When Churches Become a Cult

For the check list please see the link at the end of this post.

Sadly, over a period of time a church can become a cult, or cult-like.  I have seen this happen.  This situation can create real damage.   Again, I have seen this for myself.  While few churches set out to be a cult, the process can proceed over time resulting in an organization with some, many, or all the attributes of a cult. 

As a service to you the reader, I have included the link to a check list which may help you decide whether you are, in fact, in a cult. 

May God bless. 

-- The Concerned Church Musician

Cultic Church Checklist

Young Turks Reportedly Turning to Orthodox Christianity

I hope many will find this video educational and inspirational.  In Russian with English sub-titles.  (Not long)




Direct link to video

An Admirable Choral Tone

At a time when good vocal production is little valued, the "Hour of Power" Choir under Donald Neuen evinces an admirable choral sound along with a quite stunning tenor soloist.







N.B.  I am sorry for an extended absence from this blog.  I notice that the hiatus began just about the time Donald Trump began threatening U. S. democracy.  No matter your politics, let us hope and pray the country will have a major change of heart and put music in the place of honor in our culture which it deserves.   

What Serious Church Musicians Will Be Studying: Duke Ellington

In watching the following video, it occurs to me that only racism would have kept this music from most Americans for fifty years.  Let this be the year of new seeing and new appreciation.  

The original and famous Duke Ellington Concert of Sacred Music at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, 1965, as broadcast by National Educational Television

A Bit of Twentieth Century History: the Revival of the Organ

Readers who may have stopped by here in recent months may have wondered what ever happened to the author.  The answer is I am still here but have been pre-occupied with other matters, including other blogs.  With this post I am happy to return here and to revive the discussion about the relevance of church music, along with its challenges.  


T he pipe organ is called the king of instruments for a reason.  But if we can't have kings in America, we need a different moniker.  Calling it the "President" of instruments won't do.  Maybe, for now, we can just call it God's instrument.  Well, perhaps that's not humble enough, but it is certainly a truthful description of so mighty and useful an instrument.

At the article linked to below, you can find a fine history of the organ revival starting with Albert Schweitzer in the last years of the nineteenth century on into the twentieth century including the post-war years in America.

Sadly, the author, Lawrence Phelps, is no longer with us.  We will need to pick up this subject later in order to provide a bit more history of the most recent years.

Still, the direction of American organ building, while not entirely clear, does seem to be heading in a very good direction -- one of greater clarity of tone as well as an appropriate richness of tone.  These are opposites, of course.*  I hope to have more to say about all this later.



The Organ Revival Movement Explicated


*For more on opposites in music I recommend the writings of composer Edward Green, some of whose work is listed here:  <  http://www.edgreenmusic.org/1-technique-beauty.htm  >.     

Still Here After All These Years

You blog author is still alive and well, although sometimes kicking and screaming. My personal life continues to develop and shouldn't be of much concern here. However, my new church job provides for a better selection of music coming from the organ console and this is certainly satisfying. Issues in church music remain but are beginning to be subsumed by a major greater discussion over the nature of the church itself. This discussion will have to develop further before it is clear where church music is headed next. I am continuing my research on these matters and expect to have more to say in the fairly near future. Best wishes for a safe summer. The CCM

9/11 Truth: Why Musicians Should Care

At this time I am continuing to read the important work of  David Ray Griffin* called The New Pearl Harbor Revisited. It was already apparent to me after thirty pages that there was sufficient question about the official story that a completely independent and new investigation was needed. Now, after many more pages, my feeling is only stronger: the official story is not now and never has been truly credible.


As a person of faith, I have had particular concerns. Being a creative individual, and musician, there has long been something in the eye of this beholder suspicious of the official line.  In the transcript linked to below, David Ray Griffin talks about some of these concerns.

The G. W. Bush administration put forward draconian cuts in social programs.  Arts programs certainly were not plentifully funded during his Presidency.  The War on Terror drained funds away from many needed social programs.  In short, this is the reason why musicians should care about the issue of what really happened on 9/11.

*former professor of theology
David Ray Griffin Article

Words of Hope for the World Now

As these last days of winter flow by and spring draws nearer, worry about the world economy is stronger than it has been in months.  Protests are erupted, especially in Portugal, as well as other places. 

It thus seems timely to reflect on the state of the world and the state of one's own mind, for these are indeed trying times.  His Eminence Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch, offers a message for Great Lent.  The opening of this message is below.  For the full message, click on the highlighted text at the end of this post. 


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Beloved brothers and sisters, children in the Lord,




The holy fathers, who arranged everything in an orderly manner, instituted a period of ascetic discipline and spiritual purification for forty days prior to the great feast of the Lord’s resurrection. This ascetic rule assumes the form of a limitation on foods through fasting, but especially an abstinence from evil. The saintly hymnographer characteristically emphasizes that a genuine and favorable form of fasting for God is the estrangement from wrongdoing, control of the tongue, alienation from anger, separation from evil desires, including gossip, deceit and swearing, restoration of justice, disengagement from passionate thoughts, fervent confession, cleansing of the conscience, “which there can be nothing more difficult,” refraining from “harmful passions, from envy and hatred, indeed from every wickedness,” shunning of “the mind’s perversion,” admission of transgressions. For “the Judge is close, at the door,” and he tries hearts and minds, since “He is everywhere present and fills all things.” (Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete)

Message for Great Lent

Chicago Musicians Attacked for Standing Up for Themselves

Recently, the musicians of the world-renowned Chicago Symphony went out on strike. As music is rarely a front-page issue, I had not heard about this until reading of it today at the site linked here.



Evidently, local press in Chicago printed many comments critical of the musicians' union. As a former and to-be member of the American Federation of Musicians I can attest to the fact that the musicians' union helps to provide a minimum level of support for musicians.



And as the author says here, it is all about power. Anyone who has been employed, especially in a large corporation knows what it means to be in the loop or out of the loop regarding such issues as how the corporation's money is spent, for example. A union, then, restores some sense of balance in the relationship, helps assure a minimum salary, and supports contributions to pension plans.



Working in a major symphony orchestra is very rewarding, but it is very much a job. Musicians at this level must practice at home, usually balancing this with teaching, and family duties. Like anyone else who has a degree, younger musicians must re-pay loans. If you think "sawing away" at a string instrument for several hours a day isn't work, I don't know what is. And to be able to keep feeling the music no matter what is going on in one's personal life is an absolute triumph!



As a fellow musician, I can speak for the physical wear and tear on the part of the musician. And I can speak for the other stresses musicians endure. Yes, the rewards of music are wonderful, but high-level musicians deserve fair pay just like any major professional sports athlete.



Debating the Musicians Union

Thanks to Readers

The latest version of this blog's mechanics allows me to see how many persons have been viewing a certain post.  (The identity of viewers, by the way,  is never shown.)   I am being informed that there has been a steady number of readers, but that certain blog posts have had much higher interest. 

Without going any further into such details, I say thank you most heartily to those who have read this blog over the last five years.  Although I have not been able to post often it is gratifying to see there has nevertheless been a certain steady interest.  I will do my best to present views and resources of general interest as often as deserved and as often as possible.

In the meantime -- Best Wishes to All.   

Episcopal Church Committee Recommends Go-Slow Approach to Any New Hymnal

In a recent report a national Episcopal committee has urged caution before rushing any new hymnal into print. The report runs to 70 pages as posted on line. So far I have read only its conclusion. However, I received a good summary of it by e-mail. For now I post here the beginning of that e-mail. Included in the excerpt is the URL for the actual report. The report states that a majority of those under 30 oppose a new hymnal. This includes both clergy and laity under 30. My first inkling of this new interest in tradition came in an A.G.O. study of a few years ago. This study bolsters those of us who for many years have decried the head-long rush to appeal to the young solely on the basis of newly-composed liturgies and hymns. This report is welcome news indeed! -- Thanks to Henry Evans for making me aware of this report. -- CCM (Concerned Church Musician) **************** From my e-mail box: Highly recommended reading! including comments. ~ djd+ Original URL: http://thecuratesdesk.org/2012/05/15/dont-do-it-for-the-kids-of-hymnal-revision-and-young-adults/ FROM BLOG thecuratesdesk.org Don’t Do It for the Kids: Of Hymnal Revision and Young Adults As part of the preparation for this summer’s General Convention, the Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music has a report detailing the results of a survey conducted that was designed to ascertain the level of support or lack thereof for a revision of the Hymnal 1982. There was little by way of huge surprises in the report. Below, I offer a few highlights from the report without too much comment. One factor emerged which seemed a surprise to those administering the survey. The group that was most resistant to the idea of revising the hymnal are those under 29 years of age. They are the most resistant by a large percentage.

Episcopal Bishop Criticizes the Church Usefully While Protesting Corporate Greed

Retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard, apparently alone among all United States bishops of any church, has elected to stand with those of the Occupy movement who have dared to protest the corporate state of greed which runs America now. Doing what I had thought any Christian leader ought to do, Bishop Packard has risked and endured arrest twice recently for his decision to try to preserve public space for the public good. Bishop Packard has also criticized what he calls stale liturgy. Although I have been a critic of the iconoclasts -- those who would throw the baby out with the bath water -- I support Bishop Packard's statements. Certainly most any liturgy can be done in a dry and irrelevant way. Christ Hedges reports on the life of Bishop Packard, who at this point enters the rolls of the heroic leaders of our time. In his eloquence and his smarts, Bishop Packard inspires those who see injustice and desire to do something concrete. More information here: http://truth-out.org/news/item/8960-the-peoples-bishop

There Must Be Music Here

There must be music in this building somewhere. In any event, the angels in heaven are singing with amazed joy at this radically wonderful take-over of a religious building by the Occuy movement for Christian uses. http://occupywallst.org/article/occupy-san-francisco-creates-social-center-vacant-/

Happy Easter Time One and All

Christ Is Risen.

He is Risen Indeed.

Crystal Cathedral, Once a Paragon of Musical Quality, Is Sold

Sale of The Crystal Cathedral to a Roman Catholic entity has been finalized in the last few days.

The Crystal Cathedral was once a bright light not only to religious believers and seekers but to sacred music lovers everywhere. At one time the level of music was very high with a fabulous pipe organ and a professionally-directed choir of mixed professional and amateur singers. From Arvella Schuller through Richard Unfried, to Frederick Swann and Donald Neuen,viewers could count on inspirational music of high quality, beautifully rendered.

Later, what one might charitably call "religious crooners" were added to the worship broadcast roster, but the organ and choir remained. More recently, a splash-dash Pop-Gospel ensemble has emoted, undulated, and sung with full passion music often without roots in either tradional black gospel or Western art music. In a future post I may have more to say about this religio-tainment group.

But for now, America has lost not only a spiritual icon of hope, but also a bastion of the finest sacred music on television.



http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/156929-angie-schuller-wyatt-on-the-death-of-the-crystal-cathedral.html

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.
+

+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

*****************

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

******************

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