Singing in worship is one of the most important dimensions of liturgy. Singing is attractive, prays twice, gives worship vitality, forms community, reinforces memory…
Let’s put to one side for another day the good statement that we don’t sing at the liturgy, the liturgy is sung, and focus on the concrete decisions we have to make about singing.
A helpful discussion about choosing hymns and songs came up again recently, and I think it is worth having a separate blog post about this. I use the words ‘hymns’ and ‘songs’ interchangeably.
Here are my suggestions for an average parish community:
- Use about 100 well known hymns and songs
- Learn at most 10 new hymns a year
- You can have half-a-dozen psalm chants to which all psalms can be chanted – choose the particular chant to fit the mood of the psalm; and/or you can have half-a-dozen different refrains the congregation sings to a cantor’s singing of the psalm verses, with the particular refrain chosen on each occasion to match the mood of the psalm
- Choice of what is sung for a service need not fit tightly into a “theme“, but style and content should not grate together
- Sing as much of the liturgy as possible; don’t use more than two different settings
- Have a strong community gathering hymn; if at all possible, after the first lesson, sing the psalm; you don’t need a hymn between the second lesson and the Gospel – a sung ‘Alleluia verse’ works very well (with a cantor singing the verse, and all singing a well-known, enthusiastic ‘Alleluia’); sing a strong sending-out song at the end.
- Be cautious about choir pieces trending worship to performance; but also, a choir usually needs to be more than solely leading and undergirding community worship – a difficult, creative tension
What can you add or discuss?
Sing as much of the liturgy as possible; don’t use more than two different settings
No. Singing discourages strangers twice over – once because the words are unfamiliar, once because people do not sing together anywhere else – it is counter to the culture in which we live. Keep the hymns and songs, but keep liturgy spoken.
Thanks. We will have to agree to disagree, James.
Firstly, you do not indicate your context: there’s plenty of places where people do sing together. Secondly, there’s nothing wrong with some dimensions of Christianity, and some dimensions of Christian worship, being counter cultural. And thirdly, and most importantly IMO, turning Christian worship into a tool of evangelism, and using evangelism as the measure of making worship decisions, is sorely mistaken. Fourthly, I cannot follow your logic of keeping “hymns and songs, but keep liturgy spoken” – what is your sauce for the liturgy is surely sauce for the hymns and songs? Fifthly, “keep liturgy spoken” is spin: liturgy has normally been sung, so if anything is being “kept”, it would be singing the liturgy. “Speaking” the liturgy is a relative novelty.
Blessings.
As a professional musician I know the strength of good music, but it’s also one of the two reasons I stopped working in and attending church- it can be incredibly manipulative. If I were a politician or professional orator I wouldn’t let someone hand me their script, and I learned the hard way that’s exactly what I was doing.
Not that ‘chanting’ is any different, which is what happens when liturgy gets spoken repetitively en masse. The Lord’s Prayer in particular has become a garbled race to get it over with, nothing heartfelt in there at all!
There’s nothing wrong with a choir working together to produce a performance if it’s to create and share joy, I kind-of take issue with there being a conductor up front with their back to the congregation- how did that become a norm or a perceived necessity?- or if it’s simply a platform for someone’s career or other ambition.
Thanks, Tracy. You know how much I appreciate your wisdom which comes from such wealth of experience and reflection. I’d love you to unpack your last paragraph: how can a choir function as well without the conductor you describe? Blessings.
In looking at our parish dynamics, I would have to respectfully disagree with James. We sing nearly our entire liturgy, and often times we have more participation in the sung liturgy than we do with the hymns. In fact, there are times one can hear our children singing along with the priest when he is chanting his part of the dialogue. The sung liturgy is one way to elevate the praise of the mass to a higher and richer level, and it doesn’t require the people to be highly skilled musicians in order to participate.
I agree, Beth. This is my experience too, and not just in my own community. Singing or saying the same words, the sung generally works better. The setting is well known – much more, of course, than a hymn used a couple of times a year. It’s why I suggest, use only one or two settings. And obviously choose a good setting. Blessings.
100 essential hymns. This deserves a post of its own Bosco. What are sacred songs which touch everyone…
It’s been on my mind all morning but in my experience the ‘international’ songs in English which speak to the most Christian people=
How Great Thou Art
Amazing Grace
Rock of Ages
The Lord’s My Shepherd
When the Saints Go Marching In
Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee
Silent Night
O Holy Night
O Come All Ye Faithful/Adeste Fideles
I wonder what a hymnbook compiled globally via the internet would look like?
Great thought, Tracy. Blessings.
On the “no more than two different settings” point, I think this is very sound. In my present parish church, we use two different settings of Eucharistic tones and responses. And rather conveniently, the manner in which the presiding celebrant intones “The Lord be with you” tells you whether to reply “And also with you” or “And with thy spirit” without having looked at the bulletin!
I run against my natural prejudices in agreeing with you, Bosco, that it’s best to keep the “performance” aspect of the choir’s contribution under control. I think it was R. V. Williams who wrote (in the preface to the English Hymnal?) that it is necessary to resist the temptation to parade a trained choir. Having the choir represent the congregation in the liturgical acclamations can be an authentic and uplifting mode of worship, but only in highly specialized choral foundations where all present do not feel usurped, but are instead edified and gratified by uniting their inward meditations to a glorious outward vocalization.
Your suggestion for a limited congregational repertoire has impeccable precedent. Such was the approach in the Byzantine liturgy before the Latin conquest in 1204. A handful of responsorial refrains served for all the psalms. Most of the content of services was invariable and therefore memorable. Only after 1204, when there had been a great rupture in the worship at Hagia Sophia, did the monks take over with their complex system of variable hymnography, which is gloriously rich both musically and theologically, but emphatically a liturgy of highly trained specialists. (The same thing happened much earlier in the West: the collapse of public institutions and education after the fall of Rome left liturgy to develop within clerical-monastic enclaves, where having the whole psalter memorized was taken for granted.)
So, I’m all for highly varied and technically demanding music in communities with the stability and expertise to be edified by it. But that sure ain’t my parish. It ain’t even the seminary where I teach… (Not yet, anyway!)
For Tracy’s global hymn book:
Guide me, O thou great [Tetragrammaton]
Love divine, all loves excelling
Come down, O Love divine
Let saints on earth in concert sing
Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness
Dear Lord and Father of mankind
When I survey the wondrous cross
And while 1968 is a bit modern for my tastes, I confess to having been entirely thrilled by Jaroslav J. Vajda’s “Now the silence” when I first encountered it, though I’ve never heard it sung with sufficient speed and urgency since that first occasion: http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/n/o/nowthsil.htm
Thanks, Jesse. And I can feel a Tracy-inspired English-speaking, global cyber hymn book poll post coming on… Blessings.
‘I’d love you to unpack your last paragraph: how can a choir function as well without the conductor you describe?’
thanks Bosco. I could write a book on this topic, but to summarise, I think many times what is delivered in church is a performance rather than an engaged relationship between musicians and congregation.
In many churches the congregation do not sing heartily- and the musicians assume it is because they don’t care to or can’t when in my experience almost everyone loves to sing if a) the music is meaningful to them and b) they feel comfortable.
And many musicians, music directors, conductors…they do not know how to make people comfortable, often the opposite in fact. There is a certain lack of humanity and pretention which has infiltrated the musical profession, sadly. Hence the church conductor who does not think it unusual or inappropriate to have his back to the congregation, rather than find a way to direct less obtrusively or more inclusively. In fact so many small church choirs where the director can sing would benefit from that person being in the body of the choir.
Is a mini-concert what is called for during the service? maybe sometimes for more formal services, but it can become exclusive rather than an embracing experience, with an escalating intention of staging more and more elaborate productions…
Everyone likes a blow-out once in a while but when it gets to be every Sunday I just think the majority of the attendees would get more from a more personal involvement with the spiritual powers of making music than simply hearing something they could listen to on a CD or the radio on their way in…
Hope that makes sense!
Makes perfect sense to me, Tracy; thanks. Blessings.
Thanks for moving our discussion into a post. You have added some good points to the ones I originally raised.
A couple of things I would add comments on.
The list of hymns needs to be developed by the parish so it reflects the age, cultural and spiritual experience of the community. I think adopting a standard list could be a recipe for failure.
When I attended Catholic church there were some services where it ended up with four hymns (4-6 verses) plus singing large parts of the liturgy using extended settings and it really didn’t work – and was exhausting for the congregation. My personal view is you need to do one or the other. If you are going to really sing the liturgy, then keep the songs/hymns minimal. If you like having more songs, then don’t keep the singing of the rest of liturgy simple and selective.
And I have to add a pet peeve – people who think they can ‘rescue’ congregational singing by singing louder (and often times don’t realise they are out of tune or out of rhythm). It just puts other people off singing. If you are a good singer, practice singing strongly but quietly and notice how it supports others to sing more confidently. (I have been guilty of this behaviour and confess to being a slow learner in this regard)
10 of my favorite hymns in English
Abide With Me
For All The Saints
Be Still My Soul
Nearer My God To Thee
Be Thou My Vision
It Is Well With My Soul
Lift High The Cross
Fairest Lord Jesus
I Know That My Redeemer Lives (2 versions)
I Stand All Amazed
Some I know in Spanish as well.
I just realized that the last two are LDS hymns that I learned while living in Salt lake City when I was working on my Masters Project in Excellence for my degree.
I Stand All Amazed
Congregation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi9EmztEpxI
Contemporary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi9EmztEpxI
I Know That My Redeemer Lives
Congregation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcpPilfcQHQ
Contemporary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gho-4RdI25o
Whoops!
I see that I erred on my linmks for I Stand All Amazed. I posted the Contemporary version for both.
Here is the Congregational version. This just happens to be an all women congregatiion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zNFduONf6Q
When I attended Catholic church there were some services where it ended up with four hymns (4-6 verses) plus singing large parts of the liturgy using extended settings and it really didn’t work – and was exhausting for the congregation. My personal view is you need to do one or the other. If you are going to really sing the liturgy, then keep the songs/hymns minimal. If you like having more songs, then don’t keep the singing of the rest of liturgy simple and selective.
I totally agree with this. I feel there can be too much singing which is off putting for those who feel they can’t sing or have no talent. I have been using this approach and the parish singing has really improved – about 100 hymns, 20 psalm responses, a couple of Holy, Holy’s and Mass parts on special days.
Thanks for the concrete suggestions from experience, Bishop Ron. Blessings.