Joseph song an inspired collaboration between two Minnesota dads

It was a tall order, even for an experienced musician: compose a Christmas song. Something fresh, that differs from all the classics yet deserves a place among them.

Timothy Takach was intrigued.

“Christmas is like the best and the worst thing for composers because everything’s been done,” said Takach, a 42-year-old composer and father of two from Minneapolis now living in Big Lake. “It’s super hard to figure out how to add something new.”

But he was determined to rise to the challenge five years ago when Una Vocis Choral Ensemble in Mason City, Iowa, commissioned him to compose a Christmas piece.

“In thinking about the Christmas story, there are many characters. The kings get their own song and they show up for 15 minutes. But I realized we don’t hear a lot about Joseph,” he said.

Joseph was thrust into a bizarre circumstance, Takach mused. “He kind of got a raw deal. He was told: ‘This child is coming and you’re not the father but you’re going to be his father figure.’ He didn’t have much choice. There’s something interesting to dig into.”

Being a father himself heightened Takach’s interest. So did his general interest in spirituality, first cultivated by his Presbyterian upbringing.

Then he considered a way to make this novel approach even more original. He could compose music for a pre-existing poem or he could enlist someone to write something new. With a green light from Una Vocis’ conductor, Takach called on Michael Dennis Browne, an acclaimed Minneapolis poet whom he had collaborated with before.

Browne didn’t have to think twice. “As soon as he said Joseph, it rang a bell,” said Browne, 81, a father of three who belongs to St. Cecilia in St. Paul. “I knew I wanted to explore that. My name is Michael Joseph. I was raised in Catholic schools by Josephites — a Belgian order.”

Scripture provides scarce information on St. Joseph, but like Takach, Browne began searching for clues. A verse from the Old Testament book of Hosea resonated with them, when God describes the father-like protection that he extends: “I was like a father holding you in my arms.”

It became an anchor point for the song, conveying the uncertainty Joseph must have felt as he assumed a role that was not biologically his.

That feeling was familiar to both Takach and Browne.

“There’s something so poignant about Joseph’s situation: ‘I’m like a father.’ He doesn’t feel authentic, and I identify with that,” Browne said.

The poet tapped into layers of fatherhood as he meditated on Joseph. He recalled his own early days as a father, a blur of joy and doubt. And he thought of his own father, who died when Browne was 19. He was a playful man, a devout Catholic and a church organist, introducing his son to the music that would be central to his distinguished writing career. For years, Browne used his father’s old laptop.

Six decades later, his father’s influence remains profound. “I’ve never quite absorbed all the love I learned from him.”

Browne keeps a picture of his father in a tiny writing shed in his backyard. He retreated there after Takach asked him to write the lyrics for their Joseph song — notebook in hand, tea at his side. “I love the ink and the paper,” he said.

The words emerged slowly, roughly.

In the end, he landed on unrhyming five-beat lines, like Shakespearian blank verse.

His words capture Joseph’s bewilderment: “How are you mine, child?”

They also convey his renewed sense of wonder as a parent, repeating the line “each dawn is different now that you are here.”

When it came time to compose music for Browne’s lyrics, Takach tried to honor the tension between the fear and the joy — and shift toward the latter as the song progressed. The song begins in a minor mode, feeling “ungrounded,” and Joseph’s statements start on the offbeats, as if he is hesitant, Takach said. As the new father focuses on Jesus’ future, the music shifts to the major mode, and Joseph’s statements start on the downbeat, expressing his growing confidence.

Takach worked on blank paper, pencil in hand, before he approached the computer. “The computer part tends to shut down my creative process,” said Takach, who runs Graphite Publishing and composes choral music by commission.

He wrote the song for an a cappella choir and tried to capture the “accessibility” of pop music by repeating the same chord progression.

As he composed, he reminisced about his first days as a father 12 years ago. “I remember, in the middle of the night, holding him quietly until he fell asleep. That stillness, plus the feeling of Christmas, all those elements went together to create this mood.”

His hope was that the song would illuminate Jesus’ father. “Music gives us a different lens to view the world,” Takach said. “If we can be open to receive a story and let it change us, we are better through art, through the stories we tell and the stories we hear.”

Browne has a similar view, relating his Catholicism and his creativity. “The imagination is our birthright,” he said. “We were born in the image of God, and we were meant to create. But you must have a practice, which is why I do a 20-minute meditation in the morning. Get out of your head and into your heart. Invite the presence of God and realize you are more than the sum of your fears. There’s joy below the floor of your fears.”

The song is titled, simply, “Joseph.” It made its premiere in Mason City for Christmas 2016 and was later performed by a choir at The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul. It has been very well received, gaining additional traction when the Catholic Church declared the Year of St. Joseph, a happy coincidence Takach and Browne never could have anticipated.

“You never know,” Takach said. “I had the highest hopes for this song. When I finished, I thought I had something special. But I’m not the one to decide that. All I can do is put it out into the world and see what the reaction is.”

Those high hopes were met. “I’m really proud of this,” Takach said. “It has the two things: the music and the poem. It’s a sacred piece of poetry in disguise as a secular piece of poetry. Sometimes there’s a divide between church music and concert music, and what makes me the happiest is that this is a piece that spans those two genres.”

The experience of composing “Joseph” encouraged both men to continue turning to the stories of saints and Scripture for inspiration.

“I’m more open now,” Takach said. “There are so many old stories waiting to be told in a new light.”

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‘JOSEPH’ LYRICS

a starry sky is in my arms

I hear my breathing — now not only mine

each dawn is different now that you are here

sometimes I stare at you, sometimes I tremble

I stand above you, my head a moon

and you down there on the sweet straw

each dawn is different now that you are here

I hear my breathing, now not only mine

all my dreams for you, wondering

who you might be, how far you may have come

to be with us

each dawn is different now that you are here

sometimes I feel among waves too steep,

my boat too small

for these wide hands to have made

when I’ve been working, when the sun is low,

I sink into the stream and lie there, pale as stone

and still this burning that I feel

so deep inside me

how are you mine, child?

how are you ever mine?

I am like a father

I am like a father

so let the old Joseph die, the new be born

hold high this lantern for the world to see —

this child, this light, this saving one

a starry sky within my arms (O heart)

each dawn is different now that you are here

— Michael Dennis Browne