Bright Morning Star

Welcome to the Bright Morning Star site

My name is David Mitchell. I'm a biblical scholar, Hebraist, musicologist, and musical director. Bright Morning Star is my publication site.

Much of my work centres round the mysterious Book of Psalms—its message, its messianism, its history, its redaction, its ancient music and performance. For its history, redaction, and message, see The Message of the Psalter (1997). For its music and performance, visit the wellsprings of worship with The Songs of Ascents (2015). For its coming king, voyage to the roots of messianism with Messiah ben Joseph (2016). And for my project to publish all the Psalms with their ancient music, see Music of the Psalms. You can see some papers and articles I've written. I'm a member of the Society of Old Testament/Tanakh Studies. And my current writing project is a book about Jesus.

The practical side of my work finds expression in my work as Director of Music in Holy Trinity Pro-Cathedral, Brussels. We do lots of music in Holy Trinity, from polyphony to P&W. One of my interests is historical performance practice. There's our unique Good Friday Bach Passion. We do this with wonderful Baroque musicians from the Brussels Conservatoire. And then there's our big Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols with orchestra—38 players, 50 singers. Click to hear the 2018 Festival on Youtube, including my new Ding Dong March.

So I compose too. You can hear my tunes on the Youtube page. You can find some in print on Music scores. Or look out for Christmas Cantata. Get the vocal scores—a snip at £9.99—and your choir can sing this big, beautiful 100-minute long cantata. Just click through to www.christmascantata.com.

You can see some recent reviews of my work at

Yamaha-Steinberg's Dorico Blog (Dec 2018)

The Church Times back page interview (May 2018)

Podcast interview on Messiah ben Joseph (newbooksnetwork.com, 2017)

Interview on Messiah ben Joseph (2016)

Podcast interview on The Songs of Ascents (newbooksnetwork.com, May 2017)