A VISION
Editorial

Can you imagine a church in which all the congregation sings? Enjoys singing without accompaniment? Where learning a new hymn - i.e. the teaching of the congregation -- is part of the service itself? Where the Pastor and Minister of Music confer weekly about the choice of music and the 'flow' of the entire service? Where the choir sits with their families, and then joins together in the place they can best seen and heard for anthems and service music? Where the Choir Director e-mails the choir members weekly, with information about the music and the service?

Well, we have it, in our small Charlemont, MA Federated Church. There are usually around fifty people in the pews on Sunday mornings. The choir numbers from 4 to 15 members, and varies each week in size and voicing, according to who is in town at that time. The Church is basically Congregational, and we have been well instructed in that polity: church members take responsibility for running the church. Our five Ministries involve most of the members according to their preferences (they sign up each year): Worship and Music, Pastoral Care, Christian Education, Building-and-Grounds and Mission-and-Outreach.

This stood us in good stead when our much-loved Pastor of almost twenty years resigned. It's taken us over two years to call a new Minister, and we're happily in the final stages of that process. That we have functioned well during this interregnum points up the wisdom of the democratic process here, and we've found anew that the people who contribute the most time and effort to the church are those who keep it afloat - among whom are, notably, the choir members.

The building itself is 160 years old: a traditional white, rather square building, with a high ceiling, small balcony, and superb acoustics. There is a small pipe organ and a piano. We don't often use the choir loft in front, since it's hard for us to hear each other there, so we gather on the chancel steps. The Hymnal (chosen after a lengthy process involving the congregation) is Hymnal: A Worship Book.

So, we have good basics to start with. What makes us known as 'the singing church'? I think principally because over the years a basic trust has arisen between the Pastor and the Music Ministry and the Congregation. We listen to each other and respect each others' opinions. While the Minister of Music selects the repertoire (she plays the organ/piano as well as conducting the choir), many variants are encouraged, including our (excellent) guitar-folksingers as well as visiting performers.

I'm not there every Sunday, as I'm so often out of town. But when I'm present, I sing in the choir (whichever part needs my light voice most), and love the process by which Esther keeps us all listening to each other, and sounding far better than our collective expertise and voices would suggest. But the congregation is used to my introducing an unfamiliar hymn by simply coming forward from the pew and lining it out. In doing this, I've discovered that the best way for the congregation really to make the song its own, is to continue by singing all the verses in unison and with no accompaniment. It's amazing how the repetition strengthens the melodic memory, and how the lack of accompaniment makes us focus on the text. We don't have to have the harmonization spelled out by choir or organ: in fact, it's detrimental: too much information is being imparted at once.

That's a fairly radical idea - to make this 'learning time' a part of the service. But the rewards are immediate and long-lasting. When we hear each other sing one song well, it carries over to the rest of the singing, and the sense of satisfaction in the corporate sound is almost palpable. And the lining-out method is surely the best way to teach songs from other 'world-music' traditions.

The discriminating choice of hymns is also basic. A good tune and a poetic text will always work better than an undemanding tune with unpoetic words. The congregation immediately responds to quality in the basic materials.

Too often the hymns we sing make compromises with quality. In many cases the text-tune match is not good. In hymns that are chosen for their 'message' alone, the words can be more concerned with a theological idea or the compulsion to be politically correct (gender issues) than with the way they sound and feel in the mouth. These texts can smother even a good hymn tune.

Which doesn't mean that we can't sing and love the hymns we grew up with, with all their associations. And we can and should sing songs from other cultures, stretching ourselves in the process. There can be a healthy balance between old and new, easy and difficult, thoughtful quiet and exultant joy. What we sing over the course of a year is the measure of our musical and, in a very fundamental way, congregational growth.

So, come join us in the 'singing church'. I realize well that it's not for everyone. But there is no church that would not benefit from this open approach, and the conviction that singing well together is a theological discipline that bears much fruit.

Alice Parker

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From the Mail Box

Even here in Hawley we're not removed from the larger world. Letters from friends and Fellows help us to resonate with sufferings elsewhere. Kathryn Smith-Derksen has been living in Chad for the past year, with her husband and two young sons. "This week in Moundou there was violence beyond our understanding. Government army and police ...shooting down students in schools...What kind of world do we live in, where those employed to protect instead openly kill the young? ...This situation in a remote African country ...leaves us despairing and begs the issue of accountability. What can we do other than tell you?".

And Theresa and Gabe Huck have been sending wonderful letters from Damascus for the past two years. They have started the Iraqi Student Project, identifying and helping refugee students there prepare for and apply to American colleges. They now have applications in at 14 universities; the biggest hurdle is procuring a student visa from the US government. Find out more about this responsible project at www.iraqistudentproject.org

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Note from a New "Fellow"

I can't begin to express my gratitude to you for all that you offered to me during Melody Studies. I so desire to hold on to this beginning insight into the importance of intuition/imagination/creativity with rational thinking as its servant...to allow the music to be alive in the moment-to respond to, interact with and become the song...and not to separate or isolate the roles of composer, performer, teacher, conductor in exploring and discovering each piece of music and allowing it to "sing."

Susan B., from Wisconsin

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ODDS 'N ENDS

Sometimes there are bits of information that we would like to share with you, or information we would like to receive from you. Here's a column full of such "odds and ends."

The video, Folksong Transformations, is currently out of print. Hinshaw Music, the publisher, is considering releasing it as a DVD but they have no time-table for doing so. When, and if, it becomes available we will let you know.

The book, Melodious Accord, Good Singing in Church, is also out of print. We hope we will find another publisher for this popular teaching resource soon.

As we plan for the up-dating of our website, we would like to include action pictures and videos of Alice Parker as she leads SINGS and concerts. If you or your organization have such pictures or videos, we would appreciate having copies of them. Contact Marilyn Pryor at mzpryor@comcast.net to let us know what you have and arrange for sending them.

Increased postage costs are a growing burden to organizations such as ours. You can help us reduce those costs by keeping us informed of address changes. Also, if you're one of those migratory species who spends time in two different homes, please let us know whether you wish to have the Newsletter sent to the second address or stopped for a time. It's as easy as 1-2-3: contact kay@aliceparker.com

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THE VIEW FROM HERE

I'm surrounded by beginnings. After the long, snowy winter, and the equally long 'mud season' when the ice refuses to melt but the roads and fields turn to mush, the lengthening days promise Spring! But here in the hill towns, the temperature refuses to rise (except for maddeningly tempting moments) and the cold winds blow and I still need a fire in the wood stove every night to warm the kitchen. And Easter comes, and then April - and more suddenly than we can realize, Spring is here!

It shows up first in the faintest tinge of red coloring the hills; in the first tiny buds on the trees which swell and burst into leaf. The white stalks of the bulbs poke up under and through the snow, needing full sunlight to make them green. Then the glorious, blatant yellow of daffodils and forsythia, the purple fragrance of hyacinth, the panoply of tulips. It's a confusion of color after the drab months, climaxing with the bursts of color on the fruit trees: apple, cherry, pear. There's never been such a year as this - even the oldest, 19th c. apple trees, worn and broken, are covered in bloom.

The grass starts to green somewhere in there, and along with the green come the dandelions and the weeds. How dare they grow so lush before I can plant the lettuce and basil and tomatoes that should be filling the beds? And why, O why, do the black flies have to come just as the days get warm and the garden beckons?

But I started by thinking about beginnings - and how much has to go on before we can see anything. The preparation goes back and back, through increasing hours of sunlight, rising temperatures, the upward push of sap through the maples. Back through the dormancy of winter, back to the seed pods forming in the Fall. All is gestation, with each species following its own timetable. We welcome Spring as a beginning, but of course it's part of the great cycle that governs our earth. It's a life lesson about many of our human endeavors, which demand lengthy, lonely, dark preparation before the first words come, or notes, or equations, or glimmering idea. Let's honor that pre-birth time, as we glory in the lilacs and lupine.

Alice Parker

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© 2008 MELODIOUS ACCORD, INC.
All rights reserved. To obtain permission to reprint any part of this newsletter, send requests in writing to 96 Middle Rd, Hawley, MA 01339.

The Melodious Accord Newsletter is published three times a year, reaching 4000 musicians in the United States and Canada.

Send address changes, deletions, name changes, etc. to Kay Holt, 34 Ashfield Lane, South Hadley, MA 01075; (413) 536-1753 phone and fax; e-mail:newsletter@melodiousaccord.org.

Contents:

A Vision

From The Mail Box

Recent Publications By Alice Parker

Note From A New "Fellow"

Odds 'n Ends

The View From Here

2008-9 Fellowship Program

Home Page
The News Stand