Go Tell It on the Mountain

In the fall of 2013, while attending a Wisconsin Music Educators Association conference in Madison WI, I was sitting in on a presentation when I heard some exciting music. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was; however I soon realized that it was within my own mind. For whatever reason, I had the opening theme of my “Go Tell It on the Mountain” stuck in my head. Over the next year I never wrote this idea down, but I also never forgot the idea.

A year later in the fall of 2014, right before attending the WMEA conference again, one of my music education classes, at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire, announced an arranging project. We had to connect our arrangement to a piece that we had conducted in that class (mine was an Ave Maria). I decided, what better than the Christmas arrangement that had been stuck in my head for the past year. Considering I was thinking of this arrangement for about a year, I was able to set the arrangement within a week.

This piece, by far, is one of my favorite works that I have done. The jubilance of Christ’s birth can be heard throughout the arrangement in the dance like syncopated rhythms, the modulations, the sliding of vocal lines the dramatic dynamic contrasts, it’s tempo and it’s angelic chords. The arrangement is a fun piece that ensembles will love to perform and, in my opinion, is accessible for many.

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

- Zachary J. Moore