liturgy – The Artsy Honker

On Cultural Relevance in Liturgy

Byartsyhonker May 31, 2013 0 Comments

Earlier this week I wrote on liturgy, what it means, what people think it means. One of the reasons religious groups reject one form of liturgy and replace it for another is that they are trying to be culturally relevant. There is something very good in this: there is a recognition that the language the religious group uses to talk about what is divine, spiritual or transcendent, is not the same...

On Liturgy

Byartsyhonker May 30, 2013 2 Comments

I've seen a number of instances where a church or a member of a church claims that their worship "doesn't use liturgy". They seem to mean that they don't use sung prayers, or set words, or participate in the Eucharist -- they avoid The Liturgy Of The Church, so to speak. I understand liturgy much more broadly: as the shape and format of public worship. Of course, religious traditions that are not...

Those Naughty Organists

Byartsyhonker May 3, 2013 0 Comments

I read with some bemusement an article in the Telegraph. Beware the wrath of the church organist, it warns, and goes on to list various musical infelicities. Slipping unexpected tunes into music is practically obligatory, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I will play "We're walking in the air" as a recessional voluntary when it is actually snowing (or at least for the first Sunday snowfall of the...

How to introduce new music in churches

Byartsyhonker April 16, 2012 1 Comment

I wrote this as a comment elsewhere, and thought it perhaps worth reproducing:You can get congregations to sing new music, but it takes a bit of work and cooperation from your organist/music director/whoever. 1) If you have one, see if you can get the choir (or music group or what have you) to sing the new tune (possibly to old words!) as a Communion hymn or an anthem a few times.2) In the weeks...

Friday Evensong at St Paul’s-in-the-Camp, 6.15 for 6.30pm.

Byartsyhonker October 27, 2011 3 Comments

EDIT, FRIDAY AFTERNOON: It turns out St Paul's are having Evensong tonight after all, but didn't tell anyone about it until late morning. While I don't wish to compete with them, I think we should go ahead and have Evensong outside anyway.END OF EDITOn Friday we will have Evensong outside St Paul's. While the Cathedral has said they will be open for worship, I don't believe they are having...

Multi-tracking chant experiment

Byartsyhonker July 17, 2011 0 Comments

This is a brief experiment with multi-tracking Creator lucis optime (English) by artsyhonkerYou see, I've got this hare-brained idea about podcasting a sung Compline online, possibly in some kind of Whitacre-style virtual choir. That's hard to coordinate, with chant: the pulse is directed by the words, so metronome markings are no help, for starters. But gathering together a little schola...

Adventures in hymn selection

Byartsyhonker May 1, 2011 3 Comments

In the Common Worship lectionary there are two options for Eastertide. One uses an Old Testament reading, a reading from Acts, and a Gospel reading each week. The other uses an epistle instead of the Old Testament. The point is that Acts is required.Somehow, I thought we were using the Old Testament readings, and chose hymns accordingly. So this morning we had a lovely reading from Acts, then a...

In the great congregation I will praise…

Byartsyhonker April 22, 2011 2 Comments

Though my diocesan cathedral in Chelmsford is a bit of a trek for me, I'm privileged in London to be within easy travel distance of both St Paul's Cathedral and Southwark Cathedral.Yesterday, partly out of curiosity and partly out of a desire to attend a service that I couldn't mess up by playing the organ in the wrong place, I attended the Chrism Mass (actually called "The Renewal of Ordination...

Psalm 130 to Cheshire

Byartsyhonker April 13, 2011 0 Comments

This past Sunday -- Passion Sunday -- was not an All-Age Service, or anything else requiring exceptional liturgy, and so it was back to metrical psalms with a congregational response.I was pleased with this setting of Psalm 130. The tune I chose is one that we'll be using on Palm Sunday and which is not terribly well known in the congregation, so sneaking it in as the psalm is one way of getting...

Starts with P and that rhymes with T

Byartsyhonker March 6, 2011 5 Comments

Lent approaches fast and, at St Andrew's at least, this will be a time of penitence, prayer, purple vestments and psalmody.The latter is my concern. During Advent we tried adapting the Common Worship psalter to a simple plainchant melody from Palmer's "Manual of Plainsong". It worked well for the choir, who could rehearse, but the congregation struggled to join in. Even when using the same...