All the Songs We Sing

Today’s post is for the musical geeks among you.

Elaine presented the message during our church service yesterday. She spoke about the history of the hymnals used by our congregation. Mennonite Church USA released a new hymnal, Voices Together, about three years ago. New hymnals tend to evoke emotional reactions—both good and bad—and this one is no exception. In September, we plan to have a Zoom meeting with the head of the hymnal committee, to hear from him about the process of vetting and choosing the music that went into this current hymnal. It is no small tome; there are close to 800 songs and hymns included.

I love hymnals. I have about 50 in my collection, from all denominations. I have one with my father’s name embossed on the cover, because I think that back in the day, young people in Missouri Synod churches used to receive a copy of The Lutheran Hymnal as part of their confirmation. That hymnal also contains one of the few songs to which I know the Slovak words (Čas Radosti) although the words in the hymnal are in English. DD#1’s mother-in-law gifted me the ELCA Lutheran hymnal a few years ago, and that one is a favorite.

[DD#1 and DSIL both went to Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) colleges—St. Olaf (SIL) and Pacific Lutheran (DD#1). They both love to sing. I used to fill in as pianist for one of the ELCA Lutheran churches here in the valley. I seem to have one toe forever stuck in that denomination.]

Some people get very tied up in the theology of hymns. My criticism of hymnals tends to be from a musical standpoint. Are the songs singable? Does the accompaniment support the singing or fight with it? (The new hymnal contains one song where the congregation is singing in two but the accompaniment is in triplets, and trying to keep everyone together is a major undertaking.) As the pianist, I am there to be part of the musical ensemble, not a soloist. Congregational accompaniment is a whole field of study unto itself.

In our congregation, the song leader chooses the hymns for each Sunday’s service and runs them past me. A few months ago, Elaine asked me about a song in our previous blue hymnal. She thought the text was perfect for that Sunday’s service. I had such a visceral response to the tune, though, that we are still laughing about my comments back to her, and she included them in her message yesterday. While I was growing up, our Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) congregation used The Lutheran Hymnal, published in 1942. That book is full of old German chorales. Some time in the late 1970s, the denomination decided it was time for a new hymnal, and Lutheran Worship came out in 1982. That hymnal is so awful I don’t even own a copy. The hymns were arranged in lower keys, making them almost impossible to sing in parts. What’s worse, the arrangements have those chord progressions that are so characteristic of 1970s music. I don’t know how to explain it other than the hymns ended up sounding like Martin Luther meets Peter, Paul, and Mary. The song Elaine asked me about sounded like it could have come straight from that hymnal. Interestingly, that hymnal never received wide acceptance among LCMS churches (really?), many of which continued to use The Lutheran Hymnal. The denomination eventually saw the error of its ways and released the Lutheran Service Book in 2006. I do own a copy of that one, and it is much better than its predecessor, although I still prefer the ELCA hymnal.

So there you go. I think Voices Together is a good hymnal; it achieved the goals set out for it, the primary one of which is to be a hymnal for a culturally and theologically diverse denomination. And unlike a lot of other congregations, we keep all of our old hymnals and rotate through them so that everyone has a chance to sing old favorites.

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That batch of tomatoes yielded 10 quarts of sauce, which is 10 quarts more than we had a few days ago. I need to inventory what is left of both sauce and salsa in order to know how much I have to make this year.

This is a lovely, rich, tangy sauce.

I am going to drive the BMW to town today. The husband worked on it all weekend and then drove the car around for about 45 minutes last evening. He could not get the problem to reappear. Hopefully, whatever he did solved the issue. We shall find out.