Randolph Currie
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Randolph Currie brings to his music making an extensive interest
in the history of chant, polyphony, and American folk tunes. He
also cultivates a fascination with architectural concepts in which
limitations of material and space are important. Combining these
elements of scholarly awareness and spatial relationships, this
interesting mix of elements yields a compositional style that is
tightly organized and accesible to most performers. He writes, "When
I write, I try to produce music which is serviceable and well crafted
like good antique furniture. I also consider it a challenge to write
music which is not difficult to perform, but is interesting enough
to bear repeated performances."The theory is an elevated one,
but it is based on solid music performance and composition.
For example, in addition to his music activity as the organist at
St. Joseph Catholic Church in Sylvania, Ohio, he teaches music theory
and organ at Lourdes College. He received a bachelor of music in
organ performance from Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama where
he was a student of Sam Batt Owens. In 1967 he obtained a master
of music degree from Ohio State University. It was around that time
he started to compose music and made his entry into the publishing
world in 1973 with his first anthem. He has been developing and
refining his style ever since. His compositional tasks are usually
inspired by concrete situations. His compositions for children were
written to provide worthy music for children's celebrations rather
than the "cutesy" pop stuff that was popular for a while.
Practical situations produce practical music. Our church has been
enjoying the fruit of those labors ever since the first chanter
intoned the first versicle through Johann Sebastian Bach and his
successors. There is strong evidence that the tradition continues
and is being aided by the works of Randy Currie.