Later I listened in on the Bible Study with Paul Huh. He dealt with passages from Romans and ended with a 10 minute cello (and piano) piece.
David Eicher introduced us to hymns incorporating NT water images today. One of the coolest was a text by Leith Fisher, with music by Timothy Redman. It was a very sparse text, almost haiku-like in its imagery and meter. The music was tuneful, with a crush of seconds that leant a modern, soulful sound. It was reminiscent of music from Taize. I found myself wishing that the tune ended on the dominant instead of the tonic though. We also read through a hymn written by Eliabeth Stilborn, "By the well a thirsty woman." We sang it to the author's original choice for tune, Ebenezer, and then to a tune by Diane Wilcox which, according to Eicher, the author never heard before it went to print. It, the second, newer tune, was the preferred choice by our modest crowd. It had a nice contemporary sound without sounding trite. This paired with a powerful text makes for quite hymn.
Morning worship included Orff accompaniment (plus recorder) for BEACH SPRING. The preacher used as her text the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. She had a powerful word of challenge to the youth in attendance, that the woman at the well attends their school, figuratively, and that every student who participates in shunning that ostracized student is wrong. The preacher followed that with a powerful word of grace targeted directly to any youth who sensed that maybe they were the woman at the well at their school, figuratively: that Jesus meets them with life-giving water also. It was an incredibly powerful preaching moment; one could hear one thousand worshipers not breathe nor twitch for those few moments. We sang a very pretty setting of the Lord's Prayer using a Philippine melody. Some of the folk-iness of the melody was subsumed in the rather contemporary-sounding accompaniment, the sort of cross-over I can really appreciate. It was a neat, new setting I'll be trying to incorporate soon.
After lunch we listened to a few more composers of worship music in contemporary jazz idioms, Chuck Mahronic and Joe Utterback specifically. We then took off on a long list of "creative" ways to interpret hymns. I was most satisfied to hear a word of "open invitation" regarding WONDROUS LOVE. The presenter noted that the melody is such that truly any accompaniment can mesh effectively. Recently I did this myself, using open fifths that moved all over the place harmonically. I think I hit at one point a chord that was nothing but a stack of tritones!
Bob Hobby spoke about tempo in the organ/hymns session today. What we alluded to over and again but never said outright was that the tempo of the hymn is always contingent upon context: the place in the liturgy, the mood of the liturgy at that moment, the season of the year etc. A good example proved to be DUKE STREET. In some circumstances this needs to be a very stately tune; at other times it can easily bear proceeding at a quicker pace. The context will determine what's right. And the congregation, when they know and trust their leader-musicians, will follow. That was a nice pastoral word from Hobby; a word we do well to dwell on constantly. We also began to discuss playing the various musical styles for different hymns, something near and dear to my heart. More on that tomorrow.
