It’s Me, O Lord

The tune, ‘It’s Me, O Lord’ is one of eight American Spirituals that Moerane arranged. It originated as a slave song, as did so many other spirituals, and was orally transmitted until the late 19th century, when, among others, Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949) arranged it, along with some 200 or more other spirituals, for voice and piano. Moerane may have used one of Burleigh’s songbooks as the source for his setting of It’s Me, O Lord, which is in call-and-response style, led by the Soprano and with increasing harmonic and contrapuntal elaborations as the song progresses. The version on Youtube by the Moses Hogan choir gives a good idea of the piece, although Moerane made different melodic twists. In order to help choirs learn Moerane’s choral version, a free rehearsal mp3 at a slow tempo is downloadable when the song is purchased.
Duration: 2’00”

The audio sample below was generated from the Sibelius file of the score and the image on the right shows the first page of the score.