From its location on an island off the coast of Scotland, the Iona Community has done much to influence the music of the world church, especially in North America. They have done this by providing the music used in their own worship services and by collecting songs from the church on every continent.
The History of the Iona Community
The Iona Community was founded in 1939 by George MacLeod (later Lord MacLeod of Fuinary), a prophetic minister of the Church of Scotland from both aristocratic and ecclesiastical stock.
At the time when the church, as much else, was in the doldrums due to mid-war depression, he tried to engage the worship of the sanctuary with the life of the street. After a successful church and community experiment in rebuilding a disused mill to become a children’s holiday center, he was motivated to embark for the island of Iona with 12 men, half of them trainee clergy and half unemployed workers. Thus, the Iona Community is not a monastic order. Members, with very few exceptions, do not live on Iona. And music and liturgy is not its primary focus.
Iona was the place to which, in 563, Columba came to start a new missionary movement, the ripples of which extended far beyond the shores of Scotland. This evangelistic enterprise, undertaken by Celtic monks, was in due course replaced by the more contemplative monastic life of the Benedictines, who built their abbey in the thirteenth century where Columba had built his in the sixth. Like many Roman Catholic sites, during the Reformation, the abbey settlement was despoiled and vandalized.
The local landowner, the Duke of Argyll renovated much of the sanctuary at the end of the nineteenth century, requiring that its use should not be the preserve of one single Christian denomination. But this ecumenical gesture bore little fruit, partly as ecumenism was not a favorite pastime of nineteenth-century Scots and partly because the remoteness of Iona and the lack of any living accommodation made regular worship in the sanctuary a virtual impossibility.
In 1939, George MacLeod went to Iona to rebuild the other parts of the monastic settlement associated with the common life: the refectory, the chapter house, the infirmary, the library, the chapels, the cloisters, and the bedrooms. It was his hope that the buildings might house an alternative kind of seminary. But over the summers in which rebuilding took place with an ever-increasing and ever-international group of volunteers, the seminary notion was replaced by the idea of the abbey becoming a center for reconciliation, a place of meeting opposites—rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant, faithful and faithless, Germans and British, Third World and First World. During the rebuilding, those most closely involved in the process became convinced of certain aspects of Christian discipleship which, for long, the churches had failed to attend to—personal devotions, the ministry of healing, claiming the political realm for Christ, acknowledging the potential for global annihilation epitomized in the atom bomb, opposing the seduction of materialism.
In time, some of these concerns were framed into discipline or rule that is still the basis of membership of the Iona Community. This rule with its five commitments is kept by members whether they live in an island or urban settings, whether they are Catholic or Quaker, male or female, lay or ordained hospital consultants or domestics.
At present, the Community has over 200 members throughout Great Britain, with a few who have had a residency in Scotland living abroad. There are over 1,000 associate members who keep some sections of the rule. What enables members to call themselves a community when they live far apart is both their adherence to the rule and their meeting with each other monthly in regional groups and four times yearly in plenary events.
It may fairly be said that in the fifty-four years of its existence, the Community has had an effect on the life of the church, especially in Britain, out of proportion to its membership. This is in no small way due to the charismatic leadership and personality of MacLeod, its founder who, though a holder of the Military Cross from World War I, became a tireless campaigner for peace and a thorn in the flesh of denominational protectionists by his unrelenting ecumenical enthusiasm. Bishop John Robinson called MacLoud one of the main inspirations for the controversial bestseller, Honest to God. Having spoken convincingly to thousands of Christians and skeptics throughout the English-speaking world about the social and political imperatives of the gospel, MacLoud was awarded the Templeton Award for Progress in Religion towards the end of his life.
But the Community had other pioneers. Much of the initial development work in industrial mission, the healing ministry, mission in areas of urban extension, and ecumenical ministry in Scotland, was initiated and advanced by people who were either members of the Iona Community or who came under the inspiration of its founder. The proof of this lively and valued legacy is perhaps best illustrated by the fact what when, during the recession in the late 1980s, the Community decided to replace decrepit wooden huts that masqueraded as a youth camp with a center suitable for young people, families, and the disabled. The project, which was the subject of international architectural competition, was opened debt-free in 1988. The public enthusiasm for its construction was in no small way a gesture of gratitude for the Community and its founder, after whom the MacLeod center is named.
The Music of the Iona Community
There was nothing particularly innovative about the music of the Community for most of the first forty years.
When members were at home, they used the hymnody of their denomination. There was no Iona Community religious songbook. When members met in plenary on the mainland or when worship was offered in the abbey in Iona, use was made, in the main, of the 1650 Scottish Psalter and the 1929 Revised Church Hymnary. This latter was a Presbyterian production, used by the Church of Scotland and its sister churches throughout the British Isles and the Commonwealth. Like most members, in the beginning, were Presbyterians, and as Iona was within Scotland, its hymnody was that of the majority church culture.
But there were some areas of distinctiveness.
In the first place, the abbey did not have a pipe organ, the perceived norm of ecclesiastical buildings of distinction. For reasons of atmosphere as much as cost and maintenance, it was decided not to install such an instrument, but instead to have two grand pianos positioned in the area known as the musician’s gallery, a loft to the left of the chancel. Those who know the abbey would vouch for the sufficiency of the piano to provide keyboard accompaniment where required; few, if any, would wish a pipe instrument in the precincts.
Secondly, the acoustic of the abbey is very good for unaccompanied singing that most ancient Scottish modes of congregational comprise. This form of song long predominated both inside the abbey and outside at several open-air ceremonies marking various stages of completion.
Thirdly, during the 1950s, when the youth contingent coming to camps run by the Community increased, musicians of stature were recruited to take charge of the leadership of congregational song, to provide service music, and to encourage vocal and instrumental ensembles among the visitors. Two notables of this era were Reginald Varret-Ayres, a composer and for some time senior lecturer in music at the University of Aberdeen; and Ian MacKenzie, previously and severally assistant organist and assistant minister at St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh. Ian MacKenzie was to become head of religious broadcasting for BBC Scotland and, most recently, delivered the prestigious Baird Lectures, subsequently published, in which he took an overview of music in the church and acknowledged his own indebtedness to his time on Iona.
Away from the island, members of the Community were unwittingly chiseling out a niche for themselves during the 1960s in the development of church music. Ian Fraser, then warden of Scottish Churches House, Dunblane, cajoled by the late Eric Routley and in the company of other British writers and composers (including Sydney Carter), began a series of hymn-writing encounters which, in the view of many, started the chain reaction leading to the “hymn explosion” in Great Britain. Songs of this era are found in such publications as Dunblane Praises and Songs of the Seventies (St. Andrew Press). Undoubtedly, some of this output or its antecedents were being used in worship on Iona long before they filtered through to parish churches. “Lord of the Dance” was such an early firm favorite in Iona, and George MacLeod structured a Communion order in keeping with its sentiment.
Further afield yet, Tom Colvin, a member of the Community working in central Africa, began to collect tunes from Ghana and Malawi to which he set either original texts, in keeping with the indigenous prototypes, or to which he set metrical translations of the original words. All through the world the Malawian hymn “Kneels at the Feet of His Friends” is now well-loved and sung, the result of the efforts of a member of the Iona Community.
There were also other members, such as Ian Cowie, formerly the director of the Scottish Churches Healing Center in Edinburgh, and Douglas Galbraith, presently chaplain of St. Andrews University, who were in their own spheres of activity generating interest in musical development: Ian wrote words to traditional melodies, while Douglas pioneered instrumental ensembles at a time when they were most suspected in Presbyterian parishes.
Contemporary Developments
It is, however, in the last decade that particular interest in the music emanating from the Iona Community has been raised.
The reasons have little to do with the antecedents mentioned above and little to do with the island of Iona.
In the early 1980s, youth work within the Church of Scotland began to change gear with the appointment in 1978 of Ian Galloway to the post of National Youth Adviser, based in Edinburgh, and John Bell as Glasgow Presbytery Adviser in the West of Scotland. Galloway was a member of the Iona Community; Bell scarcely knew about it.
Among some of the initiatives they developed was a biannual youth festival on Iona for young people of all denominations and even those without affiliations. The experience of the first festival in 1980 made quite clear the paucity of musical and liturgical resources the churches had to capture the imagination and concerns of contemporary young adults.
Later, in Glasgow, John Bell was joined in his work by Graham Maule (another outsider to Iona) and began monthly youth events called “Last of the Month” which over five years attracted up to 500 young people per evening, most of whom had never been to church in the morning, all of whom were prepared to stay for worship at the end of the evening.
The Iona Community also sponsored the formation of a cadre of full-time volunteers. These young adults were prepared to go on the dole for a year or more, live in areas of urban deprivation, and try to understand the life of such communities and discern ways of serving the people and the local churches. This group, which numbered almost sixty individuals over a five-year period, reflected regularly on their life and faith. They experienced the inability of traditional religious language and hymnody to reflect the reality of the life of the streets as they encountered it or the conflicting emotions in their own souls.
These experiences—the biannual youth festival, the monthly youth events, and the experience of unemployed young people engaging, under the gospel, in the life of impoverished neighborhoods—these and not quiet monastic surroundings, poetry prep-schools or circles of gifted musicians—provided the seedbeds for the music now associated with the Iona Community.
What immeasurably aided the process were two distinctive areas of liturgical development.
Ian and Kathy Galloway moved from Edinburgh in 1983 to become joint wardens of Iona abbey. They went, with among other things, the burning conviction that worship mattered. Within a short while, they had used the flexibility of the worshiping space in the abbey to develop morning and evening liturgies. Their robust enthusiasm for communal singing deepened their commitment to finding musicians appropriate to the task of leadership. This commitment resulted in the creation of the post of abbey musician. Instead of being a hit or miss sequence of six-week volunteers, this position became a permanent job, perhaps the first full-time post for a church musician in any Scottish religious establishment except for the Cathedrals.
In Glasgow, for those who came to the Last of the Month events, Bell and Maule brought together a group of young adults who were disquieted by the predictable and failing patterns of church worship and were keen on investigating other potential liturgies. From a Lenten study group, which did little more than reflect, argue, and dream, there emerged the Wild Goose Worship Group.
This group, begun in 1984, has never had more than 18 members and has never had any more than a quarter who can read music proficiently. They range in occupation from a prosthetist (artificial limb maker) to a child-care officer. They do not perceive themselves as a choir and have no intention of emulating a traditional choral sound. From October to May they meet once a week for practice, planning, and worship and all year round lead workshops and worship in churches or at conferences throughout the British Isles. Their liturgical interest is not restricted to song. They devise workshops and methods enabling people to develop skills in corporate prayer, use of Scripture, environment, personal spirituality, and drama.
The group has made seven cassettes and appears regularly either live or on tape in radio and television broadcasts both in Britain and beyond. They have been unilaterally acclaimed as one of—if not the most—innovative liturgical groups in Britain today. None of them has ever studied church music and only one of them holds a degree in theology.
The Process of Musical Development
To understand the music of the Iona Community (apart from recognizing that its roots are deep in urban experience rather than island soil), it is perhaps important to know how the original compositions in the published volumes came about.
It was—and continues to be—a very corporate effort.
The origination of words and music is largely the work of John Bell. Prior to any composition, however, the seed for such music begins with conversations within the group or at seminars and workshops where life, faith, and the Scriptures are discussed. Bell works on the first draft of text and music which, most frequently, Maule amends or comments on.
A second draft is then shared with the Worship Group. They have to decide whether the text makes sense and the melody and harmony are singable. If they express strongly negative feelings, the work is discarded. If they suggest alterations in word, melody, or harmony, these are taken on board and produced in the third draft. This is what may be shared with a bigger group in church or at conferences. Again, if it falters or detracts from the act of worship, it will be amended or discarded.
Only after a song, hymn or chant has gone through these processes will it be considered—when the time is right—for publication.
Behind this lies the conviction that hymns are destined to become public property. If the public has no possibility of influencing them, if they remain the precious possession of an obsessive writer who fears criticism, it is better that they be aborted at conception. A hymn is not a private expression of highly personal piety or emotion. A hymn is for public use to express a shared response to the Word, Spirit, and will of God. The more corporate its formation and nurturing, the more likely it is to be apposite, meaningful, and singable.
Wild Goose Songs
The name, for convenience alone, comes from the original title of the two volumes published in 1987 and 1988, subsequently printed under more descriptive titles. Stylistically the songs fall into seven nonexclusive categories which are, in no small way, evocative of the Community’s earlier musical styles.
1. Psalms and Paraphrases. Through a series of conversations about the Psalms—especially the “avoided” ones—and through personal and public attesting of the worth of these ancient biblical expressions of praise, wonder, anger, contrition, and despair, there emerged a desire to have at least some psalm texts both translated into contemporary language and also set to styles of music that would evoke the original intention and intensity of the words.
The misconception of psalms as being solely “praise songs” is something that the Worship Group often has had to counter. Many people who have been saturated with vapid, easy-listening religious music often fail to grasp that the psalms Jesus used to express the whole gamut of experience. The collection, Psalms of Patience, Protest, and Praise illustrates the variety of styles that have been found suitable to convey the force of the texts. Some are new metricizations; some are set as chants with more by way of melody than traditional Anglican chant might afford; some use the favored Roman Catholic form of shared antiphon and solo or choral verse, and some are paraphrases in blank verse or rhyme. Previously published examples include “How Long, O Lord?” a bluesy lament found in Heaven Shall Not Wait based on Psalm 13, and “Thirsting for God,” a modal four-part metrical setting of Psalm 42 found in Love From Below.
There have always been attempts to put Scripture into verse by paraphrasing it. This is an ancient as well as a contemporary educational tool. It exposes some people to passages of Scripture that they might never stumble over by casual reading or ever take note of through dull public expounding.
Of continuing popularity are “Sing Praise to God on Mountain Tops” and “Dance and Sing All the Earth,” both paraphrases of Genesis chapter 1. “A Woman’s Care” (HSNW) is based on verses from Isaiah and Romans and has been found very helpful in its allusion to God’s self-revelation as a being who encompasses motherly as well as fatherly qualities. “Though One with God” is a direct paraphrase of Philippians chapter 2 and, being set to Jerusalem affords Scottish worshipers the rare opportunity of singing a grand tune they enjoy without the intrusion of patriotic English sentiment.
2. Hymns in Traditional Meters. One of the realizations of the Worship Group early on was that what people sing has a great effect in shaping their faith. If all one ever sings is four-line choruses about God being wonderful, then faith will find it hard to cope with days when God seems absent or with experiences in contemporary life that have no immediate biblical proof text.
There is, therefore, a value in using CM, 8787D, or 8686 and chorus forms where over the space of four or five verses, a life experience, a theological insight, a musing of some kind on a personal or global dilemma, or the call and response to discipleship can be represented with an economy of words but without the dearth of linguistic expression which inhabits many worship songs from both sides of the Atlantic.
“Jesus Calls Us” (HSNW), “Darkness Is Gone” (EOA), “We Who Live by Sight and Symbol” (LFB), and “Funny Kind of Night” (I&LS) are all examples of hymns that would not look out of place in most denominational hymnals. They are there as tributes to the fact that solid stanzas of hymnody shape faith and enlarge our understanding of God. Frequently they will employ traditional tunes such as hyfrydol and “Praise My Soul” to accompany the words.
3. Contemporary Songs. It would be blind and naive to imagine that hymnody cannot be affected by types of popular music, be it ballads, blues, rock, or whatever. Such effects may be seen in the style of writing (such as contemporary choruses or charismatic songs), in the content of the songs themselves (discussion of contemporary realities such as homelessness, AIDS, and so on), the musical expression (composed for guitars or instrumental ensembles rather than the piano or organ), and the tempo (upbeat, syncopated, etc.). Undeniably, while the Iona Community books have a number of songs in what could be called a contemporary style (good examples are “We’re Going to Shine like the Sun,” “Lord of All,” or “Take This Moment”), it is not the predominant type or form of expression. That is partly because of the limitations of the composers, partly because the focus has been on what the voices can do rather than what instruments can do, and partly because there is plenty of such material already available from other sources.
4. Hymns Reflecting the Celtic Expression of Christianity. Iona was one of the cradles of the ancient Celtic church. Saints such as Patrick and Columba or their amanuenses produced hymns that are still sung today, such as “I Bind unto Myself” or “O God, Thou Art the Father.” But the Celtic church did not begin and end with the notables. Long after the Celtic church’s official demise at the Synod of Whitby in a.d. 644, the expression of spirituality engendered by the early saints and missionaries was kept alive and developed by communities of people living in remote parts of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and southwest England.
This tradition of orally transmitted prayer, poem, and song provided fertile soil for Scottish writers of more contemporary years who have drawn on the theological and devotional insights of the Celtic peoples regarding their fundamental belief in the Incarnation, their appraisal of Creation as being God-filled, their affection for the Scriptures, their close alliance of work and worship. Perhaps the most famous example of relatively recent Celtic song is the Christmas carol “Child in a Manger,” written by a woman from the Isle of Mull, which lies between the mainland of Scotland and Iona.
Songs published by the Iona Community such as “Today I Awake” (EOA), based on the form of St. Patrick’s breastplate, “Praise to the Lord for the Joys of the Early” (HSNW), “Torn in Two” (EOA), and “Hush a Bye” (I&LS) are examples of contemporary verse which find their inspiration from the Celtic tradition. In particular, the ancient runes and poems that appear in the Carmina Gadelica collection gathered and translated by Alexander Carmichael have been a rich source for Community songs.
5. Folk Hymns. This category subsumes both songs which are linguistically in a folk style and hymns that are set to folk tunes. It would be fair to say that both these types of songs are closely identified with the Iona Community and have proved to be significant. Folk-style words are more suited for celebrating the humanity of Jesus and the intimacy of the risen Christ than is the case either with grandiose Victorian melodies or with contemporary choruses.
Christ chose not to remain isolated, but to come close in order that he might share our industrial and domestic life. That he calls us by name and engages us in ordinary conversation is seldom reflected in the hymnody of the church. Folk-style words and folk tunes enable this reality to happen comfortably. Thus a line such as “Christ it was who said to Martha, ‘listen first, then make the tea’ ” (“God It Was,” LFB) would seem extraordinary in a classical hymn set to a churchy tune. But in a song about the kinds of people Christ called, set to an island tune from Skye, there is no irregularity or conflict. Examples of this genre may be found in “Sing Hey for the Carpenter” (HSNW), “I Will Give What I Have” (EOA), “Jesus Is Risen from the Grave” (LFB), and “O Sarah, She Was Ninety” (I&LS). In each case, the words were accompanied by a composed tune written in a folk style.
When words are set to traditional tunes, something else is in play. Here one of the most ancient Jewish and Christian traditions is continued. (Some of the Psalms were first sung to Jewish folk tunes.) But more than that, the use of folk melody both ensures singability, and allows the gospel to be incarnated, cradled, and clothed in the culture of the nation. It might well be argued that where indigenous cultural expressions have been disdained in favor of a high-church culture—as has been the case in Britain—the notion of God and the things of God as being the prerogative of some kind of religious intelligentsia is reinforced.
Some of the most frequently requested of the Community’s songs, for radio and television use and for reproduction in publications or hymn sheets, are those set to Scottish folk tunes, of which the following are typical:
• “The Strangest of Saints” (HSNW)
• “Will You Come and Follow Me?” (HSNW)
• “The Servant” (EOA)
• “Paul’s Song” (EOA)
• “A Touching Place” (HSNW)
• “We Cannot Measure” (LFB)
• “Hush a Bye” (I&LS)
6. Chants. Like most religious communities, Iona has been aware of the work of Taizé, and many people are familiar with its music. The form of a repeated chant is not something that endears itself immediately to a land where the majority of Christians have been bred on psalms or multi stanza hymns. And seldom does the climate allow one to sit in the open air or in enclosed spaces on a balmy night, singing “Ubi Caritas et Amor” for twenty minutes on end.
Yet the value of the meditative chant as an aid to worship or as a response to prayer, preaching, or the proclamation of Scripture has not gone unnoticed. Thus in each of the songbooks of original material, there are a number of items in this genre. Some are unison or canon, e.g., “Be Still and Know” (LFB), some are straightforward SATB harmony, e.g., “Dona Nobis” (HSNW), while others may have some choral interest that is easily within a congregation’s grasp, e.g. “Here I Stand” (EOA).
7. World Church Songs. If folk hymns constitute one style immediately identifiable with music from the Iona Community, the other style must be world church songs. To date, two collections of twenty-five songs have been published, nearly all of which were gathered from natives of the countries concerned. This does not mean the compilers traveled worldwide. Within all European and North American countries are the representatives of other nations, yet seldom are their liturgical insights or musical gifts used in local churches.
Sometimes it has been from overseas nationals living in Britain that songs have been collected, and sometimes from church delegates at international conferences and conventions. The Wild Goose Worship Group has sung these songs extensively throughout Great Britain, often—as in the case of South African songs—at open-air demonstrations, at Third World conferences, and particularly in local churches. Despite what might be presumed to be an awkwardness in using a non-European language or a difficulty in singing a Southern Hemisphere melody, the published songs offer few difficulties to users. In the selection process, only those which could be sung comfortably by Western voices were chosen.
Wherever possible, the traditional harmony or arrangement has been retained, even though transcribing it was sometimes an adventure, as in the case of “Amen Alleluia” (M&G). Where no harmony has been available, sometimes a harmonization has been devised keeping as near as possible to similar material from the same area (see “Imela” [M&G] and “Sent by the Lord” [SBTL]). In other cases, a harmonization has been made which, while not like the indigenous variety, is different from the domesticated harmonies that previous Western composers inflicted on overseas melodies, making them lose their sparkle and sound neo-Victorian. “Many and Great” (M&G) and “Somos Pueblo” (SBTL) are two examples of this process.
The songs are sung partly as a means of widening our experience of the witness to the internationality of the Christian community; partly to increase our understanding of God who, when worshiped only in the mother tongue, can become a national idol; and partly as an act of intercession and solidarity, especially at times when nations whose songs have been published are in situations of peril or war.
Use and Acceptance
All published songs from the Iona Community were never intended initially for publication or circulation. They were produced to answer a local need, to fit a particular situation or liturgy, to express a shared discovery. It was never the intention of their writers that they should be gathered into volumes in Britain, let alone published in new editions in the USA and be distributed throughout Australia.
Yet this has happened and there have been fulsome reviews and testimonies from high and humble places. Some critics are appreciative of the style of harmonization, some of the melodic line; some appreciate songs that can be sung a cappella; some express gratitude for material that can be of immediate use to a youth choir or adult ensembles with limited experience.
Many of the correspondents are particularly appreciative of the words, claiming that their freshness and directness communicate in a way that traditional hymns or contemporary choruses do not. This may be associated with the range of subject matter as much as the use of everyday or domestic vocabulary.
It has been interesting to note the appreciative comments of skilled performers, liturgists, and musicologists, and at the same time to discover many lay Christians, long sickened by trite rhymes and predictable chord sequences, warming to something which, in their eyes, has both simplicity and sophistication.
In recent years the songs have been represented in a lunch-time recital in Westminster Abbey, used by the World Council of Churches at its Canberra Assembly, featured in television programs in Britain and Germany, and included in the major denominational and commercial hymn collections published or in preparation on both sides of the Atlantic.
Wild Goose Publications of the Iona Community remains the copyright holder and British publisher, with Willow Connection its distribution agency for Australia and New Zealand. In the USA, a very happy relationship exists with GIA Publications of Chicago, who have reinscribed and published the books and are copyright administrators in North America.