In the meantime, two of our neighboring Adventist churches began choirs. A very bright young amateur
musician named Tiffany began a choir in the Bristol church, which is even smaller than ours. Our other Adventist neighbor
church, larger than ours, also began a choir. We were in danger of losing music-loving members to churches that had a music
program; keep up or lose out.
A couple years
after the first request, several new people started attending our church. One of them was Terry, who was in a civic choir
that sometimes gave joint concerts with the group I was in. She kept asking about a choir—she didn't want to drive to
either neighboring church, but did want to be in a church choir. Another was a retired Methodist minister, Miles, who
kept talking about how much he enjoyed good music.
A traveling choir,
"Sounds of Praise" visited the Bristol church. Miles attended that concert and stepped up the persuasion. I was afraid that
these new people, who had come from non-SDA churches with active music programs, would miss the music so much that they'd
go back to their old churches just because they missed the music. By now, Pathfinders and prayer meeting were on the same
night and the Pathfinders were hosting a fundraiser meal. My original conditions were beginning to be met.
The thing that tipped the scale was the Friday afternoon that I got a call from Rebekah, telling me that Judy's elderly mom
was terribly sick and might never be able to go back to church. Could we please go to her house and have a vespers songfest
for her?
Of course. While
we were singing, I discovered there were more singers than I realized; many of them were singing parts. It even sounded like
a choir. A couple of the men suggested that we should become a choir.
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The next time
Terry asked me about a choir, I said that if she would help, I'd try to get started. It was almost Christmas.
Now I needed to
find some music. It needed to be easy, have a limited range, and use only two or three parts. (SB or SAB) Since we had no
budget, it also needed to be in the public domain. One of the first pieces I found was "Carol of the Shepherds," which appeared
to be in the public domain. I transposed it so out-of-practice singers could sing melody without being true sopranos and created
an easy bass/baritone part. I already had a photocopy license that came with my own compilation 99 NEW SONGs, so I chose Douglas Macomber's "Come and Worship" from that book. With an "Amen" out of our hymnal, photocopies of my own SAB arrangements, and cheap black
three-ring binders from a discount store, we were ready to get started. I just made sure not to make more copies than I had
music books, just in case I wasn't correct about the music being in the public domain.*
*(As a composer
myself, I was determined to obey copyright laws, in spite of not having a budget for choir music. Is making copies of your
own arrangements of existing music copyright infringement? I needed to look up current copyright laws to make sure. [This
is part of the copyright information that I researched. If the music tune and words are in the
public domain, copying your own arrangement is legal. Many hymnals use their own arrangements and these arrangements
are copyrighted; they cannot be photocopied legally.])
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