Carl Eugene Wiltse

Carl Eugene Wiltse was an American composer, conductor, singer, educator, and church musician. His obituary reports that he died in Scotland on February 24, 2021, aged seventy-six; because it does not provide a birth date, an exact birth year is not asserted here. Wiltse spent most of his professional career as an elementary music specialist, principally in Holland, Michigan. His church appointments included service on the staffs of First United Methodist Church in Holland and Trinity United Methodist Church in Grand Rapids. He also served as choirmaster of the Grand Rapids Choir of Men and Boys.

Wiltse was especially influential in handbell music. He founded the advanced community ensemble Embellish in 1995 and was associated with the Bay View Week of Handbells for forty years, including fourteen years as director. Handbell Musicians of America now administers a scholarship bearing his name for young advanced ringers. He was also an award-winning composer of choral and handbell works and a frequent vocal soloist in the American Midwest and Scotland, where he and his wife, Pamela Bayes, lived from 2005. Wiltse composed this brief congregational Amen in 1982. Its earliest located hymnal publication is The United Methodist Hymnal of 1989, which credits the setting to him and prints a copyright notice naming The United Methodist Publishing House.