Fake Christmas mall muzak vs. real Church music ...

In Australia, live Christmas Church music is heard in so many guises, it's impossible to count them, but recently I've noticed that only English "Church muzak" arrangements, usually recorded in secular studios and sung by secular singers, are broadcast in Australian shopping malls. Live Church choirs in Australian shopping malls are rare. Why?

The Aussie retail giants are well aware that the large non-English ethnic Churches of Australia ( e.g. Greek Orthodox, Tamil Catholic, Maronite, Tongan, to name a few) would be hugely offended if their sacred music were grossly mangled into recorded muzak versions, and devalued by repetitive background broadcasting in a non-liturgical shopping environment. Just imagine their reaction if it were!

This week, at least twelve (a sufficiently apostolic number) of my Church music friends have bemoaned the awful Christmas mall "Church" muzak they were subjected to as they shopped. They all say (and I agree) that this weirdly secularised, corrupted junk music gives non-Christians a totally false impression of real Church music. As well as this, in the last few days a Twitter chorus of annoyance has arisen from justifiably angry shoppers who don't like being bombarded with "stupid Christian music." No wonder! One angry Ipswich, Qld. resident (possibly pre-primed by incessant fake "Christian" mall muzak) even resorted to hosing down his neighbouring Church choir to shut them up! - see article at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/juneweb-only/multiracial-church-music.html

On the positive side, a crowd of brave Church members from Parramatta, sickened by the horrible schmaltzy versions of their music infecting the mall, staged an unmiked, unrecorded live Flash Mob Christmas Eve carol chorus at Westfield Mall in Parramatta - and were heartily clapped.
See them on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtrFpHGUT9o  Australians are not slow to recognise and appreciate real Church music (it doesn't need to be perfectly sung, just in tune, in time, heartfelt and enthusiastic) when they hear it.

But despite the best in-house efforts of Church choirs, the fake "Christmas" muzak plague makes it look as if the English-speaking Churches of Australia have thrown their Church music to the retail wolves. Or have they just neglected to blow the whistle on mall muzak?

Three possible reasons for Church apathy on this issue occur to me:

1. English-speaking Church leaders responsible for Church music never visit malls at Christmas time.
2. English Church music is unfashionably colonial, so unmercifully trashing it in malls, while honouring ethnic music, is seen as non-dicriminatory and perfectly OK.
3. Many Church leaders believe that English "Church" muzak, no matter how degraded, is a helpful advertisement for the Church, and that its benefits outweigh its disadvantages.

In this fraught postcolonial scenario, some English-speaking Australian Churches have even tried to ethnic-ize their liturgies by adding unsynchronised African drumbeats to English carols. Please desist, this doesn't work.

Comments, anyone?

Merry Christmas and Keeping Church Music Records . . .

A very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in 2013 to all Australian Church musicians, families and friends!

My Australian Church music blog has been neglected lately, due to heavy family commitments, but I'm now back on track for Christmas and the New Year. Best wishes to my RSCM colleagues, who are currently preparing for the RSCM International Summer School in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Most Australian Church music directors keep meticulous Choir and music ministry records, including a current list of Choir members, an attendance roll, and copyright license files. Keeping Church music ministry records (sometimes in the public press) was part of Australia's Church tradition in the 18th to 20th centuries of European settlement. If you are in doubt about this, have a look at the National Library of Australia's records on its digitised historical newspaper database, Trove. Try searching "Church choir". You'll find a treasure house of Australian Church music history in those pages, kept by keen journalists who valued their Christian communities and their music, and were careful to record all social and musical events faithfully (although their accounts were not always without bias, and their music repertoire was far from inclusive).

There is no doubt that the history of a local Church's music ministry adds colour and personality to its overall history. Music ministry records, which are part of each Church community's history, should be lodged with your Church archives each year. Photographs, newsletter notices, and annual articles acknowledging the work of volunteer (as well as professional) music ministers, organists, visiting musicians and concert series, social events and administrative assistants, supportive clergy, choir friends and family, and retiring choristers, should all be part of this community-building record. Official Church historians will, of course, place their own slant on local Church music ministry history, but future researchers will thank Churches or private collectors who keep accurate and complete local Church music archives.

If your Church music ministry thanks and promotes its musicians and helpers adequately, it will never have any trouble attracting and keeping well-disciplined choristers, musicians, assistants and supporters.
There is actually much more to running a Church choir than singing or playing well.

Best wishes for continuing successful Church music ministry in 2013,

Elizabeth Sheppard.

Planning Inter-Church Liturgies with Music

Re-reading the Roman Catholic document Unitatis Redintegratio (which instructs all Catholics to hospitably welcome visitors from other Churches, attend other Churches to meet other Christians, and actively promote friendship and cooperation between all Churches by providing opportunities for joint worship and prayer, social events, and projects) set me thinking about how Churches cooperate in planning joint ecumenical liturgies with Church music.

In my experience, selecting inappropriate Church music with lyrics that are not common to all Churches, issuing liturgical insults by highlighting differences, and failing to provide sufficient public instruction, rehearsal and preparation for ecumenical service music in areas plagued by Church factions and disputes, may seriously obstruct local ecumenical cooperation. Some Church communities take the stance "we'll show them how we do it properly here" - and proceed to emphasize every past schism liturgically. Where textual differences are insurmountable, surely there is no harm in giving Church members "permission" to sing "their" hymn text to a common tune, with the whole assembly, by including the alternative texts in the liturgy booklet. This practice acknowledges difference, avoids disputes over pre-eminence, and promotes inter-Church unity and understanding.

Inter-Church hospitality takes many forms. Church unity is an officially stated goal of the Roman Catholic Church (see John Paul II's Ut Unum Sint) and the World Council of Churches, but members of other Church denominations could be forgiven for thinking otherwise when they are subjected to the behaviour of some Catholic communities. When a Church community welcomes other Christians, it's easy to ruin the occasion by indulging in liturgical paranoia, inconsiderately using denominational music texts, or allowing tactless comments on doctrinal or liturgical differences. Intelligent discussion of past issues in the right forum is necessary, but unfounded judgement, random condemnation, or uninformed prejudice in common worship is invariably destructive.

In ecumenical Church music, the goal should be sharing worship and prayer, centred around a common theme, with common Church texts and music, which are thankfully plentiful. Surely the holiness, or otherwise, of Churches, is God's domain, not ours: trumpeting about the splinter in our brother's eye may blind us to the log in our own eye. Events that may seem routine to the host Church, can be extremely offensive. I will never forget the explosive effect of a cleric rushing to remove the reserved eucharistic species from the Tabernacle in front of an eminent ecumenical assembly, on the scandalous supposition that their presence would contaminate it. Several clerics walked out, and others sat through the service stony-faced, and never returned.

In the absence of a formal covenant between local Churches, or where clergy from all local Churches fail to attend an ecumenical Ministers Fraternal Committee regularly, inter-Church issues and offences often remain unexpressed and undiscussed. Where insufficient ecumenical programs are in place, and no local ecumenical issues guidelines are circulated, Church members often retain "grey areas" of ignorance, indifference, apathy and outright error about Church music and liturgy practices outside their experience. Church musicians and clergy involved in planning ecumenical liturgies obviously have the power to correct many of these misconceptions.

The link below from the Diocese of Westminster provides useful and realistic guidelines for planning constructive ecumenical liturgies with music -

http://www.rcdow.org.uk/diocese/default.asp?library_ref=34&content_ref=2324

Equally useful Australian guidelines for ecumenical liturgies are found at

http://www.litcom.net.au/documents/ecumenicalworship.php

The Central Coast Chorale, director Christopher Bowen

Many Australian community choirs perform Church music, and this is one of the best. Founded in 1993, the Central Coast Chorale (see http://www.centralcoastchorale.org/) is based on the beautiful Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. Its Musical Director Christopher Bowen OAM HonFellow BMus (University of Sydney) is an eminent Australian composer and musician, whose compositions are available at www.pythagorasmusic.com. 

The Central Coast Chorale includes a large swag of Church music in its repertoire, as well as both secular and Australian Church music compositions, and it reaches a wide audience. The Chorale's annual performance at the annual City of Sydney Christmas Concert in collaboration with the Sydney University Graduate Choir, St John's Uniting Church Choir, the Sydney Community College Choir, and the Central Coast Children's Choir (directed by Jenny Bell), is always eagerly anticipated. The Chorale also presents a series of concerts throughout the year. The Chorale has produced four CDs, which include a significant number of compositions by Christopher Bowen. 

Of particular note is Bowen's setting of Christopher Brennan's exquisite poem "Sweet Silence after Bells", performed at St Philip's Catholic Church in Sydney in August 2010. Since my Adelaide University days, where I was fortunate to have Brian Elliott and Adrian Mitchell as my tutors, I considered Christopher Brennan (1870-1932) Australia's finest poet, since he addresses the deepest philosophical and religious issues with ease, but he is greatly underrated. It's good to see that Brennan now has a champion in Christopher Bowen. Bowen sums up Christopher Brennan's prolific contribution to Australian poetry in these words: 

“For me, as a composer, a poem must not only invite interpretation of the text through the intellect but be able to involve the senses through its colour and atmosphere. One has to feel its text, taste its language and absorb its essence. ... I experience these qualities in Brennan’s poetry and to merely evaluate his worth as a poet within the confines of the Antipodes is a grave injustice to a man who deserves greater recognition.”

The evils of Contemporary Christian Music: Northside Baptist Church has its say

See link at http://www.northsidebaptistchurch.org.au/christian-resources/christian-rock-music/116-whats-wrong-with-ccm.html

I was intrigued to discover that the Northside Baptist Church WA website teaches that "rock music is ungodly" and that some genres of soft rock Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) are totally opposed to sound Christian doctrine and practice.

For well intended youth ministers (e.g. Matt Maher) of several mainstream Churches, who have been dutifully slaving away trying to teach their demoralised, untutored congregations how to sing basic Biblical texts using popular music genres, this outright condemnation of soft rock from their fellow Christians may come as a bit of a shock. Yet even if you don't agree with the Northside Baptist stance, forbearance may be wise; it's worth reading and considering these detailed comments. The Baptists are trying to come to grips with how technical aspects (of rhythm, sound and delivery) embedded in Church music may support or weaken Church members' attempts to live as faithful Christians. And of course all Church musicians should try to work out roughly where they stand on at least some of the compositional and performance issues raised here.

Strangely, Northside Baptist Church's doubts about the validity of CCM for practising Christians are strongly reminiscent of the Tridentine Catholic Council that declared sung Gregorian chant the preferred form of Church music, excluding anything secular, profane or remotely lasvicious, and promoting public reverence and clear textual delivery. I can't help thinking that the Catholic canonists were fortunate not to encounter massive technological complexity, hard metal, and the internet, as we have. When parody Masses that included popular melodies, unintelligible multi-text songs, and virtuoso male cantors (who couldn't resist showing off by singing elaborate improvisations) appeared, Catholic lawmakers banned them. Goodbye all but a few sequences and tropes, hello polyphony, madrigals and grand opera. Protestant Reformation musicians promptly turned the chant into memorable metrical hymns (now called traditional), and Protestant Church oratorio composers made a mint. It may even be possible that, as a circuitous result of the Catholic crack-down, some Baptist hymn melodies are descended from Gregorian chant melodies. I have a feeling that it may be hard to keep a really good CCM down.

[N.B. I just read the warning against ecumenical Church music on the Northside Baptist site. Now I'm wondering if they've read John 17:14-23, or the 1982 "Baptism Eucharist and Ministry" agreed Statement of the World Council of Churches? But - sadly - the Australian Baptist Church Union is not a member of the WCC. Maybe the Catholic Church, which is also not yet a member of the World Council of Churches although in longterm dialogue with it, has more in common with Northside Baptist Church than I realised. Quite odd, considering all that was said to promote Church unity (and therefore ecumenical Church music) in Pope John Paul II's "Ut Unum Sint."]

A Church Music Sound System that works!

Good news from Sydney's Central Baptist Church about a brilliant new Church sound system from Streamstone Audio that works! Quite an achievement in a heritage building where the community presents liturgies in Mandarin and Cantonese with simultaneous translation into English. See link:

http://www.gtaust.com/news_item/category/contractor/id/374

Faith+reason+goodwill+music = the glory of God

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was a diligent, logical, highly productive Church musician, organist and cantor, who successfully combined his music ministry with family and community life. He stated his purpose as a Church musician simply: “I have always kept one end in view, namely, with all good will to conduct a well-regulated church music to the glory of God.”

This combination of faith, reason and goodwill drove Bach’s music ministry to the heights of well-regulated genius. A common secular misconception about Church music is that it is an unregulated, ecstatic outpouring of passionate emotion, with reason and intelligence playing no part. This is incorrect: all Church music worthy of the name has logical structures, and is the outgrowth of centuries of tradition and education in carefully coded religious expression. Observant hearers can discern structures in Church music, meant to teach or illustrate Christian texts or doctrines, or assist the listener to meditate on a text in depth. Examination of the greatest Church music shows that complex rational structures support the interwoven melodies, rhythms, and harmonies we hear. The description of Bach’s cryptic musical integration of his Christian faith into a Church music composition, found in Joan Huyser-Honig’s essay “Musical Theology: Past lessons, present perspective” on the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship website, speaks for itself (see link below for full essay).

http://worship.calvin.edu/resources/resource-library/musical-theology-past-lessons-present-perspectives/

“Bach was Cantor (music director) at St. Thomas, a Lutheran church in Leipzig, Germany, when he wrote his St Matthew Passion for a Good Friday service. He wrote it in the key of E minor, which has one sharp. The German word for sharp is kreuz, which also means cross. The Gospel of Matthew is packed with numerical symbolism, and Bach embedded biblically significant numbers (two, three, five, seven, and twelve) in his score. He also used music to emphasize key ideas in the text. His notes ascend for the word heaven. A melisma (multi-noted syllable) highlights the words love, die, wept, and forever.

Australian Church Music, Sectarianism & Secularisation

Those totally confused today by prejudiced Australian Church musicians who habitually insult and disrespect Church musicians of other Christian persuasions, can gain some insight (if not understanding) by reading Ben Edwards provocative and revealing thesis on vicious Church sectarianism in New South Wales (see link below this post). 

Despite his dig at ecumaniacs, Edwards also notes that:

"A milestone on the journey towards healing sectarian divisions occurred in Sydney in December 1957 when the first annual ecumenical Christmas pageants were held under the auspices of the Crusade for Christian Christmas Committee. These pageants saw Protestants and Catholic co-operate in an effort to remind their society, which they feared was in grave danger of secularisation, of the meaning of Christmas." (p. 168)

The Crusade for Christian Christmas pageants were still taking place in 1961 (see article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Dec 8, 1961, "Program of Crusade for Christian Christmas", p. 6) with carol singing by the St Mary's Cathedral Choir, the Latvian Choir, the Combined Police Boys Choir, the Salvation Army Choir, the Churches of Christ Choir, St Clements Mosman Choir, and the Sydney Diocesan Youth Choir. On December 22 1961, the Sydney Morning Herald published a large photograph of St Clements Choir Mosman singing at a Christmas Tableau presentation. I wonder how long it is since the SMH published a photograph of a Church Choir.

Fortunately, Sydney still enjoys many public Christmas events, perhaps not as large as the pageants of the past, and regrettably not as ecumenical. One example is the Christmas Manger Tableau placed in the forecourt of St Mary's Catholic Cathedral each year, with carol-singing.

Proddy-Dogs, Cattleticks and Ecumaniacs: Aspects of Sectarianism in New South Wales, 1945-1981. Benjamin Edwards. 

unsworks.unsw.edu.au/fapi/datastream/unsworks...

Australian Parish Church Music Snapshot - St Patrick's Catholic Cathedral Parramatta

St Patrick's Catholic Cathedral at Parramatta has an adventurous and ambitious Church Music program, buoyed up by generous funding. The Cathedral maintains an adult Cathedral Parish Choir of 40 choristers (supplemented from Diocesan choirs for large liturgies), a Schola Cantorum which draws trainee singers from the nearby Campion University College at Toongabbie, a Music Director  / Organist / Precentor, an Assistant Organist, an Organ Scholar, and eight Cantors. The standard Sunday and weekday liturgy follows the Vatican II Novus Ordo model, with most hymns and chants in English. At solemn choral Masses on Sundays and feast days, polyphonic motets and traditional Gregorian Chant introit and communion antiphons (often in Latin) are included.

The music repertoire of St Patrick's Cathedral Choirs is almost exclusively European, with some contemporary hymns from America, and occasional items from Australian composers. Since the Cathedral is a diverse multicultural parish with 47 languages spoken, ethnic liturgies organised by community leaders are held frequently, and at these celebrations each community organises and performs its own music according to their Catholic musical traditions and languages. The ethnic liturgical musics include Samoan, Tongan, Filipino, Chinese, Polish, Maltese, Maronite Lebanese, Sudanese, and Nigerian, to name just a few.

The Catholic schools and Religious Orders of the Parramatta Diocese attend the Cathedral for special community liturgies, cooperating with the Cathedral Music Director in organising and performing their own liturgies with school or religious choirs and instrumentalists. The Royal School of Church Music holds its annual Primary Schools Choirs Festival at St Patrick's Cathedral, and the Diocese has recently funded a trainee Catholic Youth Diocesan Choir.

Peter Kearney, Australian Church music composer and musician, supporter of St Vincents Aboriginal Catholic community at Redfern.

Peter Kearney's contemporary Australian Church music is the outcome of a long relationship with the Australian Aboriginal Catholic community. After spending time in Ireland in 2007-2008, Peter is now based at Mittagong, New South Wales. He is touring throughout Australia, and his next Sydney concert, "Good Morning, Good People" will be at the Holy Family Parish Hall, 214 Maroubra Road, Maroubra, on Sunday 11 November 2012 at 2.00 pm. Entry by donation.

After many tribulations, St Vincents Catholic community in Redfern is finally reaping the well-earned fruits of its dedication to Christian social justice. Sponsored by the Jesuit Order, the new Aboriginal Jarjums School, with memorial statues and plaques to the work of Mum Shirl and Father Ted, and with Gamilaroi woman Beatrice Sheen as headmistress, is now a work in progress. The Jarjums College building in Redfern is the old St Vincents Presbytery.

See stories at about Jarjum Aboriginal College, which is yet to be completed and opened (hopefully in early 2013), at :

http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=9&articleID=8362&class=Features&subclass=A%20conversation%20with

http://www.caritas.org.au/learn/blog/blog-detail?ID=c9621703-4e2e-420c-b265-f2eb24a1b63b

Californian Presbyterian Church musician Vern Sanders' "Call for Better Music"article in Creator Magazine raises a lot of issues from a Church music publishers' point of view, with interesting responses from a range of US Church musicians. See link below:

http://www.creatormagazine.com/dnn/KnowledgeBase/Repertoire/ACallforBetterMusic.aspx

Church Music education and training in Australia

Church Music education and training in Australia

Australian Churches provide many short, non-accredited courses, day seminars and interest groups in Church music, but accredited Australian Church music courses at tertiary level, with comprehensive coverage of Church music history, form, composition and liturgical practice, are absent in Australia. Australian secular music secondary and tertiary courses are plentiful, but any experienced Church musician knows that although they provide advanced technical performance skills, degrees in secular music are little more than a starting point for skilled and informed Church music ministry. Talented Australian Church musicians are still urged to seek overseas scholarships, and travel overseas to complete their professional qualifications.

The UK Royal School of Church Music Education Department works internationally and within Australia to facilitate access to accredited Church music education. In 2012 the UK RSCM launched its Church Music Skills training program internationally. Under the leadership of Lindsay Gray, RSCM Australia developed a partnership with Canterbury's Christ Church University in the UK to provide a new Foundation Degree in Church Music, but this still involves overseas travel and residence.

Some Australian Church choirs have recommended the RSCM's graded choral training program Voice for Life to their choristers, with outstanding results. One of these is the Australian Catholic University's Choir in Brisbane, organised by organist Dr Ralph Morton, Greg Mayer, and Senior Music Lecturer Judy Fromyhr. In the ACU Choir Handbook, Dr Morton says "The ACU Brisbane Choir recommends the Voice for Life choral program developed by RSCM in the United Kingdom. Voice for Life is designed to help you discover what your voice can do, and then to strengthen it. It will help you to improve your knowledge and understanding of music and to look at what it means to be a singer and member of a choir. Although it may appear that this program is about sacred music only, it is equally appicable to all of the different genres of music that are studied in the ACU Choir. A White Level that precedes the workbooks is also available for those who feel that they are really "starting from scratch." "

Voice for Life workbooks and music are available  through the RSCM online shop at

https://www.rscmshop.com/acatalog/

Phillip Percival's UK-based Emu Music is currently presenting short Church music seminars in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne. Seminars such as this provide entertainment, networking, encouragement and performance opportunities, however they do not supply accredited training or ongoing local Church music ministry support.  

For further information see the Emu Music website at http://au.emumusic.com/aboutus 

Overseas Church music courses offer much more in terms of sound, accredited tuition in Church music, equal in standard to any Australian secular music degree. The Institute of Sacred Music at the Catholic University of America (see http://sacredmusic.cua.edu) provides comprehensive Roman Catholic full and part-time tertiary education programs in choral music, organ performance and composition, at Bachelor, Masters and Doctorate level. At ISM CUA, sacred music graduate students can study choral music and literature, organ performance and literature, musicology, conducting, performance practice, composition, chant history and performance, hymnology, vocal pedagogy, theology and liturgical studies, religious and humanistic studies.

Sister Kathleen Boschetti - Australian Church Music Composer

Missionary of the Sacred Heart Sister Kathleen Boschetti msc, an accomplished Australian Church music composer, celebrated her Golden Jubilee at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, Deepdene, Victoria, on Sunday 11th September 2011.

Sister Kathleen was born in Shepparton, Victoria, into a musical family, and studied Church music at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome. Her talents and expertise as an educator, organist and musician have been at the service of the Church and community throughout her life, always with great generosity and good humour. Sister Kathleen's sister, Eileen Kennedy of Shepparton, is also a skilled Church musician and organist.

After completing her studies in Rome, she worked at the Liturgical Centre in Melbourne, becoming a consultant in Church music for the Archdiocese of Melbourne and beyond. She continues to lead liturgical worship in Australian Churches at St Francis' Church (Melbourne), St Bridget's Church (Greythorn, Victoria), and All Saints Church (Fitzroy, Victoria). Her outstanding skills as a mature Catholic Cantor and composer who inspires enthusiastic assembly participation in sacred music are renowned. She has respectfully acknowledged and (with appropriate permissions) integrated the unique contribution of Australian indigenous peoples into Australia's Church music. She continues to promote this through her Kumali Coree choir, Masses and other publications.

Sister Kathleen's sensitive compositions are well known and loved for their accurate expression of the text, their singable melodies and their expressive harmonies. Her compositions were included in the Catholic Worship Book (1985), Gather Australia (1995), and in Together in Song (1999). Her Church music is inclusive and life-giving, and has given joy, encouragement and friendship to many.

See also Sister Kathleen's Golden Jubilee page on the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart site:

http://www.misacor.org.au/index.php/news-mainmenu-37/422-golden-jubilee-sister-kathleen-boschetti-msc

But I can't sing ... a historical perspective from Australia

Plus ca change .... the old French saying that "the more things change, the more they stay the same" is evidently true in Australian Church music, as in all other life scenarios.

This morning I discovered an interesting article on Anglican congregational singing in an Australian newspaper archive - a public lecture on "Congregational Church Singing" by Mr. Sharp, choir director and organist of St John's Anglican Church, Launceston, Tasmania, reported on page 3 of The Cornwall Chronicle, Launceston on May 1st 1861. 

Brave Mr. Sharp was spurred on by the impending arrival of a fine new organ, to publicly challenge the surly non-singing habits of the Anglican congregation of St John's Launceston. With the unqualified support of his parish clergy, Mr. Sharp countered the recalcitrant congregation's silence with a well organised demonstration of liturgical singing from the parish choir, quotations of numerous Anglican liturgical rubrics, a stern pronouncement that objections to Church singing (based on feeble claims of having no voice or ear) stemmed from a libellous rejection of God's gifts, and backup from the scriptures re Christian music traditions. Mr Sharp's reprimand of non-singers was uncompromising: 

"... some persons who hear me this evening will be ready to say, “It is all very well for you to urge this duty upon those who can sing and are acquainted with music, but as for us, we have never learned music, we cannot sing, we have no voices, no ears, and therefore we at least have no concern in the matter.” The Christians of 200 and 300 years ago appear to have thought differently— they had both voices and ears and they made good use of them ... to those who plead, as numbers do, that they have neither voice nor ear, I say that each statement is a gross libel upon our common Creator, who has bestowed upon all, the deaf and dumb excepted, the organs which may be taught to sing as well as to speak." 

Evidently this approach worked, as St John's Anglican Church community at Launceston survived and flourished. But would Mr. Sharp's strategy meet with unqualified success today? Evidence from authoritarian vs. laissez faire management of Church music today tends to the conclusion that treading the middle road between these two extremes, by stating an optimistic vision, providing good quality formal instruction without discrimination, and allowing new musical expressions of faith to flourish in a positive atmosphere of hope produces greater congregational participation in Church music and liturgy than heavily authoritarian systems engender.

For further evidence on the power of positive encouragement combined with gentle guidance in Church music, see Tanya Riches' insightful analysis of the music of Hillsong Church.

The Australian Pastoral Musicians Network held its Annual General Meeting in Canberra today, in tandem with a Copyright for Church musicians Workshop. Follow developments and future events on their website, http://www.apmn.org.au/

Church music copyright issues and information discussed at the APMN Copyright Workshop at St Patrick's Cathedral in November 2011 (which I attended) are efficiently summarised on the Catholica website:

http://www.catholica.com.au/breakingnews/035_bn_print.php

Church Music fixes lisps!

On his Sentire cum Ecclesia blog, David Schutz raises the problem of difficult-to-pronounce liturgical texts. My sympathy to all Church lispers and those that have trouble getting their tongue around Church language. Difficult as it may be, advantages flow to those who persistently conquer recalcitrant texts. Admiration for anyone who can proclaim the tongue twisting genealogy of Jesus correctly is unbounded.

Like David, I too battled a childhood lisp for many years. I was cured by 1. my grandfather teaching me to whistle forwards instead of backwards, 2. being taught to "bubble" underwater by a cousin, and 3. singing many rhythmic, slow, mysterious hymns with unpronounceable texts.

My Cathedral community invariably produces a communal mumble at the word "consubstantial" in the new ICEL translation of the Nicene Creed. Singing the Creed would fix it.

The Choir of Christ Church St Laurence

Directed by Neil McEwan, the CCSL robed Choir, based at Christ Church St Laurence in central Sydney NSW, is renowned for its choral excellence and the liturgical splendour of its festal music. The auditioned choir specialises in SATB polyphony and Gregorian chant. It performs at concerts as well as Church liturgies, and records at several acoustically outstanding Sydney venues, including St Patricks Cathedral Parramatta. To ecumenically support the development of Church music in Australia, several CCSL members also provide cantor services and sing with other Church choirs around Sydney. The choir is affiliated with the RSCM (Royal School of Church Music). Peter Jewkes is the Organist of Christ Church St Laurence, which also has two Organ Scholars, and an organ recital series is maintained by the Church. Daniel Dries, the Rector of CCSL, is also an accomplished Church musician.

Reading Church music documents on Church music from various sources can be enlightening. Each Church denomination has developed its own theology and practice of Church music, but the various interpretations and practices are all ultimately based on faith in Jesus Christ. Whenever controversy arises in Australian Church music, returning to source documents can increase understanding of Church music differences. In the global Church marketplace, Australian Church music is subject to international as well as national, regional and local pressures and influences. One Church music document, published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2007, which exerts considerable (some say disproportionate) influence over the liturgical music of the Australian Catholic Church, is “Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship.” You can download the entire document in four parts (PDF) here.

St Patrick's Cathedral Parramatta - a stunning Australian Cathedral, inhabited by a vast multicultural community (47 languages spoken here) who reject all forms of religious discrimination, while combining treasured Australian Church traditions and practices with cheerful values and hopes.

Advent is approaching, with Christmas following close behind. St Patricks Catholic Cathedral at Parramatta is holding its annual Advent Choral Service and Supper for Church musicians from Parramatta Catholic Diocese on Tuesday December 4th at 7.00 pm. St Patrick's Cathedral Choirs will be singing under Bernard Kirkpatrick, assisted by Michael Hutchinson and Timothy Coorey. It's a great opportunity for networking and planning the Church music year. Do you have a special Advent music event at your Australian Church?

Introduction

Australian Church music is clearly alive and humming along today, with many new compositions, associations and study courses surfacing in many different Church traditions and environments. Studying, creating and performing Australian Church music together is a special way of expressing our faith and our interaction with God, in our own Church denominations. Church music also builds Church unity, when we listen to and appreciate each other's Christian music traditions, and when we perform approved common repertoires together.

Although Australia's Church music traditions were originally inherited from its immigrant peoples, colonial Australia did develop its own unique and well-known Church music and texts. The rich diversity of Australian Church music, and its fascinating multicultural history, deserves greater exploration, and much more positive attention.