Westermeyer Church Musicians

Reflections On Their Call, Craft, History, And Challenges
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-0-944529-70-6
Verlag: MorningStar Music Publishers
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 88 Seiten

The work of the church musician has always been challenging. In today's climate, there is a need to find new and effective ways to clearly articulate this calling to clergy, congregations, and choir members. This book of lectures examines their work and craft from a historical perspective through current practices. Paul Westermeyer's position as clergyman, musician, historian, and musicologist makes him uniquely qualified to give the reader a bird's eye view of the church musicians' vocation with all of its challenges and joys.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Westermeyer, Paul

Leseproben

1 The Call to a People, Its Musicians, and Everybody Else A People Even a quick scan of the Biblical witness tells you that God creates and calls a people.1 Abraham went out, not by himself, but with Lot, Sarai, and the persons in Haran—called to be a nation (Genesis 12:2, 5). God called Moses to bring “my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:11). From the first chapter of Genesis it is apparent that God creates and calls a people: Adam is humankind, and the plural “them” in Genesis 1:26 is not accidental. God calls priests and prophets to serve a people. The people need a preacher, to be sure—how are they to hear without one (Romans 10:14), but the people, and not the preacher, are the focus. “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14), not with one person, but among us. “Where two or three [not one] are gathered in my name, I am there among them,” says Jesus. (Matthew 18:20). “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,” says 1 Peter (2:9). What does this chosen people do? It gathers and scatters. It gathers in community to worship God in song around Word, Font, and Table where it receives God’s grace and mercy. Then it scatters in individuals and groups into the world to speak the Word and to be the body of Christ it has received. It goes as Christ to the neighbor, caring for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and prisoners; helping the wounded; seeking justice and peace; caring for the creation; pointing to and living out the unmasking of the principalities and powers; and working against systems of injustice. As St. Francis said, sometimes it has to use words. Paradoxically, as it does these things, it meets Christ in the neighbor. Focus on a people (and God’s whole creation) is not our culture’s norm. Though there are many wonderful things about our culture, there are some not so wonderful things, too. The culture’s norm is to highlight individuals at the expense of the people. “I’m number one” is the culture’s motto. “Where’s mine?” is the culture’s whine. The common good is commonly not a concern. That’s partly why so many differing agendas are forced on us by so many different people, with each agenda presumed to be the key to fixing everything. That’s partly why we live in isolated silos where we talk only to ourselves and shut out everybody else, except that we try to get people outside our silos to do what we want them to do because everybody and everything are finally objects to be sold. That’s partly why we think those who came before us did not know very much, why we presume we are the first generation to think rightly about things, why we think we are the first generation to experience change, why each of our own individual versions of change is presumed to be the only truth, why we are constantly at war with one another, and why we find it hard to collaborate. The church is tempted to imitate these less than wonderful aspects of the culture. When you translate them into the church you get the assumption that everybody has to be a Christian and that, in the years before us, everybody in the United States, or maybe in the whole Western world, was a Christian.2 Some people have been so traumatized by their discovery that this circumstance is clearly not the case now and never has been that they try to force everybody into the church’s pews. In that process, self-preservation rather than service to the neighbor has become paramount, and mission has been twisted into how to get people through the church’s doors. The tool of choice for accomplishing this is music, used just the way the commercial culture uses it, as a manipulative sales jingle. Christianity becomes another product to be sold alongside all the other products we sell, and music is the way you sell it. Self-preservation is not the church’s concern. Jesus promises to be with us to the end of time (Matthew 28:20), so that’s taken care of. Individual egos are not the church’s concern. The good of the whole world is. There are checks and balances in community and especially in the Christian community, and nobody gets his or her own way. Manipulating people by music or any other means is the antithesis of the church’s work. The church lives by grace, announces the Word and enacts it, but does not seek to force people to do what anyone thinks they should do. That’s a form of work’s righteousness which masquerades as mission or evangelism, but is their antithesis. Music This book is about the church musician. Why begin then with a people, the community of the baptized? Because we have to get our priorities straight. The church musician is not an individual star or front page personality. The church musician serves a community, and, while virtuosity is warmly welcomed, it is not the goal. Those with lesser musical talents are also welcomed and called to develop them to the best of their abilities. In all cases, the music a church musician makes with the community of the baptized is broken to and contextualized by Word and Sacraments. Music in and of itself is not the goal. So we have to begin with the community and what that community does. As I indicated, it does a number of things, and we need to examine them a bit more. One of the central things for most of the church most of the time (there are a few exceptions) is this: it sings. Kings, all peoples, princes, rulers, young men and women, old and young (Psalm 148:11–12), and the lowly whom God raises up (Luke 1:46–55) all sing with the whole creation (Psalm 150). What then is music about? It is not a manipulative sales jingle calculated to get people to do something,3 like join a church. It is possible to imitate the culture and use music that way, but that is wrong and counter-productive. It may momentarily attract people—may, although that is not guaranteed. In the long run, however, it will empty the pews because people will figure out they have been duped. They will realize that the Christian faith is not about being drawn in by some kind of music or any other manipulative ploy, but is about the way of the cross, and that the Christian faith is not about what turns my crank, but about serving my neighbor. So what then is music’s purpose? The whole Biblical witness, as well as thoughtful voices from across the entire church, from the Psalms and St. Paul onward in Colossians 3:16,4 tell us: it is for the glory of God and the good (edification or sanctification, depending on the tradition) of the neighbor.5 There may be various emphases—on prayer, praise, proclamation, and the story the gift of music voices—but when you summarize what both the Bible and the church teach us, music is for the glory of God and the good of the neighbor. We will return to this theme later, but for now J. S. Bach, one of our most able and summative instructors, can teach us well about this. He signed his scores “Soli Deo Gloria” (“to the glory of God alone”), and on the title page of the Orgelbüchlein just above his name, he placed this telling dedicatory couplet: DEM HÖCHSTEN GOTT ALLEIN ZU EHREN,
DEM NECHSTEN, DRAUS SICH ZU BELEHREN.6 My colleague Fred Gaiser paraphrases the German like this. For the praise of the highest God,
For the instruction of the neighbor. As usual with Bach, there are multiple meanings here. The Orgelbüchlein, the “Little Organ Book,” is a collection of forty-six chorale preludes for organ for the whole Church Year, originally conceived as 164 chorale preludes which “constitute virtually the entire ‘classic’ [chorale] repertory up to about 1675,”7 ten years before Bach was born. He wrote the Orgelbüchlein mostly between 1708 and 1717 while he was the organist in Weimar. He indicated on the title page that in this book a beginning organist is instructed about how to play a chorale in various ways, learning to master the pedal in the process since it is treated independently.8 Then he adds the poetic couplet. At one level Bach intends this music to be for the musical instruction of the beginning organist. Music itself is always instructive and instructed like this. But these are chorale preludes for use in church services as organists still use them, and the German couplet seems to imply more than simply the obvious instructional intent. Behind it is a deeper meaning. Like all of his music, Bach intends this too to be for the glory of God and the edification of the neighbor. Another angle of vision is supplied by Christoph Wolff who says that, “For Bach, the ultimate rationale for being a musician, that is, a performer-composer [Bach’s particular vocation], was not to pursue some sort of mental construct but ‘to make a well-sounding harmony to the honor of God and the permissible delectation of the soul’”9—for God and the neighbor. Musicians What then is the call of the church musician in light of the call of a people and the purpose of music? Bach helps us with that question, too. Andreas Loewe has prepared a carefully-researched and detailed description of Bach’s understanding of his vocation.10 His work is a good place to begin. After recounting Bach’s schooling and preparation11 in the context of the Lutheran Reformation’s development of a...