Living Theology in the Metropolitan Chicago Synod
Evangelical Lutheran
Church In America
Volume 4, Number 1
Easter 1999
Multiculturalism And Worship
Heads or Tails
Mark P. Bangert
When it comes to
choosing hymns for Sunday and Festival services it sometimes feels like a coin
might serve best. There are so many from which to choose, and, it seems, the hymn
repertoires grow exponentially day by day. One way to solve the dilemma is to
seek help. There is plenty available. On pp. 929ff of the Lutheran Book of Worship the seeker finds lists of hymns for the
day and for special concerns. If that's not enough, the Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (Marilyn Kay
Stulken, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1981) provides still longer lists for the same
purposes. Still not satisfied? Try Indexes
for Worship Planning (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996) where hymns
from both LBW and With One Voice are suggested for
specific days of the church year, twenty or more for each liturgical event.
Now, if all my worship
students from seminary days took my advice seriously they would approach these
lists saying to themselves “My task here is to match singer with situation with
song.” Knowing the singer yields information about ability, acoustics and
experience. Knowing situation gets easier the more one steers an assembly
through the path of the church year. Ah, but the song--there is the problem.
Twenty or more suggested hymns, text and tune, from which pastor or church
musician must make choices.
A coin helps.
Or, pick a hymn from
what you know best. Or, sing what you sang last year at this time. Or, fly or
sing by the seat of your pants. Now we are back to coins.
Hundreds of decisions
about music are made each year in a given parish. They range from choosing
handbell music to preparing for an alternate choice of song in case the
keyboardist for the day doesn't show up, from trying a new liturgical setting
to finding a place in the service for the teen band to present its latest
contribution.
The choices are
political, they serve larger purposes of worship and of mission, they present
themselves without notice, they mostly affect overall dynamics of worship more
than what we believe, and they call for some skill at understanding how music
works.
Since many pastors
claim to know little about music, this juncture might transmogrify into a
temptation to hand this piece on to the musician. Shun the temptation. Even
church musicians anguish over choices--and keep coins handy. Besides,
experience leads me to believe that substantial decisions about worship music
often originate from the pastoral office.
Can we get beyond the
coin? Years ago, it was possible to make choices from accepted canons of hymn
collections. Hymnological gnosticism--learned at the seminary or from
experience in the parsonage--helped one to know what was "good" or
“bad." Erik Routley helped us understand what that meant. He wrote that a
good hymn passes two tests. One, "as a piece of craftsmanship in
literature it must be without blemish" (some advice which, in spite of its
monarchical pretension, still commands attention). Two, "a hymn shall do,
precisely and in full, the thing it was designed to do (Hymns and Human Life, Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1959, p. 297).”
Routley is not all
bombast. He realized how problematic it is to speak of "good" hymns.
After ruminating about good and bad he offered instead that difficulties with
unwise matching of singer, situation, and song frequently lie not with the
music but with the motivations of the singer or the singer-chooser.
Why and how people use
music in worship can create difficulties. Increasingly a foreign experience for
people, participatory music, such as that which occurs in worship, has
potential to unite or divide. Music can drive people into themselves or it can
provide an aural glue which incarnates the body of Christ and prepares it for
mission extended into the world. The sociological dimensions of music are
beginning to come to light, or should we say, beginning to be heard in the
church.
In a study of the
relationship between song style and cultural groups Alan Lomax years ago
discovered that "as people live so do they sing (Ibid, p. 306)." He
examined 233 specific musical cultures from across the world and plotted out
how various musical characteristics commonly and somewhat universally connect
directly to specific kinds of behavior and to patterns of organization,
purpose, and societal structure. In short, a culture's favored song style
reflects and reinforces the kind of behavior considered essential to its work
habits and to its core and prevailing institutions.
Interpreted for our
purposes, that means that song style is shaped by and shapes the group which
adopts it.
It's not necessary
here to drone out the details of Lomax's work. But suppose we apply his
discoveries to music in the church, especially to hymns. To do that, it might
be interesting to advance a description of an ideal Christian worshipping
assembly, and then propose what its song style might look like according to
Lomax's discoveries.
Here are some
characteristics of worship for which I think we all strive:
1. Christians at worship
are energized by a message, hope, and power all of which come from without the
group (Luther spoke of grace coming extra
nos, or from outside of ourselves); the group therefore does not look to
itself for direction or initiative.
2. Christians carry
out their interchanges dialogically both when at worship and when not.
3. The Christian
assembly affirms its unity while inviting into its midst a diversity of
edifying gifts.
4. The assembly
functions by recognizing the equality of male/female, young/old, etc.
5. The assembly embraces degrees of
complexity regarding matters of social status, economic position, and
educational levels of its members. (Because many parishes are located in areas
which assume, invite, or specify likeness, this characteristic serves as a hope
rather than as a reality.)
6. The assembly at
worship provides information relative to the needs and abilities of its
members.
7. Christian
worshippers are action-oriented, that is, they intend to translate worship into
individual and corporate daily life.
8. The assembly is
conscious of living presently in two time systems: clock-time and the
"time to come."
9. The assembly is
determined to deal with contextual reality, and resists the inclination to
escape from the world.
10. The assembly
welcomes and encourages the “jazz factor''--the unpredictable presence of the
Spirit.
Such a list could be
expanded or perhaps shaped in different ways. But, by way of exploration, let's
see what Lomax might say about the song style of a group bearing these
characteristics.
1. The
song will be of an integrated type, a technical descriptive which means
that it will be choral, multileveled, cohesive, textually repetitious,
uncomplicated in melody and meter, with little or no ornamentation, favoring
the clear voice and slurred (or localized) enunciation. Solo offerings will be
welcomed from time to time but only as they edify and support the group (cf. 1
Corinthians 14). Because the Christian assembly depends upon external energy,
songs offering individual insight will be subjected to what the assembly holds
corporately to be true.
2. The integrated song of the assembly will
include some degree of solo/group interaction.
3. Instrumental participation will be simple
and supportive. Pure instrumental sections within a song tend to silence
the assembly. Basically, orchestral complexity reflects social rigidity, and is
therefore not hospitable to the needs of the assembly. If instruments are to be
used, the ideal Christian musical expression may turn out to be heterophony--at
least two sound producers delivering a melody simultaneously but with idiomatic
variations.
4. Melodic embellishment, glissando effects,
and other ornamentation devices will occur rarely since they are more characteristic
of solo song.
5. Vocal style will be free and clear. Vocal
tension, Lomax discovered, derives from fear related to inequality with respect
to sexual mores.
6. In parishes of more complex social
stratification, songs with heavy information loads will occur more frequently
because the songs are meant to offer some definition to each of the groups
bonded together.
7. Most songs will be delivered with two
simultaneous voice parts (as in octaves) to reflect the equality of
male/female, young/old.
8. Song patterns will reflect work patterns of
the group. Centralized authority in a single individual, or groups whose
labor is delegated to a favored few, will tend to silence integrated group
performance.
9. Worshipping
groups which have a high sense of spatial freedom, literally and figuratively,
among individual members will prefer songs with wide interval gaps.
10. Some of the songs will incorporate an
implicit invitation to dance or common movement.
To take these ten
characteristics as a recipe would be a mistake. But then they do help us grow
out of coin tossing. Lomax helps us to see how the very shape of a musical
presentation supports or subverts the purposes of the worshipping group.
Some may see this as
an attempt to elevate head above tail. Not so. Rather, can we think about how
music functions in the assembly? Can we consider its fundamental intertwining
with corporate purposes, hopes, and goals? And what of the different origins
and social intents of the hundreds of musical repertoires which surround us?
If nothing else, let
the exercise tempt you to ask how the current canon of people's music for
worship serves now one, and then another of the stylistic descriptives above.
The needs of the shape of the liturgy as well as of the diverse sub-groups of
our parishes call for diversity even when choosing from within the canon.
In this case, it might
be best to let the coin be lost.
Mark
P. Bangert