Music in worship sometimes gets mentioned even when we’re discussing eucharistic sacrifice (that imaginary beast), so perhaps we should consider this post by Rebecca Rollett at the Pittsburgh Camerata website. Rebecca directs the Camerata, whose repertoire is described as ‘the entire choral repertory, with an emphasis on Renaissance/Baroque and 20th century music’. She has a a Masters degree in Choral Conducting from Carnegie Mellon University, and teaches organ at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. She is also a devout Christian. Her whole ‘take’ on sacred music is worth reading, but here is an appetiser:
The use of music in worship is an age-old argument. The real question is, what is its purpose? … “Music wasn’t simply a chance for the congregation to sing together, rather it was a series of sonic sign-posts angled towards illumination of the underlying spiritual truth of the service.” The question for me is, does it continue to function as such? I started to write that “I am perhaps the wrong person to ask,” but as I pondered it I realized that perhaps I am the right person to ask, because I’m one of the few people I know that has a deep and abiding love for the long tradition of sacred choral music, and yet attends a church with a “worship team.” In fact, I not only attend such a church, I am on the worship team. This is an unpaid position, so it isn’t a question of working for the highest bidder. I am there by choice.
January 28, 2012 at 9:48 pm
I’m not sure I understand. Was this post perhaps cut short? (the text seemed to end abruptly)
January 29, 2012 at 7:33 am
I think Phil was just providing an appetizer. The full post is:
http://www.pittsburghcamerata.org/blog/link-post-sacred-choral-music-and-my-take-it
January 30, 2012 at 12:19 pm
My first reaction to Rebecca’s thoughts about the purpose of music in what we call a worship service is to note that Scripture really gives us no clue about that. It’s very clear that music is to be used, but I can’t find a passage that is specific about why, or how. I took a look at the recently published Oxford History of Christian Worship, and got no help there, despite the introduction by Geoffrey Wainwright (no relation) being subtitled ‘Scriptural basis’. I think this means we’re free to use it as we see best, and that means we’ll probably differ on its purpose as well as on what is the best music for the purpose.
I wrestled a long time with the ‘music helps us worship’ idea before abandoning it. I grew up in a church that sang hymns and had the occasional solo by a member with a nice voice (my mother, as likely as not), but no one ever gave any reason for them, or commented further than the occasional ‘I liked that one’. When I came back to the church, in another country and another time, I heard a lot about music helping us worship, and since I loved the music I assumed I’d ‘get it’ if I stuck around long enough. After ten years or more, by then being ordained and responsible for the music by canon, I realised I still didn’t get it, and decided that for me music would never be a help to worship and I need not approach it on that basis. I actually worship more effectively in my personal prayer than I ever do in a church service, and see the role of the Sunday gathering as primarily that of building Christians up in their faith and life. Music has a tremendous part to play in this, but congregational singing seems to me a much bigger factor than music by those especially gifted in it. This seems backed up or at least not contradicted by Scripture, which talks far more about singing than playing, and seems to be referring to singing by the whole assembly much more often than by singing specialists.
I realise that I’m the exception rather than the rule (although not unique, I’m sure) and that music helps others worship, and should therefore be chosen with that possibility in mind as well as for edification. I hope there’s discussion about both purposes and the best way to apply music to those purposes. There may well be other purposes than these two, and that would be good to hear about too.
January 30, 2012 at 10:47 pm
I would tend to agree that time in private devotion and small group prayer with fellow Christians are sometimes more deeply meaningful personally than grand services of public worship. Though I would be counted as one, perhaps of an aesthetic and more introverted personality, who often prefers as well to participate meaningfully in worship in a more receptive than active mode. Some hearts may only be lifted to the Father when the person is on his or her feet and with hands in the air. Others may find the ear and the mind a more effective instrument. It takes all kinds, I suppose. That may be a Myers-Briggs thing, and I know that for some that kind of receptivity just doesn’t seem to work. For others it’s a necessity. Part of the reason why it’s good there is more than one place to go on Sunday mornings, I suppose.
My own slightly eccentric translation of the Gk for “liturgy” is in fact, “public service.” It is our worship in and on behalf of the wide world, and with doors open for all sorts and conditions. Not a private gathering of Christians, but an invitation for all. In the Hellenistic world it was common for a local magnate to build a bridge over the ravine for the use of the village, and this was his “liturgy.” A duty of good stewardship.
In his discussion of tongues and prophesy St. Paul makes it clear that the gathering for public worship is one where the behavior of Christians must be shaped by attention to what the inquiring visitor will experience. We must share the gospel in ways that those who haven’t yet heard it can understand. And in the multilingual, polymorphous environment of 21st century America, that may mean very different things in different places. We need to find the language (understood as broadly as possible) that communicates. What may be a winsome presentation of the gospel in one setting may be essentially unintelligible in another.
I do sense that one aspect of the way music is offered in our worship at St. Andrew’s, for example, is that there is this kind of evangelistic opportunity. One of the ancient themes of the streetcorner soup kitchen was that folks who come for dinner may stay for the sermon. I have known a number of folks who have over the years come to St. Andrew’s “for the music” as a first step on a commitment to or renewal of Christian faith. Perhaps this is partly a defensive rationalization. But I would say I have seen enough of the truth of it as well, over these many years. I can worship as well, reflect on and deepen faith as well, in a simple room as in a neo-gothic masterpiece. Perhaps my truest chapel is the old chair where I sit to pray the office and read the daily lessons morning and evening. But those old stones on Hampton Street too are a gift of the Church to the world–and may inspire a pilgrim to rest awhile within, and to listen for the one who is present in every place and in every song.
Bruce Robison
January 31, 2012 at 4:17 pm
The one clear biblical command in regard to music seems to be that it must glorify God. So perhaps answering the broader question on what brings glory to God can shed more light than analyses of performance v. participation, or familiarity/contemporaneity v. obscurity/antiquity.
February 1, 2012 at 9:35 am
Are you thinking of a specific passage when you say ‘clear biblical command in regard to music’, or of the more general idea that in all we do we are to glorify God?
February 1, 2012 at 10:24 am
“Sing unto the LORD a new song” would seem to be a ‘clear Biblical command in regard to music,’ yes?
8-)
BruceR
February 1, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Psalm 150 is a good place to start specifically, but the general idea fits, too. That has ramifications for the quality of the music we offer as well as the heart with which we offer as well, insofar as God has gifted us. In essence, music becomes less about the perception of the congregation or the individual worshiper, but more about presenting to God music as a worthy part of our “living sacrifice” (Romans 12).
February 2, 2012 at 10:07 am
I wasn’t thinking of ‘glorify’ as a synonym for ‘praise’; that we are to praise God in song and with instruments of music is pretty clear. But if we’re to talk about the purpose of music in worship so as to use it in accordance with that purpose, we need more than the commandment to use it.
Linking it to the ‘living sacrifice’ idea gives it a bit more focus, although Colossians 3.23 ‘Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men’ seems to work better in terms of doing our best. As Rebecca pointed out, though, one person’s best is another person’s worst.
I found C S Lewis’s ‘A Word about Praise’ in his Reflections on the Psalms very interesting on this whole subject, although not easy to sum up here, and not particularly supportive of the idea that only the best should be used.
It still seems to me that God’s purpose in all this is hidden, and that the best way for the church to proceed is to apply music to all those purposes for which God’s people find it useful. Those who find it an aid to worship should be able to have it in that form in which they find that it serves that purpose, if there are people in the church who can give it to them. Those who find that it strengthens their faith and ability to stand for Christ in the world, likewise. There may be other purposes, but those are the two that have been mentioned here. Generally speaking, it seems that music performed by the especially gifted serves the first purpose best, while music sung by the whole body serves the second. I would think the church serves the Lord best when equal attention is given to both, and the kinds of music used which appeal to the largest number of the people that the church is trying to reach. The question is, do we really want to reach all the people in our neighborhood, or just those who share our tastes in music?
January 31, 2012 at 10:46 pm
pretty much takes all of the wind out of my sail. But I’m used to that. I’ve searched long and hard to find evangelicals who have a purpose for music.
February 1, 2012 at 8:10 am
There is a wider question and conversation about what I guess we would call “the arts” and Christian life and worship. I think there has been historically a pretty consistent trend of Evangelical anxiety about what I guess we could call idolatry. A concern that the aesthetic response can become an end in itself, that the pleasure we experience in the encounter with beauty can become a diversion, a substitute. Not a means to an end, but the end in itself. Architecture, poetry, paintings. Music. Perhaps what the similar concern is about the oft-heard assertion that one may be “spiritual but not religious.” William James spoke about the “oceanic experience” that seems to lie at the intersection of mystical and aesthetic responses. Thus the inspiration of the beautiful sunset. Who needs to read the Bible, after all, if you have tickets to the symphony?
And thus the unfortunate legacy of those who in days of yore took hammers to stained glass windows and designated illuminated manuscripts to the fire . . . .
But I guess for me the fact that the aesthetic response can be a diversion and substitute is only to say, as per the offerings of Cain and Abel, that the stakes are as high as they can be. To me the controlling Biblical image is that of Mary of Bethany, who kneels before our Lord and anoints his feet with the finest of perfumes, the best offering, the treasure of her dowry. As Lenny says, the key is Christ at the center. Per Oswald Chambers, “My Utmost for his Highest.” I would certainly hope and pray that a visitor, let’s say, to a service of Lessons and Carols, or Choral Evensong, or a magnificent orchestral service of the Holy Communion, would say not so much “what great music!”–though that certainly might be true–but instead, simply: “See how they love him.”
Bruce Robison
February 2, 2012 at 6:28 pm
I do have a hard time thinking “instrumentally” (pardon the pun) about music and worship. That we would “use” music or worship.
I guess if you were a diocesan missioner founding a new church in a new suburb you might have some kind of planning meeting where you might sit down to “select” the music and worship style of the not-yet-born congregation based on some kind of demographic survey or other of what you thought “most people would like.” And then I guess you pray you guessed right.
But I’ve spent my whole life and ministry in congregations where questions of music and worship evolve generationally and deep down as expressions of the highest and best expressions of Christian life of particular people. That doesn’t mean things are inevitably static, but that this notion of authorial control seems misguided. I’ve seen a few Rectors roll in and fire the long-time choir and hire a praise band, but the results aren’t usually happy ones. Neither would it be helpful to fire a praise band in a congregation that had formed over a long time around that form of worship, or to order your praise band to begin to play Mariachi music in an effort to appeal to a nearby hispanic neighborhood. It’s like telling a preacher that he would be more effective if he had lived a different life. The thing is, when Christ is at the center of peoples’ lives, whatever music we are drawn to will be the right music.
Bruce Robison
February 2, 2012 at 11:26 pm
Very lovely (and articulate) posts, dear Rector Bruce. And what a great blend it is for our local little church to have a (moderately conservative evangelical) rector and (moderately liberal Anglo-Catholic) organist.
Now back to our lovable, evangelical preacher Philip. I enjoy the honesty and frankness of this blog. Strangely, we might both find deep meaning in the spoken 9:00 service- for me because there is no bad music, and for you Philip (I read?) no (bad or otherwise distracting) music which is not scripturally warranted.
Now here’s my bomb: I’m not out there searching for God in the scriptures. I’m a musician (of sorts), so I’m not looking for something intellectual. I believe because I feel, not because I read. THAT (I hope) is why we still have music, both pedestrian and other. But I also admit to being quite fascinated by scripture when presented with such joy as you do. My challenge will be to show you a little of my world. Do you think we may ever meet?
February 3, 2012 at 3:21 pm
I wouldn’t say ‘not scripturally warranted’, just ‘not scripturally mandated’. None must, all may, perhaps some even should. Some seem to have no choice!
March 4, 2012 at 3:02 pm
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