Monday 1 April 2013

Vespers . . . the Evening Prayer of the Church

Vespers, otherwise known as Evening Prayer, is prayer throughout the world in many Churches. It is one small section of the immense Christian Church prayer system known as the Liturgy of the Hours or the Divine Office. Scratch a Christian prayer and you'll find that it originates or has an echo somewhere in this ancient system. Vespers has a very large Christian musical repertoire, that is greatly underrated, and deserves greater exposure and use in Churches and Christian homes.

Some years ago I made a Powerpoint Presentation on Vespers to explain how it is used today in many forms and in most Churches. Of course this is only an introduction - Benedictine sites in particular contain much more detailed information about how Vespers and the other six prayer offices are planned and performed.

Here's the Vespers Presentation link to copy and paste into your URL -

http://www.slideshare.net/elizabethsheppardstb/the-divine-office-evening-prayer-vespers

If you find my presentation useful, please use it, with acknowledgement.

Saturday 2 March 2013

Village Choirmasters & Cyberchurch Technomusos

In surveying the full spectrum of Church music literature and repertoires, I'm increasingly struck by the glaring disjunct between nostalgic attachment to the comfortable, nostalgic village choir model, versus adventurous pursuit of state of the art Church technomusicianship. Church music leaders seem drawn either to past traditions of various kinds, or alernatively to forward-looking Church music sounds and genres. Contrary to expectations, young musicians are not exclusively drawn to technologized music, and many. techno-obsessed Church musos are well on in years. But the most effective Church music leaders are always those who are prepared to move out of their musical "pleasure and comfort" zone just a little, and strike a compromise between these two extremes.

Consider Johann Sebastian Bach, a solid family man, the most staid of village Kapellmeisters, well versed in traditional hymnody and counterpoint. Yet he was so fascinated by the new hammerklavier and its well tempered tuning, that he composed the series of studies in all keys, still used as the basis of building keyboard technique today. Genius, it seems, is open to new ideas and methods, especially when they can be used to shape old musical forms in new ways relevant to the time.

Thursday 21 February 2013

Benedictine Church Music . . . a brief overview

As part of my Church History studies for the BTh, I bravely tackled the ginormous subject of Medieval Chant Reform.

I managed to produce a general summary, and received a generous assessment . . . but in retrospect I think it may contain some bloopers.

Readers, please let me know of any errors. Here's the link to my essay, on the Scribd publishing site:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25040634/Medieval-Chant-Reform-and-Benedictine-Monasticism

Monday 18 February 2013

The Growth of women's Church Cantor Ministry in Australia

In 1967, when I first started singing as an Anglican chorister at St Peter's Cathedral in Adelaide, the Church Cantor tradition had pretty well died out. Clergy canted with varying quality, choristers sang, and soloists within the choir were just singers. The Decani and Cantoris seats still adorned Anglican Cathedral Churches, but the origin of the Cantoris seat had been largely forgotten. At that time the title of Cantor was reserved for Jewish male synagogue Cantors. Then Jewish women took up the liturgical Cantor baton, and, following the role model of Miriam, revived the art of the Jewish woman Cantor. Their lead was invaluable.

I had been singing in Church choirs all my life, but in 1996 I was called to formal Church Cantor ministry after my parish Church burned down. I looked for contemporary female role models to follow, but I found that no liturgical singers in parishes were familiar with the ancient female Church Cantor tradition still practised in some convents and abbeys. I had learnt about Gregorian chant and polyphonic Church music with Dr. David Swale of Adelaide University, and I was fortunate to find excellent mentors in the Royal School of Church Music and the UK Guild of Church Musicians, who helped me to shape and develop my female Cathedral Cantor ministry. My models were gleaned from historical female Church Cantor traditions, the Australian Conservatorium system and experienced Church musicians supplied my musical training, and a six year theological degree filled me in on the ecclesial skills and understanding I needed. I waded through a varied Church music repertoire, honed my liturgical liaison skills, was surprised and bemused by petty, aggressive competition between Church music factions, took part in a program that established a fair fee structure for accredited Church Cantors, and managed to sort out the musical wheat from the chaff. I discovered that being a Cantor involves not only liturgical singing, but also substantial pastoral liaison, choir section leading, liturgical conflict resolution, keyboard accompaniment, making therapeutic music CDs and singing in hospital chapels to assist chaplains, and arranging and composing Church music and liturgies in collaboration with Church communities and music directors. Oh, and of course, sound system checking / adjustment, liturgical animation of responses and communal singing, and producing computer music scores on demand.

Twenty one years later, the art of the Church Cantor has been revived in Australia, with classes for Cantors of sll ages flourishing in many Churches. Although the quality of Cantor instruction varies, much progress has been made in reviving communal worship through music. Yet although most committed Church Cantors in Australia are female, formal clerical recognition of female Church Cantor ministry has been slow to catch up. In most mainstream Churches there is no reason why female Cantors cannot be liturgically commissioned. After completing my tertiary Cantor training ( 2 years of theory, residential schools, Church music history snd form, liturgy, assignments, viva voce examination, practical examination, and a local Practicum with portfolio) through the UK Guild of Church Musicians, I was commissioned as a professional Church Cantor by Archbishop George Carey and Cardinal Basil Hume in 1998 at Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle, and awarded the ACertCM Cantor (UK).

Female Church Cantors in Australia (and worldwide) are a brave, long-suffering and competitive breed. All the Australian women Church Cantors I have met have a genuine desire to serve and honour God rather than themselves. A few are paid, but most are volunteers, who pay for their own tuition. A favoured few, such as June Nixon and Kathlleen Boschetti, have achieved remarkable heights of Church music mjnistry in Australia. So It grieves me (and also God, I think) when ill advised, self-appointed Church music critics accuse all female Church Cantors of impious self-aggrandizement, rail against women in ministry, and declare them unwanted. Their negative criticisms are ridiculously unproductive.

Friday 1 February 2013

Globalisation in Church music - risks, disasters, and remedies



The effects of globalisation and corporatisation on Church music have apparently been even more dire that its effect on Vegemite (an Aussie in-joke). Fortunately, Australian Church musicians have strongly resisted the initial push to completely flatten our local and inherited Church music culture (for example, through Brett McEwen's Wirripang Music site for Australian composers at http://www.australiancomposers.com.au).
Jeffrey Tucker's 2002 article, targeting a multinational corporate Church music publisher whose policies and business ethics do not accord with Christian doctrine or practice (see link below)
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2009/the-hidden-hand-behind-bad-catholic-music
was recently discussed in depth by a shocked Richard Barrett on the Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy (Orthodox Christian) blog -
http://orthodoxyandheterodoxy.org/2013/01/29/the-hidden-hand-behind-bad-music-could-it-happen-here-american-catholic-worship-and-orthodoxy-in-america/

Thursday 31 January 2013

Church Music App-ologetics







Believe it or not, even in Church music, the ubiquitous computer / iphone app has its uses. In today's world, we write and compose and make music online as well as in real time face to face mode, on paper, with human hands and feet and eyes and ears and voices. 

The phenomenon of the virtual choir (if you don't know about this, google Eric Whitacre) has blown preconceptions about tying Church music to a particular time and place, sky-high. Whatever the virtues of real-time interaction (which are unsurpassed, and should never be discounted), as Church musicians we are now stuck with the digital app addictions of the upcoming generation for a long time.

In cyberspace there is now an app for every task you can possibly imagine, and many enterprising Church musicians have designed and marketed their own Church music apps, thereby solving their income problems forever. An app is a small computer program designed to help with a specific task, that you can load on to a smart phone or computer quickly, and use immediately. For instance, I have a virtual piano keyboard on my iPhone, that I use for composing.

This is not an app marketing blog, but I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so from time to time I’ll be reviewing Church music apps (e.g. ear training apps, chant databases, music theory apps) that I’ve found to be helpful and time-saving. Make your own judgements!

App-phobia has crept into the mindset of many Church musicians who

1          * obsessively photocopy, distribute, retrieve and file print scores
2          * don’t own a smart phone, or are computer-phobic
3          * believe that Church music could never be improved by technology
4          * devote no time to app discovery and selection
5          * think that rehearsing well, with no technology aids, is sufficient

Changing deep-set attitudes like this takes miracles. Hang on, I forgot, Christians believe in miracles. 

If you have a music director that insists on making his and your job as difficult as possible by refusing to adapt to digital technology and app networking, or doing a go-slow on this,it might help to pray loudly and publicly about it.

Tuesday 29 January 2013

Is Anglican High Church music elitist?

Accusations of "high-brow" elitism in Church music are often levelled at Anglican High Church (i.e. episcopalian or Anglo-Catholic) parishes in Australia. At the other extreme, the so-called "low" Anglican Churches of the evangelical persuasion, who have simplified their Church music repertoire in an attempt to increase congregational participation in Church music, are often accused of "low-brow" banality, or outright iconoclasm.

This debate generally disguises the real issues - to do with music costs and ministry time commitment. Small parishes cannot always afford the luxury of a paid orchestra, professional choristers, or a pipe organ, no matter how much they want these. The fix-it-quick option, for a cash-strapped parish with no hymnbooks, organ, or organist, is a limited hymn copyright licence, overheads or a slide projector, and recorded music accompaniments. The longer-term option (and in the long run the more productive one) is a firm commitment to weekly Church music education for all ages. Parishes with internet access (not always the case in Australia) can organise hymn practice sessions easily, otherwise CDs can be used. Both the Guild of Church Musicians and the Royal School of Church Music provide Church music training and resources in Australia, and many Anglican schools and dioceses, and ecumenical associations, organise Church music camps and conferences.

Of course, since the primary focus of every Church is its evangelical and pastoral mission, which flows from its ancillary worship (its means to mission), there is no imperative for Christians to bicker over worship music repertoire, or be inveigled into media beat-ups that gleefully escalate inter-church squabbles. Obviously, different cultures and backgrounds will favour different, legitimate Church music repertoires, and there is no harm in this. Church music governing organisations, Church schools, and parish music directors are charged with ensuring that Church music in Australia is well composed and performed, that it proclaims Christian teachings, and that it is well integrated with worship. In Western Sydney, it is not uncommon for 40+ different languages to be spoken in one Church parish, but in the interests of preserving Church unity, congregations still manage to learn and sing a core repertoire of English hymns. Annual monocultural liturgies, and special feast day celebrations, fill the need for each cultural group or faction to perform and hear their own Church music, but there is also an unspoken hospitality rule, by which an invitation is always extended to "outsiders" to attend and observe ethnic or denominational liturgies and music, where they are treated as honoured guests.

By visiting all parishes, and not indulging in excessive partiality within their diocese, clergy and Bishops can exert a considerable charitable, pacifying influence that promotes unity in Christ, even where differing music repertoires, doctrines and texts tend to divide. But the strongest unifying force for any diocese is always Christian mission, where people share the common tasks of caring pastorally for those in need. It seems to me that where Christian mission takes its proper precedence, Church music repertoire issues are often reduced to their proper perspective.

Tuesday 22 January 2013

South Sydney Bishop declares Anglican Church music dull!

Bishop Forsyth obviously hasn't attended St James Church King Street or St Patricks Cathedral Parramatta lately. Lowest common denominator soft rock choruses may be accessible, but they don't always cut it with Sydney congregations. Sometimes a vigorous wake up call is needed.

Friday 18 January 2013

Dr. Paul Westermeyer on Ending the Worship Wars

An interesting lecture, applicable to music ministry in all Churches, link found on ChurchNext TV.

http://churchnext.tv/2012/01/27/paul-westermeyer-ending-the-worship-wars/


Sure, they’ve been going on for centuries, but Dr. Paul Westermeyer of Luther Seminary says today’s church arguments over music have rarely been this mean-spirited – or this simple to solve (note the difference between simple and easy…).
Yes, liberating our congregations from the manipulative and emotion-based musical proclivities of the surrounding culture is our biggest challenge – but one that’s met by simply getting back to basics of helping the Church sing around Word, font and table.
Dr. Westermeyer unpacks this in a refreshing interview not only for church musicians, but all church leaders.



Tuesday 15 January 2013

Lamenting the great Aussie government-induced cultural cringe . . . in Church music

Lamenting the great Aussie government-induced cultural cringe. See

Michael Kieran Harvey: What Would Peggy Do? - Arts - Browse - Big Ideas - ABC TV

This lecture, although it refers mainly to contemporary secular Australian art music composition, is also highly relevant to Church music in Australia.

I love classical Church music, and I support maintaining a core repertoire of "traditional" Anglo-European Church music. But imposing imported Church music repertoires holus-bolus on Australian Church communities, even if these repertoires are deemed "superior" by music critics and selectors, can be massively emotionally and culturally damaging. This practice effectively stifles local creative movements of the Holy Spirit in our local Australian Churches, and creates undesirable schisms among dissatisfied Church members.

The practice of culturally gagging Aussie congregations and re-directing their admiration / worship to expressing second hand imported music has moral and ethical limits. The fact is, imported Church music repertoires, however excellent, come from a different time and place and population. Although we may empathise with and appreciate non-Australian musical expressions of Christian faith, it is hard, some might say impossible, to reach the deeper communal levels of faith as Australians living in Australia, unless we worship God directly with our own unique Australian music, that comes from the heart of Australia.

It would be interesting to do a survey of just how many Australian-made compositions are included in our Church music repertoires and licensing lists in Australia. I believe that editing out or minimising local Australian compositions in our repertoires risks rendering Church music in Australia culturally irrelevant to congregations. Australians who attend Churches are often musical, and many have brilliant musical concepts, ideas and creations, which are expressed and sometimes briefly admired, but their work is seldom promoted, simply because the composers are local, Australian, and therefore unimportant. Promoting a token number of Australian Church music composers is seen as an acceptable and easy solution, but why should the majority of Australian Church music composers be relegated to oblivion, in preference to a privileged few?

Typical Church music repertoires in Australia include 5% of Australian Church music compositions, which overseas visitors find very strange. This can be easily remedied, as lots of Australian compositions are available, and Church music directors and clergy have the power to gradually increase this percentage. It's time we got out of our comfortable imported music rut.

If there is an Australian Church music composer in your congregation, please seek them out, encourage them to continue composing, listen to / workshop their music, and include as many Australian items as possible in your Church music repertoire. You may be surprised at its quality, and at its effect on your congregation.

Saturday 12 January 2013

Revisiting Encounter's August 2012 review of religious music ...

Listened again to this ABC Encounter August 2012 program intended to raise awareness of the existence of the vast range of religious music genres that co-exist quite happily in Oz. Paste the link to your URL to link to the website / audio.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/sacred-songs/4138286#transcript

The examples given are impressive, but certainly don't cover the ground fully. No ABC programmer has, for instance, visited the Indian Catholic community that holds its feast days at Our Lady Queen of Peace Wentworthville, to record their intricate liturgical music. Sydney's Samoan and Tongan Choirs, and the Ntaria Aboriginal Women's Choir, are also due for an airing.

However, this Encounter program did demonstrate that many varieties of ancient and modern "classical" religious and Church music are accepted and widely used, by skilled practitioners, in contemporary worship in Australia, a fact that is sometimes forgotten.

More please, Encounter.

Friday 11 January 2013

Another disgruntled Church music traditionalist . . . link to Bill Blankschaen's blog

Seems I'm not the only one disturbed by evangelical Church music iconoclasm. I agree with Bill Blankschaen on this - see his well argued blog at

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/billintheblank/2012/07/why-ive-stopped-singing-in-your-church/.

Must we really throw our precious Church music babies (and the memories of our parents and grandparents) out with the dirty bathwater?

Sydney Anglican Diocesan Church Music

After King Henry VIII was excommunicated by Pope Clement VII on 17th Dec 1538, Anglican Churches became increasingly famous, and justifiably so, for their glorious Church music. Proof, one might say, of the efficacy of excommunication as a method for arousing the voice of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Perhaps St Mary MacKillop, our own Australian heretic whose faith was sorely tested by episcopal excommunication, would agree. Of course the rise of Anglican Church music had a very practical impetus, in that King Henry VIII, who effectively became the Pope of England on his excommunication, redirected funds that previously flowed to Rome, towards England, and some of this hoard was used to fund his flourishing company of Church and court music favourites.

By the time of porphyria-ravaged King George III and the British colonisation of Australia, English Church music had declined somewhat, being starved of funds after the American War of Independence.  When the first Anglicans arrived in Sydney, Churches were run on military lines (some with convict choirs), and soldiers drummed the religious dogma of the time into grim-faced immigrants. Harsh discipline and duty came first, worshipping God joyfully a poor second. Yet despite this unpromising beginning, by the year 2000 Anglican Church music in Sydney had acquired a balanced repertoire of traditional and contemporary works, a reliable network of skilled music ministers, and the basis of a fine Church music education curriculum in its Anglican parishes and schools. In Sydney, access to Anglican Church music education is now available through the Guild of Church Musicians and the Royal School of Church Music. In 1999 the hymnbook Together in Song, which took meaningful steps towards collaboration with ethnic and indigenous Australian Church musicians, was published. Brian H. Fletcher's 2011 book Sing a New Song: Australian hymnody and the renewal of the Church in the 1960s, traces some of this development. But where is Anglican Church music in Sydney going now?

In recent years, Anglican Church music in Sydney appears to have taken a back step in some parishes, due to misconceived social engineering policies. The malignant false premise that cultural decolonisation is, per se, good, seems to be behind attempts to reduce evangelical Anglican Church music ministry in Sydney to basics. Large iconoclastic Church music cracks have appeared in several of Sydney's prominent Anglican evangelical parishes. This over-simplification of evangelical Anglican Church music could not have come at a worse time for the Sydney Anglican Church's evangelical mission. Confined to a restricted repertoire of uninspiring ditties and basic anthems, and grossly underfunded, Sydney's evangelical Anglican Church musicians are ill-equipped to contend with the barrage of aggressive, satirical musical attacks on the Church emanating from prominent bands such as True North, e.g. the song "Bad Religion." Without sufficient resources to counter larrikin anti-religionist musos who feed on scandal, the Sydney Anglican Church is having a really hard time proclaiming the Gospel convincingly. In this situation, lightweight Hillsong hymns, Gospel choruses, and infantile happy claps provide ample satirical fodder for opponents of the Church. Well performed, professionally recorded, and globally streamed Church music with mature intellectual rigour, attractive complexity, and emotionally powerful form and structure, is badly needed.

One has only to look at what happens when good quality traditional and contemporary Church music are enabled to flourish together, to be convinced of its worth and faith-building power. It is no coincidence that the numerous Sydney Anglican parishes and schools who succeed in maintaining a high standard of liturgical music tend to be those that allow for a healthy balance of episcopalian and evangelical sympathies. Warren Trevelyan-Jones continues to delight St James King Street Anglican congregations (including Freda Mission visitors) with orchestral masses, soaring choral polyphony, new compositions and concerts that amaze, while Anglican parish choirs such as those directed by Sheryl Southwood and Robin Ruys at St Paul's Burwood and St Mark's / All Saints Hunters Hill produce a steady stream of worthy Church music. Preoccupation with Church arguments and factions, no matter how bitter or pressing, is never a good reason for diminishing God's praise through worthy Church music.