I HAVE the great fortune to have a job that can be a vocation: leading a Christian education charity that brings together my experience as a teacher, musician, and lively Christian and church member, and that enables me to advocate the worth of music in worship.
A couple of key convictions get me up within the morning, and provides me the energy to confront one more day of the apparently unequal struggle between the “to do” list, the contents of my inbox, and my limited human capability to fulfil all of it:
- that music has a transformative power and potential;
- that music and belief are natural partners — while I can appreciate easy spoken services as much as anyone, I value music as a tool to boost worship, to specific key tenets of our faith, to help and enhance prayer, and to achieve out, connect with, and develop, not only local communities, but every church community, too; and
- that music can connect me with God, in the great times and the bad.
I ALSO know that it was my very own early introduction to church music (which was singing hymns at primary school, greater than attending my church Sunday school) which set me on the journey to my present and my future. Maybe that’s why I still hold hymns dear (and, indeed, take great pride and care in how as an organist I play them), and why I’m keen about encouraging more young people to experience what it will probably feel prefer to do as I did, and sooner or later — literally — find their voice.
Music can achieve this much to rework young people, and sustain them throughout their life journey; so it is maybe no surprise that I need to enable every young person to have the possibility to feel that music is a strategy to be transported beyond the here-and-now and the on a regular basis. I worry that, if we don’t do something now, the tradition of liturgical music will regularly be extinguished, but, while we still have enough people engaged in church music to encourage others, the embers might be fanned back to fuller life.
The growth in opportunities for girl choristers is greatly to be welcomed (each my daughters benefited in this manner), but where are the boys coming forward to sing, who might be the lads singing lower parts of the longer term? Which young persons are going to be those to come back and play the organ and other instruments in worship each Sunday? How impoverished the Church can be if live church music were to vanish in all but a handful of places! Why is it that the church music of those shores is widely known world wide, but much less valued here?
I FRET that not enough people appear to be concerned about this stuff: that too many churches just accept that to have an ageing group of individuals leading the music is OK, with no particular eye on the longer term beyond “It will see me out”; that music is a bolt-on to fascinated by church life, not in it from the word go. It needs to be high up the agenda, whereas too often it’s barely even on it.
It bothers me that this could translate right into a culture by which recent people — especially young people — and recent ideas are viewed with suspicion somewhat than as opportunity. There is a danger of clinging to “This is what we do.” There is a danger that too few people have the arrogance, or breadth of experience, to have open conversations about faith, music, and worship. There is a danger of musical tribalism that closes hearts and minds to what’s “other”. We must encourage more people to make use of their time and abilities to steer and take part in music of their local churches.
We now find ourselves, I might suggest, in a fragile place, where there is commonly a divide — mirroring the Church itself, after all — between traditional and contemporary (often actually a proxy for “art” versus “pop” culture), and, for my part, a misperception that the one way forward is to depart as much of the past behind as possible.
The irony is that, in musical terms, much of what the Church regards as contemporary is miles and miles away from what young people might hearken to on their phones on the strategy to school.
I might suggest that a greater approach is perhaps to deal with really good music, in whatever style, in order that quality becomes a critical factor; and to encourage as many individuals as possible to have interaction/get entangled.
This is why the work of the charity that I lead is targeted on engaging and dealing with young people, developing music leadership, and fascinating clergy and whole church communities with the limitless possibilities that music offers as a tool for mission and discipleship.
WHAT, then, should the music of the Church be, seeking to the longer term? I might suggest that it must be serious. I don’t mean solemn (or at the least, not more often than not). I mean that it’s something that requires serious attention, in our approach and our commitment. It should mirror our faith and our theology.
Knowledgeable (Christian) musician recently described the music of Bach as “3D theology”. Do it is advisable to be, as Bach was, a believer to compose or perform sacred music? No, just as you don’t must eat meat to have the option to cook a steak. But it is best to cook food that you just are capable of taste, so that you could tell whether it is price eating.
MUSIC can expose recent people to Christianity. As someone who often gets the possibility to face in front of musicians delivering their art with full force, I know the way wealthy that joy of complete immersion in music as a living and literally respiration thing might be, not least as an expression of religion. I’m, personally, never happier than when leading music with others, preparing for, after which leading, worship, and being freely capable of express myself. This includes addressing the matters of religion which the music itself is expressing.
To that end, no single form or musical idiom is enough. A received and appreciated heritage, or an aesthetic of excellence, cannot on their very own bring sustenance to the soul.
For there to be a extremely good, sustainable relationship between faith and music, it seems to me that simply making significant effort, in musical terms alone, isn’t enough. Unseasonal it is perhaps, but I actually have a Christina Rossetti line in my head which, it seems to me, needs to be true of all who lead and take part in church music: “Yet what I can I give him — give my heart.”
Hugh Morris is the director of the Royal School of Church Music.
