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COMMISSIONING MUSIC BASED ON SACRED TEXTS FOR THE GLORY OF GOD IS JUST ONE OF THE MANY WAYS THAT DR. DICK GIESER, M.D. LIVES HIS FAITH. HE ALSO SPENDS SEVERAL WEEKS A YEAR AS A MEDICAL MISSIONARY IN THE THIRD WORLD.

Dr. Richard Gieser, M.D. was a junior in college when one day he was listening to an LP of Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony and suddenly "really heard" the third movement. This revelation started him off on his musical journey of listening and commissioning.

Richard Gieser, M.D.

In addition to his private medical practice in Wheaton, Illinois, Dr. Gieser spends a day a week teaching at Loyola University. His wife, Marge, is an artist who works in sculpture and textiles and has constructed threedimensional wall-hangings for churches, as well as a banner for Coventry Cathedral.

Besides an intense engagement with the arts, the couple share the fact that they were born overseas-Dick in China, and Marge in Egypt-to missionary parents. They met as students at Wheaton College and have two daughters, one son, and 12 grandchildren.

Each year, the couple spends time abroad as Dick does medical missionary work. So far, their activities have taken them five times to India, twice to China, as well as to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, Bulgaria, Romania, Mongolia and Siberia.

Wherever Dick is-whether at home in Illinois or in the furthest corners of the world-he finds music. Or he makes it happen…

Once in Siberia we offered to pay musicians to play a concert for us. They needed the money and we wanted to hear music. It was October and the heat wasn't turned on. Six musicians showed up in formal clothes. Here we all were in a small room, where your breath turned the air white, and we heard this long amazing concert of Russian music. That was unforgettable.

Anywhere we go I like to sponsor impromptu organ concerts in the local church. Organists don't make much money and they love to play so I offer $75 or so for a private concert. It's a win-win situation.

By doing this, I've heard organ concerts in cathedrals from the Hague to Portugal to Chicago. It's always an adventure. Once I was at a really boring conference in San Antonio, Texas. I found the local church and got a hold of the organist, who agreed to put on a concert the next afternoon, and I invited all my colleagues. We had a great time.

Conductor John Nelson

At home we host about a concert a month and I started a classical music concert series in our church. And then my son, who is great at getting things organized, worked with us to begin a project we call Soli Deo Gloria. Those are the words Bach put at the end of every composition: glory to God alone. We raise money and commission large sacred works for chorus and orchestra. The conductor, John Nelson, is our music person who picks the composers and the subjects.

John has been a life-long friend because our fathers went to college together. His was a seminary teacher in Costa Rica and my parents sent me there to work as my high school graduation gift. John and I met in Costa Rica, attended Wheaton, and later spent time together in New York City.

Our first Soli Deo Gloria commission was Miserere by Henryk- Mikolaj Gorecki with the Lyric Opera Chorus and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1994. Since then, we've commissioned Window Rock by George Arasimowicz, which told the story of Peter, and Devorah by Paul Schonfield, in which the text is narrated by an African-American preacher. Augusta Reade Thomas wrote Daylight Divine for us and Christopher Rouse composed a Requiem Mass that will be done next year in Rotterdam and at the National Symphony in Washington, D.C.

Finding a venue for the performance isn't always easy. Just because you commission a piece of music, doesn't mean you have a place to perform it. For instance, it's surprising that not too many orchestras are going to play Rouse's Requiem Mass, even though it's by one of the world's great living composers. But it's 90 minutes and a big commitment. So now we've decided to change our focus and scale back to make our next project suitable for smaller orchestras and church choirs.

We're learning. And I'm not even talking about the projects that have bombed! One lesson I learned is that the really great composers have to be free to write their music. That is easy to say, but it took us some time to realize and sometimes we put so many demands on projects that we lost some great commissions along the way.

Composer Justinian Tamusuza

We also commission music for family members. The first one was John's idea. For my son's wedding gift, Gorecki-who was in town for the Miserere premiere-wrote a piece and played it in our living room. Then for my son's birthday, we commissioned Justinian Tamusuza, Uganda's most famous-and probably only- composer of note. The Kronos Quartet has recorded a piece of his and we met him when he was getting his PhD at Northwestern. We probably gave him $500, which was a lot of money for us. The piece is played on the piano and the words are in Ugandan! That was a really great evening, so interesting.

Two years ago, we asked the composer David Gordon to write piano pieces for our twin grandchildren-we described them and said the girl is like a bumblebee and the boy is steady and calm-and the pieces turned out just like them.

We give a children's concert each year when we invite all the grandchildren and any other children we can round up. Some great performers come to play, like Robert Orth and Gidon Kremer. And we have fun because we take out all the furniture and set up folding chairs. Kids love it.

Every New Year's Eve, we host a concert and hire a couple of opera singers and some wonderful local instrumentalists. Starting with the millennium year, I asked three of my friends who were fine public speakers, to give us some words of wisdom interspersed with the music. We've been doing that ever since and it adds a kind of seriousness to the affair.

My wife and I learned from our parents whose lives were dedicated to service as missionaries. Living in the Third World makes you realize how much we have here at home. The most precious thing we have is not money. It is time. What we do- like giving away four weeks of our time in the Third World every year-is just a thanks to God for what He has given us.