Christmas Blessings

Raphael

Looking for a Savior

As church musicians and others gear up for presentations of the great Messiah by Georg Frideric Handel, here is a bit of background information on the work along with suggested editions, recordings, and other materials.

I, myself, will be accompanying the Christmas portion on organ using the 1961 G. C. Schirmer edition for organ. Playing such music on the organ is challenging, but with such great music, it is difficult to complain!


http://gfhandel.org/messiah.htm

Coming soon: A review of a recent article on issues of professional concerns for the church musician

A True Emotion About Sacred Music

Here is a moving essay by writer Barbara Crafton
who recently attended a well-known church music conference and heard a superior music program. This experience shows what music can do.


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MUSIC GLORY

by Barbara Crafton

Might I attend the master class? I had no desire to intrude. But of course I might attend; and so I did. The small chapel in which it was held was acoustically lively, architecturally beautiful, and filled with expectation at the prospect of seeing three brave souls dare to play before an audience of colleagues, to be critiqued and coached by the conference's organ virtuoso. He had accompanied our hymns at every service throughout the week, which was a little like having Albert Einstein as your high school science teacher.

Like everything else at the week-long conference of 150 church musicians, the master class was a blend of affirmation and humility for me. I was pleased to be able to understand anything at all, thrilled to sit every day amid so many wonderful voices, moved to think that perhaps I was hearing music that will be interpreted in churches for centuries to come.

The musicians were what artists always are: rare beings whose manifest giftedness walks improbably hand-in-hand with their human frailty. The combination is unfailingly beautiful. They are people who can do what hardly any of us can do. They are both born and made: their genius is God's gift, but the honing it is their gift back. As solitary a practice as the patient nurturing of art must be, the divine-human exchange of it is never a private transaction: neither the gift nor its honing is meant to remain within the experience of the artist alone. The gift of art is communicative, given not for the sake of the artist but for the sake of the world. They are always a minority among us, but they lead us as no one else can.

I tagged along to an impromptu late-night hymn sing and organ jam session. I knew that these half-dozen musicians would be intent on their art, and I wanted to see and hear. Intent they were: they clustered around the organ console like a bevy of serious musical angels in a Renaissance painting, watching the musician's hands, reaching across him to open or close a stop, smiling slightly in appreciation of this or that performance decision. They played for each other for a couple of hours, closing the evening with a dozen hymns sung a capella, facing one another in a circle. Then it was time to go.

All music, all day long and into the night. Repeating and repeating until it was right, glorying in the beautiful sounds they produced. glorying in one another in the peculiar intimacy only making art together brings. Into the chapel for at the closing Eucharist they came, two by two in long procession, each in the vestment of his or her institution, their faces already dear to me as they passed by me. A stab of bereavement: this is it, I thought. I will not hear them again, not exactly like this, not this piece of music with this organist and this conductor, not ever again. The experience of beauty carries an august sorrow with its joy, reminding us of our mortality even as it breathes eternity into us. You can't have one without the other.

As preacher, I fell into procession behind the choirmaster. He walked down the aisle centered, posture-perfect, powerful, collected and ready. All of them were ready. Thousands of processions like this one have entered the doors of churches to the strains of a pipe organ. We have done this for a thousand years -- no, longer. Thousands of us - no, tens of thousands. This service will be like the others, but it will not be just like them. And, when it is over, it will never come again, not in just this way. This will be the only one we will ever have, this moment, right now.

It is in the nature of such beauty always to be passing away.
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+Where was I? At the annual Sewannee Church Music Conference. The organist was Todd Wilson. The choirmaster was Dale Adelmann. Visit http://www.frogmusic.com/sewaneeconf/index.html.



The Almost-Daily eMo from the Geranium Farm Copyright © 2001-2011 Barbara Crafton - all rights reserved. Used by permission.

More Correspondence on Trends in Church Music

The following letter was in response to news from my correspondent that he had spoken with a young church man who said his generation could spot phoniness and that this was a turn-off for them.

Dear Chai,

I think the young man you spoke with makes a good point. I have spoken with several un-churched young men and have gotten the same basic comment, one way or another. There are going to be different viewpoints among the young, of course, just as with their elders. However, as a teacher I make a distinction between those about forty and above and those younger than forty. Of course, it is impossible to generalize -- the way we are all tempted to do. But there was a survey in The American Organist about three years ago or so which indicated that those in their twenties were looking first and foremost for authenticity in worship. Thus, anything which smacked of "surfacey" manipulation techniques were a turn-off.

To make things more complicated (!), the Orthodox have their own approach. Theirs comes out of Tradition (capital "T" intended). But they do tend to see current general trends in Protestant worship as unfortunate and incorrect. This would include music trends.

In summary, I believe we have been given our own great tradition of wonderful Western sacred music. It is up to us to preserve what I believe has enormous intrinsic value to inspire, elevate, re-assure, and enlighten, worthy goals no matter one's tradition or stripe.


-- Nony

Two Church Musicians Discuss Watered-Down Music

The following is a recent discussion between the author and a colleague, both working church musicians. Names and inconsequential details have been changed to preserve anonymity on the Internet. I think you will find the exchange interesting and useful.


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Hi, Chai,

I thought you might be interested:  I have not been able really to follow up on the conversation with the Methodist minister last week.  As a result, we are presented with a music choice for Sunday which is hardly worthy of children, it is so simple or banal.  How do such things happen?  It certainly will not be a struggle to prepare this in one rehearsal.  But I'm not going to be able to take much more of this [kind of music].  Any advice for how to approach this -- what to say exactly?


– A. Nony Maus

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Dear Nony,

I guess we all are in the same boat today. While it might not be a choral piece, it might be a hymn. The seminaries are turning out very light-weight clergy today in my opinion. However, one must remember that we as church musicians, paid employees of the congregation, are asked to do their will, no matter how trivial it might seem to us. One of my friends pointed out that the liturgy at his Cathedral suffers as well, using a simple hymn instead of a canticle, for example. That might be done in a small church but not in a large place like a cathedral with very able musicians.

     Rome has come to realize, with the new missal translation and a movement afoot by some of the intelligentsia for a revival of the Gregorian Chant, that forty-plus years of pop-style music is not worthy of the Lord's worship.... I believe that we should be realistic about our Sunday tasks if we continue in our chosen profession. Sometimes we forget that all are not on our level of musical training and appreciation. I sit with my pastor while he picks the hymns he knows and likes, often passing up something wonderful, as not singable. Most of the time I want to speak up, but just listen and say, “Fine.” I learned early on that he was the boss indeed and had the congregation's approval, even though I sometimes get my way.

     I think that you have a nice job there and that in time you might get your way more but for now I would line up with the BOSS (minister) as long as you can live with the situation. Hang in there, old friend.

P. Chai Kovsky

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Greetings, Chai!

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.  I really appreciate it.  I appreciate that you are trying to calm me down and to help me remain realistic.  With your permission I'd like to reply further (below) as I think there are some important issues.  Perhaps I can send a more polished response at a later time.  

I think I understand the point you are trying to make.  It is essentially the philosophy of "go along to get along."  There is a great deal to be said for that approach.  It can indeed make life much easier than it otherwise would be.  Perhaps I am not boasting if I say that in most of my jobs, the clergy have found me to be a team player, as the phrase goes now.

It seems important for me to say I have a little different concept of the ideal model.  Rather than a corporate or business model where there is a boss who gives orders and all the underlings jump, I prefer the concept of a covenant relationship in which all are friends.  I believe this concept is more Biblical and more distinctly Christian.  If there is the proper relationship between clergy and musician it is indeed like a team, or better yet, a circle of friends.  In this model, the musician is treated as a colleague and as a professional, a person whose opinion is valued.  Of course if there develops some kind of irreconcilable difference someone or some body will have to make a decision.  Realistically, this will normally be the clergy person. But otherwise, things are worked on through lines of authority.  I think it was Robert Schuller who said, "I hire the best people I can find and then let them go to work."  -- or something to that effect. 

A couple more observations.  Do you remember the Levites in the Old (Hebrew) Testament?  They were assigned different tasks.  One of these was the music.  They were tasked with making the very best music possible, worthy of the Divine.  The book of Numbers declares that God told the Israelites that the Levites were not to receive an inheritance from anyone.  Instead, the Levites would receive the tithe offering and  that would be their inheritance (from God, that is).  

Further, in our seminary music program we certainly were taught such things as not to respond defensively when criticism was given, especially by clergy or church authorities.  But we were also taught that when music which was shoddy or sub-Christian was suggested we were to proscribe it as part of our job. 

My dad (a minister with an earned Doctorate in Ministry) and I agree that the ignorance in this whole area is profound and a major, but major problem.  And, it's not just ministers and churches who have a lack of knowledge.  Musicians don't understand matters very well either.  I hope to be able to do more in the future in this area. 


So much more can be said!   As I think of more things to say I will write them.  I hope I didn't denigrate the good points you made.  I wish more musicians were more collegial, though I think the great majority really try to succeed in this regard.  At least, perhaps I have given you something to think about.


Regards,
Nony


by special permission

In these days of economic stress, international crises, and Washingtonian inanity, music and poetry often seem to offer me the only true consolation and encouragement. Tonight I offer a poem of Edgar Guest. It is on the simplistic side, yet useful for what people are facing now. In its descriptive words I hope it will offer a degree of inspiration and hope.

Don't Quit


When things go wrong, as they sometimes will.
When the road you are trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must -- but don't you quit!

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up, though the pace seems slow --
You might succeed with another blow....

Success is failure turned inside out --
the silver tint of the clouds of doubt --
And you can never tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you are hardest hit --
It's when things get worse that you mustn't quit.

Robert Schuller adds this admonition: "Don't trust the clouds -- trust the sunshine...."