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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.