Well, good morning. I hope you're prepared for a little bit of geeky talk, but hopefully not an unbearable amount. We are nerds here, and we like it for the most part. But ask questions if it's too dry. I'd love to know when things aren't landing. Most of you know more or less who I am and what my background is, so I'll skip a little bit of it and just launch right in. by telling you that in the spring of 2015, I was looking in a microfilm drawer for a 16th century Dutch Psalter that I needed for a class project. And next to the film that I needed, there was another film that looked interesting. So I pulled it out and put it on the reader. And needless to say, it was interesting. It made an impression, since here I still am talking about it. And that film contained this, example one on your handout. Let's talk about the title page. So I'll just read the words there as they would translate. The music of the 150 Psalms, as well as the hymns, according to the new manner of singing, the Neustanzantrant, the new manner of singing. with preludes, interludes, and basses composed by Jacob Hotholtz, organist of the Oude Kerk, or the Old Church, and the clockinist, or carillonneur, of the Stadthaus City Hall in Amsterdam. Printed in Amsterdam by this fellow in the year 1777. So, okay, interesting. At the time, I was just beginning to realize that the Dutch Reformed Church had in fact adopted the Geneva Psalter in its entirety, so it wasn't hard to tell which version of the Psalms we were dealing with. If you say the music of the 150 Psalms, well, there's been a lot of music to the 150 Psalms, but in this case, it's the Geneva tunes. It's not strange to have preludes or introductions to congregational songs, so that made sense. And basses in this context just means that harmonies are provided so that the organist knows what notes to play besides the melody. Accompaniment's not so interesting if you just play the melody. You want harmony too. And organists such as myself do tend to have some awareness that in certain circumstances in the 18th century, some German organists played a short interlude after each line of a hymn to connect the lines. But what is going on with all these ornaments, which you can see on the next page, example two? And why is there an interlude after every line, not just in some of the psalms, but in every line in the entire Psalter? Something like 1,200 lines of music and a little interlude after each one. It's all incredibly systematic. This does not appear to have been the way that Mr. Potholt played when he wanted to do something special or extraordinary. It was what he did all the time. And since I would never dream of playing this way, and since it seemed to be part of a well-developed stylistic tradition, there had to be something we could learn from it. And so there was. And so there continues to be. Yeah, so I'll explain all that later. We don't need the details right now. But thank you for asking. It was an appropriate question. I stuck a strange and complicated bit of code there in front of you and didn't explain it. I will explain it later. It turns out that this field was rich with rabbit holes to be explored. Pothole, that's this fellow, his preface refers to another book like it by his predecessor in the same job, Conrad Friedrich Kohlerbusch, and that one happened to be easily available on Google Books. That one also had a preface which also referenced another composer, in this case saying that composer's bad, don't do what he does. And that one was available too, and one thing led to another, and it turns out there's about 15 of these. each one setting the psalms the same tunes, exact same melodies, exact same purpose, but in slightly different ways that are mutually illuminating. And a lot of them have prefaces that sort of either explain what the notation is telling you or explain what the organist is supposed to do with it. or give a sense as to maybe who is buying this book and why, these sorts of things. And putting everything together, we can learn quite a lot about the way that educated Dutch Reformed organists in the 18th century thought about their task, what it consists in, what its goals should be, how to evaluate it, and more. And they thought differently about these things than most of us do. Even within a framework for reformed sacred music that is broadly traditional, not to say antiquarian, as perhaps some would call what we do here at IPC, there are yet some areas of fairly sharp contrast. Some of you will know this quotation from C.S. Lewis's Learning in Wartime. He says, most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods. And that is what I would like to do here for the next few minutes. Lay out one coherent and well-developed conception from the past of what congregational singing is, what it is for, and then set it against the present in the hopes that it will help us to think more clearly about what is essential in our hymnody and psalmody. So we will proceed by basically taking a bunch of remarks from some of these, I mentioned there are about 15 of these books, taking some remarks from those authors and then sort of distilling them down into principles, and then we'll go from there. So, first of all, there is broad if not overwhelming agreement among these authors that singing in the church is to be in unison. One unison singing. As distinct from part singing. So everybody sings the melody, nobody sings harmony. That is to say, all members of the congregation should sing the same note at the same time. Adjusted, of course, for the octave difference between male and female voices. Women sing higher than men. That's okay. without breaking into harmony or incorporating any echoes. Perhaps this is no surprise since from the time of the Reformation only a small minority of congregants would have been both educated enough to read the notes for part singing and wealthy enough to purchase books that would include those parts. So practical considerations alone would have been sufficient to preclude part singing without even getting into theology or principle. One organist on this topic, he plainly writes that, quote, the harmony is the domain only of the organist, which is to say, not the domain of the congregation. Elsewhere, he asks regarding a particular style of playing, whether it is, quote, more apt to cause the church to sing in unison than another method, to which his answer is no. And for that reason, he disapproves that style. If something disrupts unison singing, it has to go. Another author writes of the need for improvement in the musical element of the psalter, quote, in order that a whole congregation might sing it with one voice. And if they sing with one voice, of course, they sing the same note at the same time. People singing harmony are singing with multiple voices. And then another refers to chorale singing in which the whole congregation takes a unison or unanimous part. So these would be sort of, if you will, the proof texts for unison singing. But the firmest demonstrations of their presumption in favor of unison singing are a little bit more under the surface. I do say presumption in favor rather than necessarily commitment. In some cases, it's not clear that it even would have occurred to them that part singing was a possibility. And in other cases, it is considered but rejected on practical rather than principled grounds. It's probably at least in part rhetorical strategy. Should implies can, as the phrase goes. So if you can convince people that it's impossible to sing a certain way, they won't trouble you for the arguments about whether you should. Whereas if you proceed the other way, it takes more space, and you have to make the argument twice. In any case, that's the way they did it, and there was no sense that that anybody wanted to change that. Whether in any individual case that's a matter of principle or of circumstance, we can ignore for right now. But yes, the other demonstrations of this presumption appear in their language. that is not necessarily saying you must sing in unison, but just talking about how you sing, and we can see that it refers to unison singing. One author refers to the melody notes, not any harmony notes, the melody notes as singing notes. So the notes that you sing are the notes of the melody. He refers elsewhere to the singing notes of the melody, or to the singing notes of the church, by which he means the melody. Another refers to the organist's task as accompanying the monophonic song, that is, the unison melody. The congregation sings the unison melody, and the organist does something else. And then in explaining how to make interludes between lines, one refers simply to the last note of one line and the following note. So, OK, at the end of a line, there's only one note. There's not a full chord, just one note. And at the beginning of the next line, likewise, there's just one note, the note to the note. We can also see it in the way that they recommend setting the pitch for the singing. All the authors who discuss such things talk about setting the pitch so that all voices can sing the melody comfortably. Not one word is devoted to the placement of any harmony parts. And the pitches are chosen exclusively so that those who are to sing, the congregation, may do so comfortably. It's not chosen for artistic effect, it's not chosen for variety, it's simply chosen for the comfort of the congregation who has to sing. Interestingly enough, a small rabbit trail here, while unison singing is presumed and required with regard to the notes, it is not always required with regard to the texts. There is a pamphlet from 1766 arguing for a new Psalter in the Netherlands. The old one was from 1566, and the new one that eventually came out was in 1773. And this author acknowledges the objection that the old and the blind, who could not read a new Psalter, would be stuck singing the old texts from memory, while the rest of the congregation sang the new texts. to which his response was, let them continue as they like. Any chaos that it might introduce would be minimal, and in any case, it would be gone in just a few years. Or in another slightly less macabre case, there is an English language psalter from 1632 that sets English text to all the Geneva tunes, whose preference seems to contemplate an English person taking the book to a church in in a Dutch or a French city and using it to sing there. So sing in English. Everybody else is singing in French or maybe in Dutch. You sing in English, it's fine. As long as you're singing the melody in unison, you won't cause confusion. Next comes the issue of rhythm. And we might even say simple rhythm. This is the part where things get a little bit technical, but I think you can all follow along. The Dutch Psalter is the Genevan Psalter, basically. We can use them interchangeably. It was originally composed and printed in a lively mixture of whole and half notes. That is to say, some notes were long and other notes were short. And that's what you can see in your example three there at the bottom of page two. The top line is the original rhythm of Psalm 42. Let me just play that quickly. Compare that with the lower line here, where all the notes are the same length. That second version is the way they actually sang by the 18th century. The original lively rhythms had fallen out of use as early as 1619, an important year in Reformed history. The Synod of Dort, 1619, that produces the Canons of Dort. They also talk about congregational singing and there are complaints about how something must be done, it is horrible, it has gotten so, so bad. And one of the problems is that the singing is super slow and they're singing all the notes the same length. The original rhythms have been lost. A few of our authors remark that other people, not them, would like to bring back the original rhythms. But they all agree that doing so would be a bad idea for various reasons. A few examples. This is a book from 1804, maybe? 1807? Anyway, it's just after the turn of the century. This, by which he means singing in rhythms. is absolutely not to be praised because chorale singing is not figural music. I'll explain that in a minute. Also, I have never heard tolerable singing like this in a single church. And how would a congregation inexperienced in music make the correct time, the proper proportion that must be heard between a whole and a half note? The edification that otherwise is found in chorale singing is lost through such a perverse execution. So what he's saying here is, first of all, there are two types of music. Chorale singing, that is to say congregational singing, and then figural music, which is like performance music, art music. And he's saying, it's not that one is a species of the other. It's not that there's a continuum between the two. So there's a firm wall. And congregational singing is over here, and art music is over here. They're different things. He then will say that basically, to trouble the congregation to sing those rhythms is to convert a congregational thing to an art thing. Basically changing the nature of the endeavor. But then the funny thing is, how would a congregation manage two distinct note values, a long and a short, it can't be done. They can't do it. This is funny for us, of course, because we sing things in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 note values all the time. I've counted up the number of different rhythmic values in a classic tune like Rock of Ages, and I think there are nine distinct note values. And that's not even getting to contemporary Christian stuff. Now, I do have a bit of a problem with Rock of Ages. Every time I accompany it in church, I do find that though it be classic, though everyone knows it, yet nobody agrees on the rhythms. And so it's not really very well sung in unison. And yet, we in our day are comfortable singing in as many as nine different rhythmic values in a single song, and this author is saying two is one too many. All right, next remark on simple rhythms. He says, all triple meters, that is to say, if you have one, two, three, one, two, three, anything like that, all triple meters are in these psalms errors. And all whole measures now in half and then in whole notes divided are things which fight against the poetic art and against the ordinary way of singing the psalms. And then there's another author who is explaining his notation. He is the only one of these books to print in his keyboard notation the rhythms as they appear in the original Psalter. So in his book, what you see is... But he tells you not to play that way. He says, I have strictly kept the rhythms as they were originally, namely whole and half notes, although the playing of the psalms no longer occurs that way, as one goes on from one note to another in even proportion. And then later on in the same preface, he says, elsewhere, that is to say, other people are saying this, not me, it is suggested to sing and play the psalms as they appear in the book, to wit, in whole and half notes. But this does not go well in practice. Implying that he tried it, right? And that it failed. So it's not totally made up that a congregation can't handle two-note values. At least in some places, they've ostensibly tried it. But did they try it once, and it failed, and they didn't try again? Or did they try it a couple times? They don't mention that. Is that the teacher blaming the students? It might be. It's possible. But there are specific reasons as well for why it wouldn't go well. There are two authors who do wish to bring back distinctions of whole and half notes, long and short notes, but not in their original configurations. There is one who would like to rewrite the rhythms to fit 18th century musical taste, rather than the 16th century musical taste that they were written to satisfy. And there's another who wishes to rewrite them to fit better with the poetic meters of the texts. And that was an issue. If you've heard me expostulate about iambic and trochaic rhythms, the difference between ta-ra, ta-ra, ta-ra, ta-ra, and ta-ra, ta-ra, ta-ra, ta-ra, in the Dutch Psalter, they didn't always match. And that Psalm 42, which I keep coming back to, it's almost as if I chose it for a reason, is a good example of that. The example four that you have there, on page three is. is a setting of Psalm 42 to that same tune by a Dutch church in New York, 1767, so just before the revolution. You might remember that New York was New Amsterdam, and the colony that became New York had previously been New Netherland. So there's a large Dutch population there. And in the preface to this psalter, it's quite sweet, actually. The elders of the church are saying, we've been here a while. Our children are no longer growing up speaking Dutch. They all speak English. And yet they have to have a psalter that they can use in their own language. So they prepare this one. But they do so on the assumption that the style of singing will continue being that all long notes. So let's sing just the first two lines of this, as pants, the heart, et cetera. Let's sing it first in all notes the same length. That will work. Try it. Yeah, there's a note missing. They had to leave that one out to make it fit. But nevertheless, now try it in the original rhythms. It will not work correctly. as plants the heart for cooling streams when he tells. It's a little bit silly. Even more funny is, I'll just sing this bit. Oh, when shall I behold thy face and drink of thy refreshing grace? That last bit is sort of, it has a sort of Renaissance-y flair to it, but the, and when shall I behold thy face? It's literally, every one is wrong. So, this is an issue in English, it's more of an issue in 18th century Dutch, because they depend on vowel length to make their strong and weak syllables. When we talk about long and short vowels in English, we're talking about the difference between a and aa and aa. In Dutch, they're talking about the difference between aa and aa. at least in this era. So when you have a language that is based on long duration and short duration vowels, and you have a musical style that's based on long duration and short duration notes, and those are flipped, you have more serious problems. All right, so that's the issue of simple rhythm. It comes about for two reasons, but by this point, certainly it's widely agreed that no congregation can handle so many as two different rhythmic values at once. Next, we can consider their discussions of interludes. And this is probably the most foreign to us, because if we have interludes at all in our singing, they are between verses rather than between lines, and they are to serve some sort of ornamental purpose, to add a level of excitement or something. Neither of those is the case in this style. In this style of congregational accompaniment that was typical in the Netherlands in the second half of the 18th century, and continuing to a diminishing extent well into the 19th, organists added a short interlude after each line of singing. They did this for two reasons. First, to give winded congregations a chance to catch their breath, which was important given the slow singing tempo. And second, to help the congregation find the pitch at the beginning of the following line. Thus, while it is easy enough to imagine these interludes as being purely ornamental, and surely some organists treated them that way, we know that because authors are continually saying, whatever else you do, these are not to be treated as purely ornamental. Do not, do not, do not. And the insistence with which they say this suggests that somebody was doing it. Probably a lot of people were doing it. At least in principle, the interludes served a functional purpose first and an ornamental one, if at all, only by extension. Two short remarks from our authors. First, the organ can serve, he says, by adding decent interludes after each line in an agreeable manner, implying that there are indecent interludes in a disagreeable manner as well, to give some relief to the congregation and especially to the cantors, that is to say the song leaders, which they usually have, who may not otherwise rest and whose throats are really not organ pipes. They will get tired. And then another remark from a different author. If people were more mindful of the purpose of the interlude, they would often perform more sensibly. The interlude served to lead the singing congregation in a clear and regular way from the note of the last sung syllable of one line to the following note. The idea is to lead the congregation. Of course, this brings back that same issue. If people were more mindful, they would do better. Are they more mindful? No, often they're not. They do badly. So thus far we have discussed our author's opinions on a few specific technical elements of congregational singing and its accompaniment. Let us also consider what they have to say in two more abstract areas. Their concept of the organist's role and their concept of the nature of congregational singing. First, the organist's role. We will find everywhere that, as far as accompanying singing in church is concerned, the purpose is held to be to lead and facilitate the singing of the congregation. Anything that might hinder that one goal is to be cast aside, and this includes things that might be desirable in their own right. There is a limit, for instance, to how viscerally one ought to express the text in one's playing. There is a limit to how much ornamental beauty should be added. Both beauty and text expression are good things, but only insofar as they do not hinder the congregation in its singing. Here's a good line about it. Describing what would constitute good congregational singing, one author writes that church members should always be, quote, adapting their several voices so that they strike each note all at once, following the sound of the organs that serve them by directing this holy exercise. So the purpose of the organ is to direct the singing so that the people arrive at each note together. Another author writes the following, I'm sorry, there it is. One must always keep in view accompanying the singing congregation with a solemn and harmonious accompaniment. By playing the melody solemnly and harmoniously, shall one best keep the congregation under control, and not only that, but also fulfill the requirements of a pious chorale song. Previously we talked about directing the congregation, now we're keeping the congregation under control. Two ways really of saying the same thing. You don't want them to be all over the place, you want it to be orderly. You want people to be singing the same note at the same time. But then that line about fulfilling the requirements of a pious chorale song as well. There's a certain reverence that comes when there's order and avoiding chaos. All right, another, he says, we organists have the pleasure of accompanying with harmony the monophonic song. That's the unison melody. The more natural, the more grave and magnificent. This natural beauty does not require embellishment. Also, the ear of the singer should, above all, not be drawn away more than necessary through so many superfluous, indeed, sometimes very strange chords, or such playing hinders the attention. And I'm sure you've all had the experience of singing with an organist who added what one might call superfluous, indeed, sometimes very strange chords. It will not do. Another, in the expression of the sense of the words, I think I have been as precise as possible, says this author. Although the chorale or psalm music gives a little freedom in this regard, but it is certainly true that all excessively strange dissonance is more hinder than edify the singer. So there are places in the psalms where a dissonance is probably called for. There are points of pain, of tragedy, of deep grief in the psalms. But to express that in such a way that distracts, it's not worth it. It's hypothetically a good thing, but it takes away more than it adds. And then finally, the most complete description of the role of the organist in congregational singing that I've maybe ever heard in this style. He says, concerning the question of, what use have we for church organs? He's answering a hypothetical student. This is from a book written in dialogue. So the student has asked him, what are church organs even for? His answer. And he does a little bit of talking about, OK, you can use them for recitals. You can use them to play preludes. You can use them to introduce the hymns so that people know what they're going to be singing. But then when you get to the singing itself, he has six points. One, to provide an appropriate starting note. Two, to maintain the pitch so that the singing doesn't get lower and lower as you go. Three, to make the singing remarkably easier, insofar as each singing note is laid as if in the mouths of the congregation. Four, by adding decent interludes after each line to give some relief to the congregation. Five, to continually sustain and stimulate the desire to sing. So not only to sustain the singing itself, to sustain the desire to sing. Interesting distinction. And six, with the help of sacred music, the more powerfully to impress the sense of the words in the hearts of the observant singers. So the idea that by the addition of musical tone, the text becomes more penetrating. And then as the same author put it more succinctly later in the same work, he says, the organist's role considered as to his principal duty, that of playing the psalms, consists in this. And this part, there's not a whole lot of all caps in this era, but he puts this line in all caps. And I would like you to remember it because that's the, This is a title that I made for this talk as well. The organist role consists in this, all caps, as it were laying the notes in the mouth of the congregation. I love that line. We'll talk a little bit more about it later. So hold that one in mind. There's another small note on this point. One author goes on to say that organists should avoid trying to force their congregations to sing more correctly. But if correction is necessary, to bring it about slowly and gradually. I'm not going to read that whole quote because it's long. But one might ask why one should avoid correcting mistakes. They're mistakes. They should be corrected. Aren't we all about precision and accuracy and clarity? Well, there are more important things than that. If by correcting a mistake, You would stifle the singing. It's not worth correcting the mistake. Let them continue. And that is about note mistakes. OK, if they're singing the wrong word, they probably should sing the right word. That's a different ball of wax. But even if the voice of the congregation is, in some sense, making sounds that are less than maximally beautiful, if they're even making mistakes that render the song somewhat ugly, It's not worth it to stifle them in order to correct. And the only reason I can think of that that would be the case is that the voice of the congregation is the essential thing. Not so much how it sounds, not so much whether it's correct, not even so much whether it's beautiful. Any attempt at greater beauty is out of place if it stifles the singing. So that brings us to our last and most general heading, the question of what is the nature of congregational singing according to this concept? Well, first, one author writes, and we would wholeheartedly agree, the singing is a principal part of the public worship service. It is one of the elements, not one of the forms, as Mr. Johnson would say. We already mentioned briefly this point about how chorale singing is not figural music. There's a fundamental divide between the kind of thing that is congregational singing and the kind of thing that is art music. And for a congregation even to aspire to the intricacy and precision that a rehearsed ensemble can achieve is in an important sense to miss the point. Another, the devotion of a Christian consists, according to an expression of a certain spiritual writer, this is all part of the quote by the way, in a holy alertness of the heart to the Lord of the universe and the stream of love that he pours out on his people by spiritual and physical benefits. And the purpose of psalm singing, in general, consists in this, that the praying heart, by singing, pours itself out before the Lord. Whether it be brought to deepest sadness by the loss of priceless friendship with God, or whether the converted Christian, made glad in the enjoyment of bountiful divine blessings, must express happy and jubilant songs of praise. From these principles, which, in my judgment, no wise person will wish to oppose, both we and the psalm poets, we being organists, both we organists and the psalm poets must derive our rules. And then another, if one had a concept of what is really being accomplished by the singing of psalms, and directed the same, that is the singing of psalms, for the glory and praise of God, it would be thus a most highly profitable practice. The angels are often set before us as being continually singing praises to God, and their holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts continually sounding forth. Well-timed after last night's sermon. And so ought we to follow them here on earth in that heavenly work, and raise our souls above the clouds in a holy rapture. So it is worth noting that they do not say, for instance, anything about music being a principal part of the service. The principal part is singing. I have often struggled to convey the ramifications of this point in conversation, so I wrote it out fairly carefully. Hopefully it works. Do tell me if this doesn't sort of land. If singing is the element that matters and listening is not even mentioned, then it follows that music for congregational singing is not to be evaluated on the basis of how it sounds, but rather on the basis of how it sings. It will be objected that how music sounds is the only tool we have by which to evaluate music, but this is not true. I would say by living in the world as it is, we have been taught that the verb associated with music is to listen, or perhaps to hear, but it was not always so. The first public concert where admission could be bought for money took place in London in 1672. Prior to that time, the only people who could have music performed for them were the nobility and the very rich, since they could hire musicians to come to their houses. And such concerts open to the public did not become mainstream until midway through the following century, that is to say the 18th century. Only in the era of Handel do we see a really robust public concert culture develop. And yet there was lots of music. It's just that the operative word associated with it would have been to sing, or perhaps to dance. And by the way, that's from the beginning of human history up to 1672. That's a lot of time. The next revolution in access to music for listening came with the phonograph in the late 19th century, brought to mass market in the early 20th, then radio in the 1920s, cassettes in the 60s, CDs in the 80s, streaming in the 90s, which reached mass audience in the early 2000s. So we can think about an exhilarating cycle of development in which each iteration makes listening to music more convenient, higher quality, and a better substitute for singing. The first cycle lasting from the beginning of human history up to 1672, the next taking about 200 years, then 40, then 40, then 20, then 15. And indeed, the length of the streaming era has already eclipsed that of the CD-without-streaming era. You probably don't even remember when you could have... Right? You do? Before streaming? Okay, that's fine. Already there are people... I'm sorry, already there are no people living who grew up in the developed West without at least the possibility of listening to recorded music, a fact that has only been true for about one generation, or maybe two or three at a stretch. And I would say that this constitutes an absolute revolution in the way that individuals interact with music. It has caused us as a civilization to give up a singing frame of reference in exchange for a great deal of wonderful art. Not a trade I wish to find fault with, but one that the church has to grapple with. because, as mentioned before, singing is a principal part of our public worship. It's a conceptual shift that I just find incredibly important. We'll talk about it a little bit more later as our minutes take away. What follows is a sort of long conclusion. We introduce these points in order from the most practical and technical to the most conceptual. Let us summarize those most relevant to today's situation in the reverse order, beginning with the conceptual. According to a dominant set of opinions among Dutch Reformed organists in the 18th century, admittedly a small sample, but nevertheless an interesting and coherent one, First, congregational singing is a principal part of Christian worship. This should be understood as singing qua singing, not singing for any other purpose, including the purpose of being heard. Second, congregational singing is a fundamentally different thing from art music. And third, under this first main point, this singing is the work of the angels and it will be our work above. To engage in it here below is to participate in the work of heaven. Second big topic, the organist's role in congregational singing, which we might expand to include the role of any musical leader, whether singing or on a piano or even There's something else. The role of that person is to lead and direct the singing by A, setting the pitch, B, setting the tempo, C, adding a solemn and harmonious accompaniment, which must at no time hinder the corrugation or discourage it from singing, even if by doing so, greater beauty might be achieved. It's never worth it. Never, pretty much never. Almost never. D, sustaining and stimulating the people's desire to sing as well as their singing itself. And above all, here's that favorite quote, to lay the notes of the melody into the mouths of the congregation. I love the fact that he doesn't say laying the notes into their ears. If it were about hearing, he would say laying the notes into their ears. He says, laying the notes into their mouths. When the congregation opens its mouth, the organist should already have put the note there so that it just comes out. I love that. Third main heading here. The material to be sung should have particular musical qualities that cause it to serve well for congregational singing. Among those, simple rhythms. For most of our authors, even so many as two different rhythmic values, long and short, was one note value too many. B, melody only singing. None of these authors even mentions the possibility of attempting to sing in parts. The entire psalter is composed so that the melodies stand alone, and this is the Genevan psalter. Harmony is something that can be added to them, but is not essential to them. It is a thing in addition. Parts and descants might also be added as well as harmony for the sake of beauty. But once again, only so long as they do not hinder or obscure the unison singing of the melody. Melodies should not go too high or too low. In practical terms, there's a particular range that works well for most men and most women. And going beyond that tends to be a bad idea, even if some people can manage the wider range or the lower pitch or the higher pitch. It's good to keep things in a range that is good for most people. All right, we've discussed the features of this type of singing in some detail. And since we don't have an organ in here and we don't have a large room, it won't quite work to experiment with it. But I'd like you to hear a little bit of it. And for that, let's turn to the back of your handout, page four. I'll explain what you're seeing here at the upper left hand of the page. So we have five measures of introduction. Sounds about like this. Then five measures of singing. And this is the tune. It's not quite what we think of when we hear that, but it's not so far off. And it has all these ornaments. This is what it sounds like. Then there's a little interlude. And the last note of the interlude always, always, always gives where to start the next line. Et cetera. So let's just listen to what this sounds like with a large congregation and a big organ. Oops. So there's the end of the introduction coming to the first line of singing. ♪ Alleluia ♪ ♪ Alleluia ♪ And that's where we'll pause. A minute and 18 seconds in, that's a quarter stanza. So you can imagine this taking quite a long time. But I do think there's a certain solemnity to it, which, though we might not want to sing this way on any kind of a regular basis, does make a certain kind of sense in a worship service characterized by reverence and awe for a transcendent God. I love doing this with large congregations. It's fun. Sometime maybe we'll have a chance. So, we don't have much, much left in the way of time, but I'd like to consider a few implications that we might draw from some of this. First, in discussions of Reformed worship, we often think about our practices in terms of elements, forms, and circumstances. You'll hear that from Ian Hamilton, I hope, and from Terry. It's in his books as well, and most of this is cribbed from his books. Elements are things that are scripturally determined and unchanging. They include prayer, the reading of scripture, preaching, psalm or hymn singing, and the sacraments. A form, on the other hand, is the content and structure through which the element is expressed. In casual discussions of music, even within these Reformed worship circles, I often come away with the impression, though perhaps not many people would actually say this if pressed on it, that under the surface of their thinking, many people both in our circles and beyond would categorize music as the element and singing as its form. That is not to say that they see vocal and instrumental music as interchangeable or that they would happily substitute choral music for congregational singing. But they judge music for congregational singing according to criteria that are only properly applicable to performed music. So in the conceptual framework that governs thinking, it seems to me that that there is this mismatch. Music is not the element. Singing is the element. And so singing should be judged qua singing. Crucially, this is not something that happens only on one side of an obvious fault line. It's not a political issue. It's not a factional issue. Nor is it something that afflicts only people with bad taste. Indeed, it can afflict the most educated with good taste all the more. My prototypical example of this is our own Lowell Mason, who was our organist from 1821 to 28, before he went up to Boston. Major figure in American music. as well-educated and as good taste as anybody. His great project in church music was to replace existing American psalm tunes with better ones drawn from the European classical masters. And there can be little denying that the music he and those like him drew upon was excellent, probably more excellent than what he wished to replace, at least on average. But it was not congregational music at its core. It was performance music, much of it originally instrumental. And as such, it begs to be evaluated according to performance standards and criteria. I believe we would do well to move back to a more reformed way of conceptualizing and evaluating the discipline that is congregational singing, which in my opinion would require rethinking along several dimensions. First, if singing is the element, what we should value in it is the singing itself, not the hearing of what is sung. And if that is what we value, then that is where our criteria for evaluating it should reside. If for some reason the singing does not sound beautiful, try not to worry too much about it. It's not there for you to listen to. Focus instead on the act of singing itself. Try to be patient and trust that over time, rightly focused singing will eventually become beautiful, if not necessarily the way that a listener steeped in classical performance might look for. In particular, avoid the urge to silence any individual voice that strikes you as ugly, above all your own. That is the voice you'll be most tempted to silence. The sound that is beautiful in the relevant sense and to be sought after is the united voice of the whole church, the voice of the bride of Christ. To take another way of saying the same thing, the bodily organs required for congregational singing are the lungs and the lips and the tongue, not the ears, although the ears are useful to assist the others in their work. Second, additional things may well be added to beautify what is sung, but they are not to be confused with something essential. And if they intrude upon the essential act of singing, it is better to discard them. This would include such things as additional instruments beyond what is needed to accompany, alternate harmonizations, singing in parts, descants, and my personal bugaboo, hymn tunes that structurally require singing in parts. Even classics like Joy to the World, It is Well with My Soul, or And Can It Be. I love end canopy, we had it at our wedding, but it's not that reformed. These things can be beautiful, they can even be singable. We probably shouldn't discard them, but it is worth being aware that they are at odds with the tradition in which we stand. And we should be ready to discard them if at any point they come to hinder the singing. Third, in a public worship service, it is important that the entire service be intelligible to a reasonably aware visitor, not controversial in terms of the readings of the prayers of the sermon. But when it comes to singing, that means that it should be intelligible to that visitor at the level of singing, not merely the level of listening. A visitor ought to be able to join in without inordinate difficulty, and this places a firm upper bound on the difficulty level that we should be using for our congregational music. In my opinion, most hymn tunes that we sing should be easy enough that someone who does not read music and does not know the tune would be able to sing most of it by the second or third time. It's a different question from whether he would be comfortable to do it. He should be able to do it, even if not comfortable. Of course, this can be a little bit contextual, and we probably ought to be more careful to cater to visitors in this way on things like Christmas and Easter than maybe on a typical Sunday. One more minor plea for expert musical judgment in this. In order to properly evaluate these things, it is important to distinguish carefully between tunes that are difficult and those that are unfamiliar. Since almost any tune can become easy to sing with enough practice, and for a congregant not trained in music, almost any unfamiliar tune, no matter how easy, will feel difficult at first. But there are structural features that make a tune fundamentally easier, difficult to sing, or to sing well. And a good musician should be able to recognize them. But it does take some education. By analogy, there are certain engineering problems that would stump a layman like me, but that would be trivially easy for a good engineer. And there are certain, one might even say, many operations that I would not attempt myself, but that are trivially easy for a well-trained surgeon, or even a minimally competent one, shall we say. Likewise, there are technical musical considerations at work here that are invisible, perhaps, to one without training. It's worth consulting the experts on that particular thing. Let me close by saying that while it is not necessary for everything we do to be maximally reformed, it is incumbent on those who would promote a coherent vision of reformed worship, such as ourselves, to learn to think about congregational singing along reformed lines. Singing is a principal part of our worship, an element, not a form, and certainly not a circumstance. It deserves the same kind of rigorous thought as any other principal part, perhaps especially when that thinking is difficult. And with that, are there any questions? It sounds like cross singing is making a joyful noise. Second thing is, I know this is all about congregational singing, but when do choirs come in and what does that do to the organist when he's got a choir presentation to do as opposed to when he's doing music for congregational singing? Yeah, gradually and with a lot of controversy. The initial intrusion of the choir, shall we say, in denominations that didn't previously have them, which would have been your Low Church Anglicans and your Scots for sure, Dutch as well. was to help the congregation sing better. And in fact, usually at the beginning, the choir would be seated facing the same direction as the congregation. If that's the congregation and I'm the choir, this is where I sit. But then gradually, they get their little enclaves, and they move up to balconies, and they start doing other things. This happens, starts in the 18th century in England, the later 18th century in the Netherlands, more 19th century in Scotland. And it does change, it changes the role. The way that organists are selected becomes more and more for their ability to perform and to lead choirs, and less for their ability to lead congregations. The assumption being leading congregations is easy. And so anybody who can do those other things can also do the main thing. Perhaps that too, yes. Especially in your richer areas with more, shall we say, sophisticated tastes. As the Industrial Revolution raises standards of living, it improves people's access to well-performed music, people develop a taste for it. And they start to be frustrated with unbeautiful congregational singing. because they have a frame in mind of hearing and evaluating that way. This is pretty early. There's a document from around 1800 where a thoroughly respectable, excellent English musician is advising churches to get an organ as big as possible so that they can drown out the noise of the congregation. So there you go. It's not a given. With the organist role being to lead and facilitate worship and singing, in your research, do any of these people also believe that they should participate in the congregational singing as they're playing? You mean sing at the same time? Yeah. That's never discussed. I think it's a neutral. Yeah, I do mostly if I get to a place that's difficult and I can't do both properly at the same time. Of course, at some point I have to choose to play rather than sing. And every once in a while I do sing and then make a mistake that I wouldn't have made if I was singing and then feel ashamed. I do that, yes. That's a different ball of wax, but yes, I do. Can you address intelligibility in singing, congregational singing, and to what extent that is culturally determined or just simply objective? Meaning? I know that's a big question. The ability for a visitor to join in. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's a reason I put the qualifier of a reasonably aware visitor. That's what I called it. There are going to be visitors who come that are not reasonably aware. OK, there's a upper limit beyond which we shouldn't go in our difficulty to keep things OK for that reasonably aware visitor. There's probably also a lower limit below which you're not really doing the thing. So what's the easiest song in the world? This is the easiest song in the world. One note, one rhythm. OK, everybody can do that. If you add a second rhythmic value or a second note, it's a little harder. A third note, a little harder. Generally, the standard for the authors that I'm looking at is about eight notes, about two rhythms. Any simpler than that, you're on your own. Yeah. Was the melodic range in the psalter in this music similar to what we sing today? For the most part, at least in a traditional hymnal. Most of them are within an octave, so like... that range, some go that far, some go that far. There is one that goes that far, and people don't like it very much because it's going to be too high. That's a C to an F, so an octave and a fourth. There are, that's the Lord's Prayer, which is the tune that I was, the Mendelssohn that I played last night is on that tune. I have seen contemporary worship sorts of hymns that go an octave and a fifth, an octave and a sixth. Yeah. So something like that is virtually guaranteed to be both too low and too high at the same time. The next worst thing is if something is guaranteed to be either too low or too high. And then the best is to have something that at least can be pitched that is neither too low nor too high. So to do that, you pretty much need to keep it within an octave or an octave plus a note. The hour is hastening on. Lunch starts in just a couple minutes here. We do have an hour and a half for lunch, so I'm happy to stick around and talk more to whoever is interested.