Advent, hymn-playing, and the AGO exams

Tonight was our Service of Advent Lessons and Carols. I could say much about this, not least that the choir sang with strong connection and beautiful phrase-shaping, but upon review of my reference recording, one comment:

I am playing the hymns better than I used to.

And I did not put a large amount of preparation time into them, not directly; two hours perhaps. But indirectly – yes. I could not have played tonight as I did without my work on improvisation, intensively in recent years, but in other ways for twenty years and more, often with little or no audible progress for years at a time. Improvement in hymn-playing was not my intent with this work; I did not even consider it as a possibility. But that is what happened.

From time to time, the AGO talks about revising their professional examinations to make them more relevant. I gather that such revision may currently be in progress. I do not think this is a good idea.

Many of the musical skills one must develop for the exams seem thoroughly irrelevant on the surface. Why does a modern organist need to sight-read in open score with C clefs? Or transpose? Or write a fugal exposition for string quartet? Or read the “square” plainsong notation and engage in modal analysis of chant, and write a short unaccompanied motet?

It took me a long time after I had completed my exams (AAGO, ChM, FAGO) to understand better how the various skills interweave and bear fruit in unexpected ways. Tonight’s hymn playing – and the singing of the choir, for that matter – are an example. All that time wrestling with plainsong and the modes laid the groundwork for being comfortable with playing in the modes, such as my improvised accompaniments for the three plainsong hymns in the service. Reading C clefs is a gateway to transposition (which I found exceedingly difficult and still do), which in turn is groundwork for improvisation.

In short, any work you do as a musician helps all of the other aspects of your playing, singing, and conducting. Any skill that you take the time to develop will pay dividends, most often when you least expect it. And there is hardly anything in music that comes on a straight, direct path; it all happens indirectly, a little at a time.

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I came into this day, the First of Advent, hating the season, wishing it would go away. A look at my December calendar fills me with dread. And it is not unreasonable; I have lived through many Advents and know well what is involved. I do not want to do it for yet another year.

But tonight’s music, and the choir’s singing of the spiritual “Steal away to Jesus” in this morning’s service, saved me. I hope that the music may have had similar effect on others, for I am not alone in dreading this season, this month of darkness and cold and despair.

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming
As seers of old have sung.
It came, a blossom bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night.
(German hymn, 15th c.. tr. Theodore Baker)

Sweet Hour of Prayer

It has been a long time since I have posted any music online.
Here is a piano improvisation on the Gospel song “Sweet hour of prayer,” from September 30. I played it twice that morning, at our 9:00 and 11:00 services: this is the earlier (and better) version. I considered posting both of them so that the listener could see how two improvisations on the same theme, played only a couple of hours apart, differ. But one is enough, and my (free) SoundCloud space is limited.

Singing the hymn elicited a lot of feedback, about equally divided between positive and negative. For some, it was profoundly moving, healing. For others, it was “like being in the Baptist church” (not usually a compliment from Episcopalians). One woman, who generally supports my musical choices, simply said (with disgust in her voice) “Please! No more of this!” She was no happier when I followed up by selecting “Jesus loves me” for the next week. For that one, she said afterwards “I almost walked out.” But the positive responses from others to both songs were equally strong.

I do not know if singing these two songs was the Right Thing To Do, given the divisions they awakened. In their defense, they did fit the lessons for the day, which was my primary reason for choosing them. Both of them appear in Official Episcopal Songbooks (though not our main book, the Hymnal 1982). And they represent a musical style almost never heard in this parish, a voice that in my opinion is worthy of our attention.

I can offer only one thought: with songs like these, both of them with simple three-chord harmonies, it is essential to respect them. The musician can easily trivialize them, which is fatal. With the piano prelude on “Sweet hour” (and the next week’s prelude, which included “Jesus loves me” alongside two other hymns), I wanted to establish the idea of taking these songs seriously.

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Yesterday I spent close to an hour at the music store, improvising on their Casio GP-500 hybrid piano, with headphones as I will mostly be playing in retirement. I enjoyed it every bit as much as playing the Steinway at the church (the one heard in this and all of my piano recordings). The session with the Casio brought clearness to me: given all the considerations involved, this is my piano of choice. I am ready to write a check and buy it. Except there is no place in our current living arrangement to put it, and I would have little time to play it.

Before his retirement, one of my dearest friends longed for a yacht. I think he wanted to live on one. As it came to pass, he was denied that wish by health conditions, but I think the dream helped him make it to the finish line of his career.

And so it is for me: the piano has become a symbol of retirement and freedom. Some days it seems so far away. But I recall the Word that came to me through a friend over a year ago: “You still have work to do here.” I believe that is still true.

Good services on Sunday: good choral singing, good hymn singing (yes, even “Jesus loves me”), Choral Evensong with Wm. Smith (which all by itself is enough to make my day). I played the organ well enough, including two pieces by Bach, one of them being a piece where I had fallen apart with the “yips” a year ago. I could feel them coming on in one passage, but by God’s grace it did not fall apart.

It was especially good to practice the big C minor prelude and fugue (BWV 546) over the past fortnight and play it for the evensong. I am glad that it is granted me to keep doing this sort of thing.

I will sing to the LORD as long as I live:
I will praise my God while I have my being.
(Psalm 104:34)

Liturgy of the Hours: another approach

I have been praying the Daily Office according to the use of the Episcopal Church for most of my adult life. Daily Matins in the Rite One traditional language is part of what made me an Episcopalian, when I was in a congregation where weekday Matins was significant, with eight or ten people gathered every morning. And I hardly need mention Choral Evensong, which is pretty much the rest of what made me an Episcopalian.

It may thus be surprising that I am trying something different. As of this past Monday, the day after Whitsunday, I have moved to the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours. An experiment, one might say.

Some years ago, I was with my sister at a thrift store in suburban Maryland. There on the shelf was a complete four-volume set of the Liturgy of the Hours, eighty cents per volume. As I learned, it had been in the care (I almost wrote “belonged,” but such things do not “belong” to anyone) of Alfonso Sanchez, S.J. – a Jesuit. From the looks of these volumes, he did not mess around; they are thoroughly well used. As they should be: Roman Catholic clergy and religious are bound by solemn vow to the observance of the Hours. But not laymen; that was left for the genius of Cranmer, who envisioned a church where everyone from peasant to queen would daily gather for Matins and Evensong in their parish churches and chapels. It has not turned out that way, unfortunately.

Once before I dipped my toe into these volumes for a week while on vacation, hastening back to the familiar Comfortable Words of the BCP when I returned home. But now that I am no longer responsible for leading public Matins in the church (excepting Sundays), the door is open for me to try this at greater length. So, on Monday, off I went: Volume III, Ordinary Time weeks 1 through 17.

Some preliminary observations:
- The rhythm of the day is different, heavily front-loaded (if one does the Office of Readings back to back with Morning Prayer, which I gather is common). Not so much in the evening; there is Evening Prayer, but it is much more lightweight than Anglican Evensong. One could place the Office of Readings there, I suppose; it can happen at any point of the day or night.
- The language is thoroughly pedestrian: ICEL texts for the liturgy, New American Bible for the scriptures, the Grail Psalter. It is a far cry from the BCP Rite One, but would probably flow naturally enough for someone inured to BCP’s Rite Two. The level of non-inclusivity for language about humankind is striking for someone who has been in a different environment for years, but these volumes date from the 1970’s, before that became a significant issue in most places. The ones I have may indeed be obsolete; I do not know if these texts were revised when they renewed (and greatly improved) the Mass translation a few years ago.
- There is a lot of Psalmody. Three psalms (or parts of longer psalms) at each office, including the Little Offices during the day. Overall, there is a four-week cycle which (at least in Ordinary Time) carries on independently of the cycle of Sundays and weekdays. Excepting on feasts and saints’ days, of which more below. I have not looked, but my suspicion is that some of the psalms show up more than once in the four weeks, otherwise it would feel more equal in weight to the Cranmerian system of reading it all through beginning to end every month, which system I have followed all these years. [Edited to add: There are a good many Canticles added to the mix, some of them familiar to Episcopalians from Rite Two Matins, many others in similar vein from Old and New Testaments. There may be enough of these to add 30% or 40% to the Psalter, and account for why the amount of psalmody feels like more than the BCP. It is definitely a lot more than the psalmody appointed in the BCP's Daily Office Lectionary, a six week cycle based on similar principles as the Roman Catholic approach, aiming to place psalms where they best fit in the rhythms of the day and week]
- But they leave out some of the juicy parts. I was shocked to learn some years ago that the Benedictines (and presumably others) omit the verses about your dogs drinking the blood of your enemies and the happiness of those who bash infants against the stones. And so they do; we had Psalm 69 this week – much of it, that is; not all.
- And there is not much Scripture. For all of the Hours excepting the Office of Readings, there is one little snippet, one or two verses in the manner of what we have in BCP Compline. Fine for meditation, but not much meat to it.
- In the Office of Readings, there are two lessons of more proper length, similar in size to the BCP Daily Office lessons. But no Gospels! Best I can tell in Volume III, not once in these seventeen weeks, other than little snippets in the other Hours. The norm is a lesson from the Old Testament or Epistles followed by a reading from the Church Fathers, generally relating to the Scriptural lesson just read or (on saints’ days) to the commemoration. I hope that I am mistaken about the absence of the Gospels. I am nervous from stepping so far away from Holy Scripture, which has brought me thus far in conversion of life.

And that brings me to what may be the most significant point for my ongoing use of these books: it presumes a context that does not exist for me, of daily attendance at Mass, which is where they are assuming you will hear the Gospel. It presumes that one will more properly feed upon Holy Scripture outside of the Hours, for example in Lectio Divina at some point during the day. I could do this, and must if I continue this path. But the thorough reading of pretty much all of the Old and New Testaments in a two year cycle, with the Gospels more often than that, is one of the treasures of the Anglican/Episcopal approach, seen all the more clearly by comparison to the Roman Catholic method.

In a similar vein, there are no Creeds, and no confession in the Liturgy of the Hours. Again, it presumes that you will have the Credo at Mass (at least on Sundays and major feasts) – and the Catholics have their own way of dealing with Confession, which for a religious or clergy, is indeed Confession with capital “C.” Not a general confession said by all together in the liturgy.

After two or three days I began to find my way through the services well enough. Then came the first exception: the memorial of the Venerable Bede, Priest and Doctor, May 25. The saints’ days are in a different part of the book, with their own texts, and much flipping of pages. Part of the propers come from the Common of Doctors of the Church (page 1763 and following) or the Common of Holy Men, Religious (page 1858 and following). Or for what they call “memorials” and we call “lesser feasts” one can go ahead with parts of the normal daily texts. But not all. I sat down at home for Morning Prayer that day, a Friday – when I had overslept; it was already nearly sunrise when I did this, and I needed to get on the road to the church and my duties – and I almost threw up my hands and quit. It was complex, and took much longer to find the right things, I was in a hurry, and not very recollected spiritually.

Whatever form is followed, the Officium is like that sometimes.

But the second reading at the Office of Readings (once I got to it) was a wonderful letter on the death of Saint Bede, by Cuthbert, which made my day. Oh how I want to be someone like that!

One gains appreciation for what Cranmer meant in his preface to the First Book of Common Prayer (our BCP, page 866) where he wrote that in the medieval Office “… that to turn the book only, was so hard and intricate a matter, that many times, there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.” I said an “Amen” to that on Friday. The Daily Office in the Anglican/Episcopal manner can be prayed by any layman who can read even a little: I remember a young gentleman back on the island where I first encountered these things who could indeed barely read; his schooling had ended with the third grade. But he could puzzle out the scriptures in the Authorized Version and the liturgical texts in the Rite One language well enough to read lessons at Matins and sometimes serve as Officiant, and he found it worth his while to do so. It is a person like him that Archbishop Cranmer had in mind as the foundation of the Anglican Church. In the Roman Catholic form, one must be considerably more determined, ready to pore over the rubrics and flip lots of pages, or receive good instruction, or best of all, the modelling of one’s elders in the religious house where one is discovering this manner of prayer. To be fair, the normal garden-variety Ferial Day is not that hard to follow in the Roman books – but there are a lot of saints’ days.

One last surprise: the hymnody. Large amounts of it: a hymn at each of the Hours. I am a little disappointed that the great corpus of Latin office hymnody is largely absent (excepting Night Prayer, where several of the greatest office hymns are given in Latin as well as English), but on the whole the selections were well chosen, with good representation of then-modern authors such as Fred Pratt Green and Fred Kaan. It surprises me how “Protestant” the hymnody is; there is little difference from what one would find in a Presbyterian or Methodist hymnal of the period. For example, the hymn for Morning Prayer on the memorial of Saint Bede was "For all the saints" (page 1864) by the Anglican bishop W. W. How, tune Sine Nomine by the English agnostic R. Vaughan Williams. But for the Latin office hymns, our Hymnal 1982 is a better source.

While it is convenient to have the hymn text right there with the office, I worry about having the selections fixed in place for who knows how long. Have they revised these since the 1970’s? For one thing, there has been a lot of excellent Roman Catholic work since then which should have a place here, to say nothing of hymnody from other sources – world music, for example, entirely absent from these pages. Again, that was barely on the radar in the 1970’s.

But one week does not give me the right to pass judgment; I submit my reflections with humility, knowing that much would become clear only with continued use. I hope to stay with it through the summer and perhaps through all of Ordinary Time, but not beyond that unless I have a change of heart. It is instructive, and is helping me to a better understanding of my own tradition.

[Edited 6/17/18 to add: I didn't make it even one month; back to the BCP for me, though with an increased understanding of the Daily Office in both its Roman and Anglican forms. More on this in the next posting.]

Veni Emmanuel

As mentioned in the previous essay, I have been working on some of the concepts in the Mike Garson masterclass, and giving it higher priority – not so much more time from the week, but better time, first thing in the day when I am fresh. I had been feeling a little “stuck” in my improvisatory work, and I think that this work has gotten me out of the ditch.

Here is this morning’s improvisation. It is based on the three songs from the service, mostly the first:

- O come, O come, Emmanuel (Veni Emmanuel)
- Mary, when the angel’s word (Tempus adest floridum)
- Creator of the stars of night (Conditor Alme)

Garson talks about his “now” music, where he has no preconception before he starts playing. I am trying to move a little in that direction, and to be less concerned about formal structure. But not entirely unconcerned, and neither is Garson; I think that he is trusting his subconscious to keep the unity of the piece. I am not there yet.

For one thing, I think it important to begin and end in the home key, in this case B minor/major. In between, I planned to go to the relative major (D) for “Tempus adest floridum” (best known as the tune for “Good King Wenceslaus,” but here with a modern text), and did so, having played around some during the week on a transition into it from the plainsong, and out of it.

I did not preconceive a key for “Conditor Alme.” As it happened, it was mostly in G major, moving to C major (about as far from the home key of B as possible). Nor did I plan what to do after that, beyond getting back to tonic.

And I think it turned out pretty well. I can hear many things that showed up during the week’s practice, but I had no idea which of them would show up today, or in what context, and none of it is exactly like anything I did through the week. For those who might be interested, there is a Serious Mistake at 4:16 – having moved in a direction that was a bit unexpected, I tripped over a note and lost the rhythmic “groove” for a moment. Yuck. “You can play any notes, but stay with the groove.”

But one must get past the fear of such things. To paraphrase another master (William Porter, organist) – we miss notes in our repertoire; what’s the difference when we miss them in an improvisation?

The whole thing is rather spacious – lots of long notes, lots of quiet. That comes partly from the two plainsongs, but partly from the day – clear and very cold, the sunshine streaming in the south window, just a handful of people at the service – four, when I started. It felt like the music needed to be gentle, reflective, so I sought to go in that direction.

From 8:45 onward feels like a coda. I did not find the photographs for the YouTube clip until this afternoon, but the coda fits them well. Both photos (from the Hubble Space Telescope) are of the “Creator of the stars of night” in his workshop – they are areas where new stars are being made.

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Some of this work with improvisation filters into my hymn accompaniment. Certainly, when it is the same tune (like the three in this one, all played later in the service), I have much more freedom with the accompaniment than I would had I not spent the time to “know the tune.” But it carries over into my organ playing, too. I do not think that I improvise well at the organ (I hope to, someday), but I am getting better at playing the hymns.

These are from last week’s choral service: Five Advent Hymns. Numbers are from the Episcopal Hymnal 1982.

- 65: Prepare the way, O Zion
- “People, look East” (from the supplement Wonder, Love and Praise)
- 72: Hark, the glad sound, the Savior comes
- 60: Creator of the stars of night
- 444: Blest be the God of Israel

They are from the organist’s point of view – that is, the microphone is close to the instrument and one hears much more organ sound than the congregation would hear out in the room. I post them as an example of what I aim to do with the hymns.

I could not have played this way five years ago, perhaps not even one year ago; I would have been tied much closer to the page. And I emphasize that such progress as I am making is not coming from explicit work with the hymn accompaniments; it is carry-over from that half-hour or so at the piano every morning. I do of course practice the hymns, but no more than I have for years, and perhaps a bit less these days.

The final hymn, however, is an important caution to the improviser. It is a “big” English tune, with a fully-written out accompaniment by its composer, Basil Harwood. When presented with such a hymn, the organist should play exactly what is on the page, and that is what I do, perhaps filling in a chord here and there.

There are times when improvisation is not a good idea. Just play the notes.

The photos are of our beloved little Pilcher, taken on a sunny winter day much like today.

Amazing grace

This was a hymn for last Sunday, and I have posted three new YouTube settings from those services:

Improvisation on Amazing Grace (New Britain)

Some may wish to compare this with my improvisation on the same tune from a year ago. One of the things I liked about that version was that I incorporated a bit of Howells, for that was the Sunday we sang the Collegium Regale Te Deum.

This year’s version is just “New Britain.” I sought to establish a contrast between a solemn version in the low tenor, in A flat, with a bit of scherzetto in the upper register in C major, leading to a dialogue between the two. But I think last year’s version was better, and perhaps one of the best I have done.


Peter Schickele is a well-known musicologist, the world’s leading scholar in the music of P.D.Q. Bach. But he is also a composer. This setting of Amazing Grace for choir has nothing to do with P.D.Q. Bach; it is a fine, serious piece. I am especially proud of the adult choir, who on this day numbered seven singers. Unlike some small Episcopal choirs, we do not have paid singers; all of them are volunteers, who over the course of a year give a lot of time and energy to the choir.

Here is an organ setting by Kenton Coe, one of six settings of early American hymn tunes.

I could write more about “Amazing Grace,” but instead I refer you to Bill Moyers. Some years ago, he prepared a documentary which can be found here.

A Documentary: Amazing Grace (Bill Moyers, for PBS)

The video quality is poor – someone recorded it on their home VCR. The sound quality is nonetheless pretty good. And the content is amazing. It runs an hour and twenty minutes; save it for a time when you can sit down and listen with attention. At the very least, watch the first half hour or so.

If you would prefer a version with better sound and video quality, many libraries will have the DVD, or it can be purchased. If you do that, please don’t buy it (or anything) from Amazon; get it here, from the PBS online store.

As a chalice cast of gold

Again, we sang one of the hymns by Thomas Troeger with tune by Carol Doran, “As a chalice cast of gold.”

The hymn was new to the congregation, so I used it for an improvised prelude at the choral service on the organ. It forms the A section of an A-B-A form, with the opening hymn, St. Denio (Immortal, invisible) as the B section. Here is the improvisation.

The artwork begins with a Salvador Dali painting. The second, “The Chalice” by Morris Graves (1910-2001), I found very striking – it is as if the chalice is filled with light, perhaps a galaxy. He was a painter in the Pacific Northwest, much influenced by Zen Buddhism and Asian art.

I will share with you also an example of how hymn playing and improvisation should be done: Healey Willan, at the church of St. Mary Magdalene, Toronto: Hymn (Ye watchers and ye holy ones) and concluding improvisation

He takes the hymn with a much slower tempo than any modern organist would dare attempt – that was apparently the style at his parish. There is another YouTube clip of Willan playing “Hail thee, festival day” as a processional, and it takes somewhat over twelve minutes. Most clergy would have a conniption.

But the improvisation... I would like to play like this when I grow up. Notice the intimate relation between the hymn tune and the improvisation, and the grandeur.

I gather from the comments to these clips that nowadays, hardly anyone attends St. Mary Magdalene. I wonder what has happened to them in the fifty years or so since Willan's time.

At a choir dinner on Saturday, one of the choristers said that she did not know any of the hymns we have sung over the past year. I hear similar comments frequently from people who move here from other churches, including Episcopal parishes – they don't know the hymns. It is a stark reminder that my musical work in this place is but a leaf in a windstorm, a storm that seems to be carrying away all that is worthwhile - including such things as these fine hymns by Troeger and Doran that I have sought to keep alive. I will soon be gone, and what will become of it all?

That is not my concern; I can only do my work, here and now.

I see that all things come to an end,
But your commandment has no bounds. (Psalm 119:96)

some thoughts on Congregational Song

I am presenting a workshop on Leading Congregational Song for our local AGO chapter this Saturday (for those who live nearby, it is at 10 am, Trinity Episcopal Church, Iowa City). For me, this is a Big Deal; what can I say to these my friends? I have been struggling with it for about a week, and still do not have it firmly in place. But here are some ideas. I acknowledge my debt of gratitude to John Ferguson, formerly of St. Olaf College; I learned much of what little I know from his “Mini-Course on Creative Hymn Playing,” an audio CD and workbook available from the AGO website, and some of these ideas are explicitly his.

Know the Tune.
I wrote of this elsewhere. In this context, be able to play the tune with either hand, or in the pedals, without giving it a lot of thought – your mind will need the freedom to consider other aspects of your playing, not just the tune. It is good to take it through several different keys to improve independence. And I find it essential when learning a tune to sing along with solfas as I play. Singing it (with solfas) away from the organ is good, too.

Immerse yourself in the spirit of the Tune. Is is cheerful? Solemn? Dancelike? Is it a medieval Chant, or a Psalter tune, or Chorale, or folk melody, or nineteenth century “parlor song,” or big English “public school” tune? Or something else entirely?

Know the Text.
Know also where this Text and Tune fall in the overall Story, the mighty Acts of God which we remember in the liturgical year. If it is a good hymn and well-chosen for the liturgy, it says something unique that must be said at this precise point in the Story. How can the organist communicate the text so that it will connect with people?

Decisions about tempo, articulation, registration, and much more depend on what the Tune and Text are telling you.

Breathe.
If you don't, neither will they. Give them a reliable tactus, with a breath between phrases and especially between stanzas. Do it the same between every stanza – not one way after stanza one, another after stanza two. Within the stanza, how does a comma differ from a semicolon or period? Where will they want to breathe in spite of the need to carry over the line break for the idea? How can you play to help them across the gap?

Listen.
It is tempting, sometimes, to sing while you are accompanying the hymn. It is usually a bad idea, but you might have to do it – I am expected to sing as I play piano at the middle service, so I do. Whether you are singing or not, listen. Are they “getting it?” Are they dragging the tempo, or sounding weak and confused? How can you react? Sometimes I play too softly, hoping to encourage them to sing softly. If instead it is weak, maybe all it needs is another stop or two, especially 8' foundation tone. And sometimes I have prepared to play on full organ, but the congregation is smaller than expected; am I “blowing them away?” Too much sound discourages them just as much as too little; back it off a few stops. But if the singing is strong and confident, that frees you to expand the texture perhaps more than you had planned, or drop out for an unaccompanied stanza.

And that leads to the next:

Love your people, and their Voice.
Over time (if you pay attention) you will know very well how they sing, and how they will sing under different conditions. Most importantly, congregational song is what it is – it is not a polished performance (and if it is, such as in the BBC “Songs of Praise,” it is artificially so). In most cases, it is not what you would wish it could be – some people sing too loud and perhaps off-key; others aren't singing at all; almost no one has a Good Voice.

All of this is very much like the wrinkles on the face and hands of your beloved. There are reasons for all those wrinkles, for all the imperfections (musical and otherwise) of the people who gather in your congregation on Sundays.

[I must here insert a link to the song “Lies” by the Canadian artist Stan Rogers, with grateful thanks to Fr. Tim, who introduced me to his music. Take the time to listen to it. Read the lyrics.]

Sure was a bitter winter but Friday will be fine,
and maybe last Easter's dress will serve her one more time.
She'd pass for twenty-nine but for her eyes.
But winter lines are telling bitter lies...

Get to know your congregation's Voice, which is like no other in all of Christendom. Be a partner with it in the eternal Song.

Know (and love?) your instrument.
It is much the same. You are probably not playing the finest pipe organ in the world – not that there is such a thing, for no organ can play everything well – It might be a little hundred-year old Lady such as our Pilcher, with plenty of wrinkles in its face. It might be a brand-new fifty rank Randall Dyer in a fine acoustic, such as I played for many years. It might even be a 1970's Baldwin electronic, which I played for a while. Or a Hammond; I played one of those, too.

Whatever it is, get to know it. Know every sound on it, alone and in combination – every one of them has a potential use, somewhere and sometime. Know how it relates to the room, to the congregation's sound. Most of all, know how to use it to bring forth the spiritual gifts that are essential for the songs that you will all sing together.

That is enough for now. I still have some thinking to do between now and Saturday.


Here is a piano improvisation from last Sunday, mostly on the chorale “Christ ist erstanden,” with a bit of the opening song at the end (“Gather us in,” by Marty Haugen)

God has work for us to do

The Lord's Day: Solemnity of Christ the King

Almighty and everlasting God, we yield unto thee most high praise and hearty thanks for the wonderful grace and virtue declared in all thy saints, who have been the choice vessels of thy grace, and lights of the world in their several generations; most humbly beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow the example of their steadfastness in thy faith, and obedience to thy holy commandments, that at the day of the general resurrection, we, with all those who are of the mystical body of thy Son, may be set on his right hand, and hear that his most joyful voice: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Grant this, O Father, for the sake of the same thy Son Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen. (BCP p. 487)

I once thought of this Sunday in terms of the Second Coming of Christ when all shall be made right, and I thought of that Day in a manner akin to the arrival of Aragorn and his friends at the Field of Pelennor, the King's banner flying from the ships, the sword Anduril in his hand, the orcs and goblins and all the forces of evil scattered and destroyed, and all that is wrong with the world made right.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)

There is Scriptural support for such a view: Revelation 19:11-21, for example, as well as the Old Testament Lesson from today's Office: Zechariah 9:9-16, especially verses fourteen through sixteen.

As it says in one of the Psalms for the Twenty-Third morning, which we read at Matins:

He will heap high the corpses;
he will smash heads over the wide earth.
(Psalm 110:6)

Scripture suggests that there may be an element of that somewhere in what is to come, but today's Gospel (St. Matthew 25:31-46) is the only one of the three for this day in the RCL Eucharistic cycle that even remotely leans in this direction. The other two emphasize that His crown is of thorns, His throne a tree:

Fulfilled is all that David told
in true prophetic song of old;
how God the nations' King should be,
for God is reigning from a tree.
(Vexilla Regis – number 162 in Hymnal 1982)

The working-out of these things remains a Mystery, which we must leave in the hands of God. But when we see it with our own eyes, “as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west” (St. Matthew 24:27), we shall know that His judgments are righteous (cf Psalm 119:137-8).

Here is my recording of the Toccata and Fugue. You will hear a lot of clatter in the pedal solos; that is the nature of an old tracker instrument, and the microphone is close to the console.

On the whole, I am pleased with it; I hope my Teacher is. He knows that this week has been instructive, and not just in terms of playing the organ. I take from this two lessons and a question:

1. The places I missed were all well-prepared. I knew they were hard, gave them extra practice, felt prepared – and still missed them, all in ways that I had not done before. These were not “old” mistakes creeping back in; they were brand new, though in passages of sufficient difficulty that mistakes of all sorts are possible. The place where I fell apart yesterday and expected a Train Wreck went perfectly well today.

2. All of these places felt at the time like horrible glaring failures. Yet, when I listen to the piece, the mistakes are there, but they do not destroy the effect to the degree that it seemed at the time. Any of my young musical friends who are still reading these pages, take note; your playing is often much better than it seems to you at the time. At least it is if you can keep going.

The question: How can I improve my accuracy? I have done everything I know to do at this point, and I have improved my playing a lot over the past two or three years. It could be that my proposed New Habit of adding technical exercises to my daily practice might help. But I am not sure my errors today were technical in nature; they were probably more like St. Peter looking about at the wind and waves (St. Matthew 14:29-30). I ask my Teacher “What must I do?”

A musician whose opinion I trust said that it was terrific. I take comfort in that.


I took a chance with today's hymnody, for all of the songs were unfamiliar. Here are the three that were brand-new to both of our singing congregations.

“What kind of shepherd seeks the sheep” by the young Mennonite pastor Adam Tice, written in 2013

“Stranger, standing at my door” by the distinguished New Zealand author Shirley Erena Murray, text 1997 with tune by Jane Marshall written in 2008

“Till all the jails are empty” by the equally distinguished American author and Episcopal priest Carl P. Daw, Jr. with tune by John Bell and the Iona Community, text and tune both from 1995. That is almost twenty years ago, but it still seems like a “new” hymn. I heard it for the first time at the Hymn Society convention in Richmond a couple of years ago.

One parishioner took me to task for these songs: “Love your neighbor. I get it. You don't need to beat us over the head.” Perhaps I overdid it, though I would offer the defense that these songs are faithful to the Gospel, and echo today's excellent sermon by Rev'd R. And behind that, they express a message that is of sufficient importance to repeat until everyone hears it...

Till all the jails are empty,
and all the bellies filled;
till no one hurts or steals or lies,
and no more blood is spilled....
God has work for us to do.
(Carl P. Daw, Jr., copyright Hope Publishing Co.)

I leave you with the piano improvisation for the middle service prelude. In this, I mostly sought to introduce the tune for “Stranger, standing at my door,” and finished (somewhat to my surprise) with a bit of Forest Green in C major, the tune for the opening hymn “What kind of shepherd.” I had worked with Forest Green in my preparations, intending to cast it in minor – but in the event, it insisted on being in major, and I think rightly. Form is of utmost importance for an improvisation, and preparation is essential, but sometimes the piece goes in a different direction than expected. I think that the subconscious is at work here, or perhaps the Spirit, and one must not be deaf to these whispers.

Of all the music today, and much of it was very good, it was the song by Adam Tice that got to me. The text mostly covers ground well-worn by Psalm 23, and Ira Sankey with his old song “The ninety-and-nine,” which is a story told elsewhere in the Gospels, but it relates very well to the day's Old Testament Lesson (Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24), which is why I selected it. Near the end, Rev'd Tice writes:

Then with the wand'rers and the strays
that you have sought and found...

In the context of today's Gospel, it reminded me that should we be chosen to be at His right hand, it is by grace alone. We are, all of us, a company of “wand'rers and strays.”

The Pilcher at work

I have written much about playing the organ; it is high time I give an example.

In November, I am to be the proctor for an AGO examination in our chapter. I had the choice of having the exam professionally recorded (at my personal expense) or learning to do it myself. For this, my 1980's Radio Shack portable cassette tape recorder, which I have used for thirty years to evaluate my practice of improvisation and hymn accompaniment, would not be suitable.

Last week, I went to the local music store and purchased an MP3 recorder. I gather that such devices used to be expensive; not so much nowadays. This one, a “Zoom H-1,” was $100, with another $30 for the accessory kit. This week, I have experimented with it, and am amazed with its capabilities. I need to work with it a lot over the next month so that I can reliably record the exam and burn it to CD.

Today, I used it to record the beginning of our 11:00 church service, and have posted it on YouTube – my first attempt at such a project. That part of it was not so easy and took me about two hours, mostly in downloading the Windows Movie Maker software and figuring out how to change the WAV file that I recorded into an MP4 file that can go on YouTube. I patched on a photo of our choirs from last spring, which gives you an idea of what the interior of our church looks like, with the organ to the left in the background.

Better, you can now hear what it sounds like. The file includes the following:

Variations on a Shape Note Tune (Wondrous Love) by Samuel Barber
Hymn: All hail the power of Jesus' Name, to the tune Coronation
Salutation and Collect for Purity
Gloria in excelsis: setting by Robert Powell (S-280 in the H-1982)

The aural point of view is that of the Organist – I set the recording device beside the bench, pointed away from the instrument into the room, but it nonetheless is heavier on the organ during the hymn than it actually would sound in the room. And during part of the Barber, you might note the “Vox humana” on the tune – that would be one of the choir altos, who hummed along with me as I played. I am fine with this, for it shows that the music engaged at least one of the listeners.

The Barber is one of the classics of the twentieth century American organ repertoire, and I think that I played it pretty well today. The hymn is typical of what we do in our parish. One stanza is sung by the women, another by the men (and, in review, I was too loud for both of these), one unaccompanied by the congregation, and the descant from the hymnal on the final stanza.

Here is the link.

Conference Notes: Taizé

As with my previous essay, this one is an attempt to organize my thoughts about another aspect of the Hymn Society conference: the workshop on the music and worship of the Taizé Community, and the evening prayer service in the spirit of Taizé. I write my notes in this form in order to provide a space for links to online resources.

I wrote last week that my encounter with Taizé last month showed me that there is more to it than I had realized. Taizé was started by Brother Roger in 1940 as an ecumenical community of reconciliation and peace. "The defeat of France awoke powerful sympathy. If a house could be found there, of the kind I had dreamed of, it would offer a possible way of assisting some of those most discouraged, those deprived of a livelihood; and it could become a place of silence and work." Their small cottage in the desolate village of Taizé, where Roger was joined by three others, the first Brothers of the movement, became a sanctuary for many displaced persons during the early years of the war, until the Gestapo occupied it in November 1942. After the war, the four Brothers returned from Switzerland to the village and resumed their life of "simplicity, celibacy, and community." At first, their worship was in the village church. In the early 1960's, the community began to attract large numbers of young pilgrims, and they built their own church, the Church of Reconciliation, with the work of volunteers and pilgrims.

Should the coming decades bring what I expect, the quiet witness of these Brothers, just Brother Roger at first and then for many years fewer than ten of them, stands as a model for those facing times of famine, death, tumult and war. No matter what the circumstances, it is always possible to live the Christian life in community, and to serve as Christ's hands in the healing of the nations.

More specifically, we church musicians must keep the Taizé songs and their manner of worship in mind. There may be more strength to these songs, these prayers, than one might think.

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The workshop and the evening prayer at the Hymn Society conference were led by David Anderson (davida@giamusic.com), who is an editor at GIA Publications. They are the U.S. agent for the Taizé publications, and all of the music is under their copyright for the U.S. and Canada. Several collections of music are available from GIA; recordings as well.

The Taizé website is this:
http://www.taize.fr

At this site, the most useful aspect for our purposes is the menu item "Prayer and Song." This takes you to a page with many subheadings; all of them are very important.

There is a page with mp3 files recorded live and quite unpolished (and thus, more real. For example, the cantors sometimes sing flat, the instrumentalists fluff notes, the congregation coughs and drops things on the floor and is sometimes not "with it." But there are times when it is all incredibly splendid. As with real worship, these moments are unpredictable.) There is a link to a weekly broadcast of the Saturday evening prayer service at Taizé, by a Catholic radio station in Cologne. There are many older services on the page as well as the one for the current week; each of the recordings runs about one hour and fades out in mid-song when the hour is expired.



The basic resources that Mr. Anderson recommended as a starting place are these:
- Songs and Prayers from Taizé (G-3719 for the basic edition) - 50 chants, guidelines, prayer texts and litanies.
- Taizé: Songs for Prayer (G-4956S for the vocal edition)
- Christe Lux Mundi (G-7101S for the vocal edition)
- Prayer for Each Day (G-4918) - this is text only; prayers for various seasons, a general introduction to worship in this manner.

Also two DVDs:
- Praying with the songs of Taizé (DVD-391). This is helpful because it is hard to enter the spirit of Taizé worship without seeing it. And it is done badly in many places, so badly as to turn people away from it. A similar result can be achieved from the broadcast recordings noted above.
- Life at Taizé (DVD-481) - a sixteen-minute video introducing the Community and its life.

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What should I make of all this?

There is already a weekly Taizé service in our community, so it would be wrong to try and start another one at our parish. Besides, we have the form of daily prayer that is proper to our tradition: Rite One Matins and Evensong, and especially Choral Evensong. We should nurture this rather than looking to Taizé for a model.

Still, it is worth noting that the Taizé form of evening prayer is based on the same model of monastic prayer that lies behind Roman Catholic Vespers, Lutheran Vespers, and Anglican Evensong: a beginning, psalm, Bible reading(s), prayers including the Our Father, song [in the basic tradition, the anthem or office hymn. In the Taizé form, this element is considerably expanded]. Perhaps there are lessons that we could carry over into Choral Evensong -- much longer silences after the readings, use of candles and icons, more opportunity for meditative prayer toward the end of the service (where our rubric says "Authorized intercessions and thanksgivings may follow" [BCP p. 71]), including ten or fifteen minutes of silent prayer, and then an open-ended conclusion to the service?

The result would feel very different from a traditional Choral Evensong, and probably very different from anything that is being done anywhere. I surely am not aware of any place where one might hear the Smith Responses, Anglican Chant psalmody, a Stanford Mag and Nunc, and end up with a couple of hours of Taizé songs, prayers, and meditation by candlelight. I would attend such a service; one of my problems with our Choral Evensong services is that when they are finished, what I want to do is to spend another hour or so in the church, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, contemplating what we have sung and continuing the prayer.

Of more interest is the question of incorporating elements of this into the Sunday morning Eucharist, specifically our 8:45 "contemporary" service. The practice at this service is to sing a Taizé song or other repetitive song during the administration of the Blessed Sacrament. (We use songs from other sources, such as the Iona Community, and more of these than the genuine Taizé songs. But the ones we use are in a similar style, and aim for similar effect.)

There are many problems with this. The most notable is that it requires a mental shift from the discursive to the meditative. And this is supposed to happen in a service where the clock is ever-present. We have to be done by 9:45 so that people can go to their church school classes. A secondary problem is that silence is just as important to the Taizé spirit as the music, and there is often not so much as thirty seconds of silence at any point in the 8:45 service -- again, the clock is the ruling factor. We must press on from one thing to the next in a headlong rush. One cannot easily flip the switch from this mindset to one of stillness. Even if we were not in such a hurry, the people would have to learn to tolerate silence.

A third problem is that the effect of the songs is cumulative. In a proper Taizé service, there are many songs in a row after the concluding prayer -- in the service broadcast that I am hearing as I write this, almost a half-hour of songs. We have time for only one song, perhaps five minutes, eight or nine minutes at the most.

Nonetheless, with all these obstacles, it sometimes works. Or (I am guessing) it works for some people some of the time, while simultaneously for others it falls flat. And on another Sunday, it might work for other people. It depends on what the people are bringing to that day's worship from their lives -- and, very much so, it depends on the work of the Holy Ghost who prays with and among us and can never be predicted or pinned down or planned, and does always what is best, and what we need.

There was a man who is a notable author who used to attend our 8:45 service. He would sit in the back row with his young daughters. In those days, someone else (Thomas W., who reads this blog) was leading the music, and I sat in the back row with them. In one of his books, he wrote of a particular day when we sang a Taizé song -- and how it changed everything for him. I remember that song and that day, and even sitting beside him, I had no idea what was going on in his heart. It is well to remember such things as these. We (especially we who plan worship and music) may think we know what is going on, but we do not.

What I am getting at is this: the Taizé song during the distribution of communion is the most unpredictable part of our 8:45 service. And it must remain so. All I can do is to pick a good song, lead it with some degree of sensitivity to the feel of the congregation, and stay out of the way. When it "works," the song takes on what Brother Robert called "a flow of inner life animat[ing] the singing," and it becomes like a little bird, or a butterfly.

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A practical note: One easily gets the impression that the instruments are more important than they are in fact. There are books of instrumental parts for all sorts of things -- flutes, trumpets, cellos, guitar (classical-style, not the "thrash and bash" type guitarist that so often appears in church settings). Mr. Anderson reminded us that they don't actually make that much use of the instruments at Taizé. In the off-season when there are not so many pilgrims, there may be only the guitar which seems to be their basic instrument, or a keyboard, and this is perfectly legitimate. Even in the peak season, there will likely be only one or two additional instruments at a given service. In the one I am listening to -- in August, a peak time with lots of pilgrims -- there is a trumpet, not very well played, and he or she only plays in perhaps one-quarter of the songs, maybe less.

What there are at Taizé, and what we lack: cantors. We have some people who sing at the 8:45 service, but none of them have vocal ranges that correspond to the written Taizé parts. Many of the songs benefit greatly from the solo descants.

Still, the song can and should be simple. If leading from the piano as I do, a good bit of improvisation is helpful, and it would be quite deadly if the pianist simply were to repeat the written accompaniment, over and over. I begin with the written accompaniment, and after a few times start to play descants, or change registers (e.g., revoice the chords into the tenor register), or reduce the texture to just the bass line, or just a descant line, or stop playing altogether, just giving a hint at the end of each repetition that we should continue. Or arpeggiate, or play what the old composers called "doubles" -- variations in eighth note motion. Brother Robert again: "Variations in intensity are desirable, to match the variations in the prayer itself. At times it will be calmer, and at other times more urgent." The piano and other instruments can give cues as to the changes in intensity -- but the pianist must not force this on the people; he must sense what is appropriate from moment to moment. If Brother Robert is correct (and I think he is), the pianist is sensing "the variations in the prayer itself" and through his playing helping the congregation likewise to sense the variation, the ebb-and-flow of the prayer.

I have tried accompanying the songs at the organ, and it has been a miserable failure. The piano is much better for this - though the organ could work with the strongest and most outgoing of the songs, such as "Laudate Dominum," if there is a large and vigorous congregation.

And the large congregation helps all of the songs. There is a special magic when hundreds of people are singing this music in a good acoustic, as we had at the Hymn Society service. We sang the Magnificat canon, which is one of the older songs, and got the four-part canon going plus the four-part secondary canon, and kept singing for about ten minutes. It was spine-tingling (not at all like the recording, which is a studio recording with a small group of singers -- much cleaner, but not like a real congregation). It is something that is not possible for our congregation of fifty or sixty people, most of them not especially interested in singing.

Here is a song that was new to me. I think it will be effective at our 8:45 service. The YouTube link is more of a real congregation, and shows the use of the guitar to accompany:
Let all who are thirsty, come

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I am left with many more questions than answers.
But that is true of almost every aspect of my work as a church musician, and my life as a Christian.

Conference Notes: Praise and Worship Music

This entry is more for myself than for others; it is a way to try and make sense of one of the aspects of last month's Hymn Society conference. Namely, it summarizes my notes from the workshop led by Greg Scheer entitled "Praise and Worship: from Jesus People to Gen X." By putting my notes in this form, I can include links to fill out the picture somewhat, and return here for reference.

First, my disclaimer: I know very little about this genre. Mostly, I want to list the elements that Mr. Scheer thinks are important in the current era, that of "Emerging Worship," and some of the musicians that are prominent. And mostly, the information here presented is from the notes that I took at Mr. Scheer's workshop. Anything useful is his; the mistakes and misjudgments are all mine. [My comments are in italics]

A much better presentation of these ideas can be found in the essay that Mr. Scheer contributed to the book "New Songs of Celebration Render: Congregational Song for the Twenty-First Century," edited by C. Michael Hawn, published by GIA Publications, Chicago, 2013. I purchased a copy of this book on the last day of the conference and it looks to be very interesting (I have not had time yet to read it). The book traces seven "streams" of congregational song as we move into this century, with Praise and Worship being one of the seven. Mr. Scheer's essay is found at pp. 173-206.

Three Fundamental Traits:

- P&W music is a product of American Evangelicalism, but has affected others, including Roman Catholics and the mainstream Protestant denominations
- The aesthetic is drawn from pop culture. It tends to track pop culture with a time lag of five to twenty years. The desire is to please and attract nonbelievers by speaking their musical language. Music is always a vehicle for evangelism. It is youth oriented because pop culture is youth oriented, aimed at age 18-24.
- There is a strong personal and ecstatic spiritual orientation, with roots in Wesleyan Holiness and the Pentecostal/Charismatic movements.

Precursors and Scripture Song (1971-77)

Mr. Scheer outlined several precursors to the movement, especially William Booth and the Salvation Army bands; the frontier revivals, camp meetings, [and urban revivalism - C. Finney, D.L. Moody, and the musicians associated with them such as Ira Sankey] ; African American music [spirituals, but especially gospel music. Also "white" Gospel music belongs here - e.g. Fanny Crosby, William Doane, many others]; the mid-twentieth century evangelical movements such as the Billy Graham crusades, Youth for Christ; youth musicals; the "Jesus People" of the 1960's and early 70's.

The early "Scripture Song" movement is well illustrated by Karen Lafferty's song "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." [We sang this one today at the contemporary service]. These are guitar songs, quoting Scripture for their texts [almost always King James version], using three to six guitar chords.

Important in the early stages was Calvary Chapel and its pastor, Chuck Smith. As Wikipedia recounts it, "Smith's daughter introduced him to her boyfriend John Higgins, Jr., a former hippie who had become a Christian and who went on to lead the largest Jesus Freak movement in history, the Shiloh Youth Revival Centers." With Smith's support, the musical side of the Jesus Freak movement led to "Jesus music"
and Christian Rock Concerts. The music label "Maranatha! Music" was formed to publish and distribute these songs [and make a lot of money on them. The resulting "Christian music industry" pretty much absorbed all of this music and its musicians. This is a theme that recurs several times in the history of this genre; every new creative impulse is soon commercialized.]

Praise Chorus (1978-92)

The Jesus People grew up and became Boomers, and wanted a "contemporary" style of worship with "their" music. From this period come what Scheer called the "classic praise choruses." A typical song is "Sanctuary" by Randy Scruggs and John Thompson, copyright 1982, with the first line "Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary."
[Although it is over thirty years old, it is still sung at gatherings such as our diocesan youth "Happenings," and was one of the songs chosen by our high school musicians for Youth Sunday in our parish this spring.]

The CCM, or "Christian Contemporary Music" movement fits here. Just as "Maranatha! Music" was the key publisher for the Scripture Song period, "Integrity (Hosanna!)" is the main publisher in this period. [Partly from dealing with these publishers and their music, I have gotten to where I am very suspicious of any corporate name that includes an exclamation point. Just saying.]

The music gets professionalized, often with big triumphalistic orchestrations. The style is no longer simply one or two singers with guitars. It is smooth light-rock pop. Most importantly, it is now a fixed style. As Mr. Scheer said, it is immediately identifiable -- "Oh yeah. That's my mom's church." In other words, it is the church music of the Boomer generation.

Praise and Worship (1993-1998)
CCM reached a point of crisis with Amy Grant, "the queen of Christian pop." Her album "Heart in Motion" (1991) was a crossover into secular pop, and offended many of her fans, as did certain aspects of Ms. Grant's personal life during this period. For example, as Mr. Scheer cited, she was portrayed on a music video as dancing with a man who was not her husband. And later, she divorced her Christian songwriter husband Gary Chapman and married mainstream country musician Vince Gill. None of this set well with CCM fans. [One of my choir parents at that time had a genuine spiritual crisis over this; she felt deeply betrayed by Ms. Grant's move out of the CCM subculture into the secular world and especially by her divorce. This choir mother was not alone; it was an important moment for a lot of evangelicals who had immersed themselves in this genre of music.]
More broadly, it was becoming clear that CCM had become reflective of its big corporate ownership and the values that went with it -- primarily making lots of money and delivering product to consumers.

As Mr. Scheer said, "Praise and Worship ('P&W') stepped in to fill the gap."

Some names here are Hillsong and their musician Darlene Zschech;
Delirious? [yes, the question mark is part of the band's name. It is almost as bad as the 1970's and 80's exclamation points]

Also the Vineyard movement should be mentioned, with their founding pastor John Wimber. Their music is characterized by its very intimate nature, what Mr. Scheer called "Jesus is my boyfriend" songs. It tends to be in a Celine Dion style.

Emerging Worship (1999 to the present)

Once again, the previous era's music has now become The Establishment. By now, we have the children of the Boomers. If they have grown up in evangelical megachurches, they have never sung hymns. Boomers mostly want to be entertained; their children want to participate. Boomers threw away everything that was before 1960; their children are sometimes looking for something that has some history and substance, and especially for something that is not so commercialized. They are more attracted to elements of traditional liturgy, though often in new guises. Where the Boomers liked to build "worship centers" that looked like shopping malls, entirely devoid of trappings such as crosses and icons, their children are much less comfortable worshipping in such spaces. The new generation complained that their parents' music was "too slick, too happy, and too tame." [I think that Mr. Scheer was painting with a broad brush in these aspects, and I get a little nervous when one characterizes people by their generation. But there is probably a good bit of truth in these generalizations, and they correspond to what I have seen, so long as one remembers that there are many exceptions to these generalized statements in every generation. I am one of them, I hope. But I think that the characterization of the older P&W music is very accurate: "too slick, too happy, and too tame."]

A couple of names:
SonicFlood
Passion Conferences
and the "re-tuned movement" that I mentioned last week; we had a song festival of some of their music at the Hymn Society conference. Mr. Scheer was one of the leaders of that festival. They are looking to old hymn texts (mostly 18th and 19th century) and setting them in a current musical language.

Also this (their concert at the Ryman Auditorum)

Besides the songs, I think the clips of some of the songwriters starting at 54 minutes into the video are good: they talk about why these hymn texts are important.

"Hymns don't water down reality... We do ourselves, our communities, our families, our friends, and the world a disservice when we don't sit in reality."
"These hymns seem to have a lasting impact, where they go deeper and deeper into my heart. They become richer and fuller with each life experience, whether it's a hard and sorrowful time or a joyful time."
"I have literally sat in church services singing these songs, singing these hymns, and feeling my sanity restored."

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I will leave it here. This is not "my music." But I want to know about it. Perhaps it is best to end by quoting the final paragraph of Mr. Scheer's essay (p. 201):

Praise & worship is a little less than the worship utopia proponents predicted, but a little better than the erosion of foundations that detractors expected. Time will winnow the wheat from the chaff.

Some of my readers know a lot more about this music than I do; please comment and suggest further directions to explore.

RSCM Report: The Gathering

July 22: Monday

This was the travel day to the RSCM Course in St. Louis. I love solo road trips; it always takes me a while to adjust to others in the car. But I soon relaxed, enjoyed conversation with Judith, and delighted in the young choristers in the back seat, Lucy and Ted, with their conversation and songs and games. I thought of other years, other choristers, now grown up.

These days are precious, and ever so fleeting.

Many friends from past courses were there at Todd Hall when we arrived, including some who had been long absent. I was delighted to see them. But again, these days are precious, and ever so fleeting: I learned this evening that Mr. B. is retiring after sixteen years as course manager. My first thought was that this might be the last St. Louis Course. By the end of the week, I came to believe that it will continue in some form, but I did not feel that way on Monday when I heard the news, and it hung over me like a cloud through much of the week. With almost everything that happened, I had the sense that it might be the last time.

I delighted in Ted, at his first course and his first rehearsal, volunteering to read a stanza of text. I sat in the tenor section beside Max at the first rehearsal -- Max, who was still a treble this spring. Mike was now sitting behind the table at registration as assistant to Mr. B., a leadership position where I am sure he will excel. It is they -- all these young folk and others like them across the world -- who will take the Song through the days to come.

July 23: Deposuit potentes

Fecit potentiam in brachio suo;
Dispersit superbos mente cordis sui,
Deposuit potentes de sede,
Et exaltavit humiles.

He hath showed strength with his arm;
He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat,
And hath exalted the humble and meek.

For the first time at this Course, we are singing Lutheran Vespers instead of Anglican Evensong. That means that we have a Latin Magnificat, a fine setting by Pachelbel. It is my first time singing the Latin text, and I am glad to learn it.

The Magnificat is the sovereign answer of Our Lady and Holy Mother Church to the mystery of iniquity, and all of its powers in this world. The infancy narrative of St. Luke is in Greek, not Hebrew. But there may well be an older Hebrew or Aramaic narrative behind it. Certainly it reflects a Semitic manner of thought more than the rest of St. Luke's Gospel.

It is far from obvious that "he hath put down the mighty from their seat." To all visible evidence, they remain firmly in control. But part of the genius of Hebrew and Aramaic verbs is that they do not concern themselves very much with past, present, or future in the same way as the verbs of European languages. As I understand it, the primary concern is more with whether an action is completed -- past or future is of little account.

From the introduction to my Hebrew Psalter:

... future events are often described in past tense, because the prophet has already seen these events occur in his prophetic vision.

Every Evensong, every Vespers, whether spoken or sung, is our testimony that these things are true: "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek." This is a completed action, and the answer to all my doubts and fears.

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The musical balance is different for Vespers as compared with Anglican Evensong. The Anglicans have sophisticated choral settings of the Preces and Responses; the equivalents at Vespers (whether Lutheran or Roman Catholic; they are almost identical in form) are much simpler. This is a loss for an RSCM Course, because rehearsal on Preces and Responses builds concentration like few other forms of music. One must be at the height of alertness to sing them well.

I miss the Nunc Dimittis, which in the Anglican service is usually a quiet counterpoint to the Magnificat. But having only the one Canticle, the Magnificat can be (and usually is) a more extensive and challenging setting, like the one we sang.

It is worth noting that although Luther put much of the liturgy into the vernacular, he left some parts in Latin, at least for some occasions and places: the Magnificat is one example. The finest Lutheran setting of this canticle is of course the one by J. S. Bach, BWV 243, a major work for choir, soloists, and orchestra running about thirty minutes.

This is far beyond what we could do in one week at an RSCM Course. The Pachelbel setting, however, was perfectly suited for us. Here is an energetic performance of it by a young European choir (I don't recognize the language spoken at the beginning; it is perhaps from one of the Baltic countries such as Latvia?)


July 23 (continued): Beati quorum via

Beata quorum via integra est:
Qui ambulant in lege Domini (Psalm 119:1)

We learned this motet today, this fine setting by Stanford. In one day we took it from a first reading to performance at Vespers. A copy of this has resided in my personal library for decades, beautiful and unapproachable. I longed to sing it someday, but knew that I would never have the opportunity with any choir that I direct. And here we are today, singing it.

I was selected for the semichorus in the Pachelbel Magnificat, which is also the schola for the plainsong Psalmody. The group consists of four sopranos -- Elizabeth, Jenna, Kyle, Meara; Kristin and Erika on alto; Mike and Mark on bass; Eddie and me on tenor. It is an immense honor to sing with these people, most of whom I have known for many years through this Course (and two of them through our choir at home). I wish I could do more singing with them, to revel in the musicianship of this group. As it was, we had only one short rehearsal together plus the warmup on Saturday evening.

Along with the Stanford, we sang the Pachelbel at Vespers, a service that began with one of the high school singers, Kyle, at the organ for the opening voluntary. I have known for years that she is a fine choral singer. How splendid it was to learn that she is now an organist! May God's blessings be with her.

The day included good conversations with an old friend whom I did not expect to see again at the Course; a new friend, Stephen; and Michael, who is perhaps on his way toward ordination. This week he is the assistant chaplain, leading Morning Prayer and weekday Vespers. In his sermon, based on the Beatitudes lesson (for the Feast of St. Thomas á Kempis), he spoke of how blessed we are in singing here, in being gathered as a community this week. "Blessed are those whose way has integrity; who walk in the law of the Lord."

I bless the Lord for these people young and old: their music, the presence of Christ among us, gathered in his name; and for this day so perfect that I would cling to it, save for the knowledge that it endures in the mind of God forever.

Tree of life and love

July 15-17: The Church in the World

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work... (II Thessalonians 2:7)

It is at work in the gap between rich and poor, in Wall Street's control of the U. S. government, in the wars we have started, in the rape of the earth for the short-term benefit of a few.

But it shall not prevail for ever.



This year's conference of the Hymn Society considered the flowering of congregational song in the fifty years since the Second Vatican Council, under the title "Tree of life and love." I believe that the songs have been given to us as seed that may grow. They may lie dormant for a time, perhaps a long time. But the songs cannot be entirely silenced, and they will in due season fulfill their role in the healing of the nations.

I know that some of the changes wrought in these fifty years are necessary. But that does not make it easy. My discomfort with some of the songs and the theology of worship behind them arose almost at the outset: Monday's Morning Prayer, a service whose readings were mostly from Rumi (a 13th century Sufi mystic) and several modern poets, but no Scripture other than Psalm 29, no canticles, no creed, no Lord's Prayer, no collects. I wondered whether I would be better off skipping the services for the rest of the week.

But halfway through Monday's service, I realized that it was working its intended effect; I was joining in worship, and seeing for a moment in a new way. Musically, it was close to the manner in which our 8:45 service at home has developed, and through the week I was to sing many songs at Morning Prayer that would work in that context.

Still, I wish that it were more grounded in Scripture. We heard very little from that Book all week, and that is a grave danger.

The principal issue, we were told by the Jesuit scholar John Baldovin in the plenary address that followed, is the dichotomy between "moderate" and "conservative." The first is informed by the Enlightenment and historical method; the second rejects some or all of these influences. The documents of Vatican II can be read in both directions, and what he called an "epic struggle" for the soul of the church continues, fifty years later.

It is good for me to hear these things, though I remain firmly in the conservative camp, and hold to the liturgical and theological positions articulated by Benedict XVI among others.

I must respect the other side of the debate, musically, liturgically, and theologically. I must listen to the truth of its songs, its prayers. And I must be wholehearted in my work as a Musician in that context.

Among other virtues, the conference traced the development of three streams of congregational song since 1963: Roman Catholic, mainstream Protestant, Evangelical-Pentecostal. In all three areas, there is hope, and much better work is being done that there was ten or fifteen years ago.

The surprise for me came from the evangelicals, with a workshop and hymn festival on the "re-tuned movement." By the 1980's and 90's, the praise and worship songs of the evangelicals had become slick, formulaic, commercial, and virtually devoid of content. This was the music of the Boomers, grown middle-aged and comfortable. They hated the traditions of church and society, they discarded all that had happened or had been thought before 1960, they lived in a shallow world of pop culture, and that was what they made of the church.

But their children, who (in the evangelical churches) have grown up entirely without hymns, were looking for something more. Some of them are finding the old hymn texts and "re-tuning" them in their musical style, and, we were told, this is part of the music of the "emerging church." This gives me hope. We will all need songs with meaningful context in the coming years, and we will need new songs from a new generation.

I remain uncomfortable with the performance practice, for the congregation has no responsibility for the song. If they choose to sing, great. If not, it is the amplified sound of the band that matters, not the natural un-amplified voice of the people. But these "re-tuned" songs are a large improvement.

Here is an example of this music, a YouTube about a concert of "re-tuned" music at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The organizer of this concert was our leader at the hymn festival, along with a couple of the songwriters, and we sang many of these songs.


As the week continued, the morning prayer services became increasingly important to me, thanks in part to the leadership of the Mennonite musician and pastor Ken Nafzinger, and others whom he incorporated, most of them young, in their twenties.

There was much to remember about the week: daily hymn festivals, one of them led in part by an old friend from graduate school, now a pastor in the Reformed Church; another festival involving Carol Doran (of whom more in a moment); another evening which was a Taizé service, and a final hymn festival (again, more in a moment).

Carol Doran collaborated as a musician with the author Thomas Troeger on several volumes of hymns in the 1980's and 90's; she was the organist for the first night's hymn festival. I learned in conversing with her over lunch that her path moved on from seminary teaching to now, in her old age, teaching music in a ghetto middle school. It is a task of little account to the powerful, this teaching of children whom they have already written off as losers, part of Mitt Romney's 47 percent. It is a thing no larger than a mustard seed.

Taizé and its music well belonged in this context of developments since Vatican II. I attended the workshop on Taizé as well as the festival, and in my mental context (still lodged in the Hunger Games) was reminded of the patient witness of that community in the darkness of war-torn Europe. Should we return to such days, there is more to Taizé than I had thought -- more seeds cast abroad upon the earth.

We have a weekly Taizé service in our community, and the few times I attended it, I did not like it at all. This was different; there was less singing and much more silence (including one stretch of about fifteen minutes, which is a long time). This was the only service that had significant chunks of Scripture. The acoustic and visual setting were terrific; a large Roman Catholic parish church in semidarkness, lots of candles and icons.

I normally do not get anything other than boredom from singing "Ubi caritas" forty-six times in a row, and I think that has turned me against this repertoire. But in our parish, where we regularly sing Taizé songs at communion during the 8:45 service, there have been some moments where a Taizé song has become something remarkable.


The final hymn festival, the closing event of the conference, was titled "New shoots and buds: new directions in congregational song," led (mostly) by Tony Alonso and Hilary Seraph Donaldson with lots of other musicians -- almost all of them under the age of thirty (Hilary's father Andrew, a long-time Hymn Society leader, was one of the exceptions; it was great to see father and daughter together among the musicians.)

I learned that the organizers had not met in person before the conference. The planning, extending over a year, was done entirely through meetings on Skype and through other forms of electronic communication.

And they see what I see in the world. The penultimate hymn was a call to eschatological hope, which is central to the witness of the Church -- a hymn that they said was hard for them to find. It was sung to the strong shape-note tune "Morning Trumpet," with lines like this:

Let the banker and the president beware the trumpet's call,
And beat swords of greed and commerce into equal shares for all.
Let the teachers speak in wisdom, let the music-makers play,
Let the weavers weave the tent where we shall gather on that day.

Lowly eyes shall be lifted, while the tyrants taste their fear,
For that sound is both a gospel and a warning...
("The trumpet in the morning," by Rory Cooney)

I sang, we all sang, with tears in our eyes, longing for that day when all shall be made right.

Later that day as I drove west through the Alleghenies into one last mist-shrouded mountain sunset, I thought of these brave words and those who sang them. Will they -- will we -- have the strength to stand when the drone attacks and "peacekeepers" kill our friends, spies and informers are everywhere, and all is darkness -- as it already is in parts of the world?

Hymnal Revision Study

This document has probably been online for a while, but I became aware of it only recently. Here is a link to the PDF file.

I wrote about this topic last summer: Here and Here

There was a 2009 resolution to conduct a feasibility study of a replacement for the Hymnal 1982. The Commission has determined that no, there will not at present be a new hymnal. Considering the content of the hymnal supplements beginning with "Wonder, Love and Praise," it is probably just as well – any new hymnal that our denomination would produce would likely be an embarrassment.

There is much about this report that is troubling. For example, by the use of "logistic regression" methods, they are able to predict whether specific music directors will favor a new hymnal by a list of demographic criteria (p. 34-35, especially Table 42). In other words, the reason I oppose a new hymnal is that:

- I am male
- I hold a graduate degree in music
- I am a member of the American Guild of Organists
- I have a high regard for the Hymnal 1940

So, why did they bother asking the question? All they needed to do is collect the demographic information. And in the end, the largest demographic wins. But in this matter, there is no clear demographic "winner," unless it is the two-to-one opposition to a new hymnal across all demographics by members of congregations (see below).

It was good to see that the younger generation supports traditional church music. Here is a comment from a 22-year old, quoted on page 57:

I think there is a huge assumption made that the younger generation wants guitar- and piano-based praise and worship music. ...What we want to hear in a Sunday Eucharist are the classic hymns played on organ. And occasionally we want to chant. Church is the one place where our musical taste is not based upon fad, but instead links us with a much more important, more elegant tradition. If I wanted to listen to acoustic guitar and piano, I'd pick up Dave Matthews or Ben Folds. If I wanted rap, I'd listen to Lil Wayne. ...For worship, I want music that connects to me a world outside of the ins and outs of my daily life.

This is congruent with what I see in our parish; it is the "baby boomers" who want praise and worship music in church services, although they often justify their wishes by saying "it will appeal to the young people."

It is heartening to see the opinions expressed about parish choirs: most members of congregations find the choir to be spiritually enriching, they enjoy listening to it, and think that the choir has a high level of musicianship (p. 43). There are a lot of hard-working, faithful Episcopal choirs across the country, in parishes large and small. It is good to see that their work is appreciated.

I am not alone in my disdain for the various Episcopal supplements (p. 39). While the Hymnal 1982 gets about a "4" rating (scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being "very satisfied with it"), none of the supplements manages even a neutral "3" rating.

The survey asked about the medium of presentation. It was good to see that "there was a marked indication that projection screens are disliked by many" (p. 60) - one comment was that "when I see a PowerPoint screen go up in the sanctuary... I am out of here" (p. 61).

Having read the report, I concur with their conclusion, and with the decision of General Convention to table this matter.

While among clergy and music directors, a plurality favor hymnal revision, sentiment among congregation members runs 2-to-1 against revision and there is no demographic category that is in favor... Even for those who do favor revision, an examination of their comments fails to point to a consistent direction that a revision would take. Perhaps most significantly, there is no pattern in which youth correlates with a particular movement towards new forms of musical expression. To revise the Hymnal must in some way be a project that is a gift to the next generation. Gaining some clearer sense of what the worship music of that generation will look like will require a longer and more careful period of discernment. (p. 65)

"... a gift to the next generation." I wish we could provide that for them. But we cannot. Perhaps the best we can do is to lay groundwork for the future.

Erik Routley (1917-82)

Dr. Routley passed from this life thirty years ago yesterday, October 8, 1982, while on the road for a church music workshop at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tennessee. Perhaps more than any other single person, he was central to my spiritual formation.

I had the privilege of attending Westminster Choir College during his tenure as Chaplain and Professor. His graduate courses in Liturgy and Hymnody are my only formal training in those subjects. His weekly sermons in the College Chapel taught me what it means to undertake this work of Church Music and memories of those Tuesday mornings have often sustained me through the dry places when the work of music has seemed meaningless, a lost cause. I had the further privileges of serving on the Chapel Committee, and, as graduate assistant for the church music department, of preparing the weekly service bulletins for those Tuesday liturgies.

When word reached me of his death, I felt lost, even though by that time I was serving in a parish far away. It seemed to me that there was no one to carry forward his work, in a time of liturgical and musical upheaval when his wisdom was needed more than ever. At the distance of thirty years, others have arisen to supply theological underpinning to the work of church music, but I still think that I was correct in that judgment for that critical moment in the early 1980's. I must trust the Lord of Hosts that Dr. Routley's work on this earth was done, no matter how it might appear.

I miss him.

Hymns are delightful and dangerous things. They are regarded, in the late twentieth century, as inseparable from the worship of all but a very few Christian groups. They are as familiar an activity as reading a newspaper: in worship they are for many people the most intelligible and agreeable of all the activities they are invited to join in or to witness; they are the most easily memorized of all Christian statements, and one who has not been in a church for most of a lifetime, but who was brought in church when young, remembers some hymns, though everything else may be forgotten. [Routley, Erik: Christian Hymns Observed (Princeton, NJ: Prestige Publications, 1982): p. 1]

… Singing goes with whatever means most to people. But hymnody introduces into the life of the church a creative tension between the passing and the timeless, between the spatially universal and the local, which without them the church would disregard to its lasting detriment.... It is perhaps surprising... how much abuse they survive: but, if we may ignore for a moment the present age's impatience with history, we may judge that what meant so much to Ambrose, St. Francis and St. Thomas Aquinas, to J. S. Bach and Isaac Watts and John Wesley, to Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and your own Christian neighbour, is worth treasuring, preserving and nourishing. Even if our heathen children don't want them, we will not hide them from them: another generation will be grateful if we don't. [Ibid., p. 107]

Hymnal Revision: pitfalls and potential

I should expand on my comment the other day concerning the sort of hymnal the Episcopal Church would be likely to produce in our generation. There are many potential pitfalls, but among them lies potential for good.

Three of the reasons I would not be sanguine about a new Episcopal hymnal can be illustrated by our closing hymn at the 11:00 Eucharist this morning: number 481 in the Hymnal 1982, Rejoice, the Lord is King with the tune Gopsal. It is a terrific hymn -- and it would be unlikely to appear in a new Episcopal hymnal. For one reason, the title: many clergy and others in authority are hesitant to refer to the Deity as either “Lord” or “King.” There is overwhelming Biblical support for using these names, such as Psalm 97:1, which may have been in Wesley's mind when he wrote this hymn -- “The LORD is King; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of the isles be glad.” But these terms imply a hierarchy with which many would disagree – the Deity, especially in its incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth, is our Friend, our Companion, our Lover – but not our Lord. Further, both “Lord” and “King” are masculine terms, which are unacceptable in many circles. For reasons such as this, most of the corpus of traditional hymnody is dissonant with the more liberal expressions of contemporary theology, and many argue that it is time to lay aside the old texts, with the ideas they embody.

A second (and related) reason is that this hymn is the work of two Dead White Males: Charles Wesley (1707-88) and George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). Many modern clergy (and not a few laypersons) are not interested in hearing from such persons, for they are part of the oppressor class and did their work before 1960, meaning that they have nothing to say to our generation.

A third reason is that the tune Gopsal is musically challenging, especially to the organist or pianist. With all my certificates, diplomas, and experience, I have to devote a good bit of work to this tune in order to play it convincingly. What is the volunteer musician in a small parish to do? Or worse yet, what is the guitarist to do? This piece will not work without a keyboard accompaniment.

The Hymnal 1982 is more musically challenging than most denominational hymnals. One senses that the committee which assembled it took pride in the Episcopal Church's tradition of being a place where the best possible music was sung and played. That remains true in places, but not as widely as in 1982, and a new hymnal would probably strive to be more “accessible” at the expense of tunes like Gopsal.

To be fair to the Episcopal hymnal supplements, it is their duty to include new songs and hymns, and there is a lot of excellent new material available. Part of what needs to be added to the wider congregational song are voices that have indeed been overlooked, and the supplements have been at their best when they have attempted to do that.

There is difference of opinion as to whether a new hymnal will ever be needed, or for that matter a new prayerbook. I gather that the Standing Commission's feasibility study discovered that many churches either print all of the day's music in the service leaflet or project it onto screens. The denomination's current trend is to encourage the use of “RiteSong,” which is a subscription-based download service for the hymns and songs in all of the Episcopal hymnals and supplements. This makes it easier to produce service leaflets and PowerPoint presentations. Why have a printed book in the pews if it is not going to be used?

For many reasons, I am convinced that we should continue to have printed Prayerbooks and Hymnals and that we should use them: perhaps I can write of this another time. Should a committee someday be charged with the preparation of a full-scale hymnal to replace the Hymnal 1982, it could easily turn into a battleground, with every constituency pushing its own agenda. But with God's grace it could instead be a feast of many cultures, the best of old and new. One recent book that I think presents a good example is the 2005 hymnal of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland, Church Hymnnary 4, where one finds eighteenth century Scottish Paraphrases and items from the old Scottish Psalter alongside Iona songs, Graham Kendrick and others from the “praise and worship” genre, contemporary authors such as Shirley Erena Murray and Carl P. Daw, songs from Africa and Asia, Watts and Wesley, Fanny Crosby, and much more.

There are only two verses in the New Testament that explicitly instruct about music in the church: I Corinthians 14:15 and Colossians 3:16. Both verses occur in the context of forbearance for one another: the first in relation to the exercise of spiritual gifts in worship, most of all in the context of the “more excellent way” outlined in chapter thirteen; the second likewise in the context of “charity, which is the bond of perfectness” (Col. 3:14), and submission to one another (v. 18-24) that there may be “neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ... in all” (v. 11):

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. (v. 16-17).

It is perhaps the challenge and the privilege of our generation, more than any that have come before, to sing one another's songs – across the centuries as well as the continents and islands. The hymnal can be a model of how this may be done.

---

As a footnote, here is a YouTube rendition of "Rejoice, the Lord is King." The first version is to Gopsal, as discussed here; the second is to Darwall's 148th, which is the tune more commonly given with this text -- a thoroughly worthwhile pairing, but not quite as challenging as Gopsal. [the first clip begins with something of an advertisement, and continues after "Rejoice, the Lord is King" with another hymn: "God is love, let heaven adore him" with the Welsh tune Blaenwern with which it is most often sung in Great Britain. The whole thing is taken from the BBC series "Songs of Praise."]

Do take the time to watch this clip. Seeing the people in these two churches brings to mind a sermon by Martin Franzmann, "Theology must sing." In it, he refers to the Albrecht Dürer woodcut, "Hymns of the Chosen before the Lamb." Franzmann said:

[Some persons] begin by criticizing the good hymns as 'hard to sing.' One might ask in return, Why must a hymn be easy? Who ever said that it should be easy? Look at that woodcut... in which those that came through the great tribulation, who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, sing their heavenly song. Look at those faces, their intensity of concentration... if you would know what singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord really means. ["Come to the Feast," edited Robin A. Leaver, MorningStar Music Publishers, page 139]