October 2006
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Towards a Responsible Demotic Practice

Alan W. McCormack suggests an alternative approach where resources are limited.

There’s something about church music making that encourages us to lower our expectations. It’s very easy to fall back on the ‘Sunday School’ notion that God doesn’t really mind if our songs are amateurish and flat. It’s the participation that counts, the fact that we gather together and in the ritual act of gathering honour and perpetuate traditional styles of music making and familiar forms of liturgical encounter. We do what those before us have done. We do what we ourselves have mostly always done. We sense it may not quite be working anymore but there is a kind of solidarity and satisfaction that comes with the feeling of circling the wagons.

Some churches, it is true, may dare to be different. On the one hand we have the cathedral tradition of music making (often seen to be the great white hope of ‘catholic’ Anglicanism and not nearly as historicising as is sometimes imagined in its achievement of high aesthetic standards). On the other hand we have selfconsciously experimental churches whose practice roves a broad spectrum exploiting new musical forms, instrumental groupings (sometimes percussion heavy and harmony light) and the resources of new media technologies. But, for the most part, music making in the Church of Ireland remains faithful to a historic pattern of a core hymnody sung to fairly basic and unadventurous organ accompaniment.

Looking at the Church Hymnal Fifth Edition I sense that the Church’s musical establishment would like to develop considerably on standard current practice. That volume I read as a very large ‘sampler’ of diverse musical types that can coax a congregation into widening their core even just a little. Maybe the traditional ‘Praise, my soul’ at the beginning of the service can be partnered with a Graham Kendrick song towards the end. Or maybe the lyrical ‘Be thou my vision’ can be accompanied by talented instrumentalists. The Church Hymnal opens up and encourages possibilities like this.

And all to the good. Or perhaps mainly to the good. There’s a danger in creating too much diversity in a single act of worship—the unitary nature of the act (that which lends coherence and actually makes it satisfying) can easily be undermined. As to diverse musical forces, talented instrumentalists must indeed be ‘talented’ and we must not fall into the same old ‘God doesn’t care’ line of reasoning. It’s not the taking part that counts! What churches should aim for is good community music making at whatever ‘level’ is appropriate and possible for a given (and highly particular) community.

I am writing this piece from Sicily where I am currently (Summer 2006) a locum priest, and I want to share with you some of my community music making practice as it has been developing here. I am ministering in a tiny Anglican church in Taormina with an average August Sunday congregation of twelve, three of whom are regulars, the rest tourists. There is no organist, only a rather temperamental keyboard, and the choice of two hymnals—Hymns Ancient and Modern and The English Hymnal (not The New English Hymnal!) There is no facility for making service sheets or otherwise providing for paper copies of new music.

On the first Sunday I chose four traditional hymns from EH (all quite well known). I led a short music rehearsal before the service began at which I explained that there was no organist and that we would be singing the hymns a capella and melody only. The congregation sang quite well as it happens but there was something really rather limited and dissatisfying about the experience. ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty’ really doesn’t work in this way—it’s a fine tune, but loses much of its substance and solidity and grandeur without the satisfyingly familiar harmonies barked out on reeds and mixtures. The music making simply didn’t feel communal—it didn’t feel to me as if I was singing in common with my sisters and brothers in Christ.

The next Sunday I did things differently. I dispensed with both hymnals and used the music practice to introduce four Taizé songs—Veni Sancti Spiritus; Kyrie eleison; Ubi caritas et amor and Jubilate Deo. I explained to the group that one way of understanding Taizé is as an intuitive organic phenomenon—I asked them not to ask me how many times we would be repeating a certain phrase but rather to ‘feel’ the music with me and to see it as a natural part of the organism of the ritual itself, an instantiation of the connectedness of priest and people. I asked any who knew what I meant by the term ‘harmony’ to have a go at improvising harmonic patterns as we sang. The results were astonishing—this small group of people (all at the older end of the age spectrum) who seemed not to have had any connection with this style of music making before, took to it rapidly and pleasingly. A beautiful sound was made—simple enough but tuneful and occasionally adventurous in its harmonic structure. Best of all, we were able both to create eye contact as we sang and to focus on the choreography of the Eucharistic ritual. This felt like a genuine act of the community, a demotic¹ musical landscape.

Now, I am not advising everyone in the Church of Ireland to use Taizé- which was actually a former great white hope of ‘catholic’ Anglicanism. I am using Taizé only as an example of what can be done with poorly resourced and musically limited church communities. Such communities can go on flying the flag and doing things as they always have done though perhaps with increasing mediocrity (Taormina used to have a choir and a choral tradition!) or they can attempt a genuinely demotic musical practice. This latter course will involve an honest assessment of musical capacity and a decision to do simple things well not difficult things badly.

What is key to the procedure is good aesthetic judgement and an appreciation of the fact that those who think demotic musical practice means bad musical practice are just plain wrong. Of course, the community itself may need to be saved from this particular belief and may need to be encouraged to make music differently, but the Taormina experience suggests that openness is not a problem when people are treated courteously and actually assisted, through a clear and well led pre-service rehearsal, in their music making. Demotic musical practice, sustaining prime theological warrant, with care and attention can help break the cultures of mediocrity and dependency that prevent many of our parish churches from experiencing the song that is divinely common in their worship.

The Revd Dr Alan McCormack is Dean of Residence and Chaplain in Trinity College Dublin (whose Chapel pursues a highly undemotic musical practice) and also a member of the Diocesan Music Committee and of Societas Liturgica.

¹ demotic = pertaining to the people

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