May 2008
Living Worship - The Church Music Committee's 2008 on Music in the Liturgy Course	Show Menu

What an attractive schedule the Church Music Committee offered: four Saturday mornings on the trot (well, almost) with a line-up of speakers, most of whose names would be immediately familiar to many church musicians. And if you didn't recognize some of the names, the fact that they were listed in exalted company promised well for the unknowns too. Were we disappointed? Not a bit of it.

I had heard of John O'Keeffe, and had performed some of his music; but I had never met him in the flesh. A quiet, almost diffident manner could not conceal his great knowledge of and love for his subject. He unfolded for us a refreshing variety of approaches to psalm-setting, to the pillars of eucharistic liturgies (Gloria, Sanctus and the like) and to opening and closing music. His emphasis was on participation by the assembled worshippers in the liturgy to the greatest extent (a theme informing the contributions in all four sessions) and his recommended means for achieving that concentrated mainly (though not exclusively) on simplicity of line. He opened us to the possibilities, in particular, of using chanted entrance antiphons as an alternative to hymns; and he tantalized us with samples of the work of Ronan McDonagh, organist in Clarendon Street Church in the heart of Dublin. John also spoke of the important function that the great wealth of high-art religious music from centuries past can, if used with care, contribute in a modern liturgical setting.

The following Saturday was the turn of Colin Mawby, a man steeped in the choral tradition, with deep experience of music for worship and a fine catalogue of compositions of the highest quality. He dispelled some of the mystique that surrounds composition by inviting participants to offer spur-of-the moment melodies to fit psalm responses. He was quite prepared to speak candidly of, and let us learn from, errors that he had made in the past: poor choices of music for particular liturgies, unfortunate approaches to prickly clerics and the like. Drawing on his experience, he underlined for us the importance of the celebrant or president as the key figure in encouraging active musical participation. The positive effect on a congregation of a celebrant who sings, even without accompaniment and even not particularly well, is a phenomenon that we have all witnessed: the people tend to sing right back! Colin encouraged us to ensure that as church musicians we engage with our clerics so that we can agree a common approach to music as an integral part of liturgies as well as making sure that there are no rows over particular musical choices for particular Sundays. He suggested a number of techniques for encouraging greater participation by the people in the music, and provoked lively discussion among the course members.

After the break of a Saturday (enabling us to watch a rather unedifying performance by Ireland against Italy in the Rugby Six Nations) it was back to the higher plane of the psalms. Judy Martin and Peter Parshall, who are now based in Christ Church Cathedral in the capital, presented their work in the process of making congregational psalm-singing (as distinct from their being sung by a choir for a passive audience) a part of the Anglican rite. They showed us how they have taken some of the glories of Anglican chant and adapted them to the modern responsorial approach to psalm-singing. For this participant, used since the 1960s to responsorial psalms as an integral part of the Roman Catholic Eucharist and not familiar with Anglican chant, it was a fascinating insight into the state and evolution of psalmody in another tradition. The second half of this session was an introduction by Alison Cadden to her work in composing new responsorial settings for the psalms, seeking to ensure that a congregation should be able to sing them from the Book of Common Prayer with the minimum of additional material. What was striking about the entire session was how the vigour, nobility and range of emotion contained in the psalms as a body of literary work are capable of inspiring such a variety of musical responses, each able to yield to the reader and the participant the layers of meaning and association inherent in the text.

On our final Saturday morning, Donald Davison shared with us his immense knowledge of hymns and sacred songs. Naturally, his talk centred on the Church Hymnal, that magnum opus of which he was music editor. Donald's encyclopaedic knowledge of his subject was evident, and his affection for it was contagious. He put us to the test by choosing some of the more unusual and less travelled byways of the Hymnal with which to punctuate his talk-his captive, and captivated, audience providing a willing congregation. He reminded us of the very many ways in which we might go about choosing hymns for particular occasions, and of the different factors that might inform our choice-apart from the obvious question of subject matter and aptness for a liturgical season. Such issues as whether a hymn addresses God or one of the Trinity direct, tells a narrative or represents the innermost feelings of the hymn-singer, and intensely practical matters like its key (can the organist play in five flats?) and tessitura (how high are your people prepared to strain?) An important feature that Donald was keen to stress was the ecumenical quality of so many hymns; the texts are at the least unobjectionable and at best warmly embraceable by adherents of most denominations. It means that we can borrow freely from each other!

Common features of all the sessions included regular opportunities to experience for ourselves the different musical features to which we were being exposed by singing them: lively and hood-humoured debate among the presenters and the course participants; and copious reference and bibliographical material supplied by our guides. The participants were a mixed bunch; an archdeacon, a Dominican priest, organists, conductors, organist/conductors, cantors, choir singers, the aged and the youthful. What become clear early on was that we all have the common aim of bringing liturgy in our churches to a higher plane by encouraging our congregations to express their prayer in song. While the challenges in bringing about that may differ somewhat from congregation to congregation and between traditions, the differences are outweighed by what we share. And knowing that the challenges are shared makes the work of the church musician in tackling them a less lonesome task: we can draw support from each others.

Brian Ingoldsby is director of music at St Therese Church, Mount Merrion, Co. Dublin.

brianingoldsby@irishboardband.net

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