Hymnody 101 Part 3- Types of singing and closing thoughts
Jan 14, 2016 16:36:46 GMT -5
laughingmooseinn and art like this
Post by mandojeff on Jan 14, 2016 16:36:46 GMT -5
III. In addition to three types of song, there are two types of singing- congregational and individual.
This might seem silly to point out, but these are some important distinctions (particularly due to the way this thread came about). A soloist, a worship band and a congregation don’t all approach a song the same way and a worship leader needs to be intentional about the groups involved.
It may seem odd, but congregational singing has not always been the norm within the church. In various times and church traditions, a choir or a soloist (cantor) or even the pastor/rector/priest did all the singing or chant. Almost invariably in those cases, the singer(s) sang to God on behalf of the congregation. Chant (often called plainchant) was used within the early church and is the basis of a lot of what became early congregational music as well. (Example: Of the Father's Love Begotten)
Often these were prayers of confession or offering to God. The Reformation significantly affected this area of church life. Luther, particularly, felt the congregation should have more active participation in the service. Regarding music, the result was both an increase in choral music as well as congregational music within the service. (This can be seen in full flower with J.S. Bach in the Baroque Lutheran context.) Luther was aware of both the power and necessity of music. He even demanded that his pastoral candidates be able to sing as it was essential, in his mind, to quality preaching. Some say that Bach was really the last real church musician- writing lots of long form music for every Sunday of the church calendar, teaching, etc. But I digress...
Back to Cali's original question: 'Why do hymns repeat so much and so often have boring music?' (paraphrased) Some of that is subjective, of course, but there are some general reasons that go to this.
I mentioned earlier that the repetitious structure was intentional for rote memorization due to large groups of people being unable to read either words or musical notation. Since these songs were intended for the general public, a lot of frill was discouraged. Not only that, but the melodic range of many hymns were intentionally narrowed in order to suit more people. It's generally expected that you keep the melody within an octave or, at the most an octave plus a couple of steps in order to aid in this. Large leaps and melodic angles are avoided and generally one note per syllable are encouraged. (I'm speaking of hymns from 1700 forward, largely). Parts were added and taught in order to accommodate all voice types and give a fuller sound. The four part hymn remains a standard form today.
The other side of that is individual, or performance, music. This would be any person or group which doesn't involve the entire congregation. What we used to call 'special music' when I was growing up. Vocal, instrumental, whatever.
Note this subtle, but important difference: in the congregational singing, the only audience is God. In the other, there are two audiences: God and the congregation. Ideally, what I said earlier is in play- that is, the soloist or group is bearing the musical offering of the congregation to God. The pitfall is, of course, to begin performing to the audience. Every church has to deal with issues of quality and focus in this regard.
Miscellaneous thoughts in closing:
The point of talking about this last point is that most of the arguments within churches over music have to do with performance/style issues and many churches are less than intentional, which often leads to a lot of problems.
This is a very quick, often broad brush look at the subject. there are entire courses in seminaries about such things.
There was much debate and dissension about what seem to be very minor things, during the 14-1600s particularly, regarding everything from temperament (distance between notes in an octave scale) to modes (long story, but where the half steps fall in a scale. Think major versus minor keys), to time signatures. There have been alternating periods of extreme prescription and overwhelming liberty put upon composers with varying results. Many non churchmen composed church music for church use and some churchmen composed brought 'secular' music into the church- again, with varied results.
I'm not a scholar in all this, but I've had some training and a lot of experience and I hope this helps as you think about these things. Let me know if I can ferret something out for you as questions come to mind.
This might seem silly to point out, but these are some important distinctions (particularly due to the way this thread came about). A soloist, a worship band and a congregation don’t all approach a song the same way and a worship leader needs to be intentional about the groups involved.
It may seem odd, but congregational singing has not always been the norm within the church. In various times and church traditions, a choir or a soloist (cantor) or even the pastor/rector/priest did all the singing or chant. Almost invariably in those cases, the singer(s) sang to God on behalf of the congregation. Chant (often called plainchant) was used within the early church and is the basis of a lot of what became early congregational music as well. (Example: Of the Father's Love Begotten)
Often these were prayers of confession or offering to God. The Reformation significantly affected this area of church life. Luther, particularly, felt the congregation should have more active participation in the service. Regarding music, the result was both an increase in choral music as well as congregational music within the service. (This can be seen in full flower with J.S. Bach in the Baroque Lutheran context.) Luther was aware of both the power and necessity of music. He even demanded that his pastoral candidates be able to sing as it was essential, in his mind, to quality preaching. Some say that Bach was really the last real church musician- writing lots of long form music for every Sunday of the church calendar, teaching, etc. But I digress...
Back to Cali's original question: 'Why do hymns repeat so much and so often have boring music?' (paraphrased) Some of that is subjective, of course, but there are some general reasons that go to this.
I mentioned earlier that the repetitious structure was intentional for rote memorization due to large groups of people being unable to read either words or musical notation. Since these songs were intended for the general public, a lot of frill was discouraged. Not only that, but the melodic range of many hymns were intentionally narrowed in order to suit more people. It's generally expected that you keep the melody within an octave or, at the most an octave plus a couple of steps in order to aid in this. Large leaps and melodic angles are avoided and generally one note per syllable are encouraged. (I'm speaking of hymns from 1700 forward, largely). Parts were added and taught in order to accommodate all voice types and give a fuller sound. The four part hymn remains a standard form today.
The other side of that is individual, or performance, music. This would be any person or group which doesn't involve the entire congregation. What we used to call 'special music' when I was growing up. Vocal, instrumental, whatever.
Note this subtle, but important difference: in the congregational singing, the only audience is God. In the other, there are two audiences: God and the congregation. Ideally, what I said earlier is in play- that is, the soloist or group is bearing the musical offering of the congregation to God. The pitfall is, of course, to begin performing to the audience. Every church has to deal with issues of quality and focus in this regard.
Miscellaneous thoughts in closing:
The point of talking about this last point is that most of the arguments within churches over music have to do with performance/style issues and many churches are less than intentional, which often leads to a lot of problems.
This is a very quick, often broad brush look at the subject. there are entire courses in seminaries about such things.
There was much debate and dissension about what seem to be very minor things, during the 14-1600s particularly, regarding everything from temperament (distance between notes in an octave scale) to modes (long story, but where the half steps fall in a scale. Think major versus minor keys), to time signatures. There have been alternating periods of extreme prescription and overwhelming liberty put upon composers with varying results. Many non churchmen composed church music for church use and some churchmen composed brought 'secular' music into the church- again, with varied results.
I'm not a scholar in all this, but I've had some training and a lot of experience and I hope this helps as you think about these things. Let me know if I can ferret something out for you as questions come to mind.
