Things That Make a Church Pianist Happy

I became a church pianist with no training other than knowing how to play the piano. It is one of those jobs where the people who don’t know how to do it are convinced that they know how easy it is to do it. You play the piano, right? Surely you must therefore be able to sight-read, play by ear, transpose instantly, modulate as needed, read shape notes, and be familiar with every hymn ever written.

Not all of these are skills commonly taught to budding piano students. You know who trains their church pianists well (and early)? The Baptists. Catherine, the previous pianist at our church and my mentor, came from a Baptist background. And I once took an all-day church pianist workshop in Kalispell hosted by one of the Baptist churches—I learned more in one day from them about being a church pianist than I had learned anywhere else.

I am rather proud of the fact that not only am I a church pianist, I am a church pianist for two different congregations in two different denominations. That takes some skill.

I had never encountered shape note musical notation until I joined the Mennonite church. I grew up singing German chorales in a Lutheran church. All our notes were round. The Mennonites, however, embraced shape note singing and elevated it to a whole new level. What is shape note singing, you ask? From Wikipedia:

Shape notes are a  musical notation designed to facilitate congregational and community singing. The notation, introduced in late 18th century England, became a popular teaching device in American singing schools. Shapes were added to the noteheads in written music to help singers find pitches within major and minor scales without the use of more complex information found in key signatures on the staff.

Shape notes of various kinds have been used for over two centuries in a variety of music traditions, mostly sacred music but also secular, originating in New England, practiced primarily in the Southern United States for many years, and now experiencing a renaissance in other locations as well.

This is what a hymn looks like when written in shape notes:

Singers read one line at a time, and the shape of the note helps them to determine the pitch. Pianists have to read four lines simultaneously—in addition to key, meter, accidentals, and rhythm—and having to do that while looking at notes that vary in shape is absolutely maddening. Mennonites have only had instrumental music in churches for a few decades, so they didn’t have to consider what the pianist was reading.

Our church has a vast library of old hymnals. In the room at the back of the sanctuary, we have a bookshelf with Life Songs 2, Church and Sunday School Hymnal, and The Mennonite Hymnal (AKA the red hymnal). In our pews we have the current (blue) Hymnal and Worship Book as well as the hymnal supplements Sing the Journey (green) and Sing the Story (purple). Each of those last three books also has a separate accompaniment book containing piano accompaniments that weren’t included in the actual books themselves. Next fall, we will be getting the new Mennonite hymnal called Voices Together (also with an accompaniment book). The red hymnal from the 1960s was the last hymnal to use shape notes, although there is also a pianist version with round notes, whose location I guard very carefully lest it wander away.

Our worship planners have decided that—in anticipation of having so many hymnals available to us—we would try using a different hymnal every week. Rather than placing them in the pews, we would put a supply of that Sunday’s hymnal on a cart at the entrance to the sanctuary and invite people to pick one up on their way in. In theory, I like this idea if only from the standpoint that if we confine ourselves to singing out of one hymnal per week, perhaps I won’t be juggling five or six different books throughout the service.

For this past Sunday’s service, we planned to use the old Life Songs 2 book. That book dates from the late 1930s. Before the comforter-tying party on Saturday, I asked Elaine to help me with a couple of the songs we were planning to sing on Sunday. Elaine is a former pastor, native Mennonite, and grew up singing out of all those old books. She knows things no one else knows. She happened to mention that she thought there was a round note version of the Life Songs 2 book. In 20 years of belonging to this church, I had never seen it.

On Sunday morning, I got to church a few minutes early and went through all the books on the cart to see if perhaps one of them was the round note unicorn. No dice. I went to the room at the back of the sanctuary, got down on the floor, and pulled the rest of the Life Songs books off the bottom shelf of the bookshelf. Lo and behold, about two-thirds of the way through the stack, I found a round note version. I felt like Charlie must have felt when he pulled the golden ticket out of the chocolate bar.

The book, being nine decades old, is not in great shape. I am kicking around the idea of having it re-bound. Before I do that, though, I think I am going to make enlarged photocopies of each page, both to have as a backup volume and for the benefit of my eyes. But really, I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to have a round note version of that songbook. Now I am only missing a round note version of the Church and Sunday School Hymnal. I’ll have to ask Elaine if she knows if one exists.