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Source: (consider it) Thread: We don't sing any more
Gamaliel
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There's nothing new under the sun, Albertus ... it's just that these trendy new 'emerging churches' haven't quite clocked that yet ...

[Biased]

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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.

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Belle Ringer
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quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
As I mentioned upthread, I think the "professionalization" of church life (imported from corporate business culture) is the problem. We emphasize "excellence" rather than "giving your best"; we emphasize a "polished, professional" presentation rather than recognizing the historic role the church has played in nurturing budding talent (recognizing that a "budding" talent needs to begin somewhere-- and somewhere is not going to be polished, professional act).

One problem might be that people go to Cathedral A with enough members to have a paid organist and professional quality choir of 40 members, then moves to Church B with an amateur pianist and 8 choir members on a good day, and "it's just not the same."

Not unlike people who feel stained glass windows create a worship inducing environment and lack of such windows is "just not the same."

It really is not the same! (Should it matter? To some it just experientially does matter.)

I see two value systems in churches that collide. Pursuit of excellence (stop being sloppy, God deserves the best, which at mid level means auditioning choir members and at the extreme means hiring outsiders for preaching, organ, choir members, band members, handbell chorus, etc, not unlike the "clergy/laity divide" where "they" do it all and "we" sit) vs full active participation (a local member on keyboard with an occasional stumble, open membership choir and band, even lay preachers).

Some middle ground may be valid. You don't want a keyboardist who stumbles so much the rest can't figure out what tune they are to sing. Most churches hire a preacher to, if nothing else, try to control what theologies are presented.

Sometimes there aren't (or don't seem to be) any members with skills or interests to fulfill a function, so hiring is the only option. When a local church's volunteer band leader quit, the church hired a replacement band because hiring was how to quickly fill that hole in a "necessary" function. (Nothing is being done to nurture locals to create a future or substitute band of church members. Churches don't usually see "development of skills" as relevant.)

I reluctantly admit my "full participation" bias is challenged by an elderly in poor health who sings in choir with a voice that makes a frog sound elegant. LOVES to sing, face glows when singing, loud rasping voice dominates the choir's sound with the most irritating vocal tone I've ever heard from a human. Fingernails on blackboard tone quality. The person would be shattered to be told "you need to leave choir, your voice is so hard to listen to it significantly damages the choir's sound and the congregation's experience of the music."

Which is the holy way - kick that person out so congregation cease cringing at the sound, or delight in that person's enjoyment in participating?

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cliffdweller
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quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Hmm. 'Uber-contemporary 'emerging' churches' reinventing Choral Evensong? Interesting!

The emergent church is an extremely diverse lot, one significant strand is indeed the rediscovery of "high church" liturgical/ contemplative worship by formerly "low church" charismatic-lite evangelicals.

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Pomona
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As a woman who is an alto, one of the best things about traditional church music is that it's actually singable for me - I find so much worship music far too high for me. Worship leaders are usually tenors or sopranos and it's not like worship songs have different parts - whereas traditional congregational hymnody has set parts for sopranos, altos etc which makes life a lot easier. I can't read music so sheet music isn't much help for me unfortunately.

Laurelin, Yerevan, SCK etc - do you help the different kinds of singers in your churches at all? Would you consider getting your worship bands to teach hymns in parts, if you sing hymns?

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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]

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SvitlanaV2
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
In traditional Anglican worship the congregation do tend to sing along with the 'professionals' as you put it - even if these 'professionals' are simply volunteer members of the local choir.

They may not sing with gusto, but they generally do sing. Which isn't always something that happens in RC or Orthodox services.
[...]

Coming back to Anglicanism, other than the vicar, there aren't likely to be that many 'professionals' around in your typical traditional Anglican service - unless it's in a cathedral and there'll you'll find professional choir directors and so on.


I referred specifically to mainstream CofE congregations and to megachurch congregations because it's been mentioned on this thread that they often rely on either choristers or on worships bands to sing out rather than putting in too much effort themselves. These musicians are the 'professionals' (in terms of training) I was talking about, not the clergy. But I'm sure that neither mainstream Anglican nor megachurch congregations sit in complete silence during the songs!

I don't know about the RCC or the Orthodox congregations. The RC servces I've been to seem to do okay. Maybe it depends on the cultural background of the RCs in question.

quote:

I'm quite intrigued by the issue of non-sung worship (and yes, I know that worship is't all about singing nor what we do or don't do in church) - and I may start a thread on that over on Ecclesiantics.

I suppose one advantage of non-sung worship is that it can't be commercialised. (Although someone may now tell us that you can go online and order a copy some silent Quaker worship on CD....)
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Gamaliel
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You could always get a copy of John Cage's 4'33" and pretend it was a recording of a Quaker meeting ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3

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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.

http://philthebard.blogspot.com

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Gamaliel
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My wife's off to choir practice in a few minutes. She practices with a village choir in a medieval church about 7 miles north of here in exchange for singing with them on high-days and holidays.

She'll be singing at their carol service on Sunday.

I'll mention to her that you've referred to such choirs as 'professionals' and see what reaction I get ...

You might hear the laughing from where you are ...

More seriously, though, they are 'directed' by a professional, a woman with a PhD in 18th century church music who grew up Swedenborgian, migrated to the Methodists ('they sang better') and is now Anglican ('I'm still very much non-conformist at heart but I love the liturgy ...').

She teaches flute and piano and also plays the organ and acts as choir-mistress ... that's not her 'professional' job though ... the teaching is.

I have to say, mind, that there is something very 'community building' about choral singing - Chorister's made that point on these boards plenty of times and she's right.

I was recently invited to sing with the choir at our local Methodist church for their morning Harvest Festival service and their evening 'Harvest Celebration' - which I found to my cost, to be about 18 hymns sung back to back with short-readings in between.

We had to sing the final number twice because the minister had enjoyed it so much. I nearly enjoyed stringing him up and flaying him alive afterwards ...

They invited me back to sing in the Christmas cycle but I made my excuses ...

[Big Grin]

There was something rather jolly and very communal about practicing with them and hearing it all come together - sort of - on the day. But it was a close-run thing ...

They've got a very gifted woman there who organises the choir.

Every church I've been in or been involved with has had some musically gifted people involved and I think there's a lot of scope for such people to help everyone else. So the question posed to Yerevan, SCK et al on whether there's any help/support available to the congregations in their churches when it comes to singing is a good one.

Back in the day, when I was first involved with charismatic evangelical churches, it wasn't unusual to find churches using home-grown material - songs written by members of their congregations.

I think I caught the tail-end of that, it had already become something of a 'scene' when I got involved. I visited Spanish evangelical charismatic churches in the mid to late '80s and they were still using their own home-grown talent and music to some extent - as well as Spanish translations of popular US or British worship songs.

--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.

http://philthebard.blogspot.com

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Penny S
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The One Show has just broadcast what appeared a Skyped version of Adeste Fideles, with individuals joining in from their homes and projected on flat screen TVs. Various voices, one quite operatic.
So some people are singing.
Don't know how they organised it, and I missed the intro.

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SvitlanaV2
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Gamaliel

They can laugh all they like, but if they're being led by someone with a PhD in a relevant field then they're doing vastly better in the 'professional' music stakes than the vast majority of British churches, I should think! It's all relative, though, I agree.

So long as we have access to the kinds of churches where we feel we can contribute as much or as little as we're able to, musically and otherwise, then perhaps that's the main thing. What other people's churches do or don't do is then irrelevant.

[ 19. December 2014, 18:34: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]

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Gamaliel
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Well yes, that particular parish is fortunate to have someone with those skills and background.

Not everyone has access to that - which is one of the reasons, of course, why traditional Anglican choirs have been in decline.

I'm not particularly commenting on the rights and wrongs and ins and outs of how various churches conduct their worship ... I'm simply making some observations about sung worship - just as over in Ecclesiantics I've started to make some on what we might call 'unsung' worship - the use of physical postures, gestures, actions and so on - rather than the vocal element we've been discussing here.

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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.

http://philthebard.blogspot.com

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John Holding

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quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
...I would have answered the question "why don't you sing?" in much the same way as I would answer the question "why don't you play handball?" now. There was no particular reason - I just wasn't doing it, the few times I had tried it it was sort of fun but certainly not enough to make a hobby out of it, and I had no other reason why I would be doing it.

Interesting comment, thank you.

I grew singing, not daily, but around the campfire on vacations, on car trips, in Scouts. Singing was a normal activity outside church.


As did I. But that was 50-55 years ago. Back then, we sang in school -- music class -- at the elementary level because that was all you could do in music class -- no theory was taught, no instruments were available (unless there was a piano played by the teacher). And we sang at scouts -- with all the embarrassment you would expect from a group of boys ages 12-16. And I remember campfires when at college, where we sang.

BUT....

Today music in schools really doesn't happen (around here) at the primary or elementary level, except possibly one term of learning to play the recorder. If there's a music male teacher who is otherwise popular, (one school in a hundred) then you might get somewhere, but school choirs at that level are girls only, because "boys don't sing" -- at least that's the attitude in the schoolyard.

And at other levels. instruments are king -- lots of bands but very few choirs and precious few boys in them.

As for scouts and such, they've just about disappeared from around here -- and with scouts now aged 8-11 -- remember that school teaches that "boys don't sing" you'd have a fine time trying to get anything sung round a campfire.

John

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Belle Ringer
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quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
I grew singing, not daily, but around the campfire on vacations, on car trips, in Scouts. Singing was a normal activity outside church.


As did I. But that was 50-55 years ago. Back then, we sang in school...
BUT....

Today music in schools really doesn't happen (around here) at the primary or elementary level, except possibly one term of learning to play the recorder... As for scouts and such, they've just about disappeared from around here

I wondered about scouts, seems like lots of kids are in sports instead, that's not good or bad, just a change.

The last adult campfire I was at no one sang, just chatted. I wished I had brought a uke or guitar, hadn't occurred to me they may not respond if I did!

Perhaps the concept of being as interested in singing as in handball is widespread - "nothing wrong with it, just not something that crosses my mind to do."

Also, perhaps have fewer songs "known by everyone" these days? That would war against spontaneous group singing.

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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
I wondered about scouts, seems like lots of kids are in sports instead, that's not good or bad, just a change. The last adult campfire I was at no one sang, just chatted. I wished I had brought a uke or guitar, hadn't occurred to me they may not respond if I did!

Perhaps the concept of being as interested in singing as in handball is widespread - "nothing wrong with it, just not something that crosses my mind to do." Also, perhaps have fewer songs "known by everyone" these days? That would war against spontaneous group singing.

Actually, my dad was in the (German version of the) boy scouts, and one of the few memories of "amateur singing" I have from my childhood is my father singing (often very funny!) boy scout songs on long drives in the car, typically on our way to some vacation. Quite possibly my dad wanted to motivate us to sing along more than we did - I think for some of these we did the chorus line - but in the end it was little more than a curious variation of the radio to us. We also normally sang a couple of traditional German Christmas songs before opening our gifts under the tree. But again this was more filed under "special cultural things to do at Christmas" than under "normal activity with special content for this occasion".

I also did have a music education at school, and I'm probably doing our music teachers a slight injustice by saying that we did not learn singing at all. But really only a slight one. I remember more having to learn the "circle of fifths" than any particular song. It was more music theory, history and discussion than practice, best I can recall, and next to none of it stuck (in particular, while I must have been able to "read" music to the extent of passing a test or two back then, I have lost all but some basic recognition of music notation).

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Stumbling Pilgrim
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quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
The One Show has just broadcast what appeared a Skyped version of Adeste Fideles, with individuals joining in from their homes and projected on flat screen TVs. Various voices, one quite operatic.
So some people are singing.
Don't know how they organised it, and I missed the intro.



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Stumbling in the Master's footsteps as best I can.

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Stumbling Pilgrim
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quote:
Originally posted by Stumbling Pilgrim:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
The One Show has just broadcast what appeared a Skyped version of Adeste Fideles, with individuals joining in from their homes and projected on flat screen TVs. Various voices, one quite operatic.
So some people are singing.
Don't know how they organised it, and I missed the intro.


This is from last year's but explains how it was done:
and here is the performance.

(double posted cos hit 'add reply' without typing anything - [Disappointed] )

[ 20. December 2014, 07:51: Message edited by: Stumbling Pilgrim ]

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Salicional
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The comparison of singing to handball that arose earlier on this thread is very interesting! Although I'm not sure that scripture specifically exhorts us to "play handball unto the Lord".
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