Donald Emry Fishel

Donald Emry Fishel is an American flutist, composer, teacher, and church musician born in Hart, Michigan, in 1950. He studied flute at the University of Michigan School of Music under Nelson Hauenstein and Michael Stoune and graduated in 1972. His musical life has included orchestral and band performance, flute teaching, music publishing, church leadership, and sacred composition. He was music leader and orchestral conductor for the charismatic Roman Catholic Word of God Community in Ann Arbor from 1969 to 1981 and served as publications editor for the community and Servant Music from 1973 to 1981.

Fishel composed the melody of Alleluia No. 1 together with its text in the summer of 1971. Hymnary identifies the tune as ALLELUIA NO. 1 and also records the name CHURCH STREET, recalling the Ann Arbor house where the song was created. The original melody is commonly notated in triple meter and was published in E major, although later hymnals transpose it to E-flat, F, and other keys.

The song's later musical history includes harmonizations and descants by musicians such as Betty Carr Pulkingham, Charles Mallory, George Mims, Dale Grotenhuis, Norman Warren, Randall DeBruyn, and others. Those contributions are arrangements of Fishel's tune rather than evidence of shared original composition.