June 2004
A Tale of Two Churches	Show Menu

David McConnell reflects on his experience as musician for two traditions

Last September I was invited at short notice to play at the 12 noon Mass in a local Roman Catholic church. Almost twelve months on, I am still there most Sundays. The Anglican liturgy in Zion ends at 11.30 so there is just enough time to move from one church to the other. I have found the experience stimulating and enriching and hope the arrangement will continue.

On paper, our liturgies are almost identical in structure. Now that the Church of Ireland has adopted the three-year lectionary, the bible readings are usually the same. The hymns used in Catholic worship are familiar to me. But there the similarities end. A combination of five centuries of worshipping apart, together with historical, tribal, and sociological factors, results in the ethos of post-Christendom worship by two affluent, middle-class, suburban communities, living cheek-byjowl being markedly different.

Not so long ago, a church musician friend said to me "We Catholics find Anglican services rather intimidating". This started me thinking. I might reasonably have responded by seeking a little more formality about some aspects of Catholic community worship. And certainly, there are few things more intimidating than a High Mass I attended recently in the London Oratory. However, I can empathise with my friend. And the manner in which an almost indefinable lightness of presentation is juxtaposed and intertwined with the solemn Liturgy is something many Catholic priests have brought to quite a high level. Increasingly at times I feel like saying to our clergy: "Loosen up a bit … quicken the pace … be aware of the language of your body". Certainly, those of our younger priests who have abandoned the stiff and constricting medieval cassock and surplice for the more comfortable alb are getting the message that drama, like music, provides a powerful support for liturgy.

But to return to Sunday mornings: At the 12 o’clock Mass there are two hymns, at the Entrance and the Going Out. Invariably, only two verses are sung and this is usually quite enough. The 16th century Reformation may have been born on song, but Anglicans and Protestants must maintain a balance. Hymns help the Liturgy; they must not hinder it. And a plethora of hymns with too many verses, especially long ones, not only holds things up, but also can smother the drama and movement of what we are doing in church. A Lutheran theological student working for a time in Ireland last year was highly critical of the length of our hymns. "Why do you sing so many verses?" she complained. In a sound -byte world, hymns with eight-line verses should be used sparingly.

While there is no choir, the church has a cantor with a trained voice, and it is a joy to work with her, particularly in choosing and preparing vocal music, which she sings during the Communion of the People. She also sings the Psalm and I have grown to love the simple Gelineau-type inflexions and the attractive Responses, mostly composed by the late Fintan O’Carroll. For several years I have sought to move away from Anglican chant. While I can find it very satisfying in a cathedral context, at this stage I am convinced that Anglican chant is often inappropriate and unhelpful in contemporary community worship. But try persuading my choir and congregation of this! One of the strategically biggest misjudgements in the new BCP (in my view) is that the bar-lines for Anglican chant are printed in the Psalter. This seems to give undue status to a method of singing the psalms that many church musicians nowadays recommend we should not use in community worship. We must have regard for the huge corpus of study, writing and praxis relating to other ways of singing the psalms – the fundamental song of the Christian (and Jewish) traditions — as those of us who have attended church music courses in England and North America will be well aware.

There is a widely-believed myth that ‘Catholics can’t/won’t sing’. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has referred to this twice recently in reported comments. But to experience every Sunday the fervour and gusto with which the entire community in the Church of the Three Patrons sings the ‘Holy, holy, holy Lord’ and the ‘Our Father’ at the climax of the Eucharistic Prayer would challenge the most Wesleyan of Methodists! If only the Anglicans up the road would do the same. On the other hand, other than a small number of pieces, deeply embedded in folk memory, the hymns are not well sung. If I continue to be engaged as musician, I hope I may be allowed to make some practical suggestions as to how this can be improved. This is an area where musicians of the reformed traditions can usefully bring their experience to Roman Catholic worship.

But perhaps the most unexpected outcome of my new involvement is other than musical. The welcome and affirmation I continue to receive is heart-warming. And in no way do I under-value forty years experience of the Church of Ireland community. But I am now stopped in the neighbourhood regularly by complete strangers who say things such as "I saw you at Mass last Sunday … you and Aisling are doing great things for us… keep it up". While I have lived in the same street for twenty-five years, overnight I feel more part of the entire local community. Which, as I said earlier, all makes one think!

David McConnell is organist and choir director at Zion Church, Rathgar and a member of the Church Music Committee.

HINTS & TIPS 2

Peter Barley,
St Patrick’s Cathedral

Liturgical index

A while ago I started to keep a categorised index of choral/church music approprate for certain seasons/themes, e.g., Easter, Christ the Teacher, Discipleship, etc, and feed new information into it on a year by year basis. This makes choosing suitable music (which could of course include organ music and hymns) much quicker, as I can quickly access ideas. After a performance, I like to make a note in my copy of anything I wasn't happy with at the time so that when I come back to the piece again I remember what I would like to work on/possible problem areas.

HINTS & TIPS 3

Derek Seymour

One thought from experience! When playing in the RTE studios for TV broadcasting, bring some paper clips for marking pages, as mysterious gusts of wind can sweep through the studio throwing your music into confusion!  

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