How to introduce new music in churches

I wrote this as a comment elsewhere, and thought it perhaps worth reproducing:

You can get congregations to sing new music, but it takes a bit of work and cooperation from your organist/music director/whoever.

1) If you have one, see if you can get the choir (or music group or what have you) to sing the new tune (possibly to old words!) as a Communion hymn or an anthem a few times.

2) In the weeks running up to the use of the new tune, ask the organist/musicians to play it as part of the processional or recessional voluntary (whichever people are more likely to listen to), or even a short verse after the reading of the Gospel if appropriate.

If people have heard it a few times, they’ll find it much easier to sing.

3) Having sung the new tune, don’t abandon it; use it again in a few weeks time, if possible. (Again, you might want the choir to do this with different words.)

If copyright allows, I also find it helps to include music notation for the melody in whatever the congregation are reading from. At our church we have a fair number who read music “a bit” but don’t sing in the choir, and between them and the ones who pick up tunes quickly by ear, it isn’t so terrible.

4) Try to get people to sit close together. If you are Anglican this is probably the hardest step, but it really does help.

I might add a few more points:

5) Try to make sure the first and last hymn or song of a service are tunes that people do know. I was taught that the first and last notes a musician plays will be what most people remember; this is also true of liturgy, and familiar, well-loved hymns at the beginning and end of a service will be less disorienting.

6) If the music is something people are going to be singing a lot (say, a hymn for Lent with different verses for each Sunday, or a congregational Mass setting), or if it's a bit difficult (syncopation, changes between triplets and duple quavers, awkward leaps in the melody, changes in harmonic rhythm and so on), it's worth offering a brief rehearsal at some point so people can go over the tricky bits. Try to make this short (ten minutes is plenty) and don't expect to get things perfect. Make sure it's at a time people can attend -- after a service is usually best.

7) Try not to introduce new music alongside changes to the general format of services, and don't introduce too many new things in quick succession, especially if it's a long time since the congregation has had to sing anything new at all.

Friday Evensong at St Paul's-in-the-Camp, 6.15 for 6.30pm.

EDIT, FRIDAY AFTERNOON: It turns out St Paul's are having Evensong tonight after all, but didn't tell anyone about it until late morning. While I don't wish to compete with them, I think we should go ahead and have Evensong outside anyway.
END OF EDIT


On Friday we will have Evensong outside St Paul's. While the Cathedral has said they will be open for worship, I don't believe they are having Evensong tomorrow, so I want to go ahead with this. It's the day for St Simon and St Jude, apostles.

Meet at 6.15pm for 6.30; outside M&S seems to be a reasonable place for it, although we may need to move (especially if there are enough of us to obstruct the walkway).

You can print a copy of the liturgy from here ON THE DAY or from here today (Thursday). Alternately you can follow along online using the same links on a smartphone or using one of the various Common Worship smartphone apps.

The really simple way to do it will be to bring a Book of Common Prayer, though. I have a small number of spares. The Psalm will be Psalm 119.1-16. The Old Testament reading will be 1 Maccabees 2.42-66 and the New Testament reading will be Jude 1-4,17-25.

I did not choose these readings; I want to use the same ones that will be on the Church of England website, for ease of letting others follow along at home or elsewhere. Readers for the readings will be assigned when we meet.

We will sing the psalm and canticles from the Parish Psalter. If you have a Parish Psalter please bring it, even if you don't sing! These are harder to get hold of than the BCP and I only have a small number.

Unless a conductor volunteers in the next couple of hours, we will stick to the ferial responses. Please bring music to these if you have it; it's hard to get hold of online and I only have a small number of copies. I will cantor if there are no clergy there who are willing/able to do so.

We will use the same hymns as on Sunday and Wednesday. If you want to print the words to these yourself they are available in .pdf format here. If you want to bring a hymnal to sing harmony I prefer New English Hymnal (note that some of the words are different).

If you don't have any of these bits of pieces, you can still come! Really. You can look over my shoulder, or someone else's, or participate in a more reflective manner.

It would be helpful to have a rough idea how many people will be coming along, so if you are planning on it please do leave a comment here. Anonymous comments are fine.

If there are enough singers we might do an anthem -- same one as yesterday -- but be aware that if numbers are low this will be cut.

Summary:
6.15 for 6.30pm outside M&S, St. Paul's-in-the-Camp
Liturgy here on the day.
Bring BCP, Parish Psalter, and ferial responses if you have them.
Further updates from @artsyhonker and @FlashEvensong on Twitter.

Multi-tracking chant experiment

This is a brief experiment with multi-tracking chant.

Creator lucis optime (English) by artsyhonker

You see, I've got this hare-brained idea about podcasting a sung Compline online, possibly in some kind of Whitacre-style virtual choir. That's hard to coordinate, with chant: the pulse is directed by the words, so metronome markings are no help, for starters. But gathering together a little schola cantorum to come and sing with me in person once a week or once a month seems equally daunting. And I worry that singing Compline by myself is just going to sound a bit daft; there are too many responsorial bits, really.

So I thought I'd take something simple and see whether I can sing chant with myself, so to speak. In went the headphones and out came the hymnal to select something I'd not sung before. The results are... instructive, really. This will need a lot of work on intonation and timing before I'm happy to do an entire Compline. I did actually cheat and "mute" some sections of some voices in one or two places where the timing was just unbearably out of sync; I didn't do any other fancy stuff, though. What you hear is what I sang.

I guess if I want an online Compline to be a recording of an actual prayer, rather than something that takes hours of editing and re-recording to get into acceptable shape for posting online, I need to find some people to sing with me, or get used to the idea of singing alone.

There are, of course, other folks who put this sort of thing online. Most seem to be regular "Compline choirs" in the US, who rehearse regularly, or monastic groups with their daily Office available as podcasts. I'm not entirely sure how what I want to offer would be significantly different, and maybe I need to figure that out, too. On a very basic level, I'd like it to be something that encourages people to join in. That means providing links to the text and preferably to notation with the text underlaid, not just an audio file as I have above.

Adventures in hymn selection

In the Common Worship lectionary there are two options for Eastertide. One uses an Old Testament reading, a reading from Acts, and a Gospel reading each week. The other uses an epistle instead of the Old Testament. The point is that Acts is required.

Somehow, I thought we were using the Old Testament readings, and chose hymns accordingly. So this morning we had a lovely reading from Acts, then a letter to Peter or someone, then a gradual hymn which was very much related to the Old Testament reading we hadn't just heard.

Mix-ups do happen. I planned that we would sing "Allelyua, sing to Jesus" as the Communion hymn on Easter Sunday -- what can I say? I like to get as much of that A-word in as I can now we're allowed to say it again. When I had a closer look at it the night before, I realised that the words to verse two are very much more appropriate for Ascension, particularly "Though the cloud from sight received him when the forty days were o'er". Oops! Thankfully I caught that one in time to change it.

I usually choose hymns in advance, about a month at a time, sending the list to the vicar for approval (canon law means the incumbent does have the final say). Occasionally we end up caught in the guessing game of trying to figure out which hymns the choir and congregation will already know, and then find out that no, it's just us who think of some hymn tune as very well-known. I would have expected them to know NUN DANKET ALL for "Jesus, these eyes have never seen", for example, but at rehearsal on Thursday that turned out not to be the case. We used another Common Meter tune instead, there are enough of them about that it wasn't a problem!

The other thing that has happened sometimes is that I've chosen carefully, the vicar has given a thumbs-up to the choices, and then on Sunday morning we both wonder what on earth we were thinking! Sometimes I can follow the thread of my thoughts backward, sometimes not.

In the great congregation I will praise...

Though my diocesan cathedral in Chelmsford is a bit of a trek for me, I'm privileged in London to be within easy travel distance of both St Paul's Cathedral and Southwark Cathedral.
Yesterday, partly out of curiosity and partly out of a desire to attend a service that I couldn't mess up by playing the organ in the wrong place, I attended the Chrism Mass (actually called "The Renewal of Ordination Vows and the Blessing of the Oils" on the order of service) at Southwark Cathedral. In the Church of England, this is the service at which Chrism oils are blessed and at which clergy renew their ordination vows. It was a good service, and I'm glad that I went. The Mass setting by Langlais was perhaps a tad inaccessible, but if you can't sing Latin and some crunchy harmonies when you've got several hundred clergy who all know what the words mean, when can you sing them? Certainly there were bowed heads when the Sanctus came around, so I'm sure the vast majority knew what was going on.

Accessibility was also my concern with the Psalm. The choir sang their verses of Psalm 23 beautifully enough that, at first, I wondered whether my previous disdain for responsorial psalmody might be unjustified. I don't know whose setting it was; it isn't the one in the only book of responsorial psalmody I own, and by the time I've looked it up anywhere else I'll probably have forgotten it. It was simple, the text was clear, and when the choir broke into four-part harmony for the last four lines it was simply sublime; I think it was some of the best choral singing I heard during the service.

Why, then, interrupt this with a congregational response? The response itself was interesting enough, but I struggled to remember it correctly after hearing it twice and singing it once. Perhaps I'm just getting too dependent on having dots in front of me! But switching from unmetered chant to a metrical response without some sort of indication of tempo is hard in a small congregation and even harder in a large one. I felt like an unwieldy, oversized ox in a specialist china shop for dolls. I value congregational participation in the psalms, but given the nature of most of the congregation -- ordained clergy and the odd "church geek" layperson such as myself -- I think that just the chant without any congregational singing might well have been participatory enough. It would have been better had the response had some sort of metrical introduction, but even that might not be heard clearly in an echo-y cathedral with an organ. I was too far away to see the musical director well enough to follow any directions given to the choir.

(The psalm was also labeled as Psalm 133 -- a wonderful psalm to use at a Chrism Mass, given the focus on unity and the imagery of oil -- but the psalm they sang was definitely Psalm 23. I can only attribute this to a clerical error!)

By contrast, I absolutely loved the hymnody; there is something about singing hymns with several hundred other people singing their hearts out that is just too good for words. I was disappointed we didn't make it to the end of "Lift high the cross" (which I've sung so seldom I didn't actually remember the tune) and none of the hymns were real favourites of mine, but there was none of the lumbering uncertainty I felt during the psalm. Ordinarily I prefer good metrical hymnody in full parish churches to cathedrals, for some of the same acoustic, aesthetic reasons I didn't like the psalm response: in a big echo-y space, chances are you've got to go slowly enough to spoil the line, and if the place isn't absolutely rammed (and even sometimes when it is) people tend to sing quietly under their breath so that the general effect is that of an indecisive jellyfish; I usually end up listening carefully for the organ and choir and trying to stick with them while people around me mumble into their hymn books, and I really struggle if there's a tune I don't know. But in this instance everyone was singing, the tempo was on the whole right for the space without being too slow to get through a line in one breath, and it was all quite wonderful. I really enjoyed being able to sing without feeling like I had to take the lead for twelve people sitting near me who had no idea what the tune was, and being able to let my voice follow others when I didn't know the notes. Maybe this is what hymns were like, or could be like, when there was more general enthusiasm about singing. Maybe this is what hymns can still be like if people can be convinced to sing! It was one of the best experiences of congregational singing I've had for a long time.

Psalm 130 to Cheshire

This past Sunday -- Passion Sunday -- was not an All-Age Service, or anything else requiring exceptional liturgy, and so it was back to metrical psalms with a congregational response.

I was pleased with this setting of Psalm 130. The tune I chose is one that we'll be using on Palm Sunday and which is not terribly well known in the congregation, so sneaking it in as the psalm is one way of getting people used to it. I'm also very fond of the harmony. That said, the dotted rhythms mean it does need to be taken quite slowly in order that the words don't get swallowed up.

I did stumble at first over the beginning of the last stanza:

"And plenteous redemption
is ever found with him."

At first glance this doesn't seem to have the right number of syllables. There should be eight in the first line and six in the second, right? But I know from singing other music that pronunciation has changed; the word "redemption", which most people now pronounce with three syllables, would have had four. The choir were happier to sing it with four syllables than change the rhythm of the music to make it fit, so that's what we did.

Here's the response, taken as usual from the last line of the melody:


And if you want the whole thing, you can download a .pdf file. I played the verse first, then the choir sang the response once through, then the congregation sang it. This seems to work well.

Starts with P and that rhymes with T

Lent approaches fast and, at St Andrew's at least, this will be a time of penitence, prayer, purple vestments and psalmody.

The latter is my concern. During Advent we tried adapting the Common Worship psalter to a simple plainchant melody from Palmer's "Manual of Plainsong". It worked well for the choir, who could rehearse, but the congregation struggled to join in. Even when using the same plainsong melody for the whole season, fitting unfamiliar lines of varying length to the same tune was either too difficult or too unclear.

I feel strongly about congregational participation in church music in general, and psalms in particular. While there is an argument for reverent, contemplative musical worship where a choir sings the psalms on behalf of the rest of the congregation who participate silently, I think that kind of vicarious liturgy is more suited to Choral Evensong. The psalms are a dialogue, a means by which human feelings can be honestly explored and offered to God, and I feel there is something to be gained from very direct participation in sung psalmody.

So this Lent I'm trying another approach: responsorial psalms. The term "responsorial" is a bit of a mis-nomer, I feel, but refers to psalmody in which the main body of the psalm is sung or said by cantor, choir or reader, with a refrain repeated by all present.

A lot of the chanted responsorial psalmody available today is in a particular style of simplified, interpreted Gregorian chant. Murray's settings of the Grail psalter are by far the best known of this type of recitative chant; and for the Grail translation I understand they work very well. Copyright issues abound, however, and I can't quite be having with a paperwork fight. New Psalms for Common Worship, compiled by Colin Mawby, also uses this style of responsorial psalmody -- and also has copyright issues, as the publisher, Kevin Mayhew, do not take part in the Christian Copyright Licensing Initiative, so I cannot photocopy the chants for the choir to learn or the response for the congregation to read. In addition, the text of the Common Worship psalter, like the beloved Coverdale psalms used in the Book of Common Prayer, was not really designed to make chanting easier, and hard-to-sing accents on the last syllable of the line are common. That might eventually be okay if we had sung or chanted psalmody every weekday or even once a week on Sundays but as things stand, it only has a place during the penitential seasons, unless I get particularly insistent. This is unfamiliar stuff to the majority of the congregation and so it needs to be very easy to pick up. Besides that, I don't want to limit myself to just one translation or one musical style. There is a rich heritage of English psalmody upon which to draw, and I don't mean just Anglican Chant, lovely though it can be.

I'm taking a slightly different approach. Several months ago, I attended a RSCM-led psalmody workshop in Salisbury where the director suggested combining Anglican Chant with the refrains of the responsorial psalmody. Writing a refrain certainly isn't beyond my abilities and having the congregation sing the same refrain, after hearing the choir sing it once, makes it more likely that they'll be able to join in.

If we can do this with Anglican Chant, why not do it with other styles of psalmody?

For Ash Wednesday, Dr Francis Roads (who also conducts the London Gallery Quire) kindly furnished me with copy in Sibelius of a metrical setting of the first half of Psalm 51. The music is by Playford, set for SAB, and the text is from Sternhold and Hopkins; you can download the manuscript from the International Music Score Library Project. But while the metrical text and regular tune make this easier to learn than chanted psalmody, it's still a bit much to ask of a congregation with no warning and no rehearsal -- or so they would have me believe every time I introduce a hymn someone hasn't heard for a while! Since I already had a shiny Sibelius file I transposed the entire lot down a tone, and modified the alto part to be less awkward. I also made this response:

to be sung in unison. That line of music, plus all the words, with the refrain in bold type, will be printed in the pew slips for the congregation to follow. As the notes are the same as the last line of the verses, I'm hoping it will be reasonably easy to follow, and that Playford is not turning in his grave.

Of course, the trouble now is that the vicar would quite like the words to all the rest of the psalms for Lent as soon as possible, so I need to find suitable settings and write responses for all of them in a bit of a hurry! I'd like to include a mix of plainchant and metrical psalmody, sticking for the most part to better-known tunes for the latter, but I might go for a chanting tune or two.

So of course this afternoon I've been blogging about it, instead of getting on with the actual setting. Next up is Psalm 32.

The Volunteer Organist

Last Sunday I rolled along to Christ Church Wanstead as I often do for Evensong; it's usually quite a small service and I enjoy turning up, singing, and going away again without having to worry about messing anything up. Evensong doesn't have to be all cathedrals and choirboys and processions and Stanford; it can be an intimate, quiet occasion, comfortable like an old coat -- even if, for me, it's an old coat I've only recently acquired, somewhat by accident.

It wasn't quite like this Victorian parlour song, but I arrived to find the organist was absent, and somehow I ended up volunteering to play.

Thoughts:

The minister's decision to say rather than chant the psalm was the right one, given that the congregation was also small that day. I don't have enough experience of chanted psalmody to be able to do this without at least being able to play through the chant a few times. The canticles were okay though, because the text is more familiar.

My sight-reading isn't as bad as I thought! But, it isn't good enough yet that I'd really be happy to do that for a "main" service. I didn't do myself any favours with tempo and I might have taken things a bit more slowly, especially as at previous services there I've found the hymnody leans toward a more stately pace. On the whole I think I would be better off playing the first line or even just the starting notes and then singing: people would likely find that easier to follow than an organ or piano. In fact (and I did discuss this with the minister afterward) there's a strong argument for two-note chanted psalms and canticles, and unaccompanied hymnody, with so few people and without the usual organist.

Next time, it would be better to spend more time rehearsing the unknown hymns on the electric piano and less time trying to work out how to turn the organ on... and I really should get around to doing some practice at Christ Church, as a change from the instrument I'm learning on at St Andrew's.

A Response to that "CCM praise songs we can't stand" meme:

"There are two musical situations on which I think we can be confident
that a blessing rests. One is where a priest or an organist, himself a
man of trained and delicate taste, humbly and charitably sacrifices
his own (aesthetically right) desires and gives the people humbler and
coarser fare than he would wish, in a belief (even, as it may be, the
erroneous belief) that he can thus bring them to God.

"The other is where the stupid and unmusical layman humbly and
patiently, and above all silently, listens to music which he cannot,
or cannot fully, appreciate, in the belief that it somehow glorifies
God, and that if it does not edify him this must be his own defect.
Neither such a High Brow nor such a Low Brow can be far out of the
way. To both, Church Music will have been a means of grace; not the
music they have liked, but the music they have disliked. They have
both offered, sacrificed, their taste in the fullest sense.

"But where the opposite situation arises, where the musician is filled
with the pride of skill or the virus of emulation and looks with
contempt on the unappreciative congregation, or where the unmusical,
complacently entrenched in their own ignorance and conservatism, look
with the restless and resentful hostility of an inferiority complex on
all who would try to improve their taste – there, we may be sure, all
that both offer is unblessed and the spirit that moves them is not the
Holy Ghost."

- CS Lewis

In response to this meme.

As I've said in comments on Phil Ritchie's blog, I do think that some modern music used in worship is pretty awful. So is some of the older stuff. But this isn't really about "old" vs "new"; new music doesn't need to replace more ancient offerings but can exist alongside it, with a bit of liturgical and musical sensitivity. I am definitely not a worship band kind of girl, but that doesn't mean I don't want to include as many people as possible. In addition, there are some real theological and aesthetic bloopers among older music, too. Some of it has been sifted out through decades or centuries of persnickety musicians and clergy saying "no more" but some of it is remarkably persistent.

There are significant challenges to anyone trying to create new liturgical music. These include the passive, consumer-oriented nature of many people's primary musical experiences today, the huge breadth of styles available in popular music (so that emulating one style really won't make more than a fraction of listeners feel "at home"), the deplorable state of many church instruments (organs are the main things allowed to fall apart, but church pianos can be pretty horrendous too) and the expectation by many churchgoers of not having to engage with anything that doesn't fit them exactly.

These challenges are real, but they are not insurmountable.

I believe:

• people will always respond better to good music, performed well and with some liturgical sensitivity, than to bad music that is not in context
• there is a lot of really good music, old and new, that people simply don't know about because they only ever experience what happens at their local parish church or at larger gatherings where the music is chosen for familiarity
• the fact that people are complaining about the music at all, in any capacity, shows that they care... there must be a way to harness this enthusiasm!

So I ask:

1. What is your favourite piece of music for congregational singing? Why?
2. What is your favourite piece of music for performance by a group of specialist musicians within a liturgical context? This might be a worship band or a cathedral choir or just a very snazzy organist or something else entirely, but the point is that it is not congregational singing and it is live music in liturgy.
3. What is your favourite piece of music which makes you think about God to listen to outside of your place of worship? Why? This could be secular music.
4. What is one thing you like about the music at your usual place of worship? Have you told the musicians about this lately?

I tag Phil Ritchie, BanksyBoy, and Good In Parts.

"Go quietly to bed"

Sunday evening, I had the privilege of singing Compline with the choir at St Mary's Addington. I started attending services in the parish once in a while in order to visit a friend of mine who is Curate there, but the community -- and especially the choir -- has become a real resource for me. As an organist working in a C of E church but who doesn't come from an Anglican background it's been excellent to be exposed to some of the standard repertoire from the rehearsal side as well as hearing it sung in services and, eventually, joining in and even conducting from time to time; they also did me the honour of singing a piece I composed. I've always been made very welcome and if the journey from Leytonstone weren't so silly I'm sure I would want to be there more often.

Anyway, Compline. I hadn't ever attended a Compline service before, not even a said one, so this was a new experience for me, though I'm familiar with the general shape of the liturgy. I've had a bit of a brush with chant notation in other contexts, and it's pretty straightforward to read if you're already good at transposition, so that wasn't a problem for me. I struggled a bit more with the psalm pointing but once I got the hang of it that was also straightforward. The service was by candle light, and very atmospheric. Choir and cantor sang well; that sort of unaccompanied unison singing is harder to do well than you might imagine, but the pitch stayed pretty stable throughout and I think the timing was good.

Compline is the last Office of the day and it is traditional to go quietly to bed afterward, without speaking and certainly without any cavorting about. I can certainly see how after singing the service in the cosy intimacy of St Mary's, going home quietly and to bed without further ado would be quite welcoming even if it meant a fairly early night. That option was, alas, not open to me: my journey from Leytonstone to Addington had been by bicycle, then train, then tram, and so on the way back I did the same in reverse (well, I didn't ride the bicycle backward, that doesn't work...). I wouldn't say I was cavorting, exactly, but even on a Sunday night in London one must keep one's wits about oneself on a bicycle. Still, I'm very grateful for having had the opportunity to go.

A multiplicity of translations

Over at the Liturgy blog, Rev Bosco Peters has a series of posts on the new Revised Grail Psalter. In the first post he links to the full text of the psalter, and laments the multiplicity of translations, though he does say "An English psalter for worship needs to balance accuracy on the one hand with rhythm for proclaiming, chanting, and singing on the other." I don't have the book he recommends as an accurate translation -- though it is inexpensive and I might well look into it. If I am curious about translations I go first to the Psalter Kata Bob.

In a second blog post, Rev Bosco goes on to lament the use of antiphons coming from the Revised Grail Psalter (which is translated directly from the Hebrew) together with others coming from the Latin Mass. In addition to not fulfilling Liturgiam authenticam, which is defined as a translation of the Latin Mass, this leads to a certain lack of liturgical coherence. I am sure that this is regrettable, but as at St Andrew's we use the Common Worship texts it doesn't affect me directly.

In a third blog post, Psalm 2 is appraised with regard to translation and sources; it appears to be something of a mash-up between the original Grail translations, the NRSV, and new translations for the Revised Grail Psalter. Interesting; I don't know how much of this sort of mashing-up is present in other psalm translations. But I thought I might present some other translations of Psalm 2:

There is the 1662 Book of Common Prayer version, of course:
Quare fremuerunt gentes?

WHY do the heathen so furiously rage together : and why do the people imagine a vain thing?

2 The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel together : against the Lord, and against his Anointed:

3 Let us break their bonds asunder : and cast away their cords from us.

4 He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn : the Lord shall have them in derision.

5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath : and vex them in his sore displeasure:

6 Yet have I set my King : upon my holy hill of Sion.

7 I will preach the law : whereof the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.

8 Desire of me, and I shall give thee the nations for thine inheritance, : and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.

9 Thou shalt bruise them with a rod of iron : and break them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings : be learned, ye that are judges of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord in fear : and rejoice unto him with reverence.

12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and so ye perish from the right way, if his wrath be kindled, (yea but a little) blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

There is the "Old Version", a metrical setting of the text by Sternhold and Hopkins:

1 Why did the Gentiles tumults raise?
What rage was in their brain?
Why do the people still contrive
a thing that is but vain?

2 The kings and rulers of the earth
conspire and are all bent
Against the Lord, and Christ his Son,
whom he among us sent.

3 Shall we be bound to them? Say they,
let all their bonds be broke;
And of their doctrine and their law
let us reject the yoke.

4 But he that in the heav'n doth dwell,
their doings will deride;
And make them all as mocking-stocks
throughout the world do wide.

5 For in his wrath he shall reprove
their pride and scornful way,
And in his fury trouble them,
and unto them shall say,

6 I have anointed him my King
upon my holy hill;
I will therefore, Lord, preach thy law
according to thy will:

7 The law whereof the Lord himself
hath thus said unto me,
Thou art my only Son, this day
have I begotten thee.

8 The people I will give to thee,
as heirs at thy request
The ends and coasts of all the earth
by thee shall be possessed.

9 Thou shalt them bruise e'en like to those
that under foot are trod,
And as a potter's vessel break
them with an iron rod.

10 Now ye, O kings and rulers all,
be wise therefore and learned,
By who the matters of the world
are judged and discerned.

11 See that ye serve the Lord above
in trembling and in fear;
See that with rev'rence ye rejoice
when ye to him draw near:

12 See that ye do embrace and kiss
his Son without delay;
Lest in his wrath ye suddenly
Perish from the right way.

13 If once his wrath (but little) shall
be kindled in his breast,
Then only they that trust in him
shall happy be and blest.

There is the "New Version", that is, the metrical setting by Tate and Brady:

1 With restless and ungovern'd rage
why do the heathen storm?
Why in such rash attempts engage,
as they can ne'er perform?

2 The great in counsel and in might
their various forces bring;
Against the Lord they all unite,
and his anointed king.

3 "Must we submit to their commands?"
presumptuously they say;
"No, let us break their slavish bands,
and cast their chains away."

4 But God, who sits enthroned on high,
and sees how they combine,
Does their conspiring strength defy,
and mocks their vain design.

5 Thick clouds of wrath divine shall break
on his rebellious foes;
And thus will he in thunder speak
to all that dare oppose:

6 "Though madly you dispute my will,
the king that I ordain,
"Whose throne is fixed on Zion's hill,
shall there securely reign."

7 Attend, O earth, whilst I declare
God's uncontrolled decree;
"Thou art my Son, this day my heir
have I begotten thee.

8 "Ask and receive thy full demands;
thine shall the heathen be;
"The utmost limits of the lands
shall be possessed by thee.

9 "Thy threat'ning scepter thou shalt shake,
and crush them every where;
"As massy bars of iron break
the potter's brittle ware."

10 Learn then, ye princes, and give ear,
ye judges of the earth;
11 Worship the Lord with holy fear;
rejoice with awful mirth.

12 Appease the Son with due respect,
your timely homage pay;
Lest he revenge the bold neglect,
incensed by your delay.

13 If but in part his anger rise,
who can endure the flame?
Then blest are they whose hope relies
on his most holy name.

More recently there is the Common Worship version:

1 Why are the nations in tumult, •
and why do the peoples devise a vain plot?

2 The kings of the earth rise up,
and the rulers take counsel together, •
against the Lord and against his anointed:

3 'Let us break their bonds asunder •
and cast away their cords from us.'


4 He who dwells in heaven shall laugh them to scorn; •
the Lord shall have them in derision.

5 Then shall he speak to them in his wrath •
and terrify them in his fury:

6 'Yet have I set my king •
upon my holy hill of Zion.'


7 I will proclaim the decree of the Lord; •
he said to me: 'You are my Son; this day have I begotten you.

8 'Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance •
and the ends of the earth for your possession.

9 'You shall break them with a rod of iron •
and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.'


10 Now therefore be wise, O kings; •
be prudent, you judges of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord with fear, and with trembling kiss his feet, •
lest he be angry and you perish from the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.


12 Happy are all they •
who take refuge in him.

And then, of course, there is the Latin:



The thing that I find fascinating is that all of these are words I would happily use, in different contexts. I would probably use the metrical settings in congregational worship where people are less familiar with the psalms or with singing chant; the Common Meter texts are easy to sing as a group and the vocabulary is relatively simple, though the translation is a little, er, "free" at times to the point of being quite unsuitable for interfaith gatherings. I would use the Common Worship text for said psalmody as it's nearer than the other examples to the way people actually speak today; I would use Common Worship or the BCP version for Anglican chant, and either Common Worship or the Latin for plainsong, depending on the type of service. Anglican chant can work in very small and intimate services, as I've discovered by attending Evensong at Christchurch Wanstead, but where people want sung, non-metrical psalmody to be performed by a choir and there isn't already a certain familiarity with Anglican Chant, plainsong seems to work better. I don't think I'd like to be limited to just one psalter, and I am grateful for the "multiplicity of translations" which others lament. I'm grateful, too, that in the Church of England we are free to use any translation of scripture that is not banned, subject to the approval of the incumbent as per Canon B5 -- and as yet, no translation has been banned.

Alas, there'll be none of it for me tomorrow morning as we have a gradual hymn instead of a psalm. But that's a post for another day...

Travel time and time travel

This morning feels about a million years away! Really, I only had two main events today, but the day felt much longer.

I started with a Gregorian Chant workshop put on by RSCM EEL. I wouldn't ordinarily have gone to something like that with such short notice -- I got an e-mail about it on Thursday -- but it was led by Nick Gale, director of music at St George's RC Cathedral, and it was close to home at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Wanstead. Our first chant of the day was not Gregorian but Ambrosian chant, a setting of the Gloria. It dates from around 400 CE, and it was interesting to see how the later additions to the text of the gloria were clearly of a different musical pattern than the earlier text. There was also quite a lot of actual Gregorian chant, including some things that might be useful for Advent.

I enjoyed the workshop immensely. After that I was off to a Harvest Supper at St Mary's Addington, where I was to play the serpent and the piano as part of the entertainments. The journey was quite horrific; I was kindly offered a lift by another workshop participant who lives near Addington, and as it had only taken him about 45 minutes to get to Wanstead in the morning I accepted. Unfortunately the southbound Blackwall Tunnel was closed and we spent about two hours on Blackwall Tunnel Approach. I couldn't even get out and take public transport until after we'd cleared the start of the tunnel.

I got there in the end, though, and the entertainments hadn't yet started. Phew! My piano playing was accompanying two friends singing "Misalliance" by Flanders and Swann. I was still a bit rattled after the journey and my hands were shaking badly, so I didn't play as well as I might have, but we got through okay and the audience loved their singing -- and acting! Later on was the serpent number. The choir had rehearsed "O God, my heart is fixed, 'tis bent", a metrical setting of Psalm 57 vv7-11 from the London Gallery Quire book Your Voices Raise, but we hadn't had a chance to play it together at all; it went well. The tune is "Lynn" by Uriah Davenport (1690-1784) and the words are from the New Version of Tate and Brady (1696). I had left my notes for the brief chat about the serpent and about West Gallery music at home, so forgot large parts of them; hopefully I didn't baffle people too much. I closed that set with a brief rendition of "Fly Me to the Moon" for reasons which I won't go into here. I have found that, anachronistic as it might seem, some of the jazz standards work remarkably well on the serpent. Possibly it's because I'm so accustomed to playing vocal basslines.

Then it was just the long journey home again... given the earlier transport problems, I accepted with some trepidation a lift as far as East Croydon station from a choir member, and though there were indeed some roadworks and a detour it was smooth driving all the way there. Then came the train, and the tube, and the rail replacement bus, and the walk home.

Dates for music I have sung/played today:
~400BC
18th century
20th century

Types of transport I have used today:
walking
Tube
private cars (not mine -- I don't drive!)
bus route 15
Docklands Light Railway (a sort of train)
London Overground (another sort of train)
Croydon Tramlink
British Rail
TfL rail replacement bus.

Clearly what I need is one of these:


No wonder the day felt long. It's far past my bedtime now, though; I've got to get up in the morning to play the organ at church.

Transcendence

I've just been to Greenbelt, a Christian arts festival held at Cheltenham Race Course. There is music, but I didn't get to much of that, tending instead to be drawn to talks, workshops and worship.

The days are already merging into a sort of blur, but some things stand out.

One of the most memorable and perhaps transcendent experiences for me was an Orthodox Vespers on Sunday night. The room was a small space near the top of the grandstand, and crowded. The east-facing windows looked out over the hills, glowing gently in the sunset. Two icons served as a visual focus for prayers.

There was a short introduction before the start of the service. We were invited to stand, as the Orthodox do, to join them in their prayers, and gently reminded to think of the choir as praying, rather than performing.

The entire service was chanted or sung, in English -- nothing was spoken. We weren't given any service sheets, which left my hands relaxed and my eyes free to look at the icons or out at the beautiful horizon. The portions sung by the choir were beautifully simple and reverent, and repetitive enough that the rest of us could quite easily join in with "Lord, have mercy."

So we did, again and again.

It was very moving, and 45 minutes flew by. I can't speak for others but I was caught up, absorbed, really not thinking of the technical details of the music or liturgy at all after a while. Afterward, I thanked a choir member, and she said it was wonderful that we sang, too, and that her daughter had said it was something special, that there were "so many prayers".

I sat for a while, pondering, with the sound of the repeated song ringing in my ears.

Then I went to an entirely different service. This one, called "Transendence -- an Ancient Future Mass", was using the Common Worship liturgy -- with a bit of a twist. Like the Orthodox Vespers, large parts of the service were sung, and there was near-constant music. Like the Orthodox Vespers, there was a strong visual component. Like the Orthodox Vespers, there were no paper service sheets.

But my impression was not one of reverence and awe but of busy-ness. I found the electronic music more disruptive than meditative, with some disjunct transitions between sections. I found it hard to sing along when the clergy and choir had microphones (with significant amplification) and I did not. I found the visual displays were also distracting, constantly moving, and as all the words for the service were projected onto screens (and it was too dark for me to have been able to read a service sheet even if I had one) I didn't have the option of looking away. The very best parts of that service, for me, were when the background music dropped away and the choir sang a capella polyphony... but that wasn't something that I was able to participate in. Overall, my experience wasn't one of transcendence at all, but of being overly aware of a liturgy which could have been much simpler.

The thing that troubles me about this is that I can see how it could have worked. I think that the electronic music would have been alright had it been selected in such a way that it didn't jar with the other music; I think that the images on the screens would have been much more effective if they hadn't moved as often or as fast. I understand the need to use microphones with so much going on, but much simpler music at a lower volume would have meant that the human voices could have been amplified much less (though in that particular space, full of carpet and not acoustically kind, some amplification would probably still have been necessary).

I mustn't judge too harshly, as I did arrive late. There were elements of the service that worked. There were physical intercession stations of a sort; I didn't visit all three, but some people did. The darkness of the space gave people freedom to sit or kneel, stand or even prostrate themselves, and being able to do that without worrying about what everyone else is up to is a strength. Maybe the whole thing works better in York Minster.

The Common Worship liturgy is far more familiar to me than the Orthodox Vespers liturgy. I'd never been to the latter at all and I attend the former most Sundays. But the intimacy and simplicity of the Vespers service made me feel very much at home, so that phrases I'd never heard were somehow familiar enough to become prayers.

I'm not going to run off and join the Orthodox church, but I do want to think about how to develop that sort of beautiful reverence and simplicity in music at St Andrew's.

I will sing praises

I've been incubating a project. It isn't done yet -- won't be for a while -- but I think it's time to start writing about it.

I have developed something of an interest in the psalms. Partly to encourage their use in (Christian) liturgy, and partly to indulge in my passion for learning more about them, I want to run a series of workshops. The idea would be to look at the psalms in what we understand of their original context, and then go on a sort of meandering path through liturgical history, examining how they would have been sung, chanted or said in various situations, and why. I'd like to draw on what we do know about the Hebrew chanting/singing of psalms in Temple times... and of course Gregorian chant will feature, and Anglican chant, as well as the West Gallery metrical psalmody which I have grown to love so much through my singing and playing in the London Gallery Quire. Gelineau's translations of the psalms into French will feature, and the Grail responsorial versions and their offspring. I'd also like to look at other English vernacular psalmody in Christian worship in the 20th and 21st centuries, with a view to finding, disseminating, developing or creating resources for using the psalms in worship in situations where existing musical traditions are inappropriate or inaccessible.

Ideally I'd like each of the workshops to include some listening, some teaching, and some audience participation. With Gregorian chant, for example, I could sing some chants, or have another performer or even a choir sing them. Then I would talk about the history of Gregorian chant, the issues around singing in Latin as opposed to Hebrew, the use of the psalms in monastic worship, and the problems inherent for us when we try to use Gregorian tunes meant for Latin to sing in English with its very different word stress and vowels. I could highlight resources for further study and discuss in which situations Gregorian chant -- in Hebrew or in English -- may enhance worship, and in which it might be inappropriate. And then we could try some ourselves, myself and everyone there who is interested in trying... I could do a five-minute crash-course in chant notation for anyone who wants to have a go at reading it, but would provide modern notation as well for those that want it. We'd start with something we heard earlier so it wouldn't be completely unfamiliar, and take things gently, seeing how far we get, just to get an idea of what it feels like. I'll have to adapt this part of the workshop quite heavily to the capabilities of those attending, but I think that my topic is narrow enough that most people who are interested will have enough interest in music and singing to be able to cope with simpler chants in unison.

Obviously, I cannot hope to present a complete treatment of the topic of musical aspects of psalmody in the four to six workshops which would make this a manageable project, and there are considerable barriers to accurate performance of the earliest sung and chanted psalmody and copyright issues with the most recent publications of music for psalms. However, even with light academic content, I want to be able to answer people's questions or refer them to appropriate resources for learning more. This means I have spent the last several weeks reading quite a lot, and e-mailing various people about the project and getting, in return, varying degrees of delightful encouragement and support, and an even longer reading list! I'm now at the point where I'm feeling rather overwhelmed by the number of books still on the "to read" list, and I need to start getting some rough outlines written down so that I can read more purposefully and begin to think seriously about selection of the music.

I'll try to blog about some other things, too, once in a while, so it isn't just all psalmody, all the time.