Excellence is not a negotiable quality for church music: our worship of God demands our very best. This premise extends to the complex art of composing music for use in worship. This article outlines liturgical, textual, and musical guidelines for composers who seek excellence in composing music for the church.
Quality music for the church is a little like a “good Christian chair.” If such an entity as a good Christian chair existed, it would first of all be a well-designed, well-built chair; a cross carved into its back would not, by itself, make it “good”. The analogy breaks down fairly quickly but perhaps serves to clarify what, for me, is a basic premise: church music of quality is first of all music of quality: compositionally solid, well-crafted, written with an understanding of the performing medium. Sincerity and zeal, while desirable, cannot substitute for well-honed compositional skills and a well-developed musical imagination.
But the modifier church does add another dimension—that of function—to the definition and to any assessment of quality. Music is indeed a gift of God, to be enjoyed for its own intrinsic values; but music in worship is neither concert nor entertainment. Church music properly functions to assist and support the congregation in worship. (The congregation includes choirs, organists, and other musical leaders, as well as those who “sit in the pew.”) In this capacity, it assists and supports most effectively when it relates to other aspects of worship on a particular day. The most tangible connection between music and worship themes is, of course, text. When a music text, whether congregational song, choral response, or anthem, relates to other texts for the day, its potential for supporting, enriching, and enlivening worship is greatly increased. Even instrumental music, if hymn-based, can relate via text, especially if the hymn tune is a familiar one.
A good text, like good music, has integrity. Texts selected for church music should have theological grounding; they should be well-written and, whether Biblical or non-biblical, they should help the listener understand and relate to theological truths. A general, all-purpose text, such as “sing, sing, sing and rejoice,” will seldom move anyone to “a more profound Alleluia” (F. Pratt Green, “When in Our Music God is Glorified,” stanza 2, Oxford University Press). To borrow an analogy from C. S. Lewis: A general anthem is “like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms.… [While a hallway is all right for waiting], it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [New York: Macmillan, 1981], xliv). Lewis was here describing general, nondenominational Christianity. Texts that warm the spirit, or rest it or feed it, will usually be created “in the rooms.”
A text will reach more listeners if its language is up-to-date and inclusive. Use of the generic “he” and words like “whither” and “mayest” promotes the notion that the church is out of touch with reality, ready to be filed on the shelf as historical reference material. A number of excellent contemporary poets are writing new and vibrant texts for the church. Composers might also look for—or create if they have the skill—up-to-date translations of older texts. Some favorite old texts are mediocre English translations of old-fashioned German translations of Latin paraphrases of original Hebrew! The original meaning is often compromised when filtered through so many layers.
Not only do the music and text need to have integrity: the two together must have integrity. “Amazing Grace,” for instance, simply doesn’t sing well to the tune of “Joy to the World” (Antioch), even though it has the right number of syllables in each line. In setting a text, a composer must be sensitive to everything the text conveys and seek ways in which the music can convey, non-verbally, the same message. The joint integrity of text and music is fragile and sometimes difficult to balance. While imagination is vital to the creation of good church music, cleverness is an attribute to be applied sparingly. In the same way that a witty story can upstage the focus of a sermon, musical cleverness can easily overshadow the idea it is intended to illuminate. When it is the composer’s ingenuity that is remembered and not the message of the text, the composer has done a disservice to both the text and the listener.
Church music exists in a world of nonprofessional musicians and short rehearsals. A composer can gain valuable insights by observing, or participating in, actual rehearsals. It becomes clear, for example, how much rehearsal time is saved and uncertainty averted when tempos, mood, dynamics, and hoped-for subtleties are indicated in the score. “Gently moving” (=84) will convey much more than simply “Moderato.” The musicians may have ideas to contribute but should not have to guess at the composer’s intentions.
A typical church choir rehearses once a week, perhaps for an hour, often at a time when voices, minds, and bodies are tired. This does not mean that the singers enjoy learning banal music. On the contrary, many church choir singers have an artistic and spiritual sensitivity that makes them highly responsive to the power of theology in music, and they often bring to their music-making a depth of personal commitment almost unknown in professional circles. To write artistically and imaginatively for non-professional musicians, inspiring their sensitivity and commitment, is indeed an exciting challenge.
Excellent writing for non-professional singers—whether congregation, choir, or soloist—begins with, and is very nearly encompassed in, good vocal writing. The distinctions between writing for trained and untrained voices, or adult and children’s voices, are shades of the same color when compared to the distinctions between writing for voices and writing for instruments. An understanding of the human voice—the original, natural instrument—informs and enlightens the whole compositional process.
Singers live their musical lives melodically even when they are not singing the melody. Lacking visual or tactile reference points on their instruments, they find pitches principally by relating them to a previously sung pitch. While all performers enjoy a melody, singers “need” them. A melodic line that has no horizontal logic—that moves, for instance, from F to B to E to G# to C—will not sing well, regardless of its context or the amount of rehearsal time devoted to it. A good vocal melody will move logically and gracefully from note to note and will give the singer time to breathe without gasping. The principals of good part-writing apply to vocal writing with a particular urgency, since going against the grain usually violates melodic principles as well as harmonic ones.
It is generally understood that singing ranges are more limited than most instrumental ranges; but even more than range, it is tessitura—the area where a large share of the notes lie—that makes passages singable or awkward. An awkward tessitura may be one that lies very high or very low for long stretches, or one that consistently sits at the vocal “break”: the point at which singers adjust between their two “voices,” head voice, and chest voice. The very existence of text, which is so important in church music, creates complications that instrumentalists never experience. The ease with which a given pitch is sung may relate as much to the vowels and consonants of the word as to the pitch itself, and the way in which the note is approached melodically will also affect its singability. A phrase like “Despair engulfs earth’s frame” (Norman O. Forness, “Rise Up, O Saints of God!,” stanza 2, Lutheran Book of Worship, 1978) combines consonants in a way that is extremely disruptive of the musical line; singing the phrase quickly would be impossible. Generally, the music should allow the text to flow as naturally as possible, with important words highlighted by length and rhythmic placement within the phrase.
Vocal intonation is affected by many factors, including tone production, tessitura, and simply not hearing where the next note should sound. While a clarinetist may play one note out of tune and be back in tune on the next, a singer, relying on each pitch as a guide to the next, loses that point of reference after singing a note out of tune. Even repeated notes with a changing text, as in a vocal pedal point, are difficult to sing in tune, since vowel changes can affect the pitch. Once again, a melodic line that is logical and graceful, easy to sing, will help singers achieve good intonation naturally.
In writing for instruments in the church, composers do need to be aware of the differences between experienced and inexperienced players. In many published instrumental settings, the music is not too difficult per se but too difficult to be performed reliably by inexperienced players without repeated rehearsals over a long period of time. A high school trumpeter, for instance, may be able to perform a high A (B on the instrument) in a school band concert, after practicing the piece three times a week for six weeks, but may not be able to negotiate the same note reliably in a hymn setting on Sunday, after only two rehearsals. Inexperienced instrumentalists respond similarly to music in a difficult key. The key of D major, for instance, which is simple for singers and C instruments, requires trumpeters to play in the key of E, with four sharps, a much more difficult key. The result may be on-the-spot lapsed memory, even if the trumpeter can play the notes correctly in scale warm-ups at school. Rhythms that are unnecessarily complicated will also cause problems for inexperienced players.
Quality is not defined by complexity, and music for the church need not be music for posterity. A unique contribution is made by the composer who composes for a specific tenor section that has a range of five good notes, a specific children’s choir that is just learning to sing in parts, or a specific young trombonist who is wearing braces. Non-professional musicians, when singing or playing music they can handle with confidence, can contribute immeasurably to worship. Theirs is an extraordinary gift, worthy of a composer’s finest efforts.
One of the most controversial topics in the church today is style, and music—rightly or wrongly—appears to be at the center of the debate. While no musical style is intrinsically appropriate or inappropriate for worship, styles carry with them strong associations. The musical style itself may not be problematic, but the association—for instance, with the promotion of violence or chemical abuse—may be. In each generation, composers must find their own musical and personal integrity and write in a style consistent with that integrity. And the finest music from each period and style will continue to transcend century and place, enriching the communion of saints across time, denominations, races, and cultures.