Q&A: Can the prelude to a church service be sung?

Tags

arts, church music, Church service, order of worship, Prelude

Light Singers – 61 (Photo credit: pixiduc)

Short answer:  there is nothing that says “no” to this in all cases.

You would need to check out each situation.

A more detailed answer:

In my experience, the congregation is in “music on the side” mode before the service begins.

There are also some situations where singing could work:

A pre-service concert series

One church where I’ve performed concerts designates one Sunday per month as their concert Sunday.  The musician(s) play a half-hour program which is followed immediately by the service.  The congregation arrives 1/2 hour before the usual service time expecting to listen to the music.

A sung pre-service concert would be wonderful!

Congregation expects to listen

At The Riverside Church in New York, the prelude occasionally consisted of Mozart sonatas for piano and violin.  William Sloan Coffin, who was trained as a concert pianist, enjoyed teaming up with an accomplished violinist from the congregation.  However, at Riverside, the congregation is accustomed to hearing great music played by organists at the top of their field.  People come early, find a seat, remain quiet, and listen.

A singer would be comfortable in this situation.

Most of the time

My suggestion would be to include a singer after the service has begun. When the minister is at the front of the sanctuary and the call to worship or opening prayer has been spoken, people are more settled.

Why planning matters

Choir members at a nearby church (not mine) told me that when they sang an anthem as the prelude, nobody listened.

The text of a song or anthem is much more important than background music.   We need to keep that in mind when deciding where to place sung music in the service.

People who write advice columns about party/dinner planning say that instrumental music works best when guests are talking.  The prelude can be seen in the same way.  The congregation is just arriving, and they want to greet one another.  When they are talking, the text of a song is lost.

Please comment!  What have you experienced with sung preludes?

 

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Johnny One Note*

Tags

acoustic piano, Bach, Church service, digital piano, Eighth note, fugue, piano, Prelude, Quarter note, Sunday

(Image credit: Flickr)

In choosing music for Sunday, I decided on two Bach Preludes and excerpts from a Fugue (keeping the postlude short).  The service had been scheduled to be outdoors, which meant I would be playing a digital piano.

All three works are pieces I have not played before.  So note-learning commenced immediately.

After reading through everything, I went back to look for clues about the construction and articulation of each piece.

In one Prelude, especially, a seemingly insignificant detail turned out to be crucial to most interpretive decisions throughout the piece.

There are two compositional elements that must be clearly differentiated:  

• quarter-note chords; and
• thematic material.

At first, I honored the length of the quarter notes.  That plan worked for 7 measures!  Time to find another plan.

Now look at bar 8.  How can the quarter note “G” be held while continuing with the thematic upper part (B-flat and A-flat, etc.)?  Even if I were able to stretch from G to B-flat, the tone quality would suffer on the 16th notes. (My left hand is unable to play E-flat and G at the same time, too.)

Using pedal to sustain the “G” is out of the question.  The next two 16th notes would be blurred.

So I tried playing an 8th-note “G”!  And it worked.  But consistency in articulation is so important when voicing Bach’s music.  Establishing longer quarter notes over 7 bars and then playing a single 8th note instead just wouldn’t make it.  So I jumped from one quarter-note section to the next, checking them all out in the shorter version against the opposite hand.

Bach’s intentions are best expressed in the clarity between his compositional ideas.  I hear the piece as if orchestrated, with a group of instruments playing the quarters and strings (in their appropriate range) playing the thematic portions.

Seeing quarter notes notated in opposition to the eighths and sixteenths of the thematic portions makes the difference in parts visually clear.  I don’t see the notation as an error.  Imagine all the ink on the page if 8th notes and 8th-note rests were used instead.

This afternoon (Thursday), the plans for the outdoor service were changed. We will be having an indoor service, and I will be playing an acoustic piano.

Friday update:  I tried something new today with the quarter note in question.  If the moving part is played with an appropriate break to accommodate the ascending interval from D-flat to B-flat, it is possible to make the “G” sound a little longer.  I like the way that sounds, so now I’ve added a breath in the moving part.

Immediately after the breath, the piece continues in tempo.

This piece is still evolving for me.  I have decided to postpone playing it until I feel comfortable.

What do you think?  Please share your thoughts in the Comment Section below!

* When I was a staff accompanist at Smith College, one of the voice 
teachers often referred to Bach as "Johnny Rivers." 

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Don’t drown out the organist!

Tags

Church service, Congregation, Organist, Prelude

Der Organist, Öl auf Hartfaser. 56 x 48 cm (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This, for me, is right up there with “Don’t shoot the piano player!”

Background

Often when people get together for a church service, they are seeing each other for the first time in at least a week. It’s only natural that they want to greet each other and catch up.

At the church where I work, the pastor has a theory about the way layout of the building contributes to the volume of the talking before services. The outer door is near the entrance to the sanctuary, with no large area in between. He thinks that people continue to talk as if they are outdoors because of that.

In other churches I have attended, and some in which I have worked, congregants enter the sanctuary quietly. If there is conversation, it is muted and brief, as participants are already preparing to worship.

The situation

On my first Sunday at my present church, the talking was so loud during the Prelude that I couldn’t hear what I was playing! So I’m thinking that no one else could hear it, either.

The acoustics in the sanctuary are quite live. There is a carpet (flat fibers, no nap), but no curtains, wall hangings, or pew cushions to absorb sound.

On Easter Sunday, of course, there were visitors from out of town, including family members who had a lot to catch up on with their relatives. The Prelude was not completely drowned out, but the congregants were far from quiet. The last 8 measures, however, were heard because of the sforzando stop!

Another scenario with similarities

Following a pre-Easter concert at St. Thomas Church in New York, the audience did not applaud at first. When they turned around and saw the choir in the back of the church, applause broke out… drowning out a portion of the organist’s Postlude.

The issue of applause in church, then, is not a settled question, although I had thought it was. And in this case, applause had the same effect on the organ music as talking does where I work.

The critic in the review (click on link above) also includes his insights about reviewing service music, something I had not realized.

What can be done?

When someone has spent time preparing for the service, s/he would like the music to be heard. For me, it’s a matter of feeling that I have contributed to worship. If the music is not heard, then why include it? Why not just sight-read? Why show up?

The pastor and I are trying a variety of things on Sundays. During Lent we dispensed with the Prelude. The services began with a Greeting by the pastor, followed by a Voluntary. People were seated, and were invited to prepare for worship.

Easter was a special service, so I’m taking that off the radar.

Next Sunday, the service will begin with a Prelude, then the Greeting, and then a Voluntary. The plan is to include either a Voluntary or an Introit. So we’ll see how that goes. Are both a Prelude and a Voluntary necessary? Useful? How are they different from each other?

Something we may institute is having the choir in place at the front of the sanctuary 10 minutes before the service, alerting the congregation to enter the sanctuary quietly.

Drowning out the Prelude is something that I hope can be changed. There are so many variables, who knows? There may be future blog posts on this topic!

Saint Niclas parish church in Møgeltønder ( Denmark ). Renaissance frescos: Angel as organist. Deutsch: Pfarrkirche St. Nikolaus in Møgeltønder ( Dänemark ). Renaissancefresken: Engel als Organist. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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