Pope painting depicting St. Jerome (left) with Pope Gregory I (Haaretz Website)
In 2002, I was offered a position as organist for English Masses in a Polish Parish. Over the previous 12 years, I had been organist at a parish where the staff wanted mostly contemporary hymns for their liturgies. At my new position, the Pastor, Rev. Stanislaus Kondeja - Fr. Stanley, wanted mostly traditional hymns.
4/9/38 - 5/12/12
SANCTUS
dedicated to Fr. Stanley Kondeja
90% of my repertoire had to be shelved. The biggest challenge, though, would come when he let me know he wanted Gregorian Chant introduced to the congregation. The accompaniments for the chants included in all the Liturgical Resources are chord-based which, for me, is completely at odds with the flowing serenity of the vocal line and I told him chant would be better without organ accompaniment. He said simply, “I know you can do it.” (He was impressed that I used the organ’s pedalboard for the bass line, seeming to realize some organists don't.) I happily accepted the challenge. He expressed a conviction that over the course of a thousand years, only the most inspired examples of the art had survived. I was determined to make it work, and let his faith in the value of chant direct me. He had taken me to a wall in the rectory, early on, to draw my attention to an icon of the Trinity which I have now chosen for my home page. He identified each of the three figures. Very shortly afterward, I decided my accompaniments for the chants would be 3 part.
My brother David Stanley Gloninger took an interest in the project, giving me further inspiration and encouragement to work on other chants I hadn't looked at yet, as he learned to sing them.
Andrew Gloninger
Andrew Gloninger
Andrew Gloninger
Paintings of David, in his "Garden House" and in the wild, by our brother, Andrew, and some photos of David's "Garden House" environment.
Also included is Andrew's self portrait with his canine companion, Lucky.
Below, two radiant portraits of a guiding light in my life.
​​In making a case for 3 part organ arrangements, I’m first suggesting that two or more notes played simultaneously on one manual of an organ can have a texture-muddying effect when brass or woodwind stops are included in any particular registration.
When melody and inner voice are segregated on separate manuals, the possibilities for interesting contrasts and smoothness of execution are considerable.
The evolution of these 3 part arrangements was also affected by practical considerations; the most pressing of which was the widening of the distal interphalangeal joint of my right hand middle finger after surgery. The affected joint interferes with smooth transition from chord to chord (or interval to interval) in the execution of a conventional 4 part arrangement, tending to get caught between black notes.
Prior to this practical difficulty, I had, over several years, become increasingly uncomfortable with 4 part arrangements, and I’d gradually come up with a setting technique that helped with two problems: piling up of unresolved harmonic tensions and awkward fingering. An organist, Kenneth Lubben, once suggested that occasional practice on manuals alone could force a player’s awareness of the need for effective finger substitutions when moving from chord to chord; a need which could go unnoticed when “continuity” is “provided” by a foot pedal bass line. I had discovered that the two inner voices in a 4 part arrangement could play off each other providing a pulse, or ebb and flow involving a continuously alternating tension and release (one of two notes held for a full beat, the other for half). For me this ebb and flow not only offered relief from unresolved harmonic tensions, but freed up one finger for half a beat, allowing it to move to the next note without the extra step of a finger substitution.
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That was fine for a while, until my ability to handle so many notes began to slip.
My Gregorian Chant arrangements had been 3 part for years, and when my finger became a problem, I simply continued to refine my arrangements of traditional and contemporary hymns in that direction. I got to thinking the “two inner voices” had, in a sense, been one all along!
In the end, the 17th century lyric poet, George Herbert, may have said it best in the poem “Easter” the first of “Five Mystical Songs” so beautifully set to music two centuries later by Ralph Vaughn Williams:
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Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or since all music is but three parts vied
And multiplied;
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.
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Even after the transition from 4 to 3 part, my arrangements still had too many notes. At the end of every musical phrase (or sentence) where the melody note is held, I had the inner and bass parts contributing busy counterpoint. I was even advised by Alice Parker, who was kind enough to critique my work a few years back, “ (that)…the ear tires of the constant movement." (It was the Parker/Shaw collaboration that awakened me to the joy of music in 1949 or 50.) Her advise was timely, and now, at a point where my reflexes sometimes seem non existent, I can still play with lively tempos.
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The main body of Hymns on the "MUSIC" page is arranged alphabetically in an attempt to dissuade listeners from assuming the first few and last are somehow the “best of” the list.
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My scores are set up with music notation software apps. The scores created on these apps will not post to the Site (only .pdf's). If an organist is interested in downloading any of the scores on my Site as documents that can be edited, please contact this website with any specific request so we can discuss possible options. I can understand anyone wanting to delete fingering, pedaling, articulations or misc reminder markings sometimes leftover from earlier stages of the arrangements' ongoing refinement process (fingerings or pedaling partly revised since or text reminders out of place after many page "resizings", and symbols , like the one for "Turn," NOT used to indicate a "Turn".)
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The "leftovers" or other unedited stuff can, of course, be distracting or off putting to someone attempting to learn a new score. Since I can play from them "as is", I’ve simply pushed on to new arrangements and refining musical aspects of existing ones. Eventually, as health allows, I intend to get to all the fingering, pedaling, and other notation issues in all the documents. My work has value to justify a rigorous editing process, but at this point I have to set priorities. For now, I have a .pdf score for all of the hymns in my recordings library; a library which, I hope, will continue to grow.
Andrew Gloninger
Andrew Gloninger
Andrew Gloninger
Just click the Trinity Icon below to open an explanation of my recording process to right.
From my wife's photo at Sagaponack Beach 6/19/26, 78th birthday, processed by my brother Andrew
In the Photocopy of the letter below, my Father expresses his appreciation of my then 14 year old brother David 's freely expressed admiration for "Daddy's" speech given to an adult evening class in public speaking. More than a half century later I was the beneficiary of that same freely expressed admiration. But going back to my Father, a few years after writing the following letter, he enthusiastically affirmed my earliest creative efforts, (poetry at that time) seeming to follow the example David had set!
Irving Livingstone Wilson Gloninger
A New Note in a Hymn of Praise
(An address given by a business man before an adult evening class in Public Speaking
at Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, Pennsylvania
Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to pay tribute to a man who has been my hero
since childhood and is still more than ever my hero today. From this vantage point of
maturity I can look at him with eyes which understand better his trials and tribulations,
his personal tragedies; appreciate more his wisdom, his humanity and his homespun
humor.As a child I had placed him high up on a pedestal—this ungainly, tall man with aserious, sad face, with long arms and legs and a beard. Born in a log cabin, becamePresident of the United States, freed the slaves, wrote the speech which began “Fourscore and seven years ago ...”—yes, once in eighth grade I had to memorize it—was shot by an actor and died. I knew all this would have to make a man great. I also knew there was no one else quite like him, so he had to be my hero and, indeed, he was my hero, but I really didn’t intelligently appreciate him until I began later in life to study him and find out all I could about him.
The sentimentalized image I carried of him in my mind was gradually replaced by a
flesh-and-blood person—in short, a human being—but a very unusual, inexplicable
human being, this tall, brooding man with the biblical name of Abraham and the
surname of Lincoln—a man who seemed to come out of nowhere with one overriding
mission in life—to save from dissolution the Union of the United States of America ...
and to find quick surcease in an assassin’s bullet.
It was as though God was leading him to our troubled, strife-torn country. And who,
indeed, but God could arrange to have such a uniquely qualified person as the one
human resource capable of coping with America’s gravest extremity? Surely God had
created him specifically to be the savior of the United States—this log-cabin-born
man ... who as a child was precociously concerned with grown-up thoughts and
matters ... who successively was handyman, rail splitter, clerk, country lawyer, politician, debater and storyteller extraordinary and finally, to the disbelief and astonishment of many, the President of the United States ... a man some people, blinded by theirprejudices and ignorance, called clown, buffoon, country bumpkin.
His climb from lowly circumstances to the highest office in the land is impressive
enough but still does not explain his uniqueness, his Messiah-like quality of being
destined to save his country. Though he said, “The Lord must have loved the common
man; he made so many of them,” he himself, though he was “of the people, by the
people and for the people” in a much truer sense than any contemporary politician who professes hypocritically to be all things to all people, was actually the most uncommon man the country had ever known. will pass away.”
He was, at once, earthy and spiritual—earthy with a common sense, humorous, realistic
approach to all problems, and spiritual, not as a Pharisee, but as one honestly in
communion with God, having a great, compassionate, loving, forgiving nature and a
profound heart sickness over man’s inhumanity to man. He could tell a funny story to
relieve a tension one minute and pray fervently to God the next: “Fondly do we hope,
fervently do we pray that this great scourge of war will pass away.”
He was, on the one hand, selfless, self-effacing and even self-deprecating and, on the
other, stern, unshakable and unwavering in his authority. Constructive criticism he would
take but not insubordination, even from so eminent a person as Mr. Stanton, who had
aired his differences with the President on a public occasion. Other cabinet members
urged the President to fire this man, but Lincoln said, “I do not consider what may have
been hastily said in a moment of vexation sufficient ground for so grave a step. Besides,
truth is generally the best vindication against slander.”
He took upon himself the full responsibility for leadership in the hour of crisis and for the
ultimate lonely decisions this inevitably involved. His decisions were couched in
unbending words of strength, of authority, of finality, which could not be misunderstood
by any associate or enemy who would pull in the opposite direction. Strong,
authoritative yet tender and humble; hating injustice but willing to forgive it—this was the
paradox of Abraham Lincoln.
He was a master of the use of funny stories to accomplish a serious purpose. When
Grant asked him if he should capture Jefferson Davis, Lincoln answered with a story of
the Irishman who had taken Father Mathew’s pledge. Soon after he became thirsty and
slipped into a saloon and asked the bartender to make him a lemonade, and while he
was mixing it he leaned over and whispered to the bartender, “If ye happen to drap a
wee bit o’ brandy in it, all unbeknownst to meself, I’ll no mak a fuss.”
“And so, General, if you happen to let Jeff Davis go, all unbeknownst to myself, I’ll make
no fuss either.”
He was always accessible, yet always aloof. He was at ease with mortal man no matter
what his station in life, but he also consorted with the angels. He wanted happiness for
all, but failed to achieve it for himself. The lines of grief and personal tragedy were
deeply etched on his homely but handsome face, bespeaking one who could share with
his fellow man all griefs, all trials and tribulations.
He took all seriously but himself. He accepted good-naturedly the jibes at his unusual
physical characteristics, but in his sense of humor reflected a man of assured position,
as when he said, “I have very little influence with this administration but I hope to have
more with the next.”
But I have not yet touched upon his greatest power to sway the hearts and minds of
men. This was the inimitable, ineffable power of his pen. The mighty river of his words
and phrases has conjoined with the mainstream of incomparable writing through the
ages; with the writings of Milton, of Shakespeare, of Dante, which will flow ever onward
to inspire generations yet unborn to seek and preserve truth and to stamp out the evil of
ignorance and injustice.
Lincoln needed no ghostwriter to say better than any other man could say what was in
his heart. What other explanation is there for the pregnancy of his words, his phrases,
his meanings than that they were divinely inspired, as were surely the words of
Shakespeare, Milton and Dante? One doesn’t study to produce this kind of writing; it
occurs in spite of human limitations; it is the quality of genius which only God can give.
“The mystic chords of memory, stretching forth from every battle field and patriot grave
to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus
of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the angels of our better
nature.” “I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.”
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” “With malice toward none and with charity for all.”
“The last full measure of devotion.”
Lincoln needed no favorable press, no image maker. He was his own best image—the
image of truth, of integrity, of courage, of love, of sorrow.
No legends are needed to support this image; just a plain look at the man himself and
one instinctively knows that here is goodness personified.
This, then, is my tribute to my hero. It would be nice to claim him for my own, but he
belongs to the ages. More eloquent voices than mine have sung his praises. The most I
can hope for is that this eulogy will find acceptance as perhaps a new note in the great
surging hymn of praise his immortal memory has inspired.
Diana Dorothy Dibblee Gloninger & ILWG
Maud Ferguson Baber
"Junny"
who sparked my interest in music
The scores below, along with my present-day voice-over recordings, are hybrid updates for an original two part anthem I composed over 45 years ago. I could not use my 3 part arrangement technique due to the two melody's many "landings" on the same note, so the arrangements are necessarily 4 part. But the spirit of my 3 part technique was there in 1980 for anyone able to see beyond my present day voice's awkward clumsiness! The piano rendition (right) employs my score notation program's software generated playback. It has a good and even tempo, but is ultimately "artificial". The organ rendition (left) includes my actual old age, "long-covid generated" performance with a terribly erratic tempo but ultimately real. So, until I can come up with a better one .............................................
Before trying my hand at liturgical music, I'd been experimenting with piano keyboard counterpoint. I found I was able to incorporate some of the melodic content from these into my first liturgical music scores (the 2nd part of my "2 part piano piece" above, for example)