Description
WARNING: This arrangement of O Mighty God is also number 1 in the Trumpet Hymn Duets book. If you purchase that book, this same arrangement is already included.
O Mighty God / How Great Thou Art
Carl Boberg, Tra. E. Gustav Johnson
Eddie Lewis Trumpet
The official name of this Trumpet Hymn Duet is O Mighty God. If you look at the sheet music, you will see that is the only title. It is exactly the same melody as How Great Thou Art, but that hymn is still under copyright. So I am publishing my Trumpet Hymn Duet of the hymn with the title that is already in public domain, O Mighty God.
There are a lot of hymns that share “tunes”. In this case, How Great Thou Art isn’t very different from O Mighty God. The lyrics are different. But the theme and mood are basically the same.
O Mighty God
O Mighty God was originally a Swedish hymn sung to the melody of an old Swedish folk song. It was popular first, if I’m not mistaken, in Germany, then Sweden, and then later translated to English. O Mighty God was fairly popular in the USA in the first part of the 20th century.
How Great Thou Art
How Great Thou Art was written by Stuart K. Hine in 1949 (which is why it’s still under copyright). It is listed by many sources as the most popular of all the hymns. Today it is even more popular than Amazing grace.
About the Arrangement
I made certain that this Trumpet Hymn Duet arrangement was a little easier than most of the others. At one point in the process, I had to rework an idea because it went out of that range. Range is not the only factor in these different skill levels, but it’s the most obvious one. The Trumpet Player skill level goes up to G above the staff. I didn’t want this arrangement of O Mighty God/How Great Thou Art to go any higher than that.
I have the tempo marked at the beginner at 52 BPM. That’s VERY slow for this piece and you should feel free to take it at a faster tempo if that’s more appropriate for your church or performance situation. I wrote it this way because I wanted the arrangement to feel like it was unfolding from that opening statement.
This arrangement also doesn’t get as fanfare-like as some of the other Trumpet Hymn Duets. Remember that I am trying to stay true to the hymn’s original mood and harmonies. And I understand that this is all arbitrary and subjective, but to my ears, I just didn’t think that the fanfare-like stuff was relevant.
Free Trumpet Play Along Video
There will be a free trumpet play along video of this O Mighty God arrangement. We will post a button to the video here when it’s ready:
O Mighty God Video
Here’s the video for O Mighty God. I have to tell you that our power went out in the middle of working on this video project. I don’t think that the sound and the video match up with the same “takes”. I have a technique for recording that requires me to do what I call “scratch tracks” before I make the video. This is so I feel like I’m performing with a full ensemble when I do the final video recording. Usually, the sound you hear and the video you see are coming from the same “take”. Because of the power outage, I think at least one of these parts is a scratch track. I didn’t have time to totally redo the video so I left it the way it is.
I think it’s worth noting that my multipart videos are not for me to show off. I don’t consider that much of a thing to show off. Those videos are actually easier than recording live ensembles. The reason I do these videos is to show that they are playable. I want you to see that a real person can actually play this stuff. For that reason, I don’t do what most of the other people do who make these videos. I don’t record the sound and video separately. That’s great if you’re going for looks. One player said he likes that he doesn’t need headphones to make these videos. But for me, the video is meaningless if it’s not truly live.
And that’s what I’m saying here, is that these are not as live as they normally are.
Actually, I’m considering not doing the multipart videos anymore and only publishing score videos. It will take less time and I don’t think people actually care about the effort I was investing to keep the recordings live.
Anyway, here’s the video:
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