Joey Hoelscher Music

New Song: Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder

Cover art with mountain background and song title "let us love and sing and wonder"

I’m excited to announce my new song and single, Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder!

This modern hymn based on a text by John Newton is designed for congregational worship and can fit appropriately in a range of worship styles.

Listen using the YouTube link above, or keep reading for resources, lyrics, and the story of how this song came to be.

Resources

The resources below are free to use in local church worship.

Hymn sheet

Lead sheet (follows the harmonies on the recording)

Chord chart in E-flat

Chord chart in D (E-flat capo 1)

Acoustic Version:

Lyrics

Let us love and sing and wonder,
Let us praise the Savior’s name.
He has hushed the law’s loud thunder,
He has quenched Mount Sinai’s flame.
He has washed us with his blood;
He has brought us near to God,
He has brought us near to God.

Let us love the Lord who bought us,
Pitied us when enemies,
Called us by his grace and taught us,
Gave us ears and gave us eyes:
He has washed us with his blood;
He presents our souls to God,
He presents our souls to God.

Let us sing, though fierce temptation
Threatens hard to bear us down,
For the Lord, our strong salvation,
Holds in view the Conq’ror’s crown:
He who washed us with his blood
Soon will bring us home to God;
He will bring us home to God.

Let us wonder: grace and justice
Join and point to mercy’s store.
When through grace in Christ our trust is,
Justice smiles and asks no more:
He who washed us with his blood
Has secured our way to God,
Has secured our way to God.

Let us praise, and join the chorus
Of the saints enthroned on high.
Here they trusted him before us,
Now their praises fill the sky:
“You have washed us with your blood;
You are worthy, Lamb of God,
You are worthy, Lamb of God!”

“You have washed us with your blood;
You are worthy, Lamb of God,
You are worthy, Lamb of God!”

Story

I first came across this hymn text in college and was immediately captured by the wonder in John Newton’s poem. The way he weaves Old Testament imagery into a powerful telling of the gospel still speaks beautifully today. But I couldn’t find a tune that seemed to capture this wonder effectively.

I wrote the first draft of this tune in 2007, then mostly forgot about it. Last year an old friend from that era reached out: he’d held onto a copy of this tune for over 15 years but was wondering if I had a version with guitar chords written in. Back then I wouldn’t have thought of including them or even known how to write them out; today I use them regularly. I hand-wrote some chord symbols for him and moved along, but the text and tune kept rattling around in my brain.

Eventually I returned to the tune, reworking it to sing better in church congregations. Then as my church (Faith Church in Milford Ohio) was embarking on a sermon series in Numbers, those of us on the teaching team decided to introduce it as a congregational song. Now I’m sharing it so that other churches, music pastors, and worship leaders might benefit from it.

New Beginnings in a New City

We’ve moved to Cincinnati to serve at Faith Church in Milford, Ohio!

I know, I know, my very last post was announcing something new. Well, here we are again…announcing something else new: a little over a year ago we relocated to suburban Cincinnati, where I’m serving as the music & AV associate at Faith Church. We love the church body here, the elder/pastor team, and the staff.

What About the Last Announcement?

I’m also still busily writing at Content for Humans, splitting my time between that content writing, copywriting, and editing venture and my work with the church.

The good news for this site: I’m back involved in church music, preparing and leading music in services weekly. So there’s a decent chance you’ll see more activity here, like my recent recording of Beneath the Sun, an Ecclesiastes hymn by my friend Dustin Battles.

Want to use Beneath the Sun in a band-style arrangement? You can find resources linked in the church blog post, A New Song for Faith Church, and I’ll probably write a separate post here for it as well.

The less-good news for some is that I’m still mostly inactive in the choral world since my weekly services are with a band or small acoustic ensemble. I’d still like to post my back catalog of unpublished choral works, but that’s a job for another day.

What I’ve Been Up To

Announcing Content for Humans, my newest business venture

It’s been a little quiet on this site, and that’s because I’ve been busy launching something new!

Meet Content for Humans:

For years, I’ve been writing content for clients across a range of industries. It started as a side job I wanted to keep secret—I’m a published composer, after all—and it’s just kept growing.

In July 2021 I quit my day job to take my content-writing second job full time. Here we are in 2022 and I’m launching an online presence and expanding my team!

If you need written content for your brand or organization and you can’t or don’t want to write it yourself, then we should talk. That’s what we do at Content for Humans: we create human-centric content for the digital world.

See more at Content for Humans, or check out our portfolio page to see what we’ve done for others.

What does this mean for HoelscherMusic.com? Good question. I already wasn’t doing a whole lot here, and I don’t expect that to change. Perhaps in another season of life I’ll start composing in earnest again, but this isn’t that season. Right now I’m focusing mainly on building my boutique content agency.

Wexford Carol Now Available

Choristers Guild has released my setting of Wexford Carol, available for Christmas 2021!

This careful, sensitive setting is scored for SATB choir, piano, and flute.

I dedicated this piece to Warren Cook and Rivertree Singers, an exceptional choral ensemble I sang with for many years and that premiered this composition several years back.

A treble-voice version is pending from Choristers Guild as well.

I’m pleased that this choral arrangement has also received the Editors’ Choice designation from JW Pepper.

If you’re planning a return to choral singing by this coming Christmas, please give this piece a listen and consider adding it to your concert programming.

You can buy print copies direct from Choristers Guild, or you can get digital versions from JW Pepper.

New Choral Titles and Recordings

Over the past year and a half, I’ve contributed some new compositions and arrangements that have been published and recorded by The Wilds. While I’m not actively writing much music during this season of life, I’m glad that these pieces have found a publishing home and have enhanced the recordings listed below.

Choral Anthems

The Wilds has published three new anthems in the past couple years, highlighted below.

The Love of God

About 10 years ago, I dreamed up a new tune and an updated chorus for the classic hymn text by Frederick Lehman. It was toward the end of my time with the Pettit Team, and the piece didn’t quite find a home there. Well, then I was back to grad school and the piece got shoved in a drawer (figuratively).

Several years after grad school, I remembered this tune and fleshed it out into a full SATB choral setting (with flute and piano). I’m grateful to my friend Matt Taylor at the Wilds for publishing this anthem and for including it on his and Christy’s latest recording (more on that below).

Music, orchestration and full demo available from The Wilds.

Psalm of Praise

About 6 years ago, I decided to set Thomas Ken’s lesser-known text, “Awake, My Soul, and With the Sun” and incorporate elements of the Doxology as a chorus (Ken wrote it in conjunction with his morning and evening hymns).

Personally, I love that text, but publishers didn’t. One commented that it didn’t have much of a liturgical use but was more a “me and my Bible and a cup of coffee on the front porch” kind of text. So, in a drawer it went. (Yes, there’s a bit of a pattern here.)

A few years went by, and I asked my friend and coworker Eileen Berry to do something unusual. In a move I stole directly from Eric Whitacre, I asked Eileen to take a look at the anthem and the text and see if she’d be interested in composing a new lyric that fit the meter and feel of the tune.

She obliged, and Psalm of Praise was born. Loosely based on Psalm 147, this text is more accessible to 21st century audiences. While it’s certainly no Eric Whitacre Sleep, I think it will be useful for churches. Matt agreed to publish this as well. Stay tuned for future recording news.

Music, orchestration and full demo recording available from The Wilds.

You Are the Christ (SSAATTBB)

And now for something completely different: a divisi a cappella arrangement of a beloved Wilds song, complete with (one instance of) vocal percussion!

A few years ago, Matt approached me and several other arrangers, looking for complex a cappella arrangements of well-known Wilds songs, for a 50th anniversary recording. One of the two I set was You Are the Christ. I went for a big, atmospheric sound, one in the neighborhood of Voctave or some of Voces8’s modern work (…or something like that).

Personally, I love a cappella and love writing for it. I just know it doesn’t always sell well unless you’re Eric Whitacre (and we’ve already established I’m not). So writing these for a specific album use was a lot of fun for me.

Look, you and I both know this isn’t exactly average fare for your average church choir, but it sure is fun! The Wilds published the arrangement, so interested advanced ensembles can find it at JW Pepper.

Recordings

I’ve had music included on two recent releases from The Wilds Music, as well.

Jesus Is Better

Matt and Christy recorded a duet album with choral/orchestral backing, titled Jesus Is Better. They included “The Love of God” as a solo by Matt, and I think it turned out lovely…even if I wrote the solo version with Christy’s voice in mind!

Also included here is my other a cappella arrangement, which got delayed and left off the 50th anniversary album. My men’s a cappella arrangement of “It’s Still the Cross” should be a lot of fun if you’re into modern a cappella music. It has a sound you might not be expecting from the Wilds.

Recording available from The Wilds directly, or buy on Amazon.

Giving Him the Glory

This is the 50th anniversary a cappella album I mentioned earlier. With arrangements from I think 6 or more contributors, the styles here vary widely. Some tracks are pretty accessible church choir fare. Others are grand, majestic, sweeping sounds. Some pull in ideas and harmonies from modern concert music.

And then there’s mine. My setting of You Are the Christ is more in the vein of modern a cappella. To be honest, I thought that’s what all the arrangers were doing, but I thought wrong :-).

Stay Tuned for Other Stuff

I know this site has seemed a little abandoned lately. That’s largely because I’m not writing or arranging right now. But that doesn’t mean I’m not doing interesting stuff! I’ll be gradually adjusting this space to account for the other musical (and perhaps even nonmusical?) things I’m spending my time on these days, so stay tuned if you’re curious.

As a preview: Below is a Beckenhorst video demo I made with my friend Nikki Eoute along with Dan Forrest and Joanna Mulfinger.

Many who know me as a composer don’t know that I sing, so if you’ve made it this far in this post and didn’t know: surprise! I sing. And I’ve been doing more of it in 2020.

Reflections on Sing! 2019

I’ve just returned home from Sing! 2019 in Nashville. It was a great conference, with plenty of reconnecting with old friends as well as making connections with new ones. I spent a fair bit of time at the Beckenhorst Press booth, where I met dozens of choir directors and members—some of whom may be visiting my site for the first time.

If that’s you, welcome! Say hello in the comments, and browse my published choral music or check out my Wexford Carol, which I’m selling myself! (Christmas will be here soon, of course.)

Great to see old friends James and Rachel Pitts, Jonathan Albright, Kevin and Isetta Moses, and others. The connections formed in ministry years ago are deep and lasting, and any time we can reconnect is a sweet one.

I also spent time with “less-old” friends Andrew Huish and Trevor Manor. Andrew, Trevor, and I enjoyed some shenanigans at the Beckenhorst booth and at various other locations around Nashville.

Wednesday morning after a small bit of networking and a large bit of general confusion (“General Confusion” is my personal subtitle for the conference name), Andrew, Trevor, and I slipped in to a session where Matt Boswell and Matt Papa were discussing and singing some of their hymns. It was a great session!

Modern hymns need to work well in a variety of contexts. If a song can’t hold up without serious production values, it won’t have the kind of universality that hymns need to have. The Boswell/Papa hymns we sang in this session worked beautifully with just a piano and voices. They had a one-two punch of quality and versatility that I think will help them endure.

Available Now: Wexford Carol

It’s nearly Christmas again! Just 10 months ago Rivertree Singers graciously premiered my new setting of Wexford Carol. I’m grateful to a number of choral conductors and church musicians who have purchased the score from me directly for use this Christmas season. If you’d like to do the same, please contact me. I’m currently selling this anthem in e-print format at $1.75 per license, but through the end of 2018 I’m discounting it to $1.50! Order your copies today.

Composing Milestones!

A big thank you to all those who support Hoelscher Music by purchasing and using my compositions and arrangements in worship services and concerts! Still, Still, Still is my best-selling anthem, and it crossed the 20,000-copies-sold mark in 2016. Total lifetime sales of all anthems hit 70,000 this year, too. These numbers might be small potatoes for some, but they are significant to me! So let me say once again, thank you for supporting me and my music. I’m grateful!

Musical Year in Review

I know, I’m about 10 days too late for this sort of post, but it’s been a relatively quiet year in this space, and I thought I’d let you know what I’ve been up to. 2016 was an incredibly exciting year, even if it wasn’t quite as compositionally productive.

January–March

In the first 3 months of the year I finished up last details on two choral anthems, Go Up! and Mercy, and placed Perfect Peace with Lorenz. Rivertree Singers (the Greenville community chorus I sing with) returned to the 2016 ACDA Southern Division conference in Chattanooga, invited to sing in the conference’s worship event/ecumenical service. We auditioned into the 2014 conference, and it was a special honor to be invited to the 2016 event, since choirs are accepted by audition only once per four years. The combined choir for this event premiered a commissioned anthem by Howard Helvey, who I met in real life at the conference. Many of us enjoyed seeing the sights of Chattanooga in conjunction with this concert. It’s a pretty cool town! Also during this season, my wife and I announced that we were expecting our first child!

April–June

After the Chattanooga ACDA trip, Rivertree Singers began preparing for the 2016 Piccolo Spoleto festival in Charleston, SC. We have participated in the Spotlight on Choral Music series for several years and enjoyed doing so again this summer. We premiered Peter Anglea’s new piece, The Lord’s Prayer, in this concert. Jen and I snuck in a babymoon at the end of this trip down in Hilton Head and made some wonderful memories.

Additionally, the choir’s leadership turned its focus toward our summer festival, the southeast USA premiere of Dan Forrest’s major work, Jubilate Deo. We realized quickly that, to make our performance successful, we needed to create rehearsal and learning aids for the festival singers. The composer was on board with this idea, and we ended up creating full-length score videos with studio-recorded vocals atop digital orchestra realizations. I supplied the bass and tenor tracks, and Nikki Eoute supplied alto and soprano. This was an incredibly rewarding project to undertake: Nikki and I had early access to a marvelous new choral/orchestral work, and the recordings and videos continue to aid singers around the world in learning this worthy work.

Of course, those videos were merely preparatory—the festival itself was still to come, and it was, we believe, a success. We ended up with 190 singers (that’s 150 voices joining with our choir) and a full orchestra, and the performance was the most memorable concert I’ve sung in. The entire concert is available on YouTube for your edification and enjoyment.

July–September

In July I placed Psalm 113 with Shawnee Press. This anthem has bounced around a few times due to odd circumstances, and I’m thrilled it will finally get out there for the church to see and use. Perfect Peace was released in August as a (very early) Spring 2017 anthem. Also in August I got another singing gig, this time a little less high-falutin’: I was a member of the Viking horde on the latest Patch the Pirate CD, Operation Arctic. This was different for me, but a fun bit of singing nonetheless. Also during this season I wrote an anthem with lyricist Michael Pope that’s still looking for a publisher. His text is moving and powerful, and I can’t wait to share it with you soon. Lots of baby prep happened this season, too. Lots and lots, folks :-).

October–December

Our firstborn arrived in early October, which was a wonderful, life-changing event. We enjoyed visits from family and kind meals provided by families at our church. This month was consumed with trying to figure out parenthood.

Just days after the birth of our son, we learned that my childhood piano teacher and family friend, Becky Wheeler, had passed away from cancer. Becky was deeply comforted by singing towards the end of her life, and several of us that had practically grown up in her home as her son’s friends met and sang hymns for her several weeks before her passing. I’d just received Perfect Peace back from the publisher and sang this for her as well. She took great comfort in this music, and I sang it (quite tearfully) at her funeral. Through this very sad circumstance I was struck with the power and effectiveness that good sacred music can have.

November: I’m a new dad and I have to be honest, I don’t remember this month. There was turkey towards the end?

December brought one last singing gig, with a Presbyterian church in town. Then Rivertree Singers closed out the year with a Christmas Evensong, performed at two venues here in Greenville. It was an enjoyable and well-received concert, and you might see some selections up on YouTube sometime in 2017.

Housekeeping

I’ve moved my website to my own domain, HoelscherMusic.com. For the handful of folks who have this site bookmarked (aka “my mom”), please update accordingly. The old URL (hoelschermusic.wordpress.com) will redirect to the new for some time.

I’ll post again in the near future about some recent vocal recording opportunities and the upcoming Rivertree Singers & Friends choral festival. Stay tuned!