Singing our glorious confidence.

This last week was a great week. I attended the Level II organist workshop put on by Concordia Theological Seminary. I made new friends from around the country, was encouraged as I continue my efforts to become a better organist, enjoyed five days full of wonderful classes on service playing and theology, and attended at least two chapel services a day every day.

We sang so many hymns and Psalms together in class and chapel, but one stanza we sang in particular stands out as a highlight moment of the week. This is the sixth and final stanza of the hymn "Lord Jesus Christ, with Us Abide" by Philipp Melanchthon [Lutheran Service Book 585]:

Stay with us, Lord, and keep us true;
Preserve our faith our whole life through--
Your Word alone our heart's defense,
The Church's glorious confidence.

I may write in more detail about topics from this week in the future, but this stanza sums up nicely the focus of the workshop: The Word of God. We certainly discussed music since it was an organist workshop, but the focus was on the ministerial function of music as servant to the Word of God. All of the music we looked at and sang is in service of teaching the content of the Word of God, writing it on our hearts and minds, and putting it ever on our lips. For the Word of God gives and preserves faith our whole lives through, defends our hearts, and truly is our glorious confidence unto life everlasting. And it is the song of the Church that she sings with one voice unified in proclamation.

Learning what to ignore

I learned today that one of my pastors has started a blog. His post for today, On Ignorance and Imagination, is great and got me thinking. You should follow the link and read it. However, instead of discussing ignorance or imagination, I want to discuss the power of ignoring.

Since I'm a working pianist/organist, I have to learn new music every week. Sometimes it is just a hymn or two, and sometimes it is a sizable stack of music. I also help my piano students in the process of learning their music every single week. Today, I was teaching a student working on a Bach fugue that sometimes the best route to learning something thoroughly is to purposefully ignore parts of it at first.

How often do people put off starting something because they are intimidated by the size of the project? How often do people get in their own way with worry over messing up one of a myriad concerns they are mulling over?

I'm constantly reminding myself and my students that it is better to find ways to practice that allow you to fully process and properly execute what you are trying to do. Sometimes you have to practice one hand at a time. Sometimes you have to figure out and focus on only the framework while ignoring the other notes. Sometimes you have to not even push keys down, but simply walk your arms through the choreography of how they'll move to get your hands and fingers in the correct places at the correct times. Sometimes you simply play the piece through in your mind to become comfortable with how it flows and fits together. Sometimes you have to practice only the rhythm. The trick is to identify how to break the project up into many steps small enough that you can be successful at each step until you run out of steps.

I'm reminded of a phrase from one of my favorite literature quotes from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky:

To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.

It is better to admit that you do not understand something and break it down to learn step-by-step, than to exhaust great effort yet never understanding well. It is better to know what to ignore for a time than to never see it as its own component to be pondered individually.

I have seen it again and again that what is first thought of as next to impossible can be achieved if you know how to ignore properly--if you know how to ignore in a way that keeps you working and stepping forward. If you ignore the finish line, but keep moving forward, you will eventually be surprised to see when looking back to review your progress that you have crossed the finish line you thought was out of reach.

If you can ignore that you can't do the impossible.....you may just end up doing it.

[Last chance to go back up and follow the link to my pastor's blog post if you haven't already]

Give us ears to hear the joy

Let's play a game. I'm going to make a list, and you can try and guess what everything in the list has in common. Ready? Go!

Southern Harmony
Twila Paris (born 1958)
Sarum Plainsong (9th century)
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Ambrose of Milan (340-397)
Stephen P. Starke (born 1955)
Kevin J. Hildebrand (born 1973)
Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)
Anna Sophia von Hessen-Darmstadt (1638-83)
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-74)
Jaroslav J. Vajda (1919-2008)
Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (348-c. 413)
J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
Zhao Zichen (1888-1979)
Henry Purcell (1659-95)
The countries of Jamaica, Ethiopia, Kenya, China, Germany, France, USA, Poland, Brazil, Wales, England, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Russia and others.

I could go on for a long, long time, but that will serve as enough. Do you know what they all have in common? All of the above contributed either text or music for the hymnal Lutheran Service Book.

From time to time, I'll come across criticisms of traditional, liturgical church music and worship as joyless, stifling, or not appreciating creativity. This is a lie. Look at the above list again. Look at the range represented by that list. We have classical musicians alongside musicians who've been played on American Contemporary Christian radio. We have contributions from people 41 years old who are very active in continuing to write new music to people who lived over 1600 years ago. We have household names alongside obscure names. We have well over a dozen countries from five continents represented.

The music of these hymns also has as much breadth and variety. We have dances, marches, lullabies, folk songs, spirituals, classical themes, chants, and anthems. We have the usage of simple rhythms and complicated hemiola. We have simple pentatonic melodies and complicated classical melodies. We have simple three-chord harmonic progressions and complicated secondary progressions and transient modulations. All of these elements then carefully chosen and matched with the texts.

Do you want to annoy me? Tell me again that my hymnal containing the greatest source of musical joy in this musician's life is joyless, outdated, stifling, and doesn't appreciate creativity, and that I should discard it for the music representing the creativity of the culture of now. Tell me I should neglect in joining my voice to the fellowship of centuries of Christian prayers and songs and focus only on joining the voice of today.

What message does it send to cast aside and denigrate the contributions of centuries of the Church's creative efforts because it doesn't suit you? What if the mindset behind casting aside our hymnals has had the unintended consequence of teaching the upcoming generations that any part of Church that doesn't suit them can be cast aside. Even if that means casting aside God's Word and Church altogether.