Vocal Duet ~Hymns~ How Beautiful Thy Temples, Lord.

Robert and I were asked to sing at the Stapley Stake Conference  back in APRIL 2011. The song theme was temples, but the stipulation was that we had to choose a song from the hymn book….what to do, what to do? After accepting the assigment, I thought selecting a hymn would take all of 5 minutes..but nope!
I had been hitting one dead end after another. None of the choices were striking me as “the one”.  Some of the temple themed hymns, as is, come across sounding a little hokey, and they just didn't seem right for the situation. Around 10pm that night, I thought, “Why not create an arrangement with a modified melody?”  Hymn #288 started floating through my mind, but with a different tune. In a flash of major inspiration, I stayed awake that whole night and wrote out the entire thing. No really! It was all finished by 3.a.m! Well……Cool! THIS IS KIND OF A BIG DEAL BECAUSE I HAVE NEVER FINISHED A SONG THAT QUICKLY. Heavenly Father obviously helped!!
Warning:This duet voicing was not necessarily written to be user friendly to the masses.. I'm married to a guy who has a very large range, so I get away with writing some peculiar/difficult/questionable  range and voice leading when I know he's going to sing it.
If you have a male voice that can handle lows and highs(including using male head voice at the very end), and a female voice who has a meaty mezzo-ish  mid/low range,(unlike myself........cough cough) then this is the duet for you!!!  :D



You will find almost all of the dynamic markings in the piano line.  They apply to the singers as well.

The original key is DM, but because of the key change to B in the middle of the piece,  I have made a transposed version that starts in E flat M and changes to C.  Guess which version that most pianists prefer????  Lol.
(kudos to Wally Taylor for playing the original version like a boss)



Click these links for PDFs of sheet music!
E FLAT MAJOR
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3A_oLvMRe-cbDctb0g5VGZ3VEk/view?usp=sharing

D MAJOR (original version) if your pianist isn't going to like a key change ending in B Major...then choose the E FLAT version  Lol.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3A_oLvMRe-cUkRLMllhVzRSWkk/view?usp=sharing


Here's the post that has an SSA version:
http://soundswrightmusic.blogspot.com/2016/07/vocal-trio-hymns-how-beautiful-thy.html

Here's the post that has a SATB Choral version:
http://soundswrightmusic.blogspot.com/2016/07/choral-arrangement-satbhow-beautiful.html