Good advice: Five Ways to Improve Congregational Singing - from Keith Getty

Catholics write books about Why Catholics Can't Sing

It seems that Protestants have a better approach:  they face the same challenges, but they write articles like Five Ways to Improve Congregational Singing - and make some fantastically important points at the same time.

My favourite:

Congregational singing is a holy act,

I couldn't agree more.    Even  this traditionally oriented church-musician says that

"The unity that we experience in singing is a reflection of the reality of the Communion of our souls and those of all the hosts of heaven in One Body - The Mystical Body of Christ."

and has links to various pieces of neuro-science based research which starts to explain the biological ways in which that happens.      (Sadly in the rest of her posts basically say that chant is the only legitimate worship music, that that its best left to the specialists with the great unwashed aiming for the "interior participation".   Bleh!)


Some other great points from the original post:

... in our song worship, we have to be spiritually alive (dead people don’t sing), spiritually assisted (through the enabling of the Holy Spirit), and spiritually active (committed to daily walking with the Lord).

the language being placed in the congregation’s mouth, for that singing ultimately affects how they think, how they feel, how they pray, and how they live.

Reach across the aisle, meeting with leaders from different churches and denominations to learn about their music selections.

That last point might upset a few traditionalists - but I think that makes it even more important.   Who could seriously imagine not having Amazing Grace in the parish's list of hymns-we-know?    Despite a few theological quibbles (and even those aren't universally supported), it cuts across boundaries most effectively, and proves that we have far more in common between denominations that we have keeping us apart.

7th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year c

What we sang 

The African community were leading this week's music, and didn't have their usual resources at the planning meeting.   So we ended up with hymns they know from home, which are more-ore-less in the parish repertoire, too.

• Entrance:  How Great is our God
• Psalm:  We didn't   :-(
• Offertory:  Take our Bread - Joe Wise
• Communion:  Give Thanks - Henry Smith
• Sending:   Give me Joy in my Heart

What I'd like to have sung:

The psalm made me think of "I Will Bless the Lord" by Frank Hermandez. I couldn't work out why 'til I looked up the words of verse 1 again:

 "Our God is gracious and merciful,
Great in kindness and good to all,
Our God is righteous in every way,
We bless you Lord and give you praise. "

(thought I'm pretty sure that the original was a little less inclusive language based!).

And it's totally unsuitable for most Masses, but the "Love the Lord your God" round has a special place in my musical memory, too.

6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year c

What we sang 

• Entrance:  Christ be Beside Me
• Psalm:  We didn't   :-(
• Offertory:  we didn't - instrumental
• Communion:  A Mhuire Mhaithar  (last minute subsititution)
• Sending:   Brother Sister Let me Serve You

What I'd like to have sung:

Not a lot of obvious choices in my repertoire this week:   To Do Your Will is one possible oldie.
We were going to teach David Haas' Prayer for Peace using a recording, but technical challenges got in the way (someone has "borrowed" the cable). Tracking it down will be a challenge for this week.

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

This is the first in an occasional series of posts "What we sang, vs what I'd like to have sung".

Sometimes it will be based on my own parish, sometimes on other places that I happened to be visiting that day.

What we sang 

• Entrance:  Here I am Lord 
• Psalm:  none 
• Offertory:  Eat this Bread - the Taizé one
• Communion:  A Place at the Table
• Sending:   Go Tell Everyone 

(Yes, we sang Mass parts, aka "ordinays" too.  They're essential, but a lot less interesting, and not worth listing each week.)

What I'd like to have sung: 

• Bring forth the Kingdom 
• A Place at the Table 
• I am the Light of the World
• Christ be our Light
• I Yahweh Have Called You

Hello World!

I've always been fascinated by music in general, and especially music in church and music about God.  

A life-long Catholic, I'm currently "the liturgy-group-member-who-coordiates the music" (how's that for a mouthful!)  for a small parish in Ireland, where I've lived for the last five-or-so years.

I play a wind instrument (not good for accompanying congregational singing, but adds a nice lift sometimes) - mainly in Irish traditional styles, and not very well at that.

And I sing soprano in secular choir: our last work was Mozart's Credo Mass, I love singing this sort of work as music - but spiritually it does nothing for me.

 Maybe I'm just a child of the 60s, but in my book church-music belongs to the whole people of God, not just the choir. Every who has a larynx can sing, and we need 'em all to add their voices to make worship whole.  And the very act of singing together unites us in a way that no other activity can.

Why this blog?

And in the last couple of years, I've learned to use Blogger for a range of things.   So it made sense to combine the two, this time in a more personal way.    I had to think hard about whether to make this blog anonymous or not - in the end I decided not to.   Will be interesting to see if I come to regret that.

Why "Pastoral" - isn't that about sheep?

It really saddens me to see so many professional church musicians and church-music bloggers focus on musical excellence and liturgical norms, at the expense of developing spirituality and serving their congregations as they are today.   Especially when there are so many fine musicians out there who can and do balance complex pastoral, musical and liturgical factors every time they play in a church.

So I'm deliberately focussing on how to provide church music in a compassionate, pastoral way, within the context of a liturgical church.