Louisville—Musical inspiration comes in many forms. Phillip Landgrave found his last Christmas amid the “giving idea that surrounds” the holiday season, he noted.

Landgrave, who has taught music composition at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville for more than 43 years, had just the spark he needed to begin work on his next opus, the latest in a long line of works throughout his career.

The result: “A Sweet Suite.”

“I started searching the hymnal for different songs that use the word ‘sweet’ as … part of the niceness, the goodness (and) the warmness that ‘sweet’ implies,” Landgrave said.

Once finished, he discovered more than 100 hymns in the 1991 Baptist Hymnal containing the word “sweet,” which Landgrave then whittled down to a collection of 16 songs, adding entirely new tunes to many of them.

“A Sweet Suite” was introduced to the public April 25 at Alumni Chapel on the Southern Seminary campus, performed by a senior adult choir and orchestra with Landgrave at the conductor’s stand. The choir consisted of members from six Louisville-area churches—Baptist Tabernacle, Hurstbourne Baptist, Lakewood Baptist, Parkland Baptist, Walnut Street Baptist and Lyndon Baptist, where Landgrave serves as part-time music minister.

In the musical’s program, Landgrave described “A Sweet Suite” as “a musical testimony of hymns … with the word ‘sweet’ in various forms, used to describe the nature of God and our relationship to Him. … For senior adults, it is an affirmation of our lifetime relationship of the abundant, beautiful, ‘sweet’ lives we have had and will forever have in Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Beginning with the hymn, “Every Day With Jesus,” and ending with “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” and “Lead on, O King Eternal,” Landgrave called the hymns “bookends of where we (as senior adults, which he described as anyone 50 years old or older) came from and where we are that contain the songs between.”

Although Landgrave, 72, said he considers himself as being “on both sides” of the traditional and contemporary worship aisle, he acknowledged that his goal in writing “A Sweet Suite” was to compose a musical that appealed to the senior adult generation. That meant using the traditional hymns.

“Senior adults are, by far, more tuned to the music of the hymnal than they are to music of praise and worship,” he noted. “If I’m trying to communicate to people … who are in that area of their thinking and their memory, then it needs to be using materials that have some attachment to them. Hymns do.”

In his role as music minister at Lyndon Baptist—a congregation where a majority of the members are senior adults—Landgrave said he writes a new song for the congregation each Sunday, most of which are based on hymns or Scriptures since that is what the church is more likely to respond to.

“Ministry to me is ministering to the people where they are, in ways which can meet their needs for expression in praise and worship,” he added.

With the church music landscape “strongly leaning toward the praise and worship,” Landgrave noted that it is important to not ignore the traditional hymns which “have something to say to every generation.” He also acknowledged that in 50 years, a similar musical composed for senior adults may consist of all praise and worship songs.

“We know we will always have a senior adult generation and I don’t see them fading out in terms of their musical preference,” Landgrave said. “They will always be most attached to the music that was meaningful to them growing up.”

For those who missed the premiere presentation of “A Sweet Suite,” there will be a special encore performance of Landgrave’s latest musical May 18 at 6 p.m., at Lyndon Baptist Church in Louisville.