Weary & ill at ease
A survey of the attitudes of
clergy and musicians to the
role of music in English
parish-church worship
A
+
= ?
Robin L. D. Rees
To the clergy and musicians of the Church of England
Seated one day at tfie organ,
I was weary and' iff at ease,
J^nd'my fingers wandered'idiy
Over tfie noisy keys.
From The Tost Chord by Adelaide Procter
set to music by Arthur Sullivan
Weary And 111 At Ease
A survey of the attitudes of clergy and musicians
to the role of music in English parish-church worship
ROBIN L. D. REES
First published UK 1993
The right of Robin L. D. Rees to be identified as the Author
of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Republished on the Internet Archive
http;//wwWvarchiye.prg
under a
Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence
http://creatiy.ecom
© Robin L. D. Rees 1993, 2012
Cover illustration by Robin L. D. Rees 2012
Typesetting by Robin L. D. Rees
Contents
Foreword by the Bishop of Oxford 7
Preface 9
Introduction 12
1 Through all the changing scenes of life 30
Recent developments in church music
2a The call to arms is sounding 75
Three case studies
2b Prophets, teachers, true recorders 86
The survey by questionnaire
3 Captains of the saintly band 94
Musical directors and priests: their
similarities and differences
4 O faith of England 118
The church and its people
5 He who would valiant be 128
The church and its musical director
6 Come, let us join our cheerful songs 147
The church and its music in worship
CONTENTS
7 Happy are they 170
Problem areas and ways of improving
the relationship
Conclusion 181
Appendix: Contact details 187
Bibliography 189
6
Foreword
by the Bishop of Oxford
I have always rather prided myself on establishing good
relationships with organists and choirmasters. This is rooted
in a strong sense of my own musical inadequacy. I am happy
to recognize and respond to the expertise of others in this
field. However, it is clear that for a variety of reasons
relationships between clergy and organists are not always
right. Furthermore, it is clear that there is a great turmoil in
the Church over music generally.
I very much welcome Weary And III At Ease, based as it is
upon long experience and careful research. The Anglican
musical tradition is one of the glories of the world. Although
it flowers and blossoms in cathedrals, it is rooted in the
parish church, however small. It is, therefore, important that
this outstanding tradition of music should be kept alive and
the appropriate excellence fostered.
It is no less obvious that we need new music today. Much
is being produced, but alas a good deal of this is banal,
ephemeral in the extreme, or totally unmemorable. Yet every
now and again new words and new music combine to
produce something really worthwhile, which becomes
accepted right across the churches. Good new music and
good new writing need to be encouraged. In short, we need
as always the best of the old and the best of the new. Every
generation is different and our perception of what is the best
will not necessarily be the same as that of our forebears. So
7
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
there is a constant shifting of taste. Yet some things endure
and others are rediscovered.
In the changing, sometimes difficult, but potentially
creative situation that we are now in as far as music in
Church is concerned, it is very good to have Weary And III At
Ease. I wish it well. May it help all those involved in the
musical life of the Church to raise our hearts to God in joy.
+ Richard Oxon
The Rt Revd Lord Harries of Pentregarth was the Bishop of
Oxford from 1987 to 2006. He was previously the Dean of
King's College London, where he is now [2012] an Honorary
Professor of Theology.
Preface
The preamble to the BBC radio quiz I'm Sorry, I Haven't A
Clue describes the programme as an antidote to panel games.
The official Report of the Archbishops' Commission on
Church Music, In Tune With Heaven, was published only a
few months ago, and some may consider Weary And III At
Ease to be an antidote to official reports. This is not to say
that there is anything wrong with official reports, as indeed
there is nothing wrong with panel games. I hope that the two
books, written from their different viewpoints and in their
different styles, will be seen as complementing one another.
How did this book come about? For more than 30 years I
have been a regular churchgoer, usually, but not always,
singing in the choir. On many occasions and in widely
differing circumstances I have seen music cease to be a force
for unity, and become instead an occasion for division — with
disastrous consequences for all concerned.
Many of my evangelical friends would argue that the root
cause of such division is sin. In a sense, no doubt, they are
right. However, as well as being a Christian by persuasion, I
am a scientist by training, and for some time I have wondered
whether a systematic study might not throw some much
needed light on the matter. It seemed unlikely that anyone else
would ever embark on such a study and, when it became clear
that my employer, the University of Oxford, would allow me
to work part-time, and that through a family legacy I could
afford to do so, I grasped the opportunity with both hands.
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
This book is based upon the work that I undertook for a PhD
degree, awarded in 1991 by the University of Sheffield.
I have been fortunate in certain freedoms normally denied
to authors of official reports. The opinions and conclusions
here are entirely my own, though they have been reached
after discussion with colleagues and friends. I have some-
times strayed beyond my stated brief, either because some
piece of information is spread over many different publica-
tions, or because it is not published at all. Finally, and I think
this important, I have tried where possible to make the book
entertaining. As jester Jack Point reminds us:
When they're offered to the world in merry guise,
Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will —
For he who'd make his fellow-creatures wise
Should always gild the philosophic pill! 1
Many individuals and institutions assisted in the project,
and I am glad to be able to record my thanks to them. Firstly
I am most grateful to my research supervisors Dr Alan Brown
and Professor Edward Garden. The book Rural Anglicanism
by the Revd Dr Leslie Francis (now Professor) first
suggested to me the feasibility of my project: I thank him for
that, and for sharing with me his experience in the design and
use of questionnaires. I am indebted also to Canon Vincent
Strudwick. He not only allowed the project to take place in
the Oxford Diocese, but actively encouraged it, smoothing
my path to the door of many a Rural Dean.
I am grateful too for help from many others, including Bryan
Anderson, Dr Penny Atkinson, Lin Barnetson, Ronald Bay-
field, Harry Bramma, Clive Bright, Gerald Burton, Mervyn
Byers, Dr Lionel Dakers, Canon Arthur Dobb, Roger Doughty,
Canon Anthony Gann, Geoffrey Gleed, Dr Mark Gretason, Dr
Paul Griffiths, Dr Berkeley Hill, Geoffrey Holroyde, Dr Roger
Homan, Tony Hunter, Michael Keeling, the Revd David
Manship, the Revd Geoff Maugham, the Very Revd Michael
Mayne, Richard Osmond, Geoff Palmer, David Peacock,
1 W.S. Gilbert: The Yeomen Of The Guard.
10
PREFACE
Doreen Peters, Betty Rees, Dr Dave Rossiter, Anthony Russell,
Patrick Russill, the Revd Christopher Rutledge, Katy Semper,
Robin Sheldon, Dr Chris Spencer, Sheridan Swinson, Bill
Tamblyn, the late Canon Cyril Taylor, Ian Traynar, Andrew
Underwood, Canon William Vanstone, Vincent Waterhouse,
Roger Wilkes, Dr John Winter and Dr Jim Wrightson.
I thank those bodies that contributed grants towards the
expenses of the project: Bedford College [London] Association
Special Fund Trust, Culham Educational Foundation, the
Diocese of Oxford, the Music in Worship Trust, the Royal
School of Church Music, and J. Wippell & Co. Ltd.
No questionnaire, however well planned, can be of any use
without the co-operation of the respondents. I was most
fortunate in this, and wish to record my thanks to all those
who took the time and trouble to complete them. One hard-
pressed clergyman actually completed eight.
Most of all, my thanks go to Ceridwen for her forbearance.
When I began the project, two months after our getting
married, neither of us realised just how much time I would be
spending on it. I was also blessed with two faithful com-
panions during the many 'slow watches of the night' that I
spent at the computer — our dogs Judy and Sheba. My most
recent 'assistant' by day has been our baby daughter Bethan,
who on several occasions joined me on my lap as I typed.
Reformatting my book for the Internet has caused me to
reflect on what I wrote twenty years ago — and to spot the
occasional error! In this I have been helped by my wife
Helen, and Bethan.
Much has changed in the C. of E. since 1992. Common
Worship has replaced The Alternative Service Book; new
editions of mainstream hymnals have appeared; and the
'hymn explosion' (page 30) has now built up into what some
might see as a worship-song tsumani.
Though the precise data will have changed over the years, I
believe that the conclusions I drew then are still valid today.
11
Introduction
Few issues arouse such strong feelings as those relating to
religious belief. Newspapers are not sparing in their reports
of the discussion of such issues — especially if that discussion
seems in any way acrimonious.
Issues confronting the Church of England in recent years
have included: Anglo-Catholic versus Evangelical (perhaps
leading ultimately to unity with either Rome or the Free
Churches); charismatic versus non-charismatic (dictating the
degree of adherence to liturgy); liberal versus conservative
(dictating how literally scripture should be interpreted);
arguments for and against disestablishment (does an 'official'
Church, with its bishops in the House of Lords, speak with
greater or less authority — especially if the final selection of
those bishops rests with a possibly atheist prime minister?);
the rights and wrongs of the Church (especially the
Established Church) 'meddling' in national politics; and
finally, perhaps in the short term most divisive: the move-
ments for and against the ordination of women as priests.
In addition to these many controversies there has been the
age-old debate on the role of music in worship. My principal
aim in this book is to examine the current state of that debate.
In particular I have tried, by means of a large-scale
questionnaire survey, to obtain the views of those who are
often regarded as the 'party leaders', namely clergy on the one
hand, and church organists and musical directors on the other.
In this Introduction we look at the fundamental issues of the
debate before placing them in the context of the present day.
12
INTRODUCTION
We also cast a sidelong glance at other related areas of
concern. Mine is far from being the only survey of church
music undertaken since World War II, and the Introduction
concludes with a review of the other surveys, notably that of
the recent Archbishops' Commission on Church Music.
Much has happened to affect music in the Church of
England in the last 30 years, notably liturgical changes,
culminating in The Alternative Service Book 1980, and an
'explosion' of hymns and other congregational music. In
Chapter 1 we examine not only these, but also the means of
coming to terms with them, namely courses and qualifications
in church music. Moving from the general to the particular, in
Chapter 2 I sketch three case studies in which either the vicar
or the organist (or both) failed to come to terms with the
situation. The remainder of the chapter describes how the
questionnaire survey was managed. Chapters 3-7 contain the
results of the survey, namely the personal backgrounds and
general attitudes of clergy and organists, and their perceptions,
both objective and subjective, of the situation at their church,
and of each other. Also in Chapter 7 I attempt to draw certain
conclusions for improving clergy-organist relationships.
Points of Departure
Temperley describes how, throughout the history of Christi-
anity, there have been conflicting currents between those
holding different views on the use of music in worship.
There have always been those who recognise the great emotional
power of music to move men's spirits. Some have as a consequence
come to mistrust this mysterious power and to exclude it altogether
from worship, in spite of clear biblical injunctions to praise God with
psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, and with instruments of
music (e.g. Psalm 150:3-5; Colossians 3:16). This was the attitude of
the Quakers and, for a time, of the General Baptists, but it has never
found appreciable support in the Church of England, except perhaps
from the unmusical.
Others, also acknowledging the emotional power of music, have
been concerned to harness it for the good of men's souls. This view
has been held by Lutherans, Puritans, Evangelicals, and Tractarians;
13
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
it has led to a concern that music should be sung earnestly and
spontaneously by the entire congregation, and that both the text sung
and the music itself should be appropriate to the purpose — but of
course, opinions have varied widely as to what music is appropriate.
A third body of opinion denies the role of music as an actual
vehicle of religious expression, but values it as an ornament in the
offering to God, as a part of the 'beauty of holiness'. ... In the
English parish church, the conflict between the second and third of
these views remains unresolved. There has never been full agreement
as to whether the primary goal is for people to sing the music as well
as they can, or for the music to be the best possible. It will be found
that this issue lies at the back of most of the conflicts and difficulties
that have punctuated the history of parish church music. 1
Long considers the difficulties of reconciling the second and
third views:
In order to be sung by all conditions of men, melodies must move
mainly by step . . . must be restricted in range, elementary in rhythm
and easy to memorise. Admittedly there are many splendid tunes that
do satisfy these requirements but in the long run such restrictions
must eventually become a strait jacket, stifling vitality and
imagination and tending towards uniformity and monotony. 2
Long's definition of the third group appears to be more
tolerant than that adopted by Temperley:
Song is a natural outlet for the expression of our noblest and deepest
feelings and when these feelings are of worship, praise and
thanksgiving to Almighty God, we are woefully conscious of how
inadequate even our utmost skill is to convey all that is in our hearts
without having that expression arbitrarily scaled down to what less
gifted people can do. Such artificial limitations and restrictions must
inevitably give way as we open the flood-gates of pent-up emotions.
Long goes on to describe what might be termed a cycle in
religious music, a phenomenon common to other art forms:
1 Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church (CUP,
Cambridge, 1979), p. 4.
2 Kenneth R. Long, The Music of the English Church (Hodder and Stoughton,
London, 1972), pp. 34-35.
14
INTRODUCTION
Musical people tend, often unconsciously, to . . . elaborate simple
basic material to a point where less musical folk can no longer
participate. . . . The development of church music has often been a
sinuous line between the musicians, who were constantly enriching it
with new conceptions, advancing techniques and increasing
resources (sometimes to the point of extravagance); and the
reformers, like Pope John XXII, Cranmer, Calvin, the Council of
Trent, and others, who tried to constrain it and prevent excess.
In short, music may be seen not just as an aid to worship, but
actually as a form of worship, expressing realities that mere
words are quite incapable of conveying. As our old friend the
Revd Septimus Harding, Precentor of Barchester, put it:
If there is no music, there is no mystery. If there is no mystery, there
is no God. If there is no mystery, there is no faith. [
It seems very unlikely, however, that those in Temperley's
first two groups would agree with him on this point.
The Church 's Response
One of the marvels of the Anglican Church has been the
parallel development of two independent, but complemen-
tary, streams of church music. The parish-church tradition,
which in general encourages active congregational participa-
tion in most if not all of the singing, is close to the ideal of
Temperley's second group. The third group will often take
delight in the cathedral tradition (and that of collegiate and
royal chapels), where the music is greater both in extent and
complexity, and is sung by a choir whose adults nowadays
are frequently the holders of musical degrees or diplomas. At
such services, the aim is that worship is offered by the choir
on behalf of the congregation, since it would clearly be
impracticable for members of the congregation to join in the
singing, other than the hymn(s). Indeed at certain cathedrals
even this seems to be discouraged!
1 Alan Plater, The Barchester Chronicles, a television dramatisation based on
The Warden and Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope (BBC, London,
1979).
15
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Although the division into parish-church and cathedral
traditions is in general helpful, it should certainly not be seen
as absolute. Long describes the situation at cathedrals in the
first half of the nineteenth century:
Since senior clergy had no interest whatsoever in cathedral worship
and its music, they saw little point in wasting money on it. As a
consequence choirs were so reduced in size that it became impossible
for them to fulfil their proper function. St. Paul's, which at one time
had had 42 choirmen, was now reduced to six. 1
In 1841, when music in cathedrals was at its nadir, Leeds
Parish Church instituted fully choral services in the cathedral
tradition, sung by a robed professional choir of men and
boys. Many parish churches, to a greater or lesser extent, in
due course followed the example of Leeds. Indeed, the
revival of choral music in the Anglican Church during the
second half of the century came initially not from the
cathedrals but from the parish churches. 2
The period 1900-70 was marked by a great improvement
in the musical standards of all church choirs. Long attributes
this to the work of the training and examining bodies, and the
opportunities afforded by radio and gramophone to hear
church music well performed. On the other hand, since the
end of World War II, parish choirs had been experiencing
ever-increasing difficulties in recruitment. 3
Seeds of Conflict
In recent years, many have written of a breakdown in relations
between clergy and organists. While still organist at Exeter
Cathedral, Lionel Dakers was already expressing his concern:
There is something in the make-up of clergy and organists which on
occasion impels them to behave both irresponsibly and irrationally.
Obvious to all are the repercussions of two apparently responsible
adults, both in prominent parochial positions, being unable to see eye
Long, p. 320.
Long, p. 331.
Long, p. 388.
16
INTRODUCTION
to eye. Much harm can be done to the cause of the Church by the
inevitable tongue wagging which accompanies such incidents. 1
It was a topic to which, as Director of the Royal School of
Church Music, he was to return on several occasions:
To tolerate and respect the other point of view and to be prepared to
act on it, is difficult for many clergy and organists. The fact that
music is ultimately the legal responsibility of the parson has been
known to result in a misplaced power complex, especially if the
incumbent is unsure of his ground. 2
A good working relationship is the more essential today if only
because issues virtually unknown a generation ago now loom large.
Changes in the shape and language of services inevitably rub off on
the music and the musicians, and friction can arise the more easily.
Nowadays, both sides so readily feel threatened and consequently
tend to react from a position of insecurity. In practice it matters not
whether this threat is in fact real or imaginary. 3
On the closely related subject of relations between the clergy
and the choir, he wrote:
Whatever conclusions may have been arrived at concerning the
validity of a choir and whether it may have genuinely become
outmoded in the face of an agreed change of policy in a church, a
situation sometimes fuelled by the choir being adamant in refusing to
concede one iota, those responsible for the dismantling process often
seem to act in a particularly unsympathetic and frequently
pre-emptory way. . . .
What in the event frequently conspires is that the clergy,
sometimes encouraged by elements within the congregation, adopt
bulldozing tactics resulting in summary dismissal, this being the
convenient weapon for a quick kill which causes the greater hurt to
the recipients. Little account is taken, or probably contemplated, of
the effect of suddenly cutting musicians off from fulfilling the
particular gifts they wish to offer towards the enrichment of worship.
Lionel Dakers, Church Music at the Crossroads (Marshall, Morgan and Scott,
London, 1970), p. 86.
Lionel Dakers, A Handbook of Parish Music (Mowbray, London, 1976), p. 45.
Lionel Dakers, Church Music in a Changing World (Mowbray, Oxford, 1984),
p. 76.
17
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
This is the more wounding when gifted musicians are alienated and,
as a result, sometimes permanently lost to the Church. 1
Were the problems really as great as Dakers would lead us to
believe? After only six months in the post, his successor was
already writing:
Before I came to work at the RSCM I had often heard of breakdown
in relationships between clergy and organists, but had never
experienced one at first hand. I had been fortunate in every one of the
eight places of worship where I had been organist to have enjoyed a
friendly working partnership with the priest in charge. Could all these
stories be true, I often asked myself? Alas — I now know they are.
Hardly a week passes at Addington without a letter or telephone call
relating to yet another incident of a kind which is becoming
increasingly common. Disagreements there have always been. But it
seems the kind of tensions experienced today are more than
differences of opinion. So often there seems to be a complete
breakdown of understanding in which ignorance, fear, insensitivity
and unwillingness to change all feature. 2
Others have expressed similar concern, although not always
from the same viewpoint. Here is the view of a clergyman
from the charismatic wing of the Church:
If you were to do a survey among Anglican vicars as to who was
public enemy number one in their church, how many would say the
organist or the choirmaster? I suspect a very high proportion. I'm not
sure whether the same is true in non-conformist circles, but in the
Church of England there is often a fierce rivalry between the musical
side of the church and its vicar; a rivalry which has been responsible
for more than a few nervous breakdowns on both sides. 3
Meanwhile, in a leaflet edited by a group of clergy in the
Oxford Diocese there appeared the comment: The parson
may have his freehold, but the organist may have a strangle-
hold on the parish.
>4
1 Lionel Dakers, 'Aspects of a questioning age' in Church Music Quarterly,
July 1987, p. 3.
2 Harry Bramma, 'Clergy and organists... fellow workers' in Church Music
Quarterly, October 1989, p. 10.
3 John Leach, Liturgy and Liberty (MARC, Eastbourne, 1989), p. 81.
4 'The Lost Accord' in Parish and People, 27 (1986), [p. 2]. We will be
18
INTRODUCTION
Any thoughts that this problem may be confined to the
Church of England are quickly dispelled in a paper by Moores:
At a recent meeting of the American Guild of Organists in St
Petersburg, Fla., a regional officer began her speech on clergy-
organist relationships with an observation about how widespread
problems are in this area, singling out the Episcopal Church as the
church where the clergy-organist relationship is characteristically the
most tense. 1
He goes on to suggest that musicians and clergy possess
surprisingly similar types of personality:
As highly intuitive types, both clergy and musicians deal with the
world and make decisions more often using information best
described as subjective, not hard facts or objective data. This use of
the subjective opens both types to much greater creativity and
imagination, but it also causes them to act much more decisively on
the basis of their feelings alone.
The important role that intuition plays is complicated by the fact
that both church musicians and clergy preside over 'mysteries'. Who
understands the evocative power of music? Who understands the
evocative power of ritual? Yet clergy and musicians preside over
these complementary mysteries (and ministries), and while there is
great mutual respect, there can be an underlying element of insecurity
and fear, which causes each minister subconsciously or consciously
to wish to control the other.
Moores believes that many clergy view their relationships with
organists as a marriage in which the latter must 'love, honour
and obey' . A much more healthy view of the relationship is as a
partnership in which the clergy are senior partners:
As caring partners, there must be constant, effective communication
. . . which must be concrete and specific. This requires honesty and
candour. Each needs to know (not just sense) what the other thinks and
feels. For, until each knows (not just senses) where the other stands on
all the substantive issues pertaining to music and liturgy, there will be
no significant development of a long-range relationship.
i
examining this further on page 130.
The Revd Dr David R. Moores, 'Clergy-Organist Relationships' in The
American Organist, August 1985, pp. 46-47.
19
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
He then proposes a radical way of improving the relationship:
Whether or not the clergy compliment you the musician, you can
compliment them. ... It is true that clergy often develop better
defences so as to appear self-sufficient, strong and authoritative, but
they thrive on praise as much as anyone. . . .
Those who have worked with clergy who are suffering from
'burnout' know that one of the chief causes of such personal anguish
is lack of nurturing. Clergy find themselves (or put themselves) in
roles which make them the primary nurturer in the parish, and very
few lay people, let alone musicians, do anything substantive to help
them. Here the musician is in a unique position to do some ministry
for the minister and, in so doing, both can be blessed.
The spiritual blessing which can come from affirmation is obvious,
and so is a very practical blessing. The behaviour of the clergy
towards a personally affirming musician will doubtlessly be less
arbitrary and authoritarian. To put it bluntly, you do not fire a
member of your team who regularly strives to make you feel good.
In conclusion, Moores points out that much of what he has
written applies to any relationship, but that in this particular
instance the stakes are very high:
It is not too dramatic to say that we deal with eternal verities; our
concern is the health and vitality of the soul of man.
Other Matters of Concern
The shortage of organists was already being described as
'grave' more than thirty years ago. 1 In an attempt to combat
it, the Royal School of Church Music, the Royal College of
Organists, and five other institutions combined to designate
1990 as 'National Learn-the-Organ Year'. The aims were: to
encourage at least 500 musicians to take up the organ; to link
pupils with competent teachers of the organ in their home
areas; and to initiate the publication of a new British organ
tutor. The event proved to be an outstanding success. 2 The
1 Music in Church, Report of the Committee appointed in 1948 by the
Archbishops of Canterbury and York (Church Information Board, West-
minster, 1951); revised edition (CIB, Westminster, 1957), p. 79.
2 Anne Marsden Thomas, 'National Learn-the-Organ Year 1990' in Church
Music Quarterly, April 1991, pp. 12-13.
20
INTRODUCTION
continuing advancement of electronic -keyboard instruments
may well encourage others in the direction of the organ
console.
Electronic organs have been at the centre of further
controversy recently:
It has, until now, been editorial policy to refuse advertisement of
electronic organs in Church Music Quarterly. ... As part of its efforts to
increase the relevance of CMQ to the interests of church musicians, the
Council thinks that the time is right to reverse a policy which in 1990
at best seems paternalistic, at worst an unusual form of censorship. 1
This led to a stern rebuke from one of the traditionalists:
Pseudo simulators may indeed be improving all the time, but no
improvement to a plastic flower ever made it a rose. And so, we are
instructed, no improvement to a lie ever made it true, although much
research is currently going into this. Those that have ears to hear, let
them hear; otherwise caveat emptor. 2
Bramma has cited as 'a frequent cause of severe disagree-
ment in our churches' 3 the introduction of girls into a
previously all-male choir. On the one hand, it is unfair to
exclude them from exercising a musical ministry. On the
other, at least in urban churches, Bramma observes that
introducing girls to the choir invariably causes a number of
the boys (the counter-tenors, tenors and basses of tomorrow)
to leave. He sees no alternative but to run two complemen-
tary choirs which sing together at major festivals.
In 1984 it was decided that St Edmundsbury, the only
English cathedral to admit girls to the choir, would no longer
do so. The organist, Harrison Oxley, resigned in protest. 4
Sir John Margetson, 'Electronic organs' in Church Music Quarterly, October
1990, p. 3.
Bruce Buchanan (Director of J.W. Walker & Sons, Organ Makers), an open
letter to the Director of the RSCM, published as an advertisement in Church
Music Quarterly, October 1990, p. 2.
Harry Bramma, 'Clergy and organists . . . fellow workers' in Church Music
Quarterly, October 1989, p. 11.
'Cathedral choir to drop girls' in Church Times, 6330 (8 June 1984), p. 8.
21
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Now, however, further consideration is being given to the use
of girls in cathedral choirs:
Richard Shephard, headmaster of the Minster School in York and a
member of the Archbishops' Commission on Church Music, told the
annual conference [of the Choir Schools Association] that no one
knew the sort of noise girls could make, because no girls had ever
been trained in the same way as boys. He quoted evidence to the
Commission from the Royal Academy of Music which claimed that
prejudice against girls' voices was founded on musical ignorance. 1
Meanwhile Richard Seal, with the approval of the Dean and
Chapter, proceeded to launch a fund for the introduction of a
girls' choir at Salisbury Cathedral. 2 This began singing in the
autumn of 1991. Information on a survey of the use of girls'
voices in cathedral choirs has recently been published 3 , and
an experiment of allowing women to sing in them has also
been proposed. 4 1 know at least three suitable candidates who
would be delighted to help remedy any shortage of male
altos! The analogy with women deacons, now increasingly
ministering in cathedrals, should not be overlooked.
In recent years two other controversial departures have
been reported: Barry Rose from St. Paul's in 1984, 5 and
Simon Preston from Westminster Abbey in 1987. 6 In both
cases it was reported that differences with the Dean and
Chapter over musical policy were to blame. A chilling
comment appeared in Church Music Quarterly:
If those directly concerned with cathedral music are wise . . . they
will not grow complacent. . . . There are many clergymen, some of
them in quite senior positions, who care very little for maintaining
that 'unique national choral tradition', insofar as it provides a good
1 Betty Saunders, 'Girl choristers need same training as boys, choir schools
urged' in Church Times, 6641 (25 May 1990), p. 3.
'Sweet singing in the choir' in Church Times, 6641 (25 May 1990), p. 7.
Judith Pearson, 'Equal opportunities?' in Church Music Quarterly, July
1992, pp. 18-19.
Jennifer Zarek, 'The Bavin Report' in Church Times, 6744 (15 May 1992), p. 11.
'Master of St. Paul's choir quits' in Church Times, 6334 (6 July 1984), p. 1.
'Move from Abbey' in Church of England Newspaper, 4850 (15 May 1987),
p. 16.
22
INTRODUCTION
reason for cathedrals and other foundations to allocate large sums of
cash to maintain superb choirs. Some of these clergymen, moreover,
even reject the notion that a fine choir enhances the beauty and
holiness of cathedral worship in a significantly more impressive way
than, say, an amateur folk group would do. The five centuries of
inspiring repertoire, upon which a cathedral choir can draw, is used
as an argument against, not for, their continuation: a sign that they
are inextricably linked with the ancient ways of worship which most
parishes jettisoned with the 1662 Prayer Book.
So far, this has manifested itself in a few, comparatively minor,
local disputes: mysterious resignations by cathedral organists;
rumours of anti-musical pressures from domineering Deans. In 20
years' time, however, when the present generation of parish priests
has moved into positions of authority, wholesale changes in
cathedrals could be underway. 1
Canterbury Cathedral found itself in the middle of a
controversy concerning the enthronement of Dr George
Carey as Archbishop of Canterbury in April 1991. The
controversy surrounded the Archbishop's choice of music,
and led to such headlines in the national tabloids as: 'Pray,
make the go-go gospel go with a swing'. The more sedate
members of the Church of England were no doubt aghast to
read over their breakfast:
Hand-clapping evangelical 'Gospel songs' will be sung to an
accompaniment of guitars and a saxophone ... in an unprecedented
break with tradition. . . . The decision has astonished musical
traditionalists, who argue that it could destroy the solemn atmosphere
inside the cathedral. 2
But reassurance was close at hand.
Evangelical songs and charismatic hand-claps will not prevent 'the
unique English choral tradition' from shining through at the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury's enthronement next Friday. Guitars, saxophone
and the sound of an electronic keyboard will not drown the trumpet
fanfare of the Royal Marines. The Dean of Canterbury, the Very Revd
i
Richard Morrison, 'A pinnacle, not an ivory tower' in Church Music
Quarterly, July 1989, p. 3.
Damian Thompson, 'Saxophone and guitars will enthrone Carey' in The
Daily Telegraph, 42234 (8 April 1991), p. 2.
23
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
John Simpson, gave the assurance this week in answer to criticisms
of music chosen by Dr Carey. 1
The Cathedral choir would be singing Parry's / was glad and
a new setting of the Te Deum by Grayston Ives, while the
congregational hymns would be to 'well-known melodies
from the centre of English tradition'. Even the break with
tradition would not be too drastic:
'Also taking part, at Dr Carey's personal request, is the All Souls'
Ensemble under the direction of Noel Tredinnick, which will sing
three songs at that informal moment in the service when the
congregation exchange the Peace and the Archbishop greets the
ecumenical guests.'
Other Surveys of Church Music
Three times this century the Archbishops of Canterbury and
York have asked a group to investigate church music. The
Reports of the ensuing Committees appeared in 1922 2 and
1951: that of the Commission (also known as ACCMUS) in
May 1992. The foreword to the 1951 Report began:
In 1922 the Archbishops of Canterbury and York appointed a strong
Committee 'to consider and report upon the place of music in the
worship of the Church, and in particular the training of church
musicians, and the education of the clergy in the knowledge of music
as a branch of liturgical study'. 3
Seventy years on from the first Report we read:
[We recommend that] dioceses and parishes consider the provision of
local in-service training courses for church musicians . . . [and that]
theological colleges and courses, as well as those responsible for
post-ordination training and continuing ministerial training, review
1 'Choral tradition safe at Canterbury service' in Church Times, 6687 (12 April
1991), p. 2.
2 Music in Worship, Report of the Archbishops' Committee appointed in May
1922, (Central Board of Finance and SPCK, London, 1923), revised edition
(Press and Publications Board of the Church Assembly, London, 1932).
3 Music in Church, Report of the Committee appointed in 1948 by the
Archbishops of Canterbury and York (Church Information Board, West-
minster, 1951); revised edition (CIB, Westminster, 1957).
24
INTRODUCTION
their provision for the training of ordinands and clergy in the art of
preparing for and conducting public worship, and the use of worship
within it. 1
Much of my own research underlines this need, but I
question whether ACCMUS will be any more effective in
achieving this objective than its two predecessors.
The announcement in July 1988 of the creation of the
Commission gave rise to much comment — in the national as
well as the church press — with such headlines as 'Church
faces up to pop music challenge' and even 'Sounding an
Almighty sour note in the aisles'. In order to stimulate debate
on the subject, Church Music Quarterly invited a number of
musicians to suggest points which the Commission ought to
be considering. 2 They included Peter Aston, who was
concerned at current standards of church music, especially in
evangelical churches:
Why is it so feeble? A case in point is at our own university
chaplaincy in Norwich. I have been frankly appalled that even my
music students, who apply normal critical standards and strive for the
highest possible quality of performance when giving concerts, are
content to play inferior music badly in their campus services. When I
question them I am told that 'sincerity is all that matters'.
Simon Preston's concern was twofold.
I don't think that the Church has ever addressed itself to professional
musicians; it has never decided what its attitude to them is. Perhaps
this is part of a bigger problem, that the clergy cannot come to terms
with the laity in general, or harness the very real skills that the laity
possesses. ... I do hope that this Commission will investigate, and
not simply accept and endorse the changes of the last few years — the
ASB in particular, of course — which have so affected the work of
musicians.
In Tune With Heaven, Report of the Archbishops' Commission on Church
Music (Church House Publishing, and Hodder and Stoughton, London,
1992), pp. 257-8.
Peter Aston et al, 'What should they be talking about?' in Church Music
Quarterly, October 1988, pp. 4-7.
25
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
John Barnard, one of the music editors of Hymns for Today's
Church, feared that the Commission might attempt too much.
On the one hand, I hope that the Commission will feel free to say
straightforwardly and fearlessly what they think about the current
state of Anglican music, and to give clear recommendations for the
future. On the other, I hope they will not lose sight of the fact that
their deliberations will be pointless unless they lead to a response in
the churches. That can only come about if they gain the respect and
confidence of church musicians in general.
In addition to making 56 recommendations for the future of
church music (of which the training of clergy and church
musicians are but two), the 320-page ACCMUS Report
reviews many aspects of the use of music in worship. These
include parish churches, cathedrals, religious communities,
schools, the Church overseas and Churches of other denomi-
nations, musical instruments and equipment, radio, television,
etc. and copyright. One of the recommendations is that 'the
Royal School of Church Music be recognised as the Church of
England's official body for church music, on the understanding
that it continue to broaden its approach to church music and
that it be related in some way to the General Synod' 1 — an
interesting example of privatisation in reverse. However, the
overall tone of its findings may be gleaned from the following:
The outlook for music in the Church of England is an uncertain and,
in many ways, disturbing one. Although there is much that is positive
and encouraging, a sad picture emerges of a dwindling supply of
musicians, a reduced use of other than congregational music, a con-
siderable lowering of standards, and a lack of both resources and
expectations. The overall impression gained by the Commission is
that the Church in general either takes for granted the contribution of
music to its worship, or places little value on it. 2
Reviews of the Report in the national press suggested that the
root cause of the problem lies not so much in church music
In Tune With Heaven, p. 257.
26
In Tune With Heaven, p. 171.
INTRODUCTION
itself, as in the decline in church attendance 1 although, to be
fair, the Commission by implication addresses this point:
Some church musicians, and the clergy and congregations to which
they belong, may feel that many of the suggestions made in this
Report are not for them. The Commission's description of a director
of music may seem laughably idealistic to a parish which can barely
find a 'reluctant organist' ; some of the resources here described as
necessary are likely to be dismissed as wholly unrealistic by a church
with a handful of worshippers struggling to meet its diocesan quota,
as well as to repair its roof.
The critical question is just how many churches come into
this category. My own research suggests that it is a substan-
tial number — we shall be looking at this on page 120. At first
reading, Bishop Colin Buchanan 'learned virtually nothing
about what is [currently being] sung', and could find 'no
solid discussion' on music groups 2 . Perhaps there will be a
sequel in Church Music Quarterly in which contributors to
the earlier article can give their views on the Report.
Returning to the fears expressed by John Barnard, I hope that
the Report's title: In Tune With Heaven will not alienate those
whose church-music preferences do not lie with Parry or
Milton. 3 The Report also carries a summary of the results of a
questionnaire survey organised on behalf of ACCMUS. The
full results are published separately 4 , and we will be
examining some of them in subsequent chapters.
Several other surveys on church music have appeared in
recent years. In 1976 Temperley organised a short question-
naire in the rural deaneries of Seaford and Selsey in Sussex. 5
1 Ruth Gledhill, 'Churches dance to a new tune' in The Times, 64328 (9 May
1992), p. 5; also Tom Sutcliffe, 'From whence the divine inspiration?' in The
Guardian (14 May 1992), p. 22.
Colin Buchanan, Editorial in News of Liturgy (Grove, Nottingham, 1992), p. 1.
3 The front cover shows a page of the score of C.H.H. Parry's Blest Pair of
Sirens, a setting of At a Solemn Music by John Milton. The page contains the
words: 'and keep in tune with Heaven'.
4 Jacqui Cooper, Music in Parish Worship (Central Board of Finance of the
Church of England, London, [dated] 1990 [but not published until 1992]).
5 Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1979), pp. 353-358.
27
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
This covered such topics as composition and size of the choir,
types of music sung by the choir and congregation (including
details of hymnals and the degree of usage of pop music), and
the instruments and liturgy in use. The deaneries were chosen
to permit comparison with the results of questionnaires held in
1853 and 1864 (Seaford), and 1922 (Selsey).
A twelve-page questionnaire was sent with the April 1982
copy of Church Music Quarterly to over 5000 correspon-
dents of churches affiliated to the RSCM. It contained a wide
range of questions on the church, its choir, the organ, the
music sung and the numbers of services, music finance, the
choir trainer and organist, and the perceived role of the
RSCM. In his report of the project, Hill wrote:
The results must definitely not be interpreted as representing the
general state of music in the Church of England; almost certainly the
choirs taking part in this survey were among the most active in the
denomination as a whole. While it would be wrong to dismiss the
music which may (or may not) be happening in unaffiliated Anglican
churches as negligible, membership of the RSCM represents such an
advantage to active church choirs, not least in pecuniary terms, that not
to affiliate would be imprudent. The caveat on the nature of the sample
must always be borne in mind. Nevertheless the information gathered
and presented here is, undoubtedly, the best available on Anglican
parish music simply because it is the only available on a wide scale. 1
At about this time, Winter was conducting a survey of choral
liturgical music in the Church of England, with special
reference to central London. This included a short question-
naire, sent to clergy, not only in the archdeaconry of London,
but also, for purposes of comparison, in the deaneries of
Norwich and York. This sought information on liturgies,
hymnals, the choir, and the types of musical instruments used. 2
Administry, the inter-church organisation project, in 1984
held a questionnaire amongst its membership. 3 Unlike Hill's
1 Berkeley Hill, A Survey of Church Music, 1982 (Royal School of Church
Music, Addington, 1983), p. 2.
2 John Winter, Music in London Churches, 1945-1982 (PhD thesis, University
of East Anglia, 1 984), pp. 228-230.
3 A Joyful Noise (Resource Paper 84:7, Administry, St. Albans, 1984) pp. 1-20.
28
INTRODUCTION
survey, questions invited an essay-type response, covering
such areas as hymnals, psalters, song books, choirs, singing
groups, information on those holding posts of musical
leadership, and the extent to which they determined music
policy, and the use of instruments and 'non-congregational'
music. The churches taking part appeared to be mainly of an
evangelical or charismatic background.
A questionnaire to all members of the Music in Worship
Trust was distributed with the Summer 1986 edition of the
magazine Music in Worship. The results were presented a year
later. 1 Apart from seeking members' perceptions of the Trust
and its magazine, to a considerable extent the same ground
was covered as in the Administry survey. Although there was
no question on hymnals, there was one on whether any of the
musicians regularly attended music-training courses.
Three surveys of cathedral music have recently been
published. One by Hill 2 is similar in character to his earlier
survey of music in parish churches. Questionnaires were sent
to the organists of all UK Anglican cathedrals (including
'parish church' cathedrals), and those other establishments
maintaining a cathedral-like choral tradition, such as some
Roman Catholic cathedrals, Oxford and Cambridge college
chapels, and the Royal Peculiars, etc. The second survey is of
the music sung at services at 79 choral foundations in
England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland during 1986. Informa-
tion on the Responses, Morning and Evening Canticles,
Communion Services and Anthems was compiled from the
cathedral service lists. 3 The survey of female voices in
cathedrals has already been noted on page 22.
Before turning to my own survey, let us first look at the
overall changes in church music over the last 30 years.
'Results of Your Completed Questionnaire Forms' in Music in Worship, 39
(Summer 1987), pp. 4-7.
Berkeley Hill, The Organisation of Music in Cathedrals in the United
Kingdom (Cathedral Organists' Association, Addington, 1989).
John Patton, Survey of Music and Repertoire (Friends of Cathedral Music,
Chichester, 1990).
29
Through All The Changing
Scenes Of Life
Recent Developments in Church Music
There have been many changes in the Church of England
during the last 30 years — especially when viewed from the
perspective of the organ console. What are these 'changing
scenes', what has caused them, and have they brought
'trouble' or 'joy'? Two separate but related developments
have together affected parish-church music probably more
than at any time since the Reformation.
The first upheaval has been caused by liturgical changes.
After some 300 years of having a fixed liturgy, in the 1960s
the Church of England began to experiment. This culminated
in the publication of The Alternative Service Book 1980. 2 We
will begin this chapter by examining how these changes have
affected the music.
In parallel with the liturgical changes, there has been an
'explosion' of hymn writing. We will therefore go on to
review hymns and hymnals.
N. Tate and N. Brady, [in, for example,] Hymns Ancient and Modern Revised
(Clowes, Beccles, 1950), No. 290.
The Alternative Service Book 1980 (Clowes, SPCK, CUP, OUP, Mowbray,
and Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1980).
30
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
Dakers emphasises the importance and universality of
hymns:
Hymns are everyone's music in church. They are inevitable and they
are inescapable. Every so many minutes in almost every act of public
worship the entire corpus — clergy, choir and congregation alike —
are brought together in a joint preoccupation, that of singing a hymn. 1
He might easily have added that hymns are very largely
interdenominational. Together with the liturgical changes, the
hymns generated in the explosion have resulted in a rate of
change in church music without parallel since the
Reformation. Technology has played its part in this upheaval
through the media of radio, television, disc (both conven-
tional and compact), cassette and, indeed, photocopying. In
the 'crater' of the explosion, many hymnals have appeared.
The review of hymnals that follows is quite lengthy for
three reasons: firstly because of their centrality in worship,
secondly because of the absence of a recent wide-ranging
review elsewhere, and thirdly (given the title of this book) to
demonstrate how the seemingly innocuous publication of a
new hymnal can become a subject of controversy, even
bitterness. For the sake of completeness, we also look at
psalters and speculate on the form that congregational
singing books will take in the future.
Finally in this chapter we turn our attention to the training
facilities available to help church musicians weather these
upheavals.
The Effects of Liturgical Change
Liturgical change evokes a wide variety of responses. There
are those who embrace change — any change — with enthusi-
asm. Worship, they argue, must be expressed in contemporary
terms such that the Christian message may be understood by
all — those outside the Church as well as those within it — even
if the message is sometimes poorly presented aesthetically.
i
Lionel Dakers, Choosing and Using Hymns (Mowbray, Oxford, 1985), p. 15.
31
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Others take a different view. If a form of worship has 'stood
the test of time', then surely there is little merit in changing it.
Three times in the last 500 years great liturgical upheavals
have taken place in Britain: the Reformation, Vatican II, and
The Alternative Service Book 1980. On each occasion the
effects have been far reaching, not least on music and
musicians.
We can regard the English Reformation as the period from
Henry VIIFs break with Rome in 1534, through the publica-
tion of Cranmer's first Book of Common Prayer in 1549,
subsequent editions of 1552 and 1559, to the final edition in
1662. It was a time of great turbulence, as battles to the death
were fought between the Papists and Puritans.
The few musicians who did manage to retain or secure appointments
in the Henrician Church found themselves faced with almost
insuperable difficulties. The Act of Uniformity, which was passed on
21 January 1549, decreed that 'the Book of Common Prayer and
none other' was to be used on and after 9 June of that year. This
meant that in five months all the plainsong and traditional music built
up over the centuries would be ruthlessly swept away, and masses,
motets, and all settings of the Latin would become illegal. 1
It is hard to imagine just how bitter at the time this blow must
have been. Yet life had to go on and, in the succeeding years
and centuries, composers responded to the command to 'sing
a new song to the Lord' 2 .
In recent years there has been a 'Reformation' in the
Roman Church.
The Roman Catholic Church, for long regarded as the most
unchanging of churches, surprised both itself and the world at large
by the speed and scale of the changes upon which it embarked in the
1960s. The manner of these changes, however, was characteristic.
There was little choice about it; the faithful were told that certain
i
Kenneth R. Long, The Music of the English Church (Hodder and Stoughton,
London, 1972), p. 26.
Psalm 96, v. 1 .
32
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
things were going to happen (the most spectacular and controversial
of which was the introduction of the vernacular), and they did. 1
In the twenty years following Vatican II, the Roman Rite
changed more than it had in the previous fifteen hundred.
[Before Vatican II] music at 'Sung Mass' (usually one mass per
parish per week) would consist of a choral mass setting, generally
tuneful but undistinguished, with a motet or two in the same vein and
the 'proper' parts sung to a psalm-tone. The full plainchant propers
were too difficult for the average choir; such music, and elaborate
polyphony, were rare, and congregational singing even rarer. . . .
Hymns were not sung; these were reserved for separate Marian and
Eucharistic 'devotions'.
Vatican II planted not one but two time bombs in this world. The
first was the vernacular, which threatened the entire repertoire of
Latin masses and motets, the second was the call to involve the
people. The people had not sung at Mass ... for centuries. ... In
many places the musicians simply found themselves being bypassed
by enthusiastic clergy who wanted to get on. Some choirs were
disbanded and others were sacked.
The task confronting the Roman Church should not be under-
estimated.
It was nothing more or less than the making of a new music for a
whole church's liturgy, something not attempted since the
Reformation. Music has an enormously important role in the
religious 'universe' of the average worshipper, which is why it
provokes such strong feelings. To tamper with it is always risky, but
to rebuild it is an undertaking which will need much more than the 22
years that have elapsed since the Council.
Seen in the context of the previous two events, the
introduction of The Alternative Service Book 1980 was a very
low-key affair. No-one was burnt at the stake, the language
of worship had previously been, and still was, the mother
tongue, and hymnody remained the most common form of
musical expression. In any case it was, as its name suggested,
1 [Fr] Stephen Dean, 'Roman Catholic Music: the Recent Past and the Future'
in In Spirit and in Truth (ed. Robin Sheldon) (Hodder and Stoughton,
London, 1989), pp. 31-48.
33
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
only an alternative. That having been said, there must be
exceedingly few members of the Church of England who
have never encountered the ASB. Indeed, for very many
congregations it now provides the only form of liturgical
worship. How did this come about?
The first real challenge to the Book of Common Prayer
emerged in the nineteenth century. In 1927 a revised book
was agreed by the Church Assembly, but rejected by the
House of Commons. After minor changes, a second sub-
mission to Parliament suffered the same fate. Undaunted, the
bishops took the law into their own hands by publishing the
book with a disclaimer that it was not authorised for use in
churches, and then issuing a statement effectively inviting
clergy to ignore the disclaimer. In this way The Book of
Common Prayer with the additions and deviations proposed
in 1928 came into widespread albeit illegal use.
In 1966 the Prayer Book (Alternative and Other Services)
Measure was passed by Parliament, enabling the Church to
determine its own alternative services, each being for
'optional and experimental use for a period of seven or ten
years'. The Church of England (Worship and Doctrine)
Measure of 1974 now enables General Synod to regulate all
matters relating to worship, provided that the Book of
Common Prayer remains 'available' and unaltered. However,
the precise meaning of 'available' and to whom is unclear: a
survey in 1984 demonstrated that in most Anglican
theological colleges the BCP was seldom or never used. 1
The 1928 Prayer Book was, with minor revision,
republished in 1966 under the title Alternative Services: Series
1. Meanwhile a Liturgical Commission, appointed in 1955,
had produced the first set of its own proposals, and Alternative
Services: Second Series were approved in 1967/8. The
changes introduced in Series 2 were of much greater interest
to the theologian or liturgiologist than to the church musician
1 Dr Roger Homan and Prof, the Revd David Martin, Theological Colleges
and the Book of Common Prayer: a Survey (Prayer Book Society, London,
1986), pp. 5-10.
34
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
or congregation. However, two movements of the mid-1960s:
one for ecumenical co-operation, the other for the use of
contemporary English in worship, resulted in major overhaul
of the liturgy for the Series 3 services, introduced between
1973 and 1979. In turn, these services underwent minor
revision, and were published in one volume: The Alternative
Service Book 1980. The modified Series 3 communion service
was given the title of 'Rite A': 'Rite B', a hybrid of Series 1
and 2, was included in the same volume. General Synod
approved the use of the ASB for an initial period of ten years
and, more recently, for a further ten. I wonder whether the
ASB will be given a further lease of life beyond the year 2000.
Another influence on the ASB was the Liturgical Move-
ment, beginning in the Roman Catholic Church on the
Continent last century.
It led to more frequent reception of Holy Communion, [and] a desire
for more lay participation in worship. . . . Similar stirrings can be
detected in the Church of England in the early years of the twentieth
century, but the process really started to get under way . . . with the
publication in 1935 of Liturgy and Society by A.G. Hebert SSM and
two years later a collection of essays, The Parish Communion, also
edited by Hebert. From this was born 'the Parish Communion
Movement' , which aimed at restoring the Eucharist as the central act
of worship in a parish on a Sunday morning. 1
However, the Movement's success has not been without a
price. In the current shortage of Church of England clergy, it
is sometimes necessary for a priest to hurry from church to
church on a Sunday morning, in some cases his time of
arrival being scheduled to coincide with the prayer of
consecration.
The earlier liturgical changes had little impact on the
Church's music. 2 However, as the eighties dawned and
1 R.C.D. Jasper and Paul F. Bradshaw, A Companion to the Alternative Service
Book (SPCK, London, 1986), pp. 22-23.
2 The only major change was the inclusion of the 'Benedictus qui venif and
'Agnus DeV in the Communion Service of the 1928 Prayer Book, after their
exile from the 1552 and 1662 books. However, in practice these items had
already been in use for some time in the more catholic churches, and indeed
35
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
'Series 3 Communion' became 'Rite A', with increasing
numbers (especially of clergy) committed to it, composers set
about the task of writing suitable settings. By 1988 there were
at least 44 settings either composed for or suitable for Rite A. 1
The extension of the lifetime of the ASB until at least 2000 is
likely to encourage further compositions based on this Rite,
despite certain inherent difficulties with the text. 2 Although
several settings have been written expressly for Rite B, earlier
works can be used, more or less without modification.
Owing to the widespread adoption of Parish (or 'Family')
Communion, Morning Prayer ('Martins') is little used. It
would appear (page 148) that not merely in Morning Prayer,
but in Evening Prayer also, the BCP version is more
commonly used than that in the ASB. Moreover, the custom
in parish churches is to sing the canticles to an Anglican
chant rather than to a fully choral 'setting'. Such settings
tend only to be sung in cathedrals, where the Offices are
almost invariably according to the BCP. Composers have
therefore tended not to write settings for the ASB canticles. 3
General Note 3 of the ASB reads: 'Prayer Book Texts.
Where parts of a service are sung to well-known settings, the
traditional words for which they were composed may be
used.' However, such use of traditional texts is rare except in
cathedrals, where even Latin settings in an otherwise Rite A
service are by no means unknown.
Although the introduction of the ASB did not affect the
Church's hymnody, here too changes were afoot, as we will
now see.
had already appeared in, for example, Darke's Service in F, published in
1926.
1 The Alternative Service Book 1980 (An annotated list of music published by
the RSCM and others for: Communion Rite A, Communion Rite B, Canticles,
etc.) (Royal School of Church Music, Addington, 1988), [pp. 3-7, 11-17].
2 Robert Ashfield, 'The Composer and the ASB' in The Friends of Cathedral
Music Annual Report, 29 (April 1986), p. 28.
3 One exception is Alan Wilson who, in the Christus Rex series, has written
settings of all fourteen canticles, in addition to the Norwich Service setting of
the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (not to mention, at the last count, four Rite
A settings).
36
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
Hymnals and Psalters
In the last thirty years many new hymnals have appeared. Of
these, four major works have been aimed primarily at the
Church of England. These are, in chronological order:
Anglican Hymn Book, Hymns for Today's Church, Hymns
Ancient and Modern New Standard Edition, and The New
English Hymnal. We will begin by looking at these and,
where applicable, their forerunners.
Having passed its silver jubilee, the Anglican Hymn Book 1
stands slightly apart from from those that were to appear in
the 1980s.
It is many years since a completely new hymn book appeared for use
in the Church of England. ... In making this collection, we have
tried to envisage the needs of the whole Church, both now and in the
future.
Both the title and the reference in the preface to 'the whole
Church' implied a universality lacking in the then current
editions of Hymns Ancient and Modern and The English
Hymnal. However, its evangelical outlook could be seen in,
for example, the hymn: 'We love the place, O God'. The line
'We love thine altar, Lord' had become 'We love our Father's
board'. One innovation, not subsequently adopted by other
books, was the inclusion in the metrical index of the first two
lines of each tune. The Anglican Hymn Book was the first to
publish the now famous paraphrase of the Magnificat by
Timothy Dudley-Smith: 'Tell out, my soul, the greatness of
the Lord'. Leaver writes:
From today's vantage point the new material presented in Anglican
Hymn Book may look rather small but to have included about forty
new tunes, twenty or so new texts, together with many alternative
musical settings was certainly a creditable achievement for the time,
when the modern growth in hymn writing had hardly begun. 2
Anglican Hymn Book (Church Book Room Press, London, 1965).
Robin Leaver A Hymn Book Survey 1962-80 (Booklet No. 71) (Grove,
Nottingham, 1980), p. 8.
37
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
In 1975 a supplement of 49 additional tunes was added, to be
followed in the 1978 reprint by a further 29 hymn texts.
Leaver scornfully refers to these as 'hymnological jerry-
building.' A further supplement, in the form of a separate
volume, Anglican Praise 1 , contains a hundred hymns, of
which roughly seventy are contemporary. The editors
expressed the hope in the preface that other congregations
besides those using the Anglican Hymnal would find the
supplement useful. Cowley 2 has praised the editors for
selecting from a wide range of authors and composers, and
'avoiding the trap fallen into by so many of their illustrious
predecessors — that of including a disproportionate number of
their own hymns and tunes'.
'Great hymns of every age in the language of today' : so ran
the pre-publication advertisements for Hymns for Today's
Church. 3 In the preface, the consultant editor Michael
Baughen (who had until recently been Rector of All Souls',
Langham Place, London) referred to it as 'the first major new
hymn book of the new era' . This was perhaps less than fair to
the Anglican Hymn Book, especially since in some respects it
could be said to be a forerunner of the newer work. The book
contained some 600 hymns. Of these, about 140 had not
previously been published, and more than 100 had appeared
in the supplementary hymnals during the 1970s. The
remaining hymns were all traditional but, in most cases, with
revised words. Elsewhere in the preface there was a hint of
defensiveness (for example, the changes in wording of the
hymns being referred to as 'invisible mending'). One of the
book's editors went to the extent of writing a separate
booklet 4 explaining the reasoning behind the project.
Much controversy surrounded the official launch of the
work, which took place during General Synod week at a
Anglican Praise (OUP, Oxford, 1988).
Stephen Cowley, 'Anglican Praise' in Christian Music, Autumn 1988, p. 39.
Hymns for Today's Church (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1982).
Christopher Idle, Hymns in Today's Language (Booklet No. 81) (Grove,
Nottingham, 1982).
38
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
service in St Margaret's, Westminster — the church of the
House of Commons. Such was the ill-feeling that several
Conservative MPs protested that people 'might think that the
book had the approval of the Commons'. 1 The concern was
twofold. Firstly, the book (like the Anglican Hymn Book
before it) was claiming to be for all Anglicans, but in outlook
was very evangelical. 2 In the hymn 'We love the place, O
God', the 'sacred font' had been changed into 'cleansing
sign' (the altar already having been banished in the Anglican
Hymnal version). The words editor, Michael S award, replied
that the aim had been to select hymns that could be sung
'equally by Baptists and Roman Catholics'. 3
The more controversial issue was the rewriting of the
words. This included changing 'thee' and 'thou' to 'you', and
the removal of archaic endings such as '-est' and '-eth'.
These are illustrated in the hymn 'Immortal, invisible, God
only wise'. The verse:
To all life thou givest — to both great and small;
In all life thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish — but naught changeth thee.
became:
To all life you give, Lord, to both great and small,
in all life you live, Lord, the true life of all:
we blossom and flourish, uncertain and frail,
we wither and perish, but you never fail.
It was perhaps inevitable that a book incorporating changes
of this magnitude would lead to controversy. However, the
matter which caused a national uproar was the significant
rewriting of the National Anthem in an attempt to remove
'emotive language'.
i
'New hymnbook compilers give some facts & figures' in Church Times,
6248 (12 November 1982), p. 24.
A.B. Robinson, 'Hymns & churchmanship' in Church Times, 6252 (10
December 1982), p. 12.
Michael Saward, 'New hymnbook & churchmanship' in Church Times, 6253
(17 December 1982), p. 12.
39
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Traditional Revised
God save our gracious Queen, God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen, God bless and guard our Queen,
God save the Queen! long live the Queen!
Send her victorious, Guard us in liberty,
Happy and glorious, bless us with unity,
Long to reign over us; save us from tyranny:
God save the Queen! God save the Queen!
At a press conference, Michael Baughen pointed out that the
ordinary form of the National Anthem was printed elsewhere
in the book. 1
The polarisation of views concerning the book did not
seem to diminish with time. One correspondent referred to
'vandalism . . . done to many well-loved hymns and carols'. 2
In reply, another wrote: 'At last I can sing hymns in the
language I speak, which helps me to express what my heart
wants to say so much better than the antiquated words of
previous centuries.' 3 A third took a cautious view, suggesting
that: '[word changing] is good for us, as it focuses our
attention on the wording in front of us.' 4 However, this was
tempered with the comment, which some might wish to apply
also to the ASB: T suppose change is good but, as in the case
of this hymn book, so much concerning the Church of
England today appears to be change solely for the sake of
change, which might be justified if only it was filling our
churches.'
The difficulty ... as every hymnologist knows, is that hymns have
been [in a state of] being rewritten since they began. . . . The Wesleys
protested (not always successfully) against having their own hymns
rewritten; but they were ready enough to rewrite the works of lesser
1 'New hymnbook compilers give some facts & figures' in Church Times,
6248 (12 November 1982), p. 24.
2 Peter Heath, 'Misled by modern hymns' in Church of England Newspaper,
4783 (24 January 1986), p. 10.
3 Gillian Orpin, 'Grateful for modern hymns' in Church of England
Newspaper, 4786 (14 February 1986), p. 11.
4 Hugh Lawson Johnston, 'Word-changing of well-known hymns' in Church
of England Newspaper, 4785 (7 February 1986), p. 11.
40
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
hymnodists. And few people would now blame them. ... In the end,
it all depends on who's doing the rewriting. 1
The following appeared a few weeks after the hymnal's
publication:
Hymns for Today's Church must be the last hymn book to be
published in our generation. Our generation needs not bound hymn
books designed to last for ten years but loose-leaf compilations that
will be able to cope with the torrent of new worship-songs that shows
no sign of drying up. In twenty or thirty years we shall have a fair
idea of what is worth keeping. Until then it will be prudent to make
provisional judgments and to keep our options open. 2
However, this was not to be, as we shall see shortly. In the
second edition, published in 1988, there is a new 'Traditional
words' section. However, other hymns have been re- written
on the grounds of the perceived need for inclusive (non-
sexist) language. This has made the two editions
incompatible, a situation which other publishers have
normally managed to avoid. In 1988, the Revd. Christopher
Idle, one of the editors of Hymns for Today's Church, was
asked if he had changed his mind concerning the
modernisation of hymns. He admitted: 'Personally I have
retreated from dogmatic rejection of anything archaic.' 3
Hymns Ancient and Modern New Standard 4 was published
in 1983 only a few months after Hymns for Today's Church,
and contained in contrast no original material at all. How had
this come about? The story of the first hundred years of
Hymns Ancient and Modern has been written by Clarke. 5
Since its birth as a product of the Oxford Movement in 1861,
1 John Whale, 'It depends who does it' in Church Times, 6622 (12 January
1990), p. 7.
John King, 'Grasping the nettle of hymn copyright' in Church Times, 6250
(26 November 1982), p. 10.
Christopher Idle, 'Twenty Questions about Anglican Praise'' in Church of
England Newspaper, 4914 (12 August 1988), p. 6.
Hymns Ancient and Modern New Standard (Hymns Ancient and Modern
Ltd., Norwich, 1983).
W.K. Lowther Clarke, A Hundred Years of Hymns Ancient & Modern
(William Clowes, London, 1960).
41
2
3
5
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
it has undergone many revisions and supplements. One of
these, in 1904, was widely criticised, in part because of its
alteration of words to improve intelligibility 1 (a similar
exercise to that attempted more recently in Hymns for
Today's Church). For example, in the second line of Mrs
Alexander's hymn 'There is a green hill', the word 'without'
was replaced by 'outside'. Suffice it to say that in all
subsequent revisions, including that of 1983, 'without' has
been used. The Standard Edition (itself containing two
supplements) appeared in 1922. Long commented: 'With
careful selection . . . even the most discriminating could find
a wide range of superb hymns in this curiously patchwork
book.' 2 It is a testimony to this edition (described by Routley
as 'nothing less than a national institution' 3 ) that new copies
were on the display shelves of a bookshop in Oxford in 1992,
70 years after publication.
In 1950 there appeared a new edition, entitled Hymns
Ancient and Modern Revised 4 , in which the supplements
were finally merged into the main volume, but in such a way
that the most popular hymns were allowed to retain their
existing numbers. Some hymns were removed either because
they had never found favour, or because the editors sensed or
even anticipated changes in congregations' tastes. The
preface summed up the aspirations of the book:
[It is hoped that] in this new book the Church will find the same
endearing and enduring qualities as in the old, the same heartfelt yet
sober tone, so much in keeping with English-speaking Christianity.
. . . The book does not aim at breaking fresh ground or exploiting
novel ideas.
Long felt that it fully deserved its great popularity.
i
2
3
Marianne Barton, 'From Ancient to Modern' in Church Music Quarterly,
April 1990, pp. 16-17.
Kenneth R. Long, The Music of the English Church (Hodder and Stoughton,
London, 1972), p. 400.
Eric Routley, The Music of Christian Hymnody (Independent Press, London,
1957), p. 119.
Hymns Ancient and Modern Revised (William Clowes, Beccles, 1950).
42
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
100 Hymns for Today 1 was one of the first of many
supplements to many hymnals. In the Preface, the editors
wrote:
Today's Christians need today's songs as well as yesterday's. . . .
Although this book is a collection of hymns for our own time, it does
not go so far in the direction of modernity as to include those written
in an idiom likely to be so shortlived that any book containing them
will be dated within months of publication. We have tried to steer a
middle course, therefore, between restatements of the traditional and
ephemeral or 'pop' productions.
Examples of 'today's songs' are: 'Living Lord' (Patrick
Appleford), 'Sing we a song of high revolt' (Fred Kaan),
'God of concrete, God of steel' (Richard G Jones), and 'No
use knocking on the window' (Sydney Carter), which
contains the verse:
Jesus Christ has gone to heaven;
One day he'll be coming back, sir.
In this house he will be welcome,
But we hope he won't be black, sir.
By 1978, more than a million copies had been sold, which
must surely have been a significant factor in the decision to
publish a sequel. Strangely, 100 Hymns for Today lacked an
index of first lines, an omission remedied in the sequel. The
preface to More Hymns for Today 2 set the tone for the work.
Since [the publication of 100 Hymns for Today] there has been an
unexpected, fresh and exciting output of English hymns, which that
supplement may have done something to bring about. . . . Among
these recent hymns there are those that have about them something of
the elusive quality which seems to mark them with a more enduring
character. At least they deserve to be tested for a longer time and
introduced more widely in the service of the Church. . . . Like its
predecessor, [this] book seeks to be forward looking without
abandoning restraint; to be sensitive to the changing needs and
100 Hymns for Today (Clowes, London, 1969).
More Hymns for Today (Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd., Norwich, 1980).
43
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
renewed vitality of the Church in a turbulent world, while being
rooted in the long, living tradition of the people of God.
Again there is a blend of old and contemporary. For example,
the hymn 'Sent forth by God's blessing' (Omer Westerndorf,
b. 1916) is set to the tune 'The Ash Grove'. A hauntingly
beautiful poem, taken from a work by Canon William
Vanstone, is set to Song 13 by Orlando Gibbons. However,
the text has been altered and, in particular, parts of the first
two verses merged to reduce the total number from seven to
six. I find this regrettable, especially since there is no
reference to the alteration. Here are the first three verses in
their original version. 1
Morning glory, starlit sky,
Leaves in springtime, swallows' flight,
Autumn gales, tremendous seas,
Sounds and scents of summer night;
Soaring music, tow'ring words,
Art's perfection, scholar's truth,
Joy supreme of human love,
Memory's treasure, grace of youth;
Open, Lord, are these, Thy gifts,
Gifts of love to mind and sense;
Hidden is love's agony,
Love's endeavour, love's expense.
There is also a paraphrase of the Nunc Dimittis by Timothy
Dudley-Smith.
Faithful vigil ended,
watching, waiting cease;
Master, grant thy servant
his discharge in peace. 2
1 W.H. Vanstone, Love's Endeavour Love's Expense — The Response of Being
to the Love of God (Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1977), pp. 119—
120.
I have never been able to come to terms with 'discharge'.
44
2
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
In contrast, there is the American folk hymn: 'Were you there
when they crucified my Lord?'. There is also the hymn by
the seventeenth-century poet John Mason:
Now from the altar of our hearts
let incense flames arise;
assist us, Lord, to offer up
our morning sacrifice.
It is fun to speculate on what the editors of Hymns for
Today's Church would have made of that one.
The publication of Hymns Ancient and Modern New
Standard was a very low-key affair compared with the
excitement over Hymns for Today's Church a few months
earlier. 'For it is seemly so to do' came instinctively to the
mind of the reviewer 1 , when first browsing through the new
work. In the preface she would have read:
English liturgies of the 1980s provide prayers using both the 'Thou'
and the 'You' form in address to God or Christ. It has seemed
unnecessary to rewrite classical hymns to conform to the 'You' form.
Experience suggests that congregations make the adjustment to 'Thou'
without difficulty. The feminist movement has also affected attitudes
to some hymns. . . . Unlike many other languages, English has only the
one word 'man' to carry three distinct meanings: (a) the human race as
a whole, (b) an individual human being, (c) an adult male as opposed
to a woman or a boy. Some voices of feminine emancipation have
come to object to the first two meanings, not to the third. But we have
not thought it right to alter the words of hymns to meet this objection.
The book was produced by selecting just over half the material
in Hymns Ancient and Modern Revised and adding all of 100
Hymns for Today and More Hymns for Today onto the end.
Many of the earlier hymns were transposed down for the
benefit of congregations (but not perhaps altos and basses). In
common with practice elsewhere, minims have been replaced
by crotchets. There is a list of suitable hymns for the ASB
Sunday lectionary. Finally, several well-known tunes have been
1 Margaret Daniel, 'Judicious pruning' in Church Times, 6278 (10 June 1983),
p. 7.
45
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
added (for example 'Down Ampney' by Vaughan Williams). It
seems strange that the publishers rushed into print only three
years after More Hymns for Today, allowing those hymns no
time for testing before being granted a measure of permanence.
It is also surprising that every single one of 100 Hymns for
Today was considered to have passed muster.
New Standard is available in two forms: Complete, and
Abridged (that is, without the material from the supplements).
The two books 100 Hymns for Today and More Hymns for
Today have now been merged into a single volume: Hymns for
Today. A further recent addition to the family is Worship Songs
Ancient and Modern 1 , bridging, in the words of the editors: 'the
present gap between the classic hymn and the popular chorus'.
The fourth major publication aimed towards the Church of
England is The New English Hymnal. 2 The two main hymn
books of the Church of England, Hymns Ancient and Modern
and The English Hymnal 3 , have always been regarded as rivals,
although this came about by accident. Percy Dearmer and the
other compilers of The English Hymnal originally wished
merely to produce a supplement to Hymns Ancient and Modern
for the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church. 4 However,
following the controversy over the 1904 edition, they came
under strong pressure to undertake a completely new book
which, even then, was not intended as a rival to Ancient and
Modern. Not surprisingly, the Ancient and Modern proprietors
felt unable to grant permission to reproduce certain copyright
items, which caused the musical editor, Vaughan Williams, to
draw on English folk melodies, thereby endowing the book
with one of its greatest strengths.
He drew extensively on three sources practically untapped by
previous compilers: sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French
'church melodies', nineteenth-century Welsh Methodist tunes, and
Worship Songs Ancient and Modern (Canterbury Press, Norwich, 1992).
The New English Hymnal (Canterbury Press, Norwich, 1986).
The English Hymnal (OUP and Mowbray, London, 1906).
Marianne Barton, 'From Ancient to Modern' in Church Music Quarterly,
April 1990, pp. 16-17.
46
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
English secular folk-songs (or tunes modelled on them). The editor's
own contributions included his beautiful 'Down Ampney' ('Come
down, O Love divine') and the sturdy 'Sine Nomine' ('For all the
saints'), one of the best hymn-tunes of the century. . . . The English
Hymnal was a marked advance on most previous collections:
furthermore, because of the excellence of both words and music, the
more cultured and intellectual type of congregation preferred it to the
old unreformed Ancient and Modern}
Memories sometimes die hard, and it is possible that the
refusal of permission by the proprietors of Ancient and
Modern in 1905 prevented their successors from being
allowed in 1950 to use the tunes 'Down Ampney' and 'Sine
Nomine' in Ancient and Modern Revised.
The thirties brought no more than minor textual and
musical changes to The English Hymnal. 2 An unsuccessful
experiment was the publication of The English Hymnal
Service Book. 3 Some three hundred hymns taken from The
English Hymnal were combined with psalms, canticles and
other liturgical material. Canon Cyril Taylor commented:
'Whether this book fulfilled any particular need I have never
been able to discover'. 4
The preface to English Praise 5 stated:
It was at first intended to produce a complete revision of The English
Hymnal . . . but in a period of liturgical change which might well
result in a radical revision of the calendar, it seemed preferable to be
content for the time being with a supplement.
As might be expected, this hymnal contains a considerable
amount of material that had already seen the light of day in
either Ancient and Modern Revised or one of its two
supplements. However, in common with The English Hymnal,
many of the hymns are for specific times in the Church's year,
1 Kenneth R. Long, The Music of the English Church (Hodder and Stoughton,
London, 1972), p. 399.
" The English Hymnal (New Edition) (OUP and Mowbray, London, 1933).
3 The English Hymnal Service Book (OUP, London, 1962).
4 Cyril Taylor, 'And still they come' in English Church Music (Royal School
of Church Music, Addington, 1976), p. 60.
5 English Praise (OUP, London, 1975).
47
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
for example 'Bitter was the night' (Sydney Carter, Passiontide)
and 'The angel rolled the stone away' (Negro spiritual, Easter).
One innovation is the inclusion of a small number of
responsorial psalms by Dom Gregory Murray. Again, like The
English Hymnal, the book makes use of English traditional
material. An example of this is the carol 'The truth from
above', but the editors seem to have been a little careless in the
selection of verses. 1 They took the text, without alteration, from
The Oxford Book of Carols 2 , no doubt trusting the judgment of
the earlier book's editors, namely Percy Dearmer, Ralph
Vaughan Williams, and Martin Shaw. Yet close inspection of
the first three verses suggests that something may be missing:
This is the truth sent from above,
The truth of God, the God of love,
Therefore don't turn me from your door,
But hearken all both rich and poor.
The first thing which I do relate
Is that God did man create;
The next thing which to you I'll tell —
Woman was made with man to dwell.
And we were heirs to endless woes,
Till God the Lord did interpose;
And so a promise soon did run
That he would redeem us by his Son.
A still earlier version of the text 3 provides the answer:
. . . with man to dwell.
Then after this 'twas God's own choice,
To place them both in paradise,
There to remain from evil free.
Except they ate of such a tree.
The worst example of this that I ever personally encountered was the annual
omission of verse 3 in 'While shepherds watched' at a certain church's carol
service.
The Oxford Book of Carols (OUP, Oxford, 1928).
Ellen M. Leather, 'Carols from Herefordshire' in Journal of the Folk Song
Society, Vol. iv, No. 14 (June 1910), p. 17. R.V.W. incorporated these extra
two verses into his Fantasia on Christmas Carols (1912).
48
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
And they did eat, which was a sin,
And thus their ruin did begin;
Ruined themselves, both you and me,
And all of their posterity.
Thus we were heirs . . .
Whether these verses were omitted accidentally or deliber-
ately from the earlier book is unknown. The former seems
unlikely (especially given the change from 'Thus' to 'And'),
but the latter seems equally strange, not only because of the
logical discontinuity. The carol is clearly intended to tell the
story of Creation, the Fall, and Redemption of mankind. To
deprive the reader or listener of any one of these is to rewrite
Christian theology. The editors of English Praise (or The
Oxford Book of Carols, for that matter) seem scarcely the sort
of people who would wish to do so.
Like Hymns for Today's Church, the publication of The
New English Hymnal was surrounded by controversy. In this
case, however, it was the review of the book in Church Times
that proved controversial.
The publication in 1906 of The English Hymnal is rightly regarded as
a landmark in English hymnody. . . . The publication this week of The
New English Hymnal will be in no sense a landmark. It is not very
new; some four hundred of its five hundred hymns come from the
earlier book, and three quarters of the remainder have been tried out
in English Praise. The editors regard most post-war hymnody as
'poor in quality and ephemeral in expression'. Consequently most
writers associated with the hymn explosion have scanty representa-
tion. . . . Timothy Dudley-Smith is the most favoured of con-
temporary hymn-writers — apart from George Timms, chairman of the
editorial committee. The musicians of the committee contribute
considerably to the relatively small number of new tunes. . . . Not
much [ousted] from the 1906 collection will be missed, but the book
is still 'stuffed out with second-rate creaking translations of Greek
and Latin hymns'. . . }
[Canon] Alan Dunstan, 'Not-so-radical revision' in Church Times, 6415 (24
January 1986), p. 5.
49
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Were these criticisms fair? A reporter at the official launch
wrote:
Apart from the normal hymns — which Mr Timms said were mostly
for 'sober and peaceable Anglicans' although some 'popular hymns,
typical of the catholic tradition' had slipped in — there is at the end of
the book a sizable liturgical section mostly designed for use with the
new Alternative Service Book. This section includes special words
and music for the Church's seasons, feasts and holy days, some
plainsong sequences, collects for processions and psalms. It also
includes a new English Folk Mass for Rite A, well suited to
congregational participation. 1
A setting of Rite B to Merbecke has also been included. The
psalms are by Dom Gregory Murray, most already having
appeared in English Praise. As in Ancient and Modern New
Standard, several of the hymns have been transposed down.
In the weeks following publication, there was considerable
correspondence in the press.
I was disturbed by Canon Dunstan's damning review. ... A reviewer
must be free to criticise, but his criticisms must be tempered by an
attitude which is basically benevolent — especially so in the case of a
new hymn-book published after many years of hard work. . . . The
book is a revision, not a new hymnal. ... I consider [it] to be an
excellent piece of work. The brilliance of the original has been
conserved; omissions and blemishes have been corrected; new tunes
have been added. I look forward to using it at Southwark Cathedral. 2
However, the rejection of 'anything broadly charismatic' was
regretted by a Director of Ordinands:
It is true that the erudite . . . can easily point to examples of the naive
and the simplistic within the Renewal Movement. I do find it worthy
of comment, though, that ... it is our Sunday evening praise service,
where these charges could most easily be levelled, to which hundreds
of (mainly young) people come flocking. In this we are not unique.
1 Claire Disbrey, 'Revised hymnal for "sober and peaceable Anglicans" ' in
Church of England Newspaper, 4784 (31 January 1986), p. 16.
2 Harry Bramma 'The New English Hymnal' in Church Times, 6418 (14
February 1986), p. 14.
50
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
Like many priests my natural sympathies lie with the preservation of a
high musical standard in worship, . . . but the charismatic Renewal
Movement challenges this. The Church of England cannot ignore this. 1
This seems a valid point, however difficult we may find it,
but the reply from Archdeacon Timms seemed antagonistic:
I am uncertain of the precise meaning of the term 'charismatic' as
used in current Christian parlance and would value enlightenment.
... In my understanding of the term, any good hymn is charismatic —
or it is not a good hymn. ... I am told that 'choruses' (whatever they
are) are a sign of the charismatic. Certainly there are plenty of hymns
. . . which have a refrain after each verse which could be sung with
gusto. . . . We have included 'Were you there?' and 'Lord of the
Dance' and 'Living Lord'. Are they accounted 'broadly charismatic'?
We did indeed reject that curious American folksong which appears
in recent hymnals, 'Let us break bread together on our knees' 2 —
which, to an Anglican at least, would be an extraordinary
proceeding. 3
A fuller explanation of the thinking behind The New English
Hymnal eventually appeared. 4 Another reviewer at its official
launch felt that 'at times drama and emotional intensity [had]
been sacrificed to respectability', but that this was 'the best
book for those who want traditional liturgy'. 5 In lighter vein,
he wondered what Vaughan Williams would have thought of
the obliteration of the Dorian mode in 'Greensleeves', and
drew attention to the misprint in 'All glory, laud and honour',
and its doctrinal implications:
Though art the King of Israel,
Thou David's royal Son . . .
[Canon] Michael Banks, 'Hymns and renewal' in Church Times, 6417 (2
February 1986), p. 15.
For example in Hymns Ancient and Modern New Standard.
G.B. Timms, 'Charismatic element in The New English Hymnal' in Church
Times, 6418 (14 February 1986), p. 14.
George Timms, 'Hymns for Today's Anglicans' in Church Music Quarterly,
July 1992, pp. 22-23.
Martyn Cundy, '500 well-loved English hymns' in Church of England
Newspaper, 4789 (7 March 1986), p. 6.
51
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Both The New English Hymnal and Hymns Ancient and
Modern New Standard are now published by the Canterbury
Press at Norwich. Oxford University Press, publisher of The
English Hymnal, was approached in the mid-1970s concern-
ing the production of a new book, but the price quoted was
felt to be too high. Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd offered a
lower price, which was accepted. 1 (The 1933 edition will
continue to be published by OUP for the foreseeable future.)
Although I am aware of no long-term plan for the ultimate
merger of these two old rivals, the original aim of the compilers
of The English Hymnal was for it to be merely a supplement to
Hymns Ancient and Modern. Now that they share a common
publisher, is it possible that this will be the next development,
or will the two 'markets' be sufficiently diverse to justify
continuation of two separate publications? Alternatively, a
'core' book could cover the common ground, with a choice of
supplements. If, however, the ordination of women to the
priesthood creates a schism within the Church of England, it is
possible that those departing will require their own hymn book.
In addition to the 'mainstream' Anglican hymnals, many
interdenominational books are in fairly widespread use in the
Church of England. Virtually all these have been published
or republished in the last twenty years. 2 We briefly look at
these, in chronological order of the date of publication (or,
where applicable, that of the parent volume).
The Public School Hymn Book was first published in 1903. If
not strictly Anglican, it nonetheless had a strong Anglican
flavour. While it obviously was directed towards a very
specialised group, within that group it was very successful, and
revised editions appeared in 1919 and 1949. A total revision of
the book in the early 1960s resulted in a change of name to
1 Marianne Barton, 'From Ancient to Modern' in Church Music Quarterly,
April 1990, pp. 16-17.
2 Also, each of the other major denominations has its own hymnal and, of
these, several have produced a supplement and/or new edition in recent years
or are in the process of planning one. These books, however, in general fall
outside the scope of the present work (although in a few instances they are
used by Anglicans, for example in ecumenical churches).
52
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
Hymns for Church and School. 1 Long describes the book as
excellent, 'representative of all periods and particularly rich in
twentieth-century hymns and tunes'. 2 Its supplement Praise
and Thanksgiving 3 contains hymns written in the twenty years
since the previous book, as well as some older ones. Its
preface states that the aim was to 'combine high artistic
standards with singability so that hymns may be sung and
enjoyed, and remembered with pleasure and profit'. Its launch
by the Headmasters' Conference at Radley College prompted
a vicar's wife to question the need for such a hymn book:
It is continuing the divisiveness that public schools are at such pains
to end — or are they? It was Jilly Cooper who said that the upper
classes went to church to have a 'jolly good sing', and I suspect that
this is what this new book is all about. . . . This should be a time for
uniting people with one or two good hymnbooks sung by all
congregations; and I am sorry that public schools in particular should
issue their 'own' book. 4
Songs of Praise 5 was conceived as a hymnal national rather
than denominational in character. For almost half a century it
was widely used in schools. As can be seen from the preface,
the book was a reaction against Victoriana:
Our churches, both Anglican and Free Church, have alienated during
the last half-century much of the strongest character and intelligence
of the Nation by the use of weak verse and music.
Inevitably such reactions can be taken to excess, and Long 6
described the book as being 'aggressively typical of the
1920s'. Although still in print, it is little used nowadays.
1 Hymns for Church and School (Headmasters' Conference, Henley-on-
Thames, 1964).
2 Kenneth R. Long, The Music of the English Church (Hodder and Stoughton,
London, 1972), p. 401.
3 Praise and Thanksgiving (Headmasters' Conference, Henley-on-Thames,
1985).
4 Mary-June Scott, 'Divisive new hymnbook' in Church Times, 6381 (31 May
1985) p. 13.
5 (a) Songs of Praise (OUP, London, 1925); (b) Songs of Praise (Enlarged
Edition) (OUP, London, 1931).
6 Long, p. 401.
53
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
In the 1960s the BBC launched a programme called 'Songs
of Praise', a television version of its long-established radio
'Sunday Half Hour' of congregational hymn-singing. To
celebrate the 21st anniversary of 'Songs of Praise' a hymn-
writing competition was organised. From 500 entries, fifteen
were chosen and published under the title New Songs of
Praise P.
The BBC Hymn Book 2 was compiled so that listeners to
such programmes as 'The Daily Service' might follow the
words. As might be expected, in due course a supplementary
volume, Broadcast Praise, appeared. 3 Neither book has ever
been widely used in churches. The BBC also publishes
school hymnals: two million copies of Come and Praise l 4 ,
were sold in its first ten years. Come and Praise 2, 5 'the first
anthology to reflect the "broadly Christian" emphasis of
worship outlined in the 1988 Education Reform Act' 6 , was
then published. The event provided the background for a
situation which, though trivial in itself, illustrates the deep
feelings which any controversy in church music can so easily
cause. A letter appeared in Church Times 1 deploring the
inclusion of the following hymn in the book:
You can weigh an elephant's auntie,
You can weigh a pedigree flea,
But you can't weigh up all the love,
That Jesus has for me, me, me,
That Jesus has for me.
New Songs of Praise 1 (OUP, Oxford, 1986). Volumes 2-6 have more
recently been published.
BBC Hymn Book (OUP, London, 1951).
Broadcast Praise (OUP, Oxford, 1981).
Come and Praise 1 (BBC, London, 1978).
Come and Praise 2 (BBC, London, 1989).
'BBC school hymnbook already a sell-out' in Church Times, 6569 (6 January
1989), p. 2.
John Ewington, 'Rubbish in Song' in Church Times, 6570 (13 January
1989), p. 14.
54
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
Next week there appeared an official denial 1 from the book's
editor that the hymn was in Come and Praise 2 at all. The
following week the author explained 2 that the hymn had
begun its life in a primary school assembly, and that it had
indeed been published, but in New Songs of Praise 4. 3 A
week later, the following news item appeared:
That elephant's auntie certainly caught the imagination of our
readers. . . . Nothing — apart from the ordination of women priests —
has brought so many letters in recent years. The regrettable thing is
that . . . because the hymn is not in the new BBC hymnbook for
schools, [the letters] never saw the light of day. . . . Although there
were those who thought [the] hymn was 'rubbish' and a blot on the
escutcheon of church music, there were plenty more who got the
message — that you can't weigh up all the love that Jesus has for me. 4
Youth Praise P can be seen as the forerunner of the new,
less formal type of Christian music. Its editor, Michael
Baughen, later went on to be consultant editor of Hymns for
Today's Church, and subsequently Bishop of Chester. In the
preface he wrote: 'This book has been compiled to try to
meet the evident need for a composite youth music book in
Christian youth groups of many kinds.' Many of the 150
items had been published elsewhere, notably in Church
Special Service Mission chorus books, although some were
new. The book proved to be extremely popular, with the
result that within three years a sequel had been published,
this time containing virtually all new material. 6 Leaver has
commented on attempts to transfer music of this type into the
worship of the local church.
1 Geoff Marshall, 'Hymn not in new book' in Church Times, (20 January
1989), p. 12.
2 C.J. Brown, 'Hymn defended by author' in Church Times, 6572 (27 January
1989), p. 12.
3 New Songs of Praise 4 (OUP, Oxford, 1988).
4 'Elephantine' in Church Times, 6573 (3 February 1989), p. 10.
5 Youth Praise 1 (Falcon, London, 1966).
6 Youth Praise 2 (Falcon, London, 1969).
55
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Here they do not work well because their piano and guitar-orientated
music for the smaller group cannot carry the weight of the larger
congregation. . . . Many of these simple hymns and choruses have
worn very thin by constant repetition over the years. Nevertheless it
was a timely production and met a need that was being expressed. 1
The preface to Sound of Living Waters 2 proudly pro-
claimed: '[This] is not a collection of songs by "experts'". It
shares with its sequel Fresh Sounds 3 some 240 hymns and
worship songs, both traditional and contemporary.
The music has a simplicity, a gentleness, and a lack of the jingliness
associated with CSSM choruses, or the slightly martial air of many of
the Youth Praise and Psalm Praise compositions. 4
The Celebration Hymnal 5 is distinctly Roman in outlook,
and as such cannot be regarded as interdenominational in the
normal sense of the word. Precisely because of its outlook,
however, it is used in some Anglo-Catholic churches. The
word 'thorough' must be applied to this work since, with its
two volumes plus its 1989 supplement, there are well over
800 items. This effusiveness has resulted in the print being
somewhat too small for comfort, certainly in the full-
harmony edition. In addition to the hymns, there are some
rounds and responsorial material. One of these is 'The Lord
has done marvels for me', Gelineau's version of the Magni-
ficat. A line such as:
He looks on his servant in her nothingness
is perhaps fair game for misinterpretation in the junior choir
stalls (the words editor of Hymns for Today 's Church admits
that he has a list of such 'gems of hymnody' 6 ). Surely the
1 Robin Leaver, A Hymn Book Survey 1962-80 (Booklet No. 71) (Grove,
Nottingham, 1980), p. 16.
1 Sound of Living Waters (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1974).
3 Fresh Sounds (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1976).
4 Colin Buchanan, Encountering Charismatic Worship (Booklet No. 51)
(Grove, Nottingham, 1977), p. 18.
5 Celebration Hymnal (Mayhew-McCrimmon, Great Wakering, 1976).
6 Michael Saward, 'New hymnbook and churchmanship' in Church Times,
56
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
editor of Celebration Hymnal could have done something
about it: 'lowliness' is after all a tried and tested substitute.
Two thirds of the contents of the original edition of Hymns
Old and New 1 were taken from Celebration Hymnal. How-
ever, in due course Hymns Old and New (Anglican Edition) 2
appeared, the selection of hymns being based on computer
analysis of requests from over 300 parishes. A reviewer 3
commented that the computer must have been very user-
friendly to the compilers, for it had selected no fewer than 32
of their own compositions. The book makes no attempt to
modernise or feminise the words — were the parishes invited
to give their views on this? The reviewer concluded:
Indisputably, but not aggressively, Anglican, the book is worth
serious consideration. It undoubtedly goes a long way towards
achieving its aim, to be a unifying hymn-book meeting the needs and
tastes of young and old.
With One Voice 4 had already been published two years earlier
in Australia as The Australian Hymn Book, an ecumenical
project with the official backing of five denominations there.
After quoting Erik Routley, who described the book as 'just
about the most encouraging thing I have seen in the past
generation', Leaver writes:
It may not be trendy . . . but it is certainly not stuffy. ... I am certain
that With One Voice is among the best standard hymn books available
to churches today 5
Sing Alleluia: More Hymns to Sing With One Voice 6 is a
supplement of 95 psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.
Although the music comes from many lands, and hence is in
6253 (17 December 1982), p. 12.
1 Hymns Old and New (Mayhew, Leigh-on-Sea, 1979).
1 Hymns Old and New (Anglican Edition) (Mayhew, Bury St Edmunds, 1986).
3 Martyn Cundy, 'Much requested hymns' in Church of England Newspaper,
4805 (27 June 1986), p. 7.
4 With One Voice (Collins, London, 1979).
5 Robin Leaver, A Hymn Book Survey 1962-80 (Booklet No. 71) (Grove,
Nottingham, 1980) p. 10.
6 Sing Alleluia: More Hymns to Sing With One Voice (Collins, London, 1987).
57
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
many styles, Watson 1 has pointed out that the words represent
a rather narrow band of Christian experience, in nearly all
cases praise and joy of salvation. However, he suggests that
the book be examined by all those looking for opportunities
to use 'modern hymn' singing to enrich public worship.
In 1980 an innovative project was launched. Sing Praise 2
was described as 'the revolutionary new hymn book which
allows you to choose exactly what you want in it; and you
can add to it at any time!' Hymns were purchased on a
modular basis on individual pages from a menu of over 1,000
items, and then clipped into special binders. All aspects of
copyright royalties were handled by the publishers. It was a
bold experiment for which, however, the demand was
insufficient to make it viable, and the project was eventually
abandoned in 1989. Possibly the idea was ahead of its time:
we will be looking at copyright on page 63.
Songs of Fellowship Book P was a compilation of more
than 150 recently written worship songs, most of them
British. This was followed by Books 2 and 3, both with
something more of an international flavour. Next was Hymns
of Fellowship 4 , a fairly conventional hymnal but, like the
Songs, including guitar chords. A combined volume of the
four earlier publications, some 650 pieces in all, was
produced in 1987. 5 This was followed by Songs of Fellow-
ship Book 4? containing some 200 further new songs. In
1991 a volume entitled merely Songs of Fellowship 1 was
published. This contains a selection of items drawn from
earlier editions. 8 The publishers, Kingsway, 'aim to embrace
all the worship needs of a growing church'. 9 These include
1 Derek Watson, 'Hymns' in Music in Worship, 41 (Winter 1988), p. 12.
2 Sing Praise (Kevin Mayhew, Leigh-on-Sea, 1980).
Songs of Fellowship Book 1 (Kingsway, Eastbourne, 1981).
Hymns of Fellowship (Kingsway, Eastbourne, 1985).
Songs and Hymns of Fellowship (Kingsway, Eastbourne, 1987).
Songs of Fellowship Book 4 (Kingsway, Eastbourne, 1989).
Songs of Fellowship (Kingsway, Eastbourne, 1991).
I note, without comment, that the song 'Ain't Jesus Good' has been omitted.
Geoff Shearn, 'Songs of Fellowship — Much More Than a Songbook' in
Music in Worship, 36 (July 1986), p. 8.
58
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
orchestral arrangements and recordings of the songs,
recordings of backing tracks for use by a singer when no
suitable accompaniment is available, teaching aids for
worship, teaching aids for guitarists, and weekend seminars.
In addition, there is an annual publication New Songs,
containing some forty even newer items.
In their introduction to Jesus Praise, 1 the editors seemed to
feel that they should justify the book's existence:
Revival in the Church has invariably gone hand in hand with musical
expression. Hymns, songs, and the shorter, simpler chorus have been
pouring out over the past decade. Dozens of song books have been
produced all over the world. Why then another? . . . The aim of Jesus
Praise has been to gather in one book a wide selection of those songs
and choruses that have proved their worth over the past years. As
well as this, a third of the book contains new and unpublished
material.
The editors continued by saying that the book was intended
as a replacement for the Youth Praise books, but with appeal
for adults as well. However, it does not seem to have gained
widespread acceptance in worship in the Church of England.
In 1984 the American evangelist Luis Palau visited
England to hold a number of large-scale evangelistic
meetings under the general title of 'Mission England'. It was
felt that no one hymnbook then available seemed entirely
suitable for the Mission, and the compilation Mission Praise 2
(also published as Mission England Praise during the
Mission) was born. The book contained an interesting
mixture of almost 300 items, hymns old and new together
with some revival songs. Margaret Daniel commented that
the book was clearly 'not [intending] to break new ground,
but to create new enthusiasm'. 3 Archaisms abound. Perhaps
significantly the green hill far away is without a city wall; 4
Jesus Praise (Scripture Union, London, 1982).
Mission Praise (Marshall, Morgan and Scott, Basingstoke, 1983).
Margaret Daniel, 'Review of Mission England Praise' in Church Times,
6309 (13 January 1984), p. 6.
See page 42.
59
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
while 'Now thank we all our God' uses the traditional tune
'Nun danket' rather than the Beaumont offering of the early
sixties. Mission Praise II was published in 1987, while
Mission Praise (Combined Edition) 1 contains both the above
books and a supplement, 800 items in all. There is also
Junior Praise 2 , containing 300 songs for children aged 7-11.
The first fruits of a further project, encouraging contem-
porary hymn writers to write on a specific theme, appeared in
1989, entitled Hymns and Congregational Songs. 3 A special
feature of the project is that photocopying of the material is
permitted on a limited basis.
This review of some forty currently available hymnals used
in Church of England worship has not been exhaustive.
Tremors of the hymn 'explosion' are still being felt, leaving a
'crater' of hymnals in its wake, inevitably with much
duplication of hymns between books. Many new worship
songs continue to appear, mainly from the Charismatic
Movement, but it is likely to be some time before there is
another major compilation of material suitable for general
Church of England use.
One aim of my survey was to obtain information on the
levels of usage of and satisfaction with hymnals. We will be
looking at the results of this on page 154.
Next, however, we turn our attention to another type of
church-music book, namely the psalter. The Psalms pre-date
even the Christian Church by several centuries. In the pre-
Reformation Church, and in particular the monastic founda-
tions, the entire psalter was covered each week through its
recitation at the seven or eight daily offices. The Prayer Book
of 1549 reduced this to a monthly cycle in the two daily
offices of morning and evening prayer. The greatest change
in psalm singing in recent years has been its further
Mission Praise (Combined Edition) (Marshall Pickering, London, 1990).
Junior Praise (Marshall, Morgan and Scott, Basingstoke, 1986).
Hymns and Congregational Songs Vol. 1 No. 1 (Stainer and Bell, London,
1989). Copies are bought direct from the publisher by subscription. Volumes
2 and 3 have now been published.
60
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
reduction, almost to the point of abandonment. This has been
caused, at least in part, by the reduced usage of morning
and evening prayer, and the widespread substitution of
eucharistic services. In Rites A and B of the ASB, it is merely
specified as an option. The principal of a theological college
has gone so far as to say that he believes that the Psalms are
dying in the Church of England. 1
The Parish Psalter, 2 edited by Sir Sidney Nicholson, is still
quite widely used some sixty years after its publication. It is
relatively straightforward to use, but can be very effective in
the hands of a competent choir. The Oxford 3 and Wore ester A
Psalters are somewhat similar to the Parish, as they adopt
natural speech rhythms. However, they use rather more
symbols in their pointing, making them more difficult to use.
In less favour are the Cathedral 5 and New Cathedral. 6 Long
describes them respectively as embodying 'the very antithesis
of all the principles of good chanting', and 'even worse'. 7
The Revised Psalter* was the work of an Archbishops'
Commission, initiated in 1958, to revise the text of the
psalter, the first such revision since the Reformation. Indeed
the BCP version of the psalm texts is essentially that con-
tained in the Coverdale Great Bible of 1539, revised in 1540.
Although much loved by subsequent generations of Anglicans for its
beauty, the Prayer Book Psalter is in effect an English translation of a
Latin translation of a Greek translation of the original Hebrew, and
consequently not the most accurate rendering of the Psalms. 9
John Goldingay, 'A store of praise and prayer to reopen' in Church Times,
6650 (27 July 1990), p. 8.
The Parish Psalter (Faith Press, Leighton Buzzard, 1928).
The Oxford Psalter (OUP, Oxford, 1929).
The Worcester Psalter (Adam and Charles Black, London, 1950).
The Cathedral Psalter (Novello, London, 1875).
The New Cathedral Psalter (Novello, London, 1909).
Kenneth R. Long, The Music of the English Church (Hodder and Stoughton,
London, 1972), pp. 236, 397.
The Revised Psalter (CUP, Eyre and Spottiswoode, OUP and SPCK,
London, 1966).
R.C.D. Jasper and Paul F. Bradshaw, A Companion to the Alternative Service
Book (SPCK, London, 1986), pp. 449-450.
61
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Dakers has described The Revised Psalter as 'a flowing text
admirably and simply pointed'. 1 A further and rather more
substantial revision appeared only a few years later in the
ASB. These texts and their pointing were also published
separately. 2 It will be interesting to see whether the ASB
translations will last for 450 years, or whether cathedrals will
after that time still be using the BCP versions. A Manual of
Plainsong 3 caters for those adopting this alternative method
of chanting the psalms, although this practice is rare in parish
churches. BCP texts are used. I wonder whether ASB texts
have ever been sung to plainsong.
Recent years have seen the development of other methods
of singing the psalms. Psalm Praise 4 was the third volume in
a series which had produced Youth Praise 1 and 2. It
included pointed and metrical versions of the canticles, but
its chief innovation lay in metrical versions of psalms and
other biblical passages.
Many of the new texts are of a very high quality . . . but the music, with
some exceptions is all very much in the same rather superficial style. 5
A list of alternative tunes was eventually compiled. 6 Another
method of singing psalms, originally popularised by the
Belgian Jesuit priest Joseph Gelineau, has also been
increasingly adopted. It is called the responsorial method, in
which a refrain (called an 'antiphon') is sung by the congre-
gation after every two or three verses sung by the choir or
cantor. The texts are often taken from the Roman Catholic
Grail Psalter. 7 A selection of responsorial psalms has also
1 Lionel Dakers, Church Music at the Crossroads (Marshall, Morgan and
Scott, London, 1970), p. 21.
2 David L. Frost, John A. Emerton and Andrew A. Macintosh, The Psalms: A
New Translation for Worship (Collins, London, 1977).
3 H.B. Briggs and W.H. Frere, A Manual of Plainsong (Novello, London,
1902); 2nd edn, ed. J.H. Arnold (Novello, London, 1951).
4 Psalm Praise (Falcon, London, 1973).
5 Robin Leaver, A Hymn Book Survey 1962-80 (Booklet No. 71) (Grove,
Nottingham, 1980), p. 17.
6 Michael Perry, Psalm Praise Worship Index (Falcon, London, 1977).
Publications include: The Responsorial Psalter, volumes A-C (Mayhew-
McCrimmon, Great Wakering, 1987-1989); Psalms for Singing (Mayhew,
62
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
been included in The New English Hymnal.
Those who are slightly more adventurous, at least in spirit,
may well wish to consider the approach adopted at Taize. 1
Some forty years ago Brother Roger founded the Community
of Taize in the hills of Burgundy, where it now provides a
ecumenical retreat from the pressures of the world. The
music adviser to the Diocese of Bath and Wells writes:
The Taize phenomenon is one that embodies a sense of simplicity and
authenticity in worship, together with flexibility and freedom of
prayer and music. Add to this the international flavour of the thou-
sands of people who flock there each year, and you will have some
idea of its universal appeal.
The ever increasing range of Taize music is becoming more and
more well known as songs are brought back by those who go there,
and as the Brothers themselves visit the poor and deprived in all parts
of the world. . . . Whether used in small or large groups, the music of
Taize is compelling and haunting. Some of the more contemplative
refrains [antiphons] can be used in smaller churches during
Communion services, like 'O Lord hear my prayer' [Psalm 102]. 2
Methods of psalm singing are discussed more fully elsewhere. 3
Books of the Future
The duplication of hymns and settings of psalms between
different books is clearly wasteful both in paper and expense,
but seems unavoidable for the foreseeable future. At many
churches where congregational music is drawn from a number
of different books, loose-leaf compilations have been
produced. However, the question of copyright on even one
hymn can be far from straightforward, and when multiplied
several times over becomes a formidable task. Regrettably but
not altogether surprisingly, many churches have succumbed to
Bury St Edmunds, 1989); and Psalms for the Eucharist volumes 1-3
(Mayhew-McCrimmon, Great Wakering, 1984).
For example, Psalms from Taize (Mowbray, London, 1983).
John Newman, 'The Music of Taize' in Christian Music, Autumn 1989,
pp. 10-11.
Robin Leaver, David Mann and David Parkes, Ways of Singing the Psalms
(Collins, London, 1985).
63
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
the temptation to ignore the copyright laws altogether. A
central clearing-house on hymn copyright has for some time
been advocated. 1 In a sense this was precisely what the Sing
Praise project was trying to achieve. Possibly its ultimate
downfall lay in the fact that potential subscribers were seeking
a larger selection of hymns than those for which the
proprietors could readily obtain copyright permission. A
leaflet explaining, amongst other things, the legalities of
making local hymnbooks has been published by the Pratt
Green Trust. 2 The Trust offers assistance in tracing copyright
holders, but is not in any way the clearing house that is so
badly needed. However, the Christian Music Association
(formerly the Christian Music Publishers' Association) has
been operating such a scheme. 3 In 1991 responsibililty for the
scheme was transferred to Christian Copyright Licensing UK
Ltd. It is understood that more than 400 publishers are now
participating in the scheme.
In addition to the trend from bound hymnbooks to loose-
leaf compilations, made easy (technically at least) by
photocopying, technology has been opening other horizons.
Overhead projectors can in principle dispense with paper
books altogether: slides of Songs of Fellowship words are
available from the publishers. Indeed the words can now
even be loaded into a church's microcomputer, for display to
the congregation. 4
It seems unimaginable that the conventionally printed
hymnal will ever be supplanted. However, technology is
developing very quickly indeed, and I would not care to
predict the medium in which the next edition of Hymns
Ancient and Modern will appear.
John King, 'Grasping the nettle of hymn copyright' in Church Times, 6250
(26 November 1982), p. 10.
Copyright and the Local Church (Pratt Green Trust, London, 1989). A new
edition is shortly to be published.
'New copyright scheme' in Church Times, 6390 (2 August 1985), p. 2.
Bob Cranham, 'The Writing on the Wall? — Songs of Fellowship OHP
System' in Christian Music, Winter 1991, pp. 8-9.
64
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
Courses and Qualifications
Finally in this chapter, we investigate training courses in
church music. Whilst the priest is responsible for the service
as a whole and, in particular, the spoken parts, the musical
director must bear a major part of the responsibility for the
musical element within it. He or she can therefore be termed
one of the ministers. What skills are needed for this ministry,
and what facilities are available for acquiring them? In the
last ten years or so, there have been great changes in the
courses and qualifications available. Many institutions, of
which the best known is the Royal School of Church Music,
have involved themselves in this work. Let us first look at the
historical background.
In the nineteenth century, cathedral organists accepted
pupils, to whom they taught their trade in return for acting as
deputies. With the expansion of the universities and music
colleges, notably the Royal College of Organists, these
apprenticeships gradually became less common. During the
present century, the qualifications ARCO and FRCO, and
their related choir-master's diploma CHM, have become ever
more technically demanding. However, although much of the
music in these examinations was composed for sacred use, it
has always been studied primarily from a secular viewpoint,
without reference to its liturgical context. In this aspect at
least, such pupils would be at a disadvantage compared with
their nineteenth-century counterparts. If this was all the
training that was available to the professionals during the
first part of this century, certainly the amateur musicians in
the parishes could not reasonably hope for anything better.
Since 1929 the Royal School of Church Music (or, as it
then was, the School of English Church Music) has been
actively involved in the training of church musicians. Apart
from occasional visits of a Commissioner to affiliated choirs,
until 1974 this training was primarily aimed at a professional
level, with courses of up to a year's duration. Most students
prepared for the diplomas of the Royal College of Organists
65
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
but, in the words of the Prospectus, they were also given 'the
opportunity to study the art of public worship, with particular
reference to the part played in it by music'.
Since 1974 the RSCM's work has been much more
directed towards the amateur, through its many diverse short
residential and one-day courses at Addington Palace in
Croydon, and 'on site' through the expertise of its travelling
Commissioners. 1
One of the RSCM's responsibilities is the administration of
the Archbishop of Canterbury's Diploma in Church Music.
The Anglican church felt that skill in organ-playing and choir-
training, though essential, did not go far enough and that church
musicians needed further training in such specialised studies as
liturgiology, Prayer Book history, plainsong, Anglican chanting and
pointing, hymnody, and similar specialist fields. Such training would
help bridge the gap between clergy and their organists. To meet this
need Archbishop Lang instituted in 1937 a new examination, the
Archbishop of Canterbury's Diploma in Church Music (ADCM),
which involves a wide course of study embracing subjects unheard of
by the old articled pupils [of cathedral organists] — or their masters.
Just as entry for the choir-training diploma is restricted to holders of
one of the RCO organ diplomas, so for the ADCM examination only
those are eligible who hold both the FRCO and CHM diplomas. 2
The limitations of the ADCM are threefold. Firstly, the
number of successful candidates (one or two per year) is too
small for the qualification to be widely known. Secondly, and
this may be the cause of the first, there is at present no
specific course of training for the qualification. Finally, both
in name and content it is based on the Anglican Church. The
RSCM also awards three types of honorary diploma
(associateship, honorary membership, and fellowship) and is
considering the introduction of some new examination, either
on its own or in collaboration with some other institution.
Bryan Anderson, 'Seven whole days, not one in seven' in Church Music
Quarterly, January 1992, pp. 18-19.
Kenneth R. Long, The Music of the English Church (Hodder and Stoughton,
London, 1972), p. 393.
66
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
In 1991 the Christian Musicians' and Artists' Trust took
over half of the responsibilities of the former Christian Music
Association. 1 The Trust is seeking through its Personal
Membership scheme:
... to provide an infrastructure that will facilitate the linking of all
Christians who have a specific interest in worship, Christian music
and related arts . . . [including] musicians, singers, dancers, worship
leaders, church leaders, songwriters, organisers of music events,
technicians and publishers.
The newest of the bodies involved with courses and
qualifications is CHIME (the Churches' Initiative in Music
Education).
CHIME began when a working party, called together (by the RSCM)
to investigate the potential for qualifications in church music, heard
. . . about the philosophy behind the recent revision of the
[Archbishops' Certificate in Church Music — page 69]. This, together
with news of similar revisions of examination syllabuses etc, by the
Royal College of Organists and others, coincided with a presentation
from [Prof.] Bob Reeve, of Anglia Polytechnic, on the opportunities
within the Credit Accumulation and Transfer systems now being
introduced throughout Europe. He concluded his talk with a
suggestion that the various church music organisations should meet
to investigate the possibilities of co-ordinating and evaluating the
training and qualifications currently available. We decided to expand
our working party so as to take in as many shades of opinion and
churchmanship as possible. . . .
CHIME should be careful to gain academic and ecclesiastical
support and credibility: if CHIME is to be a useful forum, perhaps
even a co-ordinating and commissioning body, then its every
movement will need to be in tune with the local and national church's
needs. Having met and talked with those involved so far, I am happy
to report some fascinating glimpses of potential harmony. . . . 2
In 1981 the City of Liverpool College of Higher Education
introduced a Music and Worship course leading to a BA
honours degree of the University of Lancaster, the first such
1 The other responsibilities were transferred to Christian Copyright Licensing
Ltd. (page 64).
2 Geoff Twigg, 'CHIME' in Laudate, 17 (Spring 1991), pp. 4-6.
67
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
course in Britain leading to a degree. Teaching was shared
between the Departments of Music and Religious Studies,
drawing also on the resources of both the Anglican and
Metropolitan cathedrals, and many other Mersey side
churches. The course was widely publicised to attract the
target student intake of 24 although, in 1981, only nine
students began. The following year's intake was down to
four, caused by absence of publicity, the sudden death of the
course's founder Gerald Brown, and financial pressure upon
the college (ultimately leading to its merger with Liverpool
Polytechnic). During the year 1982/83 it was decided to
discontinue the course. Of the thirteen students, nine
graduated.
Since 1981, the BA honours degree at Colchester Institute 1
has been offering Christian Liturgical Music as a major
option in its second and third years, comprising 40% of the
entire degree. The option covers three areas: liturgical
tradition (history of church music to the present day),
placement (two years in a church of the student's denomina-
tion), and composition. Students are encouraged to attend
each other's services from time to time, so that they may
respect their colleagues' differing traditions and broaden their
own experience. The course produces roughly five graduates
per year. The head of the School of Music has written:
What we are not about is 'musicians who live in organ lofts'. We
pride ourselves on being actively concerned with music for the
people of God, not for the musically elite. However, our BA syllabus
as such can cope with the needs of those who want to take
ARCO/FRCO or whatever, but our first concern is the management
and performance of music at a pastoral level. 2
The Faculty of Church Music was founded in 1956 as an
interdenominational body promoting church music. It offers
examinations at three levels: associate, licentiate and fellow.
1 Now an Associate College of Anglia Polytechnic which, in turn, will shortly
become Anglia Polytechnic University.
2 William Tamblyn, 'Liturgical music' in Church Times, 6623 (19 January
1990), p. 13.
68
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
Alternative options to organ playing or singing include
composition and choir training.
Since its foundation in 1888, the Guild of Church Musi-
cians has undergone two changes of name, first from The
Church Choir Guild' to 'The Incorporated Guild of Church
Musicians' and, in recent years, to its present name. The
Guild has some 600 members. In addition to the Year Book,
there is a quarterly magazine Laudate. It also holds an annual
one-day conference, embracing the annual general meeting.
In 1961, Archbishop Fisher gave to the Guild the charge of
administering a new examination — the Archbishop of
Canterbury's Certificate in Church Music, ACertCM.
Initially the practical part of this examination was for
organists and choirmasters only but, is now open to singers
and cantors as well. The syllabus was revised in 1987 to
enable Roman Catholics to take the examination. At that
time, Cardinal Basil Hume Archbishop of Westminster
became, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, joint Patron of
the Guild, and the examination's title was changed to the
Archbishops' Certificate in Church Music. For whom is it
intended? The Guild's prospectus reads:
It is the expressed hope of the Archbishops that all who have the
responsibility of leading the music of their church should aim to
achieve the Certificate as a basic, minimum acceptable standard of
music coupled with an understanding of the forms of service in
which they exercise their special ministry.
Much has been done to publicise the examination and to
assist candidates to take it. There are evening classes being
run in different parts of the country, residential training
weekends (with grants available from the Leverhulme Trust),
and there is now even a correspondence course. There are
rewards for those who pass the examination, such as the
letters ACertCM (recognised as a valid qualification by the
Incorporated Society of Musicians), and an academic hood.
All these have had an effect in arousing interest but, with less
than 300 Certificates awarded in the first thirty years, the
69
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
words of the Archbishops cannot be seen as anything more
than what might be termed a pious hope for some
considerable time to come. However, recent changes in the
syllabus and the creation of an academic board may well play
their part in improving the situation. Since 1985 the Guild
has also offered an advanced diploma course, intermediate in
difficulty between ACertCM and ADCM: this too will
probably take a number of years to become established.
The Music in Worship Trust was founded in 1984 by a
small group of organists wishing to become more involved in
the worshipping community. It has recently changed its name
to the Music and Worship Foundation. It organises church-
music workshops, and in 1991 initiated a one-year regional
training programme. In collaboration with the London Bible
College, it is proposing to begin a more formal one-year
course and, eventually, a combined degree course in theology
and church music. It is closely associated with the quarterly
magazine Christian Music (Music in Worship until 1987). In
an interview, director Robin Sheldon summarised the aims:
[We try] to offer help and advice to all churches, across the whole
range of what's available for instruments and voices, as to how best
to use music in worship; and to look at the role it should occupy in
this context. ... I know as a musician how important it is to deal with
the nuts and bolts of performance, but it remains a tool in worship,
not a tool to praise music. 1
Although MWF might appear to be in competition with the
activities of the RSCM (and indeed some of its members may
at one time have wished it to be), there is now a large
measure of co-operation between the two bodies.
In 1987 the Royal Academy of Music introduced a Church
Music course as part of its Complementary Studies pro-
gramme. It is run in co-operation with St. Marylebone Parish
Church and the RSCM. Lecturers include the clergy and
organists of a number of cathedrals, both Anglican and
1 John Greenhalgh, 'Music in Worship Trust' in Church Times, 6620 (29
December 1989), p. 15.
70
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
Roman: observation visits to those cathedrals comprise a
significant part of the course. All students must first win their
place at the Academy in their principal study (instrument or
voice). The course may be taken as a one-year major option
either by postgraduate students, or by those preparing for, or
pre-elected to, a university organ scholarship. Other students
(Performers, GRSM or BMus) can take different parts of the
course throughout their three or four years spent at the
Academy. The course generally has twelve regular students
per year of whom, on average, all but one will be Anglicans
(the exception normally being Roman Catholic), and of
whom nine will be organists and three singers. The director
of the course has indicated the reasons for launching it.
This country's musical traditions have grown directly out of the rich
soil of its diverse church music. But, over the last 20 years, liturgical
practices and attitudes to music in worship have changed and
developed at a rate unknown for generations, subjecting church
musicians to new challenges and imperatives. The Academy's new
course is intended as a positive response. . . .
[The] course must extend its reach across denominational barriers,
while maintaining a keen appreciation of denominational traditions.
Second, it has to lay equal stress on purely musical skills and the
understanding needed for their sensitive and imaginative application,
an understanding involving aspects of liturgy, theology, pastoral care
and administration. This philosophy ensures the course will convey
the essentially 'ministerial' nature of the church musician's work. 1
As an expression of his concern at the poor state of music
in cathedrals in the first half of the nineteenth century, the
Revd Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley in 1856 founded the
College of St Michael at Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire,
the first new choral foundation since the Reformation.
It was intended to serve as a model to the whole Church in the
efficient rendering of daily choral services, in the selection of a truly
representative repertoire of the best sacred music, and in the
well-ordered education of choirboys under ideal conditions. Its very
i
Patrick Russill, 'Training Tomorrow's Church Musicians' in Church Music
Quarterly, April 1990, p. 19.
71
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
existence challenged the slackness everywhere else. . . . There are
now seven lay clerks and the school has been expanded to take
seventy boys, of whom eighteen are on the choral foundation. 1
St Michael's Tenbury is no more. In 1985 the number of
pupils had fallen below 50, making the College no longer
financially viable. It closed in July of that year. The decline
in pupils was blamed on the fact that the College was set in a
sparsely populated catchment area, and plans to move to
another area proved to be either unsuitable or incompatible
with the founder's intention. 2 However, some felt that the
College might have been saved, had the trustees alerted the
public to the problems earlier. 3
A new MMus course in English Church Music has recently
been introduced by the School of Art History and Music at
the University of East Anglia. This is the first higher-degree
course in church music in Britain, and is being taught in
collaboration with the organist of Norwich Cathedral. The
course includes tuition in composition, performance (organ
or singing), and choir training and conducting, as well as the
preparation of a 10,000- word dissertation on some aspect of
the history of English church music. The course has a
considerably higher music content and correspondingly
lower liturgical content than those at Colchester and the
Academy.
In 1983 there appeared an advertisement stating that, from
October that year, the University of St Andrews would be
offering a one-year postgraduate diploma in church music. 4
The teaching was to be shared between the Department of
Music and the Faculty of Divinity. The only student took the
course in 1985/6, the first year of operation. The diploma
ended when the Department of Music was reduced in 1988.
i
2
3
4
Kenneth R. Long, The Music of the English Church (Hodder and Stoughton,
London, 1972), pp. 324-5.
'Top choir school to close soon' in Church Times, 6372 (29 March 1985),
p. 3.
Julian W.S. Litten, 'Closure of a college' in Church Times, 6377 (3 May
1985), p. 13.
For example in Church Times, 6281 (1 July 1983), p. 16.
72
THROUGH ALL THE CHANGING SCENES OF LIFE
The Williams School of Church Music, situated in Harpen-
den, Hertfordshire, became an independent institution with
charitable status in 1971, although it had been a privately
owned school for some ten years previously. It served two
distinct but complementary needs. On the one hand, it was a
conventional preparatory school, but one which provided
specialist training for prospective cathedral choristers. On the
other, it held training courses for adult church musicians,
both through evening classes and by correspondence. This
led to the award of a diploma and, after further study, to
associateship of the college. Roughly twenty students per
year reached this level. The school finally closed its doors
seven years ago, the victim of financial difficulties.
To summarise, the number of courses in the 'professional'
category is expanding, those already well established being
those at Colchester Institute and the Royal Academy of
Music. The latter is not, as yet, a first study (with no
qualification being awarded), but this is understood to be
under consideration. Whilst the Academy's list of lectures
and activities may be the more impressive, the course
director 1 admits that this is at the cost of a 'living and regular
liturgical focal point for "hands-on" experience', an essential
part of the Colchester course. It is perhaps significant that the
directors of both the Colchester and Academy courses are
Roman Catholics, rather than Anglicans as might have been
expected. A further important point is that, compared with
the number of those required to exercise musical leadership
in some capacity in the Church today, the number of those
with any formal training specifically in church music must be
regarded as extremely small.
My questionnaire survey investigates the musical training
(or rather the lack of it) offered to theological students.
However, it may be noted at this stage that, apart from the
proposed partnership of the Music and Worship Foundation
and London Bible College, there is nothing in Britain
1 Patrick Russill, 'Training Tomorrow's Church Musicians' in Church Music
Quarterly (April 1990) p. 19.
73
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
comparable to either the four-year Bible and Music Pro-
gramme at the European Bible Institute at Lamorlaye,
France 1 , or the one-year Master of Divinity with Church
Music degree at the South Eastern Baptist Theological
Seminary at Wake Fort, East Carolina. In particular, the
syllabus of the Master of Ministry degree course, introduced
in 1990 at the University of Sheffield, does not cover the use
of music in worship at all.
The following extract from the submission of the Royal
College of Organists to the recent Archbishops' Commission
on Church Music provides a fitting close to this chapter:
There is a profound need for more practical musical training and
liturgical education among clergy and organists respectively. This
should be tackled particularly at the student level. The College stands
ready to discuss and promote new initiatives, and believes that the
theological colleges should examine and improve their courses in
respect of music radically. At the same time it is hoped that the
theological colleges themselves could provide 'short' courses for
church musicians. There should be open and constructive
discussions, formally constituted, aimed at producing future
generations of musically trained and liturgically educated musicians
and clergy. This way lies the route to high quality work and lack of
mutual suspicion between the two groups. 2
2
1 Susanne Slack, 'Training for Music Ministry' in Christian Music, Spring
1990, pp. 20-23.
'Archbishops' Commission on Church Music' in Year Book of the Royal
College of Organists, 1989-90, pp. 12-13.
74
2a
The Call To Arms Is Sounding 1
Three Case Studies
In this chapter we turn to my survey of church music by
means of questionnaire to clergy and church organists. First,
however, while the RCO submission emphasising the need for
more common ground between the two parties is still fresh in
our minds, let us see what can happen when that common
ground is missing.
In each of the following true case studies, the principal
participants were all well-meaning Christian people. However,
their failure to communicate satisfactorily with each other
gave rise to great distress — both to themselves and to many
who looked to them for leadership. The names of the
characters and the churches have of course been changed.
The Sitting Tenant
The Choir Dinner was always such a happy occasion. Each
year the PCC voted that St Luke's should show its appreci-
ation of the choir by inviting each adult member and his/her
guest to dinner in a local restaurant. The vicar, the church-
wardens and their wives always came along too. In his speech,
Peter the vicar momentarily forgot exactly how many years
Stanley had been organist at the church, and stopped to ask
him. On being reminded that it was nineteen, he remarked that
Stanley's 20th anniversary would have to be specially
1 Mrs Hernaman, [in, for example,] Hymns Ancient and Modern Standard
Edition (Clowes, London, 1922), No. 583.
75
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
commemorated at next year's dinner. Granted, during the rest
of the year, Stanley and a few other choir members were
known not to get on well with Peter but, at least on this one
evening of the year, any differences were forgotten.
Within a month of the dinner, Stanley had been given three
months' notice of dismissal and, within a further week, the
entire congregation had been split into two warring factions,
siding either with Peter or with Stanley. What had brought
about this sorry state of affairs, and how did matters
subsequently develop?
Stanley had been organist at the church for a long time. A
respected head of music at a local school, he felt at ease with
upper-middle-of-the-road worship, which is what St Luke's
had always offered until this young vicar appeared just six
years ago. As soon as he arrived, Peter began to make little
changes in the worship and, over the years, the church became
gradually more evangelical. Stanley, various members of the
choir, and even, it must be said, some members of the
congregation were not happy. They felt keenly about this and,
although they tried hard, they were unable to get their point of
view across to Peter. Oh, how they hated singing choruses!
Their only hope was that perhaps they could in time influence
the rest of the congregation, who might in turn influence Peter
to take things a bit more gently. Perhaps before too long he
would be moving on to another church.
But now this terrible news. Stanley had only just got home
after taking his wife to hospital, when there was a knock at the
door. It was Peter. After passing the time of day, Peter asked
him how much longer he intended to stay on as organist at St
Luke's, and seemed surprised to learn that Stanley was not
intending to leave next year after completing 20 years'
service. No, God willing, he intended to stay on for another
20. Then Peter said the fateful words: 'Stanley, I am sorry, but
we do not seem to be able to work well together. I must give
you three months' notice.' Peter accepted afterwards that he
had chosen a very unsuitable occasion on which to discuss the
matter with Stanley, and that his off-the-cuff remark at the
76
THE CALL TO ARMS IS SOUNDING
choir dinner had been most unfortunate. Moreover, he should
have consulted the churchwardens before embarking on his
present course of action. On the other hand, he knew that
Stanley had for years been criticising his ministry, mainly
behind his back and, in his shock at realising that Stanley
would probably otherwise outlast him, he took the step that he
had never before been able to summon up the courage to take.
The criticism of before was nothing compared with the
situation on the following Sunday. Battle lines had been
drawn. Within a week, the news had been 'leaked' to the local
press, and two days later it appeared in the national tabloids.
Peter, Stanley, the wardens, even the choir, were involved in
long and stressful meetings. Much of the normal work of the
church had to be laid aside in order to make time for all these
meetings. Then came the visitation from the bishop. Having
privately heard the views of those most closely involved, he
wanted to learn the consensus of the church. The meeting was
very tense and, at its end, the bishop suggested a three-month
'cooling-off period. This seemed to please no-one since it
was felt that all methods of reconciliation had already been
tried and had failed. The bishop departed to ponder the matter
further.
A week later came the announcement that the bishop had
confirmed Peter's decision. Stanley served out his three
months' notice and, when he left, half the choir and about a
quarter of the congregation went with him. Some of the
congregation eventually returned, but not until after Peter had
himself left, a few years later. Stanley felt particularly bitter
about the whole affair, the bitterness diminishing only after he
had become organist of another church in the same town
eighteen months after his dismissal. Peter soon found a new
organist who was a keen evangelical. A contract of
appointment was drawn up with the assistance of the Royal
School of Church Music. This contract was for a period of
five years with the possibility of renewal for fixed periods
thereafter.
77
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Questions
• How should a vicar deal with the situation of a 'sitting
tenant', especially a long-standing one?
• To what extent should he take note of the organist's views
on worship, and to what lengths should he go to discover
them?
• To what extent should he make an effort to develop a
satisfactory working relationship with the organist?
• How important is it that an organist should have a contract
of fixed length?
• If a situation becomes intolerable, how should a vicar deal
with the matter?
Winds of Change
St Peter's had quite a reputation for its 'bells and smells'. Fr
Paul had been vicar there for more than half of his 72 years.
Perhaps in a year or so he ought to step aside for someone
younger, but there was plenty of time yet. Perhaps the
congregation was not as large as it used to be, and there were
not many young families, but he understood that other
churches were suffering from the same problem and, all in all,
things seemed to be ticking over pretty well.
Fr Paul got on very well with Dick his organist, who was in
his mid-fifties. Dick was a sales representative, and he had
studied for a music diploma in his spare time. Like many
amateur musicians, he was immensely keen, and over the last
seven years had built up a 20-strong choir of boys and men.
These were the days when to make a gramophone record was
something rather special, and St Peter's choir had done just
that. Moreover the record was selling well throughout the
town.
Then Dick had a heart attack, and although he soon
recovered sufficiently to return to the console, he felt that he
should give notice and retire. This perhaps caused Fr Paul to
consider his own three score years and twelve, because shortly
afterwards it became known that he had gone to see the bishop
78
THE CALL TO ARMS IS SOUNDING
about retiring. As he did not want his successor to arrive at a
church with no organist, he immediately advertised the post.
Henry, a musician in his fifties, with an FRCO and a couple of
other diplomas to his name, had recently taken early
retirement and moved into the area. He was appointed and
took up his post six weeks before Fr Paul finally retired.
Four months later Fr Stephen was inducted as the new vicar.
For the first time in over fifty years the vicarage reverberated
to the sound of a teenage family. His induction service was
magnificent: the augmented choir was well up to the standard
that had been achieved on the record a few years earlier.
Everybody felt that a great new era was about to begin at St
Peter's.
Within a year Henry had resigned. He felt that Fr Stephen
was interfering far too much in the running of the music.
Trying to open membership of the choir to women was just
one example of this interference. For his part, Fr Stephen
regretted that he and Henry had not seen eye to eye: he would
so much have preferred to make the appointment himself.
Henry, he felt, was too set in his ways: Fr Stephen really
wanted someone younger, more in line with his own ideas.
The post was re-advertised, and this time there was no
applicant. However, it was discovered that a newly-appointed
music teacher at a local girls' school was looking for
accommodation for his wife and young family. The vicarage
was so large that part of it could very easily be used as a self-
contained flat. Thus Bob was appointed.
Fr Stephen's commission from the bishop was to try to
reawaken St Peter's. For as long as anybody could remember,
the pattern of worship had always been a said mass at 8.00, a
sung mass at 9.30 and evening prayer at 6.30. The 1928
Prayer Book had been used at all three services, and the choir
sang at the sung mass and evening prayer. Fr Stephen felt that
there was little chance of the congregation's increasing, as
indeed it needed to, with a 1928 eucharist as the main service.
He therefore proposed to the PCC that a Rite A [see page 35]
service be substituted. This provoked outrage from the PCC,
79
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
very few of whom had ever attended such a service, and some
of whom had no intention of ever doing so.
The only compromise seemed to be a split into two services:
a Rite A family mass at 9.30, and a traditional mass at 11.15.
The PCC reluctantly agreed to this arrangement. Fr Stephen
reconciled himself to the fact that, for the time being, he
would have to take three Sunday morning services instead of
two, and preach two sermons instead of one (the non-stipendi-
ary minister who had been promised would not be arriving for
several months).
The existing all-male choir would sing at the 11.15, whilst
Bob would form a new choir of girls from his school to
provide music for the less formal 9.30. Any men wishing to
sing in both services would be more than welcome to do so.
Bob seemed reasonably happy about the arrangement,
although it constituted a significant increase in his responsi-
bilities. The men in the choir were less happy. For some, the
revised time of 11.15 was difficult, and they transferred to the
9.30 service. Others preferred the traditional type of service,
and sang only at the 11.15. Very few sang at both services
although there was always a four-part quorum for evensong.
Very few girls could be recruited for the 9.30 service despite
Bob's best efforts. The congregation started criticising the
girls' lack of volume, and Fr Stephen began to feel that the
perfectly adequate choir at the 11.15 should really be there at
9.30 instead. He listened to Bob's misgivings, but in the end
overruled them. He was suffering from overwork, and a
complaining organist was the last straw. In the resulting
transfer to the 9.30 service, the choir lost three men, two of
them tenors.
Three months later Bob resigned. This was a difficult
decision since it meant finding somewhere else to live, but he
could stand it no more. The post of organist now was
considerably different from the one he had been offered a year
earlier: in particular there was effectively no longer any
opportunity to perform traditional liturgical music. Moreover,
he felt that decisions relating to music in the church were
80
THE CALL TO ARMS IS SOUNDING
being taken without adequate reference to him. Fr Stephen
was very sorry that Bob felt like this: it was so unfortunate
that he had been appointed during a phase of transition within
the church.
The post was advertised, but there was no applicant. It was
advertised more widely, and again no response. During the
interregnum, Phil — a member of the congregation, and a
music teacher at another local school, but in no real sense of
the word an organist — had volunteered to run things. Fr
Stephen gladly grasped this lifeline, but the men in the choir
were less happy. They felt that Phil used to treat them as
though they were in his class at school, and this reached a
climax on one occasion when he could not attend evensong
because of a school concert. One of the longer- serving
members of the choir, although not really a keyboard player,
had agreed to play the organ. Since Phil's arrival, no anthem
had been sung at evensong despite the vocal resources being
available, and several members of the choir agreed that it
would be good to sing a short unaccompanied anthem, like old
times. Fr Stephen was only too happy to agree, and the anthem
was duly sung. When Phil got to hear of this, he said he felt
that the choir had been disloyal to him, and that the choir was
not in future going to be allowed to attend evensong at all. Fr
Stephen was appalled at this, but since Phil was threatening to
resign over the matter, and since there was no-one else both
willing and able to play on a regular basis, he felt obliged to
go along with it.
Phil stayed at the church for some further time before
moving on to another teaching appointment elsewhere. During
this time, the choir gradually collapsed, partly because there
was not enough for it to do: as members left, their places were
not filled.
Questions
• Was Fr Paul acting in the best interests of his successor, and
of the church, when he appointed Henry?
81
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
• Were the resignations of Henry or Bob to the benefit of the
church? If not, to what extent should efforts have been made
to persuade them to stay?
• If they had been on the PCC, might their resignations have
been averted?
• Ought Fr Stephen to have stood his ground at Phil's ultima-
tum, even at the risk of losing his third organist within two
years of his arrival at the church?
Chalk and Cheese
All seemed settled at St George's, a large church in the centre
of a moderate- sized town. Roger had been organist for ten
years, and Martin vicar for five. Roger had been a choirboy at
the church many years earlier, and in his teens had been taught
the organ up to Grade 8 by the then organist. When the
organist retired, Roger seemed the natural successor. There
had always been a flourishing choir which sang a choral
setting at the morning eucharist, and an anthem at evensong
each week. Now, however, owing to relocation of Roger's
work, St George's was having to look for a new organist. Of
all the candidates, Nigel was by far the most promising. He
was in his forties, held several music diplomas, and did much
freelance playing and teaching. Martin, the vicar, saw in Nigel
someone who could assist his own plans for really putting St
George's on the map. They were roughly the same age, which
also seemed promising. There was only one problem. Nigel
was one of the Associated Board's overseas examiners, and
consequently would be unavailable for two months each
summer.
Martin did not have to wait long before Nigel's energies
began to have an effect. He soon persuaded the PCC to create
the post of organ scholar, open to a music student at the local
university. This post was soon filled by James, who would
play the organ while Nigel conducted the choir. The standard
of the choir began to rise, and this in turn encouraged others to
join, in some cases from quite far afield. In addition to the 90-
82
THE CALL TO ARMS IS SOUNDING
minute Friday practice, there was now a 30-minute warm-up
before both of the Sunday services. The carol service was the
best that anyone could remember. Although Martin had earlier
thought that Nigel was possibly over-qualified, he was now
confident that the right choice had been made.
As the choir continued to improve, so its repertoire
increased. Each week it would now sing one or two motets at
the eucharist, and an introit and an anthem at evensong. For a
time there was a fully choral evensong on one Sunday each
month but, after adverse comments were received from
members of the congregation, this was changed to a Saturday
evening. Each week the choir continued to sing an introit and
anthem at Sunday evensong. Superimposed on this were a
number of choral weddings, fund-raising concerts for the
church, and the occasional choral service on weekday
evenings. Nigel also instituted a series of lunch-time organ
recitals for office workers.
Although Martin and Nigel seemed to get on well together,
one or two things about each of them got on the other's
nerves. For his part, after processing in, Martin always wanted
the organ music to stop as soon as he arrived in the stalls. On
several occasions he spoke loudly into the microphone
without giving whoever was playing the chance to finish. This
irritated both Nigel and James. On the other hand, Nigel liked
to conduct the choir from decani side, while the organ console
was on cantoris. However, since Nigel felt James to be
incapable of playing certain pieces — a view which many felt
to be as inaccurate as it was frequent — he was often moving to
and fro across the chancel during the service. Both Martin and
the congregation found this very distracting. As the tensions
were building up between Martin and Nigel, the latter began
one of his overseas examining tours. On his return, he learned
that Martin had been advised by his doctor to take life a little
easier. Their meetings became less and less frequent, and
arrangements were increasingly made by telephone and
correspondence. Another issue that divided the two men was
the question of choral services during the month of August.
83
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Nigel argued that, since the choir was working hard during the
rest of the year, it deserved a break. However, Martin felt that
it should be possible to maintain some sort of four-part
quorum, especially since so many tourists normally attended
the services in August.
Four years after being appointed, Nigel resigned. He felt
that for three of them Martin had not been at all co-operative.
In addition, the salary had not been increasing in line with the
rates recommended by the Royal School of Church Music. On
those occasions when James was also absent, Nigel was
having to pay a deputy out of his own pocket at a higher rate
than he was receiving. For his part, Martin felt that, although
both he and Nigel had been wanting the musical standard to
be built up, Nigel had been trying to create a cathedral choir in
a parish church. In some ways he was sorry to see Nigel go,
but he felt that perhaps someone else might be more suitable.
James felt that the two men were too strong-willed to be able
to work with each other. Each had his own vision for the
church, and unfortunately these visions had not coincided. The
combination of three months' notice from Nigel and James's
remaining time as organ scholar gave Martin six months in
which to find a new organist. Almost immediately an
advertisement was placed in Church Times, but none of the
applicants was remotely suitable. After this, nothing further
happened until after James had left, whereupon the post was
readvertised. At that time, several members of the choir left to
join other choirs, including a secular one recently founded by
Nigel.
The applications to the second advertisement were more
promising, including one from an assistant organist at a cathe-
dral. He was offered the appointment but, as he was unable to
find a suitable teaching appointment, he had to decline. The
second choice was Kenneth, another professional musician.
Although his home and work were both 40 miles away, he felt
confident that, if he took the appointment, the commuting
would not be an undue problem until such time as he could
move to the area. Since none of the other candidates was at all
84
THE CALL TO ARMS IS SOUNDING
suitable, Kenneth was appointed. The post of organ scholar
fell into abeyance. Very soon Kenneth came to realise that the
travel did pose a serious problem and, when he discovered the
price of houses within a ten-mile radius of St George's,
realised that he could not afford to move. All his salary as
organist (still below the level recommended by the RSCM)
was being spent in travel. Being away from home all day each
Sunday was most unsatisfactory, and he found that he was
lacking both the enthusiasm and the energy to embark on a
recruiting drive to fill the now quite empty choir stalls. Within
a year of his appointment, he resigned.
After considerable further advertising, Bill was appointed.
Bill's vision was to reintroduce an all-male choir at St
George's after a break of 20 years. In mentioning this to the
sopranos he suggested that their presence might possibly be an
inhibiting factor in recruiting boys. The sopranos took the
hint: some contraltos did not even wait to be asked.
Questions
• In the light of subsequent events, was Martin wrong in
appointing Nigel?
• Given the fact that Martin and Nigel were such strong
personalities, could the collision course have reasonably
been foreseen and even avoided? If so, how?
• Is there any means by which a vicar and a potential organist
can discover whether they will be able to work satisfactorily
together? If so, what?
• In the light of subsequent events, was Martin wrong in
appointing Kenneth?
• What is the likelihood of Bill successfully re-introducing an
all-male choir?
• Laying musical considerations aside, what are the pastoral
advantages and disadvantages of such a plan?
85
2b
Prophets, Teachers, True Recorders 1
The Survey by Questionnaire
Individual case studies such as those contained in the last
section demonstrate the nature of some of the tensions that
can exist between clergy and organists. However, they do not
provide any information on the extent of the problem in the
Church as a whole. It would have been quite impracticable for
me to undertake a systematic visitation of hundreds of
churches. Even if this had been possible, only in the most
severe of cases would clergy/organist tensions be apparent to a
visitor.
It therefore seemed clear to me that a survey by means of
questionnaire was the only solution. In the light of the case
studies, readers may already be mentally composing some
suitable questions !
The Type of Survey
There are two sides to every disagreement. Clearly in order
for the survey to be meaningful it was essential to obtain the
views of organists as well as those of clergy. Since I would be
asking clergy and organists to provide information on,
amongst other things, their relationship with each other, I
decided to provide a separate questionnaire for each, to be
returned in separate prepaid envelopes. In choosing the
questions, I had to strike a compromise between seeking as
1 P. Dearmer, [in, for example,] Songs of Praise Enlarged Edition (OUP,
London, 1931), No. 212.
86
PROPHETS, TEACHERS, TRUE RECORDERS
much information as possible, and not making undue demands
on respondents' time. In addition, certain questions could not
reasonably be asked because of their sensitive nature. Such
questions included: (to the musical director) 'How satisfied
are you with your vicar's theological and liturgical
competence?'; and (to both parties) 'Do you believe that your
vicar/musical director is a practising Christian?'
The Church of England has, within the ranks of its faithful,
widely differing opinions on almost every aspect of worship,
and there are almost equally wide variations in its terminology.
Some seemingly unambiguous words have different meanings
in different contexts. Conversely, different branches of the
Church use different words to mean the same thing. I tried to
eliminate misunderstanding by specially defining in the
questionnaires certain terms and, in order to assume a neutral
stance, adopted certain composite terms.
My first task was to identify the person with overall pastoral
responsibility for a church. He/she might be known locally as:
Rector, Team Rector, Vicar, Team Vicar, Minister (evangelical),
Minister-in-charge (evangelical and/or a lay person in charge of
a daughter church), Priest-in-charge. The term 'Clergy-in-
charge', although neutral in tone, would in some instances have
been factually incorrect. I therefore adopted the slightly clumsy
term priest/minister-in-charge. The strength of feeling on this
matter can be gauged from the fact that one clergyman who
completed the questionnaire deleted the word 'minister' every
time that it appeared. On occasions in the rest of this book, the
term will be abbreviated to 'priest-in-charge' or, where there is
no question of ambiguity, simply 'priest' .
Strictly speaking, the person in charge of the music at a
church is the priest/minister-in-charge. I therefore made a
point in the questionnaires of defining the musical director
as: 'the person who for practical purposes bears overall
responsibility for music at a church'. Such a person has
hitherto been the organist but, given their current shortage,
and the increasing use of instrumental groups, this is no
longer necessarily the case. On the one hand, there was the
87
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
risk of frightening off some potential respondents who could
not see themselves as having so grandiose a title. Conversely,
the word 'organist' would discourage, for example, someone
who had been accompanying all the services on a piano for
the last five years because no organist could be found. A
recent survey 1 in predominantly evangelical churches has
found that the job title of the music leader was 'music(al)
director' or 'director of music' in 25% of cases, 'music
coordinator' in 5% and 'worship leader' in 4% of cases.
Another survey reported the use of 'music(al) director',
'director of music' or 'music coordinator' in a third of the
sample. 2 In addition, the term 'minister of music' is used
increasingly in certain churches, especially in America, to
emphasise the pastoral nature of the post.
I defined a choir as: 'a group of singers (robed or unrobed)
remaining together during a service, even when they are not
singing'. A group defined in this way would probably be
expected to lead, at least nominally, the congregational singing.
If a church did not have its own parochial church council
(for example because it was a daughter church), in those
questions relating to the PCC, respondents were asked to
answer in terms of their own church's nearest equivalent. In
many evangelical churches, hymns are known as songs, so the
composite term hymns/congregational songs was used.
Although I was fortunate enough to meet most of the
clergy at chapter meetings, I needed some means of present-
ing the project to the others and to all the musical directors.
They were being asked to give of their time, and to answer
questions of a confidential and potentially compromising
nature. I therefore sent a covering letter, explaining the
project, and reassuring them that it had diocesan backing,
and that their confidentiality would be respected. I signed
each letter and, in the case of the clergy one, wrote the
priest's name at the head of the page. Respondents were
1 'Results of Your Completed Questionnaire Forms' in Music in Worship, 39
(Summer 1987), p. 6.
rce Paper 84:"
88
2 A Joyful Noise (Resource Paper 84:7) (Administry, St. Albans, 1984), p. 5.
PROPHETS, TEACHERS, TRUE RECORDERS
invited to send a stamped addressed envelope for a summary
of the results: one in eight did so.
A priest responsible for more than one church would
receive an appropriate number of questionnaires. Since the
questionnaires were going to be analysed on a church-by-
church basis, he would need some means of knowing which
questionnaire referred to which church. If the name of the
church were written on the questionnaire itself, and it
subsequently went astray in the post, then the information
would cease to be confidential. I therefore wrote on the
questionnaire a serial number, and on each priest's covering
letter the serial number(s) and name of the respective
church(es). Similarly, it was not beyond the bounds of
possibility that a musical director might be responsible for
more than one church and receive questionnaires either from
the same or even from two different priests. To avoid
confusion, I wrote the serial number and name of the church
on each musical director's covering letter.
The Area of the Survey
Survey results based on a small sample cannot be regarded as
reliable, and my original aim was to examine up to a
thousand churches in different types of diocese. However,
before embarking on this, I wanted to test the questionnaires'
effectiveness in a pilot study. This began in January 1988 in
the hundred churches of four deaneries in the Diocese of
Oxford. It was soon clear that the questionnaires of both
parties were being completed as intended, and returned in
quite large numbers. This very success, however, gave rise to
a new problem. I had always intended to type the data into
the computer personally (indeed I had no budget for a
separate typist!), but had not anticipated the sheer magnitude
of the task. Had the project continued on the scale originally
envisaged, the task would have become totally impracticable.
I decided therefore only to extend the pilot study to eight
further deaneries in the Oxford Diocese. This brought the
total for the project to 298 of the 826 churches, in twelve of
89
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
the 29 deaneries in the diocese. The distribution of
questionnaires in the remainder of the project took place
between June 1988 and February 1989.
The Diocese of Oxford covers 2222 square miles, making
it the fifth largest in the Church of England. Its northern tip
is only 30 miles from Birmingham, in the East it is within
12 miles of Central London, while its south-western corner
is within 25 miles of Salisbury. Its total population in mid-
1987 was 1,948,000.
Apart from its size, Oxford may be regarded as a very
'average' diocese. Calculations on data taken from Church
Statistics 1 yielded the following information for each of the
43 dioceses in the Church of England: population per square
mile, population per church, percentage of population on
church electoral rolls, and number of Sunday church
attendances per 1000 population. Nineteen dioceses had a
lower population per square mile than Oxford (whose value
was 877), 22 had a higher. Fifteen dioceses had a lower
population per church, 27 had a higher. Oxford's value was
2358. Its proportion of population on church electoral rolls
was 3.4%, twenty dioceses had a higher figure, 22 a lower
one. Finally, Oxford noted 28 Sunday church attendances
per 1000 population: fifteen dioceses recorded a higher
figure, 27 a lower one. We may therefore regard the Diocese
of Oxford as typical in several important respects, and any
conclusions drawn from the present survey may reasonably
be taken to apply in other dioceses also.
Distribution and Return of Questionnaires
Even with diocesan approval, any questionnaire arriving
'cold' on a vicarage doormat might easily go straight into a
wastepaper-basket. This could be overcome, but not very
efficiently, by my telephoning each priest-in-charge to seek
his approval before sending the questionnaire to him.
1 Church Statistics: Some facts and figures about the Church of England
(Central Board of Finance of the Church of England, London, 1989), pp. 1-
39.
90
PROPHETS, TEACHERS, TRUE RECORDERS
A method more effectively demonstrating official support was
for me to distribute the questionnaires personally at a chapter
meeting, address the meeting, and invite questions. This
proved possible in ten of the twelve deaneries, and seemed to
work very successfully. In some cases, I was invited to the
lunch which accompanied the meeting. On these occasions I
normally provided some sherry — I am uncertain whether this
had any effect on the response rate. In the remaining two
deaneries, there was either no chapter meeting scheduled for
the immediate future, or its agenda was already full. In these
cases, I telephoned each priest-in-charge before posting the
questionnaires.
There appeared to be no equivalent way of making contact
with the musical directors. For those churches affiliated to the
Royal School of Church Music, there is an identifiable RSCM
correspondent, but frequently he/she is not the musical director.
In any case, less than half the churches were affiliated. The
name and telephone number of the musical director could in
principle be obtained from the priest or a churchwarden (whose
name and address could be found in the Diocesan Year Book 1 ).
However, I felt that musical directors would be at least as likely
as the clergy to take an interest in such a survey, and might well
need less persuasion to complete their questionnaires. I
therefore decided to ask the clergy to pass on the musical
directors' questionnaires. The risk of a priest either deliberately
or accidentally failing to do so seemed to be fairly heavily
outweighed by the savings in both time and postage. 2
In most cases, the questionnaires were returned within six
weeks of their distribution. However, if after two months the
priest's questionnaire had not been returned, he was given a
reminder. This took the form of a telephone call, preferably to
him personally, or, failing that, to a member of his family or
his answering machine. Failure to respond was generally
1 Oxford Diocesan Year Book 1988 (Oxford Diocesan Board of Finance,
Oxford, 1987).
2 The envelope containing the musical director's questionnaire and covering
letter was unsealed, so that the priest might be reassured to know at least the
questions being asked, even if he would not learn the responses to them.
91
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
caused by pressure of other work rather than hostility to the
questionnaire although, even in the latter case, many clergy
were amenable to persuasion. By this stage, however, some of
the questionnaires had already been consigned to the
wastepaper-basket. In some cases, the questionnaires had been
put safely aside to be completed in a spare moment — and lost.
In either of the last two situations, if the priest expressed
willingness to complete a duplicate questionnaire, he
generally did so. If neither party's questionnaire had been
returned, again the priest was approached in the first instance.
If only the musical director's questionnaire was missing,
he/she was reminded by telephone. If necessary, a second
reminder was sent after a further two months.
In a very few cases, questionnaires were returned unan-
swered, usually with a covering letter. Some of the reasons
given are listed below.
• 'Questionnaire has no relevance whatever to St X church.'
(The person concerned was subsequently telephoned and
was persuaded to dictate his responses to the questionnaire
over the telephone.)
• 'Questionnaire much too long and complicated to be
attempted.' (The letter explaining this was itself very long,
and yielded a fair amount of useful information.)
• T am afraid that I do not have the time to give the
questionnaire the attention that it deserves.'
• T never complete questionnaires unless I am forced to.'
The Analysis
The data analysis was performed by SAS (Statistical Analysis
System) on computers at Oxford University Computing Service.
The Response Rate
The response rate of the musical directors was 71%, slightly
lower than the clergy 78%. However, since the questionnaires
were distributed to the directors via their respective priest, it is
likely that at least some never reached them at all, so making
their true response rate at least comparable to that of the clergy.
92
PROPHETS, TEACHERS, TRUE RECORDERS
Outcome Of Distribution Of Questionnaires
Musical director
Priest-in-charge
Total distributed
298
Total distributed
298
Completed by MD
175
Completed
231
Completed by PC
acting as MD 2
11
Interregnum 1
6
Churches without MD
14
Churches without music
11
Not completed
87
Not completed
61
Response rate
71%
Response rate 3
78%
In the recent ACCMUS survey, 680 forms were distributed
to clergy and 545 were returned, a response rate of 80%. It
would appear from the Report 4 that the 680 were selected on
the basis that they had all replied to an earlier survey on
church finance — an ingenious way of maximising the
response rate to the ACCMUS survey. There are, however,
dangers in such an approach in that the sample of 680 may
then not be sufficiently representative of the Church of
England as a whole. A paper on clergy response rates to
questionnaires has recently been published. 5
In some cases, parts of the questionnaire were completed either by another
member of the clergy or a churchwarden.
In the absence of any sort of musical leader, certain clergy saw themselves in
the role by default. Others simply recorded the absence of a musical director.
Even in the latter case, parts of the questionnaire were often completed. The
distinction between the two cases is, however, somewhat arbitrary and may
represent nothing more than the amount of time that the priest had available
when attending to the questionnaires. In all subsequent analysis, where the
views of musical directors are being compared with those of the clergy, such
duplicated results will be excluded from the directors' set. In other cases,
churchwardens saw themselves in the role by default.
In two deaneries, the questionnaires were distributed to clergy by post rather
than personally at a chapter meeting. This did not seem to affect the response
rate.
Jacqui Cooper, Music in Parish Worship (Central Board of Finance of the
Church of England, London, [dated] 1990 [but not published until 1992]).
Robin L.D. Rees and Leslie J. Francis, 'Clergy response Rates to Work-
Related Questionnaires: A Relationship Between Age, Work Load, and
Burnout?' in Social Behavior and Personality 19, No. 1 (1991), pp. 45-51.
93
Captains Of The Saintly Band 1
Musical Directors and Priests:
Their Similarities and Differences
Given the recent upheavals and the reported cases of conflict
between clergy and church musicians, I wanted to investigate
the situation at churches, as seen through the eyes of the
musical director on the one hand, and the priest-in-charge on
the other. However, I also wanted to analyse the
characteristics of the respondents themselves, to see whether
their differences of background or of general attitude could
be related to the differences in their perception of the
situation at their particular church.
In this chapter therefore, we focus our attention on two
different species — musical directors on the one hand and
priests/ministers-in-charge on the other. We note similarities
and differences in their personal characteristics: sex, age and
education, before moving on to compare their general
attitudes to worship and to church music. 2
J.B. de Santeuil, tr. H.W. Baker, [in, for example,] Hymns Ancient and
Modern Revised (Clowes, Beccles, 1950), No. 507.
Many clergy and some musical directors were responsible for more than one
church and, as such, completed more than one questionnaire. The numbers of
musical directors and priests who completed questionnaires (as opposed to
the number of questionnaires that they completed) were 165 and 125
respectively, and the results of this chapter are based on these figures. In
other words, a priest in charge of, for example, four churches is counted only
once.
94
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
General Characteristics
When I looked at musical directors, I found that the ratio of
men to women was just over two to one. This compares with
four to one a few years earlier, 1 so the organ console is now
far from being an all-male preserve. Although the same cannot
at present be said for the vicar's stall — the ratio of males to
females for ministers-in-charge was over a hundred to one — it
will be interesting to see if there is any significant change in
this figure by the turn of the century. In the clergy
questionnaire, the question concerning sex was postponed
until page 4: a clergyman hostile to the ordination of women
might have become equally hostile to the questionnaire if he
had been asked his sex as the very first question. Indeed, one
respondent deleted the word 'sex' altogether and substituted
'gender'.
Age (years)
Under 20
20 - 29
Musi
+■
_|_
.cal
direc
tor
30%
Priest-in-charge
+
+
~^H
30 - 39
_|_
+^^^^_
~^H
40 - 49
50 - 59
+ ^ m
60 - 69
_|_
20
+^^^^^ m
~^m
Over 69
_|_
+■
~^H
+
— +—
10
+ + + + —
10 20 30%
The most common age range of musical directors was 40-
49, that of clergy 50-59, their estimated 2 average ages being
47.6 and 50.6 respectively. The youngest musical director
Berkeley Hill, A Survey of Church Music, 1982 (Royal School of Church
Music, Addington, 1983), p. 38.
One may reasonably assume that the average age of those within a given age
group is midway between the limits. In other words, a reasonable estimate of
the average age of the group aged between 20 and 29 is 24.5. In this way one
can obtain an estimate of the average age of the full set of respondents. The
average age of those 'under 20' and 'over 69' is a little more difficult to
ascertain, but common sense would suggest values of about 18 and 72
respectively. Moreover, since there are likely to be relatively few in either
category, even quite a large change in either of these figures would have very
little influence on the value of the estimated average of the full set.
95
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
was only fourteen years old and, sadly perhaps, was pre-
vented by his mother from answering some of the more
contentious questions.
Several other matters of a general nature emerged from the
early questions. A high proportion of the clergy had entered
the ministry early in life, and almost two thirds had been in
the ministry for 20 years or more. These points are illustrated
in the charts below. One in forty was in either post-retirement
or non- stipendiary ministry, the rest in stipendiary. Only one
in fifty had studied part-time for ordination. The main pro-
fession of almost a third of the musical directors was (or had
been) in the field of music.
Priest-in-charge's time in secular employment before ministerial
training
Less than 3 years + ^h^^^^^^^^^
3-9 years + ^m^^^^^^b
10 years or more + ^h^^^^b
+ + + + +-
10 20 30 40%
Period since completion of priest-in-charge's training
Less than 10 years +■■■■■■■■■
10-19 years +■■■■■■■■■■
20-29 years +^hmmmmmmmb
30-39 years +^hmmmmb
40 years or more +^
+ + + +
10 20 30%
Musical Ability
Next I wanted to discover the levels of musical attainment of
our two parties. I therefore asked: Tf you have ever attended
instrumental or singing lessons, what was your approximate
level of attainment?'
Attainment level
Musical
director
Priest-in-charge
No lessons
below
+HHHHHH
Grade 2 or
Grade 3-5
+HHHHHB
Grade 6-8
+HHHB
Licentiate
+HHHHHB
+■
Fellow/Mus .
deg.
+
+ + + + + + + + + +—
10 20 30 40% 10 20 30 40
96
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
A third of the musical directors had Grade 5 or less, but an
equal number held a Licentiate or above. In 1982, the
proportion in the latter group was found to be as high as a
half. 1 (This discrepancy may well be caused by a major
turnover of directors since 1982 — we look at evidence for
this on page 132 — or perhaps those responding to the earlier
survey, all at RSCM-affiliated churches, were unrepresenta-
tive in their high level of musical activity.) Half the clergy
had never received any tuition at all, while a further third had
reached only Grade 2 or lower. In the circumstances, I find
the ACCMUS statement: 'Most clergy have at least some
musical knowledge' 2 quite surprising, and wonder on what
data it is based. The average for musical directors fell at
about Grades 6-8
Musical Training in Theological Colleges
Having noted the clergy's lack of musical expertise, we may
reasonably ask whether they were given adequate opportun-
ity for studying the use of music in worship during their
ministerial training. I began by asking how many hours had
been devoted to this.
Time spent on musical study during ministerial training
- 4 hours +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
5-19 hours +^^^^h
20-39 hours +mmm
40-79 hours +mm
Over 7 9 hours +^^
10 20 30 40 50%
During the course of their entire ministerial training, a
majority of the clergy had spent four hours or less studying
the use of music in worship. Three quarters had spent less
1 Berkeley Hill, A Survey of Church Music, 1982 (Royal School of Church
Music, Addington, 1983), p. 32.
2 In Tune With Heaven, Report of the Archbishops' Commission on Church
Music (Church House Publishing, and Hodder and Stoughton, London,
1992), p. 191.
97
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
than twenty hours. The average was eighteen. (A few clergy
indicated that they had included the time of college choir
practice, and others may well have done so without recording
the fact. The time actually spent on study would therefore be
even lower than these figures suggest.) Did they feel that this
was adequate in quantity and quality?
Adequacy of musical training: Quantity
Much too little time
Too little time
About right
Too much time
+
Much too much time
+
+ + + +
10 20 30
— +
40
— +
50
Adequacy of musical training: Quality
Very unhelpful
Unhelpful
Neutral
+MM
Helpful
Very helpful
1-
10 20 30
40
50
More than half the clergy felt that the time had been either
too little or much too little. Although it is likely that some of
the participants in the survey were not in the least interested
in music, not a single one felt the training to have been
excessive. Almost half felt that they had derived no benefit
from their musical training, whilst almost two thirds were not
satisfied with its quantity and/or quality. Combining these
figures with data elsewhere in the questionnaire, I also
discovered that the catholic colleges have always spent more
time in music-training than their evangelical and middle-of-
the-road counterparts. Worryingly, during the last thirty years
the time spent in musical training has actually fallen at all
types of college!
Musical Refresher Courses
Given the above, it was important to discover how widely
musical directors and clergy were availing themselves of the
98
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
church-music refresher courses run by the RSCM and other
bodies, and whether these courses were felt to be helpful.
Three quarters of the clergy had not attended such a course
since ministerial training, and an equal proportion of musical
directors had not done so in the last three years. However,
those attending had usually found them helpful or very
helpful.
Helpfulness of courses
Mus
ical
director
Pries t-in-charge
Very unhelpful
+■
+
Unhelpful
+
+■
Neutral
+■
+«
Helpful
Very helpful
• — +
+ + + +
+ —
— +—
+ —
20
40
60%
20 40 60%
In a survey undertaken by the Music in Worship Trust, nearly
three out of five of church musicians were attending regional
training courses. 1 Even allowing for the fact that the report
fails to define 'musicians' (the director or the whole choir?),
and the nature and frequency of the courses, this figure seems
commendably high.
Had our respondents, either as children or as adults, ever
sung in a church choir? In other words, had they at some
time in their lives been receiving regular training, however
minimal, in church music? Two fifths of the clergy and a
quarter of the musical directors had never done so. The latter
figure may seem surprisingly high, but half of these directors
were women, to whom the traditional all-male choir would
have been be a closed door.
Levels of Education
Having looked at specifically musical qualifications, we now
take a look at the priests' and musical directors' qualifica-
tions in general. Both groups of respondents were asked
whether they held the following: fellowship and/or first
1 'Results of Your Completed Questionnaire Forms' in Music in Worship, 39
(Summer 1987), p. 5.
99
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
degree in music, first degree in theology, first degree in any
other subject, higher degree in any subject, church music
qualification with liturgical content (e.g. Archbishop's
Diploma or Certificate, rather than ARCO(CHM)), teacher-
training certificate, and other professional qualifications.
Qualification
Fel . /1st deg . mus .
1st deg. theol.
1st deg. other
Higher deg.
Ch . mus . qual .
Teaching cert .
Other
+ + + + + + + + + + —
10 20 30% 10 20 30 40 50%
Roughly a third of the clergy held a degree in theology,
slightly higher than the proportion of musical directors
holding a comparable qualification in music. (The musical
directors holding degrees in theology all turned out to be
assistant priests holding also high musical qualifications.
However, a further one in six of the directors had undertaken
some form of adult theological or pastoral training course —
in at least one case to the level of Lay Reader.)
A qualification in church music should in theory be a point
of contact between musicians and the clergy, but the results
from this question are not encouraging.
Most clergy lacked the necessary practical skills to take
such an examination (Grade 5 Practical was until recently
demanded as a prerequisite for the ACertCM), whilst the
musicians seemed to lack the interest. We will be looking at
this point again on page 103. Qualifications in the 'other'
category were for the musical directors in social work,
management, librarianship, physics, and theology. For the
clergy they were in accountancy, administration, engineering,
the Law Society and the Civil Service.
In order to obtain a still broader view, I counted the
number of qualifications of each respondent. Ordination was
included as a qualification, as was a licentiate in music.
100
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
Number of qualifications
Musical
director
Priest-in-charge
+
1
30%
2
3
+^_
20
4
5
6
III.
+ + + +
-+—
10
+■
+
10 20 30%
On these admittedly arbitrary criteria, the clergy appeared to
be significantly more highly qualified, although less obvi-
ously so amongst the real high-flyers. The average number of
qualifications for musical directors was 1.4, for clergy 2.3.
Membership of Church Musical Associations
By this stage it had become apparent that there was no real
point of contact between clergy and musical directors as far
as academic study was concerned. Was there perhaps
anything more hopeful when it came to membership of
church-related musical associations? Since membership
implies a potential receptiveness to new ideas, I asked both
parties whether they belonged to: the Royal School of
Church Music (as a personal member), Guild of Church
Musicians, local branch of the Incorporated Association of
Organists, Royal College of Organists, Friends of Cathedral
Music, Music in Worship Trust, and any other associations.
Membership of musical associations
Musical director Priest-in-charge
RSCM +^^^^^^^_ + H
GCM + H +
IAO +^^^^^^^^ m +
RCO +^^^^^^^^ m +
FCM +^^ + H
MIW +^^ +^^_
Other + H + m
+ + + + + + + +
5 10 15% 5 10 15%
Of all the church music associations, the one most directly
influential is the RSCM. We will be looking at church-
membership of the RSCM on pages 103 and 126, but
101
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
personal membership implies a somewhat deeper interest on
the part of the individual. Few, however, held such member-
ship. The Incorporated Association of Organists is an
educational charity, taking its present title in 1929. 1 It works
at local level with almost 100 regional centres, nationally and
internationally, to advance the knowledge and enjoyment of
the organ and its music. Whilst not involved expressly with
church music, the IAO does nevertheless provide a forum for
organists to exchange ideas with each other but not, it would
appear, with the clergy. However, less than one in seven even
of the musical directors seem to avail themselves of the
opportunity.
Since 1957 the Friends of Cathedral Music have been
fostering the welfare of cathedral music through regional
gatherings of its members, grants to assist choral foundations,
etc. Their free booklet Singing in Cathedrals, published
annually in conjunction with several other bodies, lists the
times of all choral services at cathedrals and collegiate
chapels. (We have already noted on page 29 the recent FCM
survey of the most widely-sung cathedral music.) Cathedral
music is very far removed from that found nowadays in most
parish churches, and this perhaps explains why its
membership was so low among those taking part in the
survey. Lower still was the level of membership of the Guild
of Church Musicians. The Music in Worship Trust (now called
Music and Worship Foundation) is predominantly evangelical
in outlook but, even in this wing of the Church, membership
among musical directors was very low. However, clergy
membership was higher here than for other organisations.
Other musical associations had even less support. Two of
those specified were purely local groups, the third was the
Christian Music Association, mentioned on page 67.
In isolation the above figures give no clue as to whether
the membership was evenly spread, or whether a few people
belonged to many organisations. The table below, showing
1 Roger Bishton, 'The Incorporated Association of Organists' in Church Music
Quarterly, October 1985, pp. 8-9.
102
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
the number of organisations to which each respondent
belonged, remedies this: the more organisations, in all
probability the greater the commitment.
Number of organisations excluding church affiliation
Musical director
Priest-in-charge
1
2
3
+■
+■
+ + + + + —
+
+
+ + + + + —
20 40 60 80%
20 40 60 80%
Some two thirds of the musical directors and nine out of ten
clergy held no personal membership. Church affiliation to the
RSCM (as opposed to personal membership) is another
potential measure of commitment and interest. It is, however,
less direct in that the church treasurer may be paying the
RSCM subscription each year, without either the priest or the
musical director necessarily availing themselves of the
benefits of membership. Notwithstanding this, if affiliation
or personal RSCM membership scores 1 point (but instances
of membership and affiliation count only once), the charts
then take the following form.
Number of organisations including church affiliation
Musical director
Priest-in-charge
1
+^^^^^_
2
+ H
+■
3
+■
+
4
+
+
+ + + + +
+ + + + +
20 40 60 80%
20 40 60 80%
More than two fifths of the musical directors and more than
half the clergy did not have access to the news and views of
any of the church-related musical associations. This surely is
not a healthy situation. (We will be looking further into
church affiliation to the RSCM on page 126.) Despite this, I
wondered whether respondents might be interested in joining
with other clergy and musicians in a discussion group on
music and worship.
103
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Level of interest in a discussion group
Musical director
Priest-in-charge
Not interested
Fairly interested
Interested
Very interested
+ + + +-
10 20 30%
+ + + +-
10 20 30%
The level of interest of both parties was only moderate for a
meeting which might help resolve or even avoid misunder-
standing between them, thereby perhaps enriching a church's
worship. There was possibly the feeling that discussing
matters in general terms would not be particularly produc-
tive. A few clergy and directors expressed interest, but felt
that they could not spare the time.
Differing Ideas for Worship
Do musical directors and clergy, as two separate groups, have
significantly differing ideas for what constitutes worship?
Three common measures for this are charismatic/non-
charismatic, catholic/evangelical, and liberal/conservative.
Of these, the last seemed to have the least influence on
church music, so I did not pursue it.
Instead I asked both parties to indicate their preferences
concerning the other two. This provoked a number of
comments, some hostile. From the directors these included:
don't understand; or more extremely don't understand and
don't want to; don't understand in the context of music (it
was not intended to be taken in this context!); does not apply
(probably a variation of the previous response); / am not
prepared to answer; I want traditional (a frequent response);
or even Agnostic (traditional). From the clergy there were
fewer comments. One indicated that he had attempted to
answer the questions in a musical sense (e.g. evangelical
choruses vs. gregorian chants). Others expressed dissatisfac-
tion at being asked to categorise worship in this way.
The question on charismatic worship produced a signifi-
cantly lower response rate than other questions, especially
104
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
amongst the musical directors. This may well be because,
unless they were involved in the Charismatic Movement,
many would not understand the meaning of the word. The
comments mentioned above provide some evidence of this.
However, several of the clergy felt that the word was too
imprecise. In addition to its colloquial sense of freedom of
expression in worship, even possibly speaking in tongues as
at Pentecost ('glos solaria'), it could also simply mean
worship guided by the Holy Spirit.
Charismatic worship: personal preferences
Musical director
Very -3 +^_
char . -2 +^^^ m
0+|
l+l
Very 2 +,
non-char . 3 +^^^^^^^^^^^^_
+ + + + —
10 20 30%
The form of the charts is strange. In the case of the musical
directors, with the exception of a minor peak in the middle,
there is a clear majority preferring to avoid charismatic
worship. For the clergy, there is a peak of those preferring
mildly charismatic worship and a second, smaller, peak of
those preferring to avoid it. The averages of the two groups
are respectively 0.8 and 0.3.
Catholic/evangelical worship: personal preferences
Very
cath.
Mu
-3+ m
sical
direct
:or
— + —
30%
Priest-in-charge
_i +
+^^^^^_
~^H
n +
20
+^^^
H
1 4.
+■
~^H
Very
o 4.
+^_
~^H
evang .
■3 4.
+^^^_
H
+—
+—
10
+ + + + —
10 20 30%
Most musical directors seemed to favour worship towards the
catholic end of the spectrum, although there was a secondary
peak in the mildly evangelical area. This, strangely, is a
viewpoint which found least favour amongst the clergy, whose
105
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
chart has a main peak at the fairly strong catholic stance, and a
smaller one at the strongly evangelical. The average figure for
musical directors is -0.5, for clergy -0.9.
The Ideal Musical Director
What qualities should we be looking for in the ideal musical
director? Are these absolute, or are certain qualities import-
ant simply because the individual priest perceives them to be
important?
In an attempt to obtain an insight into this, I asked both
parties to indicate their views on each of the following
criteria for appointing a musical director to a church:
• Church music qualification with liturgical content (e.g.
Archbishop's Diploma or Certificate);
Other qualifications in music;
School-teaching qualification;
Ability to play hymns and other congregational music well;
Ability as a solo organist;
Liturgical awareness;
Musical director is a practising Christian;
Pastoral gifts;
Administrative ability;
Willingness to co-operate in a flexible way;
Involvement with other church-based activities;
Involvement with 'non- traditional' church music;
Ability in training young (under- 16) choir members;
Ability in training adult members; and
Ability to attract and retain a choir.
I asked them to give their responses on a scale from 1 (very
advantageous), through 2 (advantageous), 3 (not relevant)
and 4 (disadvantageous) to 5 (very disadvantageous). The
table shows the average values, as perceived by the musical
director and priest respectively.
106
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
We see from the table that neither party held qualifications
in church music in very high esteem. (In particular, one
interpretation of the response of the two priests who found
the qualification to be disadvantageous is that they might feel
threatened by such a director.) This must be disappointing to
the Archbishops, who have expressed the wish that: 'all who
have the responsibility of leading the music of their church
should aim to achieve [the ACertCM] as a basic, minimum
acceptable standard'. 1 One crumb of comfort was that those
musical directors who had taken such a qualification felt
marginally more enthusiastic about it than those who had not.
Both clergy and musical directors felt that qualifications in
'ordinary music' were more useful than qualifications in
church music. Once more, musical directors were a little less
impressed with such qualifications than were the clergy —
who may in some cases have been only too well aware of the
need for their musical director to be better qualified!
Playing music for congregational singing was considered
to be the most important factor of all those listed. Three
quarters of both parties felt this to be 'very advantageous'. A
possible view of those few clergy and directors who did not
feel that the criterion was relevant may have been that the
organ playing should be in the hands of an assistant. One
musical director, after replying 'not relevant' for ability as a
solo organist, remarked: 'You cannot do much on a
harmonium' .
1 Prospectus of the Guild of Church Musicians (London, 1990) [p. 3].
107
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Criteria for Appointing a Musical Director
Musical director's view Priest-in-charge's view
Very advantageous - 1.0 -
Hymn-playing ability
Attract/retain choir
Willingness to co-operate
Practising Christian
Children's choir training
Adult choir training
Liturgical awareness
'Ordinary music' qual.
Advantageous
Solo organist
Admin, ability
Church-music qual.
Pastoral gifts
Other church activities
Non-traditional music
School-teaching qual.
Not relevant
Disadvantageous
Very disadvantageous
-1.2-
1.3
1.5
1.7
1.9
2.1
^2.2^
2.3
2.5
^2.6^
-3.0-
-4.0-
- 5.0 -
108
Hymn-playing ability
Willingness to cooperate
(i) Practising Christian
(ii) Attract & retain choir
Liturgical awareness
Adult choir training
Children's choir training
'Ordinary music' qual.
Church-music qual.
Non-traditional music
Solo organist
Pastoral gifts
Admin, ability
Other church activities
School-teaching qual.
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
Clergy and musical directors were in marked disagreement
over the benefits of 'liturgical awareness' (the musical
director's detailed understanding of what is happening during
the service so that, for example, a short interlude can be
played, or indeed drawn to a conclusion, at the right
moment). The religious conviction of the musical director
was regarded as very important, both by the directors
themselves and by the clergy. It may seem surprising that the
clergy did not take a stronger line on the question of the
musical director's religious conviction. However, one priest
wrote on the questionnaire: 'You put up with whoever you
can get', and this view may be reflected in the clergy's
response to this criterion. Conversely, another priest com-
mented: 'very very advantageous', whilst no fewer than three
musical directors felt it to be 'essential'.
Despite the care I had taken in the questionnaires to avoid
offence, one musical director found the term 'practising
Christian' offensive, and felt that no-one should dare to claim
to be one. Pastoral gifts, which might be defined as the
ability to offer spiritual as well as musical leadership, were
regarded more highly by the clergy than by the directors
themselves, one of whom wrote: 'don't understand' against
this criterion. Administrative ability includes advance
planning (such as ordering music in time for a special
service), and ability to communicate orally and in writing
with others. Surprisingly perhaps, neither party rated this
particularly highly.
Much more important was whether a musical director was
willing to co-operate in a flexible way, by implication with
the priest. The readiness of the priest to co-operate with the
musical director would probably be another interesting field
of study. One musical director, having indicated that he
viewed the criterion with favour, added the cri de coeur. 'but
not with too-trendy guitar-charged clergy'.
The use of modern or popular music in worship was a
particularly controversial issue within, as well as between, the
parties. The clergy were not quite so strongly in favour as I
109
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
had expected, while the musical directors took an even more
cautious view. In the words of one: 'From with-it parsons etc.,
Good Lord deliver us'. The ability to attract and retain a choir
implies actively developing the music, rather than merely
accepting the status quo. Even in these days, with much
emphasis on congregational music, this criterion was regarded
by both parties as very important. Indeed it was considered to
be more important than actually being able to train the choir
effectively. A possible reason for this, at least among the
clergy, is that a choir is seen as a way of encouraging both
children and adults to become more actively involved in the
life of the church, and even to draw in young and old from
outside. Several directors and clergy at churches without
choirs regarded the criterion as irrelevant, possibly because
they had given up all hope of ever having a choir.
In summary, the musical directors seemed to place more
emphasis on the purely musical aspects of their work than did
the clergy, resulting in a wider range of figures (from 1.25 to
2.56, compared with 1.28 to 2.24). To put it another way, the
directors were looking for specialist musicians, the clergy for
all-rounders. However, there appeared to be further
similarities between the figures of the two groups. They
selected the same seven most important criteria (hymn
playing, attract/retain choir, willingness to co-operate,
practising Christian, children's choir training, adult choir
training, liturgical awareness), even though they did not agree
on the order of the seven. In both cases there was then a gap,
followed by 'ordinary music' qualification. There was then a
further gap followed by the seven remaining, less
advantageous, criteria. Again the parties did not agree on the
ordering of these.
110
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
Musical Directors' Criteria for Selecting a Church
VERY ADVANTAGEOUS - 1.0
(i) Good organ (ii) PC & MD with common approach to music — 1.7
PC & MD with common approach to worship
Church near to home
Advantageous
Good choir
Large congregation
High salary
PC has music qual.
Not relevant
1.8
• 1.9 L.
2.0
■ 2.1 1
2.2
■ 2.3 ■
2.4
■ 2.5 1
2.6
-| 2.7 ■
-j 2.8
^ 2.9
- 3.0
Disadvantageous
Very disadvantageous
4.0
5.0
111
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
The Ideal Church
So much for the ideal musical director — what about the ideal
church? I asked the directors to give me their views on the
following:
• Church near to home;
• Large congregation;
• High salary;
• Good choir;
• Good organ;
• Musically qualified priest-in-charge;
• Priest-in-charge and director sharing a common approach
to music;
• Priest-in-charge and director sharing a common approach
to worship.
As before, the scale was from 1 (very advantageous), through
2 (advantageous), 3 (not relevant) and 4 (disadvantageous) to
5 (very disadvantageous). The average values are shown on
page 111.
The directors felt it important to see eye to eye with the
clergy over music. Agreement over worship was seen as
marginally less important, perhaps partly because the two
parties were less likely to be drawn into direct conflict. The
relative positions of 'good organ' and 'good choir' suggest
that directors saw themselves primarily as organists. How-
ever, this view was almost certainly coloured by the fact that
many may never have had a choir to direct.
A church near to home saves both time and money, and a
director may want to get involved in the local community. It
would probably also help in the recruitment of a choir. A
quarter of the musical directors were aged 60 or over, and a
significant proportion of these might well not have a car. For
such people, the dearth of public transport on a Sunday
makes a local church even more desirable. However, there
was no statistical evidence of the over-sixties ranking this
criterion higher than their younger counterparts. Directors
112
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
gave little attention to the salary (and there was no evidence
of it assuming greater importance after retirement). Equally
irrelevant seemed to be the question of whether the church
was 'successful' in terms of congregation size. The most
controversial matter was the question of the desirability of
the priest holding a music qualification, no fewer than one
director in six viewing the prospect with misgivings.
The directors' range of figures for these criteria in selecting
a church was 1.70 to 2.87. However in the previous question,
their range for a church selecting a musical director was
markedly different (perceived as more important?) at 1.25 to
2.56.
Finally, one director added a further criterion, which was
marked as 'very advantageous' — that the priest should be
able to sing well and in tune. It would be interesting to know
whether the absence of such an ability is regarded as a
widespread problem.
Hiring and Firing
Questions relating to 'industrial relations' between priest and
musical director were very topical at the time of the survey.
The hiring and, more controversially, the firing of organists
or choirmasters had previously been solely in the hands of
the priest-in-charge. However in 1988, after many years'
discussion by a working party of the RSCM, and
subsequently by General Synod, an amendment to Canon
B20 (Of the Hymns, Anthems and Music of the Church) was
finally ratified by Parliament. It now read:
In all [parish] churches and chapels . . . the functions of appointing
any organist or choirmaster (by whatever name called), and of ter-
minating the appointment . . . shall be exercisable by the minister
with the agreement of the parochial church council, except that if the
archdeacon of the archdeaconry in which the parish is situated, in the
case of termination of an appointment, considers that the
circumstances are such that the agreement of the parochial church
113
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
council should be dispensed with, the archdeacon may direct
accordingly. 1
The working party had originally requested that the appoint-
ment and its termination be in the hands of the PCC with the
agreement of the priest, but this was found to be unaccept-
able to General Synod because the powers of the clergy were
being undermined. However, in the words of the chairman of
the working party:
On reflection we felt that [the measure as adopted] would bring about
what we were so anxious to achieve, namely the involvement of other
persons in addition to the Incumbent as a safeguard against summary
dismissal on inadequate grounds. 2
I therefore asked the clergy whether they felt that the
appointment of a musical director should remain the sole
ultimate responsibility of the priest-in-charge. Half voted
'yes', slightly under half 'no', and one in twenty undecided.
Of those voting 'yes', some indicated that this was for
ultimate rather than sole ultimate responsibility. Another
commented: 'impossible to answer without knowing the
priest, but I know that / would want the last word!'. Taking
advice is somewhat different from taking decisions, so I
asked: 'From which of the following would you seek advice
before appointing a new musical director?'
»'3
Parties consulted by priest when appointing a new musical director
Other clergy
Churchwardens
PCC
The choir (assuming there were one)
Independent adviser (e.g. RSCM commissioner)
Others
-+ —
60
_i_
-+ —
40
~^m
+—
— +
20
-+ —
80%
Quoted by Vincent Waterhouse, 'Organists' contracts: law change brings in
PCCs' in Church Music Quarterly, October 1988, p. 8.
Dame Betty Ridley, 'The security of parish church organists' in Church
Music Quarterly, October 1985, p. 20.
In each case the chart shows the 'yes' responses as a percentage after 'don't
know' responses have been excluded.
114
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
Two thirds of clergy would consult their colleagues before
making an appointment. (I gave as much scope as possible
for a positive answer, by not specifying whether 'other
clergy' meant the priest's assistant, his peers in other
parishes, or the rural dean.) The PCC would be consulted in
roughly four fifths of cases, although Canon B20 now
requires the PCC's agreement in all cases. A quarter of the
clergy would consult other parties: these included the
Incorporated Association of Organists, other local organists,
the priest's wife, referees (although I trust that no organist
would be appointed without references being taken up!), the
entire church membership, and the heads of music at local
schools. Almost four priests in five would seek advice from
three or more parties. However, as one clergyman wryly
remarked: 'There is seldom a choice'.
So what about the firing? I asked the clergy: 'In the event
of dispute with the priest-in-charge, to which if any of the
following do you think that a musical director should have
the right of appeal?'
Parties to whom priests would allow their musical directors
the right of appeal
Other clergy +^^_
Churchwardens +^^^^^^^^^^^_
The PCC +^^^^^^^_
Independent adviser (e.g. RSCM commissioner) +^^^^^^^^ m
Others +^_
+ + + + +
20 40 60 80%
This seemed rather less popular. Only one priest in five
would wish to involve fellow-clergy in a dispute, despite the
fact that, once again, I gave as much scope as possible for a
positive answer. This perhaps suggests a feeling of insecurity.
Just over two thirds of the clergy would be willing for the
churchwardens to be approached, but to what extent they
would be allowed to overturn a clergy decision is unclear.
Indeed one clergyman wrote: 'Would the appeal seek to
resolve differences, or override the vicar's authority? If the
latter, it would be an impossible situation.' The PCC was felt
115
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
to be rather less suitable for this task than the wardens,
possibly for reasons of maintaining confidentiality. However,
in accordance with Canon B20, it would now have to be
involved if the dispute led to a dismissal. Less popular was
the prospect of bringing in an outsider, another possible sign
of clergy insecurity. Of those clergy agreeing to an appeal
elsewhere, some specified that it should be to deanery or
diocesan level presumably, but not necessarily, to be heard by
a senior member of the clergy. Others suggested a mutually
acceptable conciliator.
As before, I counted the number of different parties to whom
appeal would be allowed. Just over half of the clergy would
allow appeal to two or more parties, while a further third would
allow appeal to one party. However, it is perhaps alarming that
as many as one in ten of the clergy would not seem to allow
appeal to anyone at all. Indeed in virtually all such cases, the
response consistently took the form of 'no' rather than merely a
'don't know'.
It would have been fascinating to discover the extent to
which disputes had actually arisen, and the success or
otherwise of any appeals.
Summary
The priests/ministers-in-charge are almost exclusively male,
the musical directors predominantly so and marginally
younger. There is a wide range of musical ability amongst
musical directors, whilst that of the clergy is heavily
concentrated at the lower end. Similarly, directors' know-
ledge of theology is extremely limited. Here we see a
fundamental difference in the outlook of our two parties, with
very little common ground between them. Clergy seem to be
more highly qualified academically than musical directors.
Very few directors and none of the clergy have taken any
formal qualification in church music, nor does either party
see much value in such a qualification. However, clergy are
116
CAPTAINS OF THE SAINTLY BAND
unhappy with their theological-college training on the use of
music in worship.
There is little interest, especially among the clergy, in
membership of church-related musical associations. Few of
either group have attended courses (formal or informal) in
church music, nor does there appear to be any great enthusi-
asm for joining a discussion group on the subject. However,
those that have attended courses have found them helpful.
The two parties have different views on what is expected of
directors, especially in the importance of directors' liturgical
awareness, and involvement in non-traditional music.
Postscript
Somewhat mischievously, I asked the clergy how they felt
about the level of funds provided by the Church of England
for lay training in music. Half did not know, a third felt it
was inadequate, a sixth felt it was about right, while one
person felt it was too high. Only one respondent seemed to
spot the deliberate catch in the question. He commented: T
was unaware that the C of E. provided any!'
117
O Faith Of England 1
The Church and its People
There is a saying that the greatest resource of any
organisation is its personnel. Even from a secular standpoint,
this is no less true of the Church, while most Christians
would argue that God is scarcely likely to act other than
through some human agency.
In this chapter we look at church personnel, the groups that
they form and, as a particular example of this, the choir. 2
Preliminaries
I included some initial questions of a more general nature, as
their data enabled me to test whether my sample was
representative of the Church of England as a whole. I
wondered also whether the state of a particular aspect of a
church's life might prove to be a pointer to the state of that
church's music. In addition, I (or indeed someone else) might
in due course wish to re-examine the survey data from a
completely different viewpoint, in which case this informa-
tion might well come in useful.
First then, in what types of area were the churches
situated?
1 T.A. Lacey, [in, for example,] The English Hymnal (New Edition) (OUP and
Mowbray, London, 1933), No. 544.
2 We will be looking at the musical director in Chapter 5.
118
O FAITH OF ENGLAND
Area served by the church
Scattered rural
+^^^^ m
Village
Market town
+^_
Large town
+ H
New town
+
Large housing estate
+^^ H
Suburban
+^^^_
Urban or inner city
+ +
10
--+ —
20
--+
30
40%
Churches in a village comprised the largest single category,
just under half the total. The last five categories may be
termed non-rural, and comprised a third. 1 Closely associated
with type of area will be the population in a church's
catchment area.
Population in church's catchment area
1- 199
200- 499
500- 999
1000-1999
2000-4999
5000-9999
Over 9999
+ + + + + + + —
3 6 9 12 15 18%
This varied enormously: the smallest was 27, the greatest
25,000, nonetheless one church in ten was responsible for
10,000 souls, an extremely heavy pastoral burden. The
average was 3402. While these estimates by the clergy are
less likely to be accurate than official statistics — averages in
1987 for the Oxford Diocese 2 and for the Church of England 3
were 2358 and 2897 respectively — the level of agreement
still suggests a reasonably representative sample.
1 The precise figure was 32.1%. This is in reasonable agreement with the
corresponding figure of 30.5% calculated from information provided by
Francis, and taken from a survey of more than 7000 churches (Leslie J.
Francis and David W. Lankshear, Continuing in the Way (National Society
[Church of England] for Promoting Religious Education, London, 1991)). It
provides evidence of the representative nature of the present sample.
2 Oxford Diocesan Year Book, 1988 (Oxford Diocesan Board of Finance,
Oxford, 1987).
Church Statistics: Some facts and figures about the Church of England
(Central Board of Finance of the Church of England, London, 1989).
119
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Next I asked the Church of England's standard questions
on congregation size, namely the numbers of Easter and
Christmas communicants, and electoral roll figures. How-
ever, communicant figures under-estimate attendance by
ignoring non-communicants and those attending non-euchar-
istic services; conversely festival figures tend to be
abnormally high because of the number of casual attenders.
Furthermore, electoral roll figures will depend on how
rigorously the priest allows only active church members to
join. 1
Communicants
Communicants
Electoral
Easter 1987
Christmas 1987
Roll
0- 9
10- 19
20- 49
+■
+■
+■
50- 99
100-199
200-499
+
+
Over 499
+
10
20 30%
10
20 30%
10 20
30%
In general, the charts do not make encouraging reading. Two
fifths of the churches had fewer than 50 Easter communicants,
and one church in thirteen had less than twenty. The range was
enormous: from less than ten to over 500, with an average of
96. At Christmas the average was 120, but again with one
church in thirteen reporting fewer than twenty communicants.
Larger churches seemed to do better at Christmas than at
Easter. The largest figure reported was 700. We will be
looking at sizes of congregation at normal services on page
150. Another somewhat disturbing statistic is the fact that one
church in eight reported fewer than twenty people on its
electoral roll. Since those on the roll are probably bearing
most of the costs, not least repair of the fabric, there must be
some doubt as to how long the present situation can continue
at these churches. The average was 96. The averages per
church in 1987 for the Oxford Diocese and for the Church of
England were respectively 80 and — quite fortuitously — 96.
1 Leslie J. Francis, Rural Anglicanism (Collins, London, 1985), p. 22.
120
O FAITH OF ENGLAND
Groups Within The Church
Three indicators of the spiritual life of a church are the
creche, the young people's group, and the adult bible-
study/discussion group. A regular Sunday School or creche
was held at three fifths of the churches. The situation at those
churches is shown below.
Church creches
Number of
1 +^_
Leaders
1-
5-
10-
20-
50-
Over
4
9
19
49
99
99
Number
+■
of
Children
4- 7
8-15
--+ —
30%
Over 15
+■
+ +
10
-+
20
+■
+
-+-
— +-
A third of the creches had between two and three leaders, a
further third between four and seven. The average was four.
Just under half of the creches had between 20 and 49
children, whilst a further quarter had between ten and
nineteen. The average was 28. A regular young people's
group was considerably less common, however, being held at
only a third of the churches.
foung
0- 1
2- 3
people's groups
Number of leaders
1- 4
Number of young people
4- 7
— +
40
10-19
20-49
— + — Over 49
50%
8-15
+ + + +
10 20 30
+ + + + + —
10 20 30 40%
Slightly over half the groups had between two and three
leaders. The average was three. Membership seemed to be
smaller than that of creches, in addition to there being fewer
of them. The average was nineteen.
A regular adult Bible-study or Christian discussion group
was more common than a creche, taking place at, or being
available to, members of three fifths of the churches taking
part in the survey.
121
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Bible study groups
+ + + +
20 40 60%
Roughly a third of the groups met without a ministerial
leader. In some cases he/she attended, but not as a leader.
Over half the groups had between two and four lay leaders;
the average was four. It is perhaps reassuring that not a single
group was without some measure of lay leadership. A priest
discouraging lay leadership of this form might also be
unwilling to delegate responsibility to others such as, for
example, the musical director. There would appear to be a
reasonably high level of general participation in these events,
the average number of non-leaders being 26.
Although church policy is normally decided by the PCC,
there may be subcommittees reporting to it. These may
include a worship committee and/or one specifically to
consider music. A quarter of churches taking part in the sur-
vey had a worship committee. It would have been interesting
to know whether clergy would in general be in favour of such
a group; the presence of one suggests an openness in decision
making. However, less than one church in ten had a working
group devoted to music. Again it is unclear whether clergy
and/or musical directors would be hostile to such an idea.
Perhaps they could see nothing to be gained by the presence
of such a group, or possibly no-one would be prepared to
serve on it, or even simply no-one had thought of it.
The Choir
The music or worship committees may discuss the music, but
it is the choir that actually has to take the lead in singing it. I
asked both parties whether there was a regular choir, drawing
122
O FAITH OF ENGLAND
their attention to the definition that had been adopted (page
88). According to the clergy, 55% of churches had a choir:
the musical directors reported 60%. [ Four out of five choirs
were robed rather than unrobed.
Number of members of choir
2- 4
+ H
5- 9
10-14
15-19
20-29
Over 29
+ —
5 10 15 20%
The average number of members per choir was sixteen
(seven male, nine female); for the same choirs three years
earlier (i.e. excluding those that had since disbanded) the
figure had been fifteen. Here at least, the status quo had been
maintained. However, for every 100 choirs in existence at the
time of the survey, there had three years earlier been 114
according to the musical directors, 109 according to the
clergy. This represents a substantial reduction in so short a
time.
The average size of choir found by Hill 2 in 1982 at RSCM
churches was 22, compared with the sixteen found here. This
too implies a reduction in choir strength since 1982, 3
although it may simply be the effect of the differing types of
church in the two surveys. Hill compares his own findings
for the relative proportions of boys, girls, men and women
with those cited in Temperley 4 , which in turn had been taken
from Reports of the Chief Commissioner of the School of
English Church Music (now RSCM). I have extended Hill's
1 Since the clergy figures included those churches where there was no musical
director and, by implication, no choir either, the agreement seems
reasonable.
2 Berkeley Hill, A Survey of Church Music, 1982 (Royal School of Church
Music, Addington, 1983), pp. 13, 20.
3 On page 132 we look at evidence of an unusually large number of resigna-
tions of musical directors at about that time.
4 Nicholas Temperley The Music of the English Parish Church (CUP,
Cambridge, 1979), p. 337.
123
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
table to include the corresponding figures from my survey
and those inferred from the ACCMUS statistical report.
Composition Of Choirs
Year Boys Girls Men Women Sample Author
%
%
%
%
size
1951 54.7
2.7
29.1
13.5
244
SECM 1
1982 24.5
24.5
25.7
25.4
1223
Hill
1988/9 19.2
28.7
22.6
29.5
108
Rees
1988 17.7
25.4
23.8
33.1
377
Cooper 2
The proportion of males, and boys in particular, seems to be
continuing to decline. One might ask to what extent this
decline is being caused by admitting girls into a previously
all-male choir (a source of contention already noted on page
21). So how is the traditional all-male choir faring? Seven
were reported in the survey, some 6% of the total. Their
average membership figure was 19, compared with 16 for
choirs as a whole, so in this respect the all-male choir was
doing well. Closer inspection of the data, however, suggests
a less healthy situation. One choir had shown significant
growth, two had shown little change, whilst four had
significantly declined. Subject to the caveat of limited data,
the all-male choir therefore seems to be on the wane.
To what extent are choirs an aging population?
Reports of the SECM Chief Commissioner, English Church Music 20
(September-November 1949), p. 14; 20 (December 1949-February 1950),
p. 35; 22 (June-November 1951), p. 10; 22 (December 1951-February
1952), p. 63.
Jacqui Cooper, Music in Parish Worship (Central Board of Finance of the
Church of England, London, [dated] 1990 [but not published until 1992]),
pp. 28-29. (Cooper's figures include those in singing groups as well as those
in choirs.)
124
O FAITH OF ENGLAND
Age distribution of choir members 1
Les
the
5S
in 10 yrs
-19 yrs
-29 yrs
-39 yrs
-49 yrs
-59 yrs
-69 yrs
yrs or
:e
Male
+—
16
+
20%
Female
10-
20-
_L
— +—
8
+—
12
_i_
+—
12
+—
16
~^H
~^H
30-
_|_
_|_
~^H
~^H
40-
_|_
_|_
~^H
~^H
50-
_|_
_|_
— +—
8
~^H
~^H
60-
_|_
- +
4
_|_
~^H
~^H
70
mo:
+
+
~ +
4
+
20%
The age group of highest membership, for both males and
females, is 10-19, followed by the under-tens. Membership
falls away in the twenties, possibly as a result of leaving
home and setting up one's own, but picks up a little in middle
age. I wonder why this renewal of interest seems more
pronounced for women than for men — the former returning
after having had children, while the latter are still developing
their career perhaps? There is then a gradual decline. Only in
the highest age range do males (marginally) exceed females.
This may be because the male voice seems to 'wear' better
with age. An alternative explanation may be that the singing
careers of those over 70 would in many cases have begun in
the days when all-male choirs were much more common,
resulting in a disproportionate number of men at the top of
the scale. The average age of the males was 31, that of
females 29.
On page 165 I assess the levels of ability of choirs accord-
ing to the anthems that they were reported as singing. One
choir in seven did not hold practices at all.
The traditional seating position of the choir has in certain
quarters given rise to accusations of elitism. In other cases,
the choir is simply so far away from the congregation that it
cannot be heard. I therefore asked whether the choir sat close
to the congregation, or apart (for example in the chancel or
gallery). Furthermore, the increasing use of nave altars can
leave a chancel choir appearing to be isolated. Therefore in
certain churches having the choir close to the congregation
1 Based on 1704 members in 108 choirs.
125
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
may be beneficial. This arrangement was in operation in just
over a third of those churches with choirs. I also wanted to
know whether the seating arrangement had recently
changed — it certainly had. In as short a space as three years,
one choir in eleven had been moved. In all cases but one, the
move had been such that the choir was now located near the
congregation. It would have been interesting to know
whether the moves had the whole-hearted co-operation of the
choirs in question, and whether in retrospect the moves had
been generally perceived as beneficial. However, limits on
the size of the questionnaires prevented investigation of these
questions. Although the reasons for bringing the choir to the
congregation may be strong and in accord with current
thinking on worship, other factors such as the church
architecture, acoustics, and 'visibility' between choir and
organist, may sometimes make the matter less clear-cut than
it might at first appear.
The financial aspects, from a church's point of view, of
running a choir will be considered on page 137. However,
weddings often provide external income for the members of
the choir, quite apart from the additional opportunities for
singing. I asked directors to specify the numbers of paid and
unpaid weddings per year, both for adult members and for the
child members. Just under two thirds of choirs included
adults who sang at weddings at least occasionally. Of these,
only a third were not paid, with one in five receiving
payment for ten or more weddings per year. The total number
of weddings (paid or unpaid) ranged from one to twenty: the
average was six. Similarly, two thirds of choirs included
children who sang at weddings at least occasionally. Unlike
the adults, however, the children of only one in twelve choirs
were not paid for weddings. On the other hand, more than a
third received payment for ten or more weddings per year.
The total number of weddings (paid or unpaid) attended by
child choir members per year ranged from 1 to 81, with an
average of eleven.
126
O FAITH OF ENGLAND
Although it is often the choir that derives the main benefit
from affiliation to the Royal School of Church Music, this is
strictly speaking held by the church. Some 42% of the
churches were affiliated.
Summary
There is a reasonable amount of evidence to suggest that the
churches involved in the survey are representative of the
Church of England as a whole. Despite some disturbingly
low electoral-roll figures and the absence of a young-
people's group from two thirds of the churches, roughly three
fifths were nonetheless able to sustain a creche and/or adult
study group.
Roughly one choir in eleven had disbanded in the three
years preceding the survey, although the remaining choirs
had been able to sustain their membership at around the
sixteen level. A long-term fall in the numbers of boys in
choirs appeared to be continuing and, as a particular example
of this, there was evidence of difficulties in sustaining
traditional all-male choirs.
127
He Who Would Valiant Be 1
The Church and its Musical Director
After considering certain groups within the church, we now
turn to someone who is — or should be — one of its key
members. What exactly is the role of the musical director?
We look at the circumstances surrounding the original
appointment, and investigate the frequency with which
musical directors and priests come and go. We encounter the
financial aspects of the work, namely his/her own salary, the
budget for new music, and the expenses associated with
running a choir. We consider also the extent to which the
musical director determines musical policy.
Comings and Goings
First, how is a musical director recruited?
How did you hear of the post of musical director?
Ch. Times / Ch. of Eng. Newspaper +^ m
A music periodical + B
Other press +^
A friend + ^a^a^a^a^a^a^a^a^a^am
As asst . organist / choir member + ^^^^^^^^h
As a member of the congregation + ^a^a^a^a^a^a^a^a^a^a^a^a^a^m
Mus . dir. is priest-in-charge + ^^^
Mus . dir. is asst. priest +^
Other +__________-
5 10 15 20 25%
Fewer than one in twenty of the musical directors had been
recruited by external advertisement. The largest single
1 John Bunyan et al, [in, for example,] The English Hymnal (New Edition)
(OUP and Mowbray, London, 1933), No. 402.
128
HE WHO WOULD VALIANT BE
recruitment area seemed to be the congregational pews —
almost twice as common as the choir stalls — or from being
an apprentice to the predecessor. This could imply an
element of arm-twisting in the appointment. I mentioned on
page 93 those in the seventh category, the priest-in-charge,
but the assistant priests made an unexpected group. Had there
been more of them, a comparison with lay musical directors
would have made an interesting study. Many of those in the
'other' category were approached by the church; others were
or had been organist at another church, and were approached
via their own vicar.
Next I wanted to discover the fierceness of competition for
these posts.
Was there more than one suitable candidate for the post of musical
director?
Musical director' s view Priest-in-charge' s view
Yes +^^h +^ m
Don ' t know +^^^^^^ m +^^^^^^^^^^^^^_
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
10 20 30 40 50 60% 10 20 30 40 50 60%
It is perhaps surprising that there was a higher percentage of
'don't know' responses amongst the clergy as employers than
amongst the directors as employees. This may be caused by
the director having been at the church longer than the priest,
or the fact that the director would take a greater interest in
the subject. However it is clear that both parties agreed that
there had been more than one suitable candidate in only a
very few cases — one in six in the view of the directors, worse
than one in seven in the view of the clergy. Such figures
could have serious implications for the availability of the
next generation of musical directors. One of the directors was
magnanimous enough to admit that there had been another
suitable candidate — her husband.
When asking the musical director how long he/she had
been in post, I felt it only fair to ask the priest-in-charge the
same question.
129
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
For how many years have you been at this church?
As musical director
As priest-in-charge
0- 4
5- 9
10-19
+^^^^ m
+^^^_
20-29
+^^^_
+ H
30-39
+^_
+■
Over 39
+■
+
+ + + + + + + + + + + + —
10 20 30 40 50% 10 20 30 40 50%
Whilst a third of the directors had held their post for more
than ten years, only a fifth of clergy had done so. The
averages were 10.2 and 7.0 years respectively. Although an
average figure for organists was not given in Hill's 1982
survey, 1 I estimate it to have been 9.6, remarkably close to
the figure of 10.2 found here. In the occasional leaflet Parish
and People, edited by a group of clergy in the Oxford
Diocese, the following text appears:
The Minister & the Organist — A Study in Role Conflict could be the
title for a post-graduate's thesis. To begin with, a survey would be
likely to reveal that the organist has seen the back of several vicars
(not only at the altar) — seemingly he goes on for ever. His seat on the
organ stool is more permanent than that of the man with the 'real
actual and corporeal possession of the vicarage'. The parson may
have his freehold, but the organist may have a stranglehold on the
parish. 2
These are strong words, no doubt written from bitter personal
experience. However, there is a simple explanation of this
situation. In the course of their professional working lives,
both priest and musical director may expect to move from
one job to another, not infrequently through promotion. In
the case of the director, unless there is associated with the job
change a geographical relocation as well, there is no intrinsic
reason why he/she will not be able to continue as director at
the same church. On the other hand, a change of job for a
priest almost always involves a change of church. It is
therefore only to be expected that the turnover of clergy will
be faster than that of musical directors. Indeed, a larger
1 Berkeley Hill, A Survey of Church Music, 1982 (Royal School of Church
Music, Addington, 1983), p. 41.
P,
130
2 'The Lost Accord' in Parish and People, 27 (1986), [p. 2].
HE WHO WOULD VALIANT BE
differential than that actually found would not have been
entirely surprising.
With the words of Parish and People still ringing in our
ears, we must now start to tread more warily as we enter
slightly more dangerous territory.
How many new priests- How many new musical
in-charge have been directors have been
appointed during your appointed during your time
time as musical director? as priest-in-charge?
1
2
+^^^_
+^^ m
3 or
+^^^^ m
+^^ m
more
+ + + + +
+ + + + + +
10 20 30 40%
10 20 30 40 50%
Just under half the directors had always served the same
priest-in-charge at their present church. However, since more
directors had witnessed the appointment of three or more
new priests than had witnessed the appointment of two, it
seems reasonable to infer that a significant proportion had
seen the arrival of four or more. At well over half the
churches, the current priest-in-charge had never appointed a
new musical director. It then seemed sensible to compare
individuals' length of service with the number of new
appointments of their 'other half. Naturally, in general the
number of new appointments of the other half depended on
how long an individual had been at the church. However,
there were some exceptions in the form of longstanding
partnerships: one musical director had served only two
priests in over 29 years' service, and a certain priest had
needed to appoint only two musical directors in over 39
years. More worrying were the cases of the musical directors
who had seen the arrival (and by inference the departure) of
at least three priests-in-charge in less than ten years, and the
priest who had needed to appoint four new musical directors
in the same period.
I also wanted to know how many years' experience each
director had acquired before taking up the present appoint-
ment. I was then able to obtain an approximate measure of
131
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
the total number of years' experience as a musical director,
by combining the figures in the left-hand chart with the
number of years' service at his/her present church. This result
is shown in the right-hand chart. (The assumption that no
significant further time was spent as musical director at a
third church is probably valid in most cases — especially in
view of the high proportion of musical directors who had
never held another appointment at all.)
What is the longest period
that you have served as Total experience
musical director at any as a musical
other church? director
(Never)
+i
0- 4
yrs
+i
5- 9
yrs
+i
10-19
yrs
+i
20-29
yrs
+i
30-39
yrs
+i
Over 39
yrs
+
■ + l
+1
+1
+1
+1
+ + + + + + + + + +
10 20 30 40 50% 10 20 30%
At slightly over half the churches, this was their musical
director's first appointment, and at only one church in nine
had a director been appointed who already held ten or more
years' experience. The total experience of well over half of
the musical directors was less than ten years (the average was
13), a surprisingly short period in view of the fact that as
many as one in twenty of the directors had accumulated some
forty years' experience. Moreover, Hill's survey 1 only a few
years earlier revealed significantly higher total lengths of
service, the average then being 17 years. We must not draw
any hasty conclusions. However, we cannot escape the fact
that a particularly large number of directors took up their first
appointment less than ten years before the present survey
(1988-89), presumably to replace others who had resigned.
We have already noted that The Alternative Service Book was
published in 1980.
Finally in this section we turn to the question of contracts.
1 Berkeley Hill, A Survey of Church Music, 1982 (Royal School of Church
Music, Addington, 1983), p. 41.
132
HE WHO WOULD VALIANT BE
Much has been written in recent years extolling the benefits
of giving the musical director a written contract.
The Royal College of Organists' contract has now been superseded
by a more detailed and comprehensive document subject to the
provisions of Canon B20. 1 . . . [It] has been issued on the authority of
the Incorporated Association of Organists, the Incorporated Society
of Musicians, the RSCM, and the Legal Adviser to the General
Synod. [It had also the authority of the RCO, although for some
reason this was not stated.] Whether or not organists do in fact have a
contract as of now, we strongly urge all concerned to enter into this
new agreement which we believe to be much more satisfactory than
the old one and in the best interests of all parties. 2
The Legal Advisory Commission of the General Synod has advised
that it is essential for the appointment of an organist to be subject to
an agreement in writing which must reflect the present law in regard
to appointment and dismissal. It is important for the sake of a
satisfactory understanding on both sides for this advice to be heeded
and we recommend that all organists... insist on the terms of their
appointment being confirmed in writing. 3
Furthermore, respondents to an Administry survey reported that
giving the musical director a written job description removed a
number of 'pockets of confusion and unease'. 4 1 wondered what
was happening in practice:
What is the nature of your present contract as musical director?
1 Local' written; non-fixed term + m
1 Local' written; fixed term + m
Standard written; non-fixed term + m
Standard written; fixed term +
No written contract +^m^m^m^m^m^m^m^mm
+ + + + +-
20 40 60 80%
Only one in six of the musical directors had any form of
written contract. However, we must allow the last word (so to
speak) to the director whose description of her contract was
simply: 'Until death!'
1 Seepage 113.
2 Lionel Dakers 'A revised form of agreement for organists and choir
directors' in Church Music Quarterly, January 1987, p. 13.
3 Organists' Guide to Employment, (Incorporated Society of Musicians,
London, 1990), p. 1.
4 A Joyful Noise, (Resource Paper 84:7), (Administry, St Albans, 1984), p. 6.
133
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Matters of Finance
Closely associated with contracts are matters financial, in
which the director of music is likely to be involved at least to
some extent, for example his/her own salary, the budget for
new music, and the expenses associated with running a choir.
(There will also be the expenses of organ maintenance, but
we will not consider these further here.)
I asked directors to state their annual salary, including
expenses where applicable but excluding fees, offered to
them. The question was so phrased because directors often
refuse to accept some or all of their nominal salary. Despite
this, the high incidence of the figure zero suggests that the
question was answered by many in terms of salary received
rather than salary offered. We may, however, be confident
that the salary received was not greater than the figures in the
table. (Assistant priests serving as musical director were
excluded from the data.) The salary for two fifths of the posts
was zero, whilst for only about a fifth was it greater than
£500. The average (excluding one exceptionally high salary 1
of £9800) was £282. One director reported receiving no
payment, but conceded that he received 'an ex gratia capon
at Christmas'. From the salary and data in other parts of the
questionnaire I next estimated the payment per attendance. 2
Payment offered to musical directors
Per year
(£)
.99
99
.99
.99
.99
Per attendance (£)
1- 99
100- 199
200- 499
0.01-0.
1.00-1.
2.00-4.
5.00-9.
Over 9 ,
+■
500- 999
+^^^^_
1000-1999
Over 1999
+
+ + + + +-
+ + + + +
10 20 30 40%
This particular post included considerable pastoral responsibility.
I arbitrarily assumed that: if the director was involved in N services per
month, after allowance for holidays, this would amount to 11 xN services
per year; also, if choir practices were held, the director would be involved in
45 practices per year, a total of (11 x N) + 45 attendances.
134
HE WHO WOULD VALIANT BE
If the director was offered payment at all, it was most
unlikely to be less than £2.00 or more than £10.00 per
attendance. The wide variation, namely a factor of five,
almost certainly represents not only the differences in skills
required for different appointments, but also the varying
financial strengths of individual churches. Both parties were
asked their views on the adequacy of the director's salary.
Many did not directly answer this question, but simply wrote
the word 'voluntary' beside it. One director went further and
wrote: 'I don't think church musicians should be paid'.
Views on adequacy of payment offered to musical directors
Too low
Musical director' s view
Priest-in-charge' s view
About right
Too high
+■
+■
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + —
10 20 30 40 50 60% 10 20 30 40 50 60%
There was remarkable consistency in the views of the two
parties, with almost a third feeling that the salary was too
low. One director who ticked the 'about right' box added: 'It
is right because obviously the church cannot afford more, but
in worldly terms it's senseless'. Another, ticking the same
box, added that it would be far too low for anyone relying on
the income. Another stated that his salary had been
unchanged for six years, but it could, if he asked, be
increased. Then were added the words: 'Yes I will!'. I next
examined the directors' perceptions of the adequacy of their
salary in terms of the salary itself. (The post at £9800 was
excluded from this particular study, although in fact both
parties at that church felt the salary to be about right.)
Payment Offfered To Musical Directors
Compared With Their Perceptions Of Its Adequacy
Average annual payment Average payment per attendance
'Too low' £280 " £3.00
'About right' £300 £3.24
'Too high' £265 £6.00
135
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
An increase of less than 10% seemed to be sufficient to change
directors' feelings on salary from inadequacy to adequacy, and
we may conclude that the difference was more of attitudes than
the level of payment itself. The results where the payment was
perceived to be too high are based on only two appointments of
considerably differing nature, and should be treated with
caution. In an earlier question (page 111), musical directors
were invited to give their views on various criteria that a
director might apply in deciding whether to accept a church
appointment, ranging from 1 (very advantageous), through 2
(advantageous), 3 (not relevant), and so on. The average figure
of those who felt that their present salary was too low was 2.20,
compared with 2.58 for all the others. Therefore, those who felt
their present salary was too low were more concerned about
salary in general. This would seem to confirm the view that
perception of adequacy of salary depends more on the attitude
of the individual than on the level of payment.
In its survey of church music, Administry found contrast-
ing views on the paying of church musicians: 1
Why should organists be paid sums of money? We don't pay Sunday
School teachers, treasurers or churchwardens. We expect these people
to offer their time and talents free.
A full- or part-time salaried music director can give real vision to a
church because he has time to plan, and seek God's face on this
matter. I feel that in a larger church, a salaried music director is a
must — the Bible lays stress in this area (see 1 Chronicles [6:31-32]);
so should we.
Less controversial, although perhaps no easier to find, will
be the funds for new music for a church. While a quarter of
churches spent over £100 annually on this, nearly a half
spent less than £5. In many cases, therefore, either no music
at all was being introduced or some illicit photocopying was
taking place. Equally revealing was the budget per member
of the electoral roll.
1 A Joyful Noise, Resource Paper 84:7 (Administry, St. Albans, 1984), p. 6.
136
HE WHO WOULD VALIANT BE
Annual music budget
0- 4
5- 9
10- 19
20- 49
50- 99
100-199
200-499
500 and
above
Total
(£)
0-
2-
5-
10-
20-
50-
100-
200-
500
abo\
Per member of
roll (Pence)
electoral
+
_+ —
20
30
40%
- 4 +
- 9 +
- 19 + H
- 49 +^^^^_
- 99 +^^^_
-199 +^^^_
-499 + H
and + B
re + + +
10 20
~^H
_|_
~^H
_|_
~^H
_|_
~^H
+
•+
10
30 40%
At almost half the churches, the annual expenditure was less
than two pence per member of the electoral roll, a truly
appalling situation. To take an example, a church buying a
replacement set of hymn books might, with a grant from the
publishers, have expected at the time of the survey to pay
around £3 per words-only book. On this basis, the new set
would take the entire music budget for the next 300 years!
Another item on the accounts will be the expenses of
running the choir. The children were paid at two fifths of the
churches, the adults at only one in fifty. The paying of certain
children and not others was very rare indeed, and did not
occur at all in the case of adults. This is unlike some churches,
notably in London, where a professional quartet forms the
core of an otherwise volunteer choir. I asked whether the choir
initiated its own fund-raising and, if so, whether it had full
control over the funds. This question raises several issues.
From the point of view of the church treasurer, a choir is a
source of expense, however beautiful its sound may be. If the
choir is enthusiastic, it will be wanting to buy new music and,
if robed, there is also the expense of maintaining the robes.
Does the choir attempt to cover these expenses or does it
believe that its enriching of the church's worship is
contribution enough? Over three quarters of the choirs did
not undertake their own fund-raising (despite generous
contributions perhaps from individual members). By
implication, they were not corporately contributing to church
funds either. It is possible that, if they did, expressions of
resentment sometimes heard against choirs, especially in
evangelical circles, might be dispelled. One director, however,
137
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
reported that the choir did indeed assist in raising general
church funds. Of the remaining choirs that did undertake fund-
raising, two thirds had full control of the funds. Of those that
did not, there were instances of choir members feeling
resentful at 'their' money being controlled by non-members
(for example, the parochial church council). However, this in
turn would cause concern within the church that the choir
apparently saw itself as an autonomous body wishing to be
outside the normal decision-making processes. At one church
where the choir did not undertake fund-raising, the musical
director commented: 'I am also the church treasurer!'
Matters of Policy
Before turning our attention to matters of specifically musical
policy, let us look at the church's official decision-making
body, namely the parochial church council, and the role that
the musical director may or may not play within it.
In these days of increasing lay involvement, few people qualify more
for inclusion on the PCC than the organist. Furthermore the
opportunity which his presence provides for deepening the relationship
and understanding between him, the incumbent, the churchwardens
and the other parishioners can be of great benefit to the life of the
church — and prevent those misunderstandings which all too often
appear in the press. 1
The tradition that an organist who is an employee should not be a
member of the PCC is an unhelpful one. 2
So I asked the directors:
Are you, as musical director, a member of the PCC?
Yes, ex officio as mus . dir. + B
Yes, in some other capacity + B
No +.
+ + + + + + + —
10 20 30 40 50 60%
Nigel McCulloch (Archdeacon of Sarum, quoted by Lionel Dakers), 'From
the Director', Church Music Quarterly, April 1983, p. 3.
In Tune With Heaven, Report of the Archbishops' Commission on Church
Music (Church House Publishing, and Hodder and Stoughton, London,
1992), p. 245.
138
HE WHO WOULD VALIANT BE
In only one church in twenty was the director a member of
PCC (or its equivalent) ex officio. In only a third was he/she on
the PCC at all. This seems rather discouraging. In particular, I
wondered whether the response of one director: 'No, thank
God' was perhaps the private view of many others. In half of
the churches, the musical director had never been invited to
serve on the PCC. This too is disappointing, since it suggests a
lack of desire on the part of others that the director become
involved in anything other than purely musical responsibilities.
When I asked the clergy and musical directors whether they
felt that in general musical directors should be a member of
the PCC ex officio, the clergy were equally split for and
against, with one in six undecided. The directors were
marginally more in favour, namely three out of five, with one
third against, and the remainder undecided. Neither party
therefore was particularly keen: some clergy may possibly
look upon the musical director as a rival, whilst the director
may see the PCC as one of the 'other church activities' for
which there was no great enthusiasm (page 108).
I wondered to what extent the director was allowed to play
his/her part in determining the church's musical policy,
especially in the light of the following comment.
In an ideal situation the choice and use of hymns is a matter of joint
concern and a joint responsibility, something which should apply to
all aspects of the work of clergy and musicians. 1
So I asked:
Who generally chooses the congregational hymns/songs? 2
Musical director's view
Clergy alone + B
MD alone + B
Clergy & MD + t
Workg . group + B
+ + + + + + + + + + + +
10 20 30 40 50% 10 20 30 40 50%
Lionel Dakers, Choosing and Using Hymns (Mowbray, London, 1985), p. 4.
In this and the following two questions, I have excluded from the musical
directors' data those priests-in-charge who were acting as their own musical
director.
139
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
There was general agreement that the priest-in-charge was
solely responsible for the choice of hymns in about half of
the churches. The musical director was solely responsible in
roughly one seventh of cases, and some sort of corporate
decision was taken in the remainder. The musical directors
need in no way feel aggrieved over this relative absence of
decision-making on their part: a priest may wish to devote a
service to a specific theme, and choose the hymns accord-
ingly. In any case, choosing hymns carefully is a very time-
consuming task! Let us reserve judgment for the moment.
A survey undertaken by Administry 1 reported four other
ways of selecting hymns. These were: 'Songs of Praise'
services (as in the television programme, the person choosing
the hymn explains the reasons for the choice); choices in
advance (via a 'favourite hymns' box); spontaneous choices
from the congregation (although other churches in the same
survey pointed out that this negated the objectivity of
liturgical worship); and spontaneous leadership from the
congregation (in which a member can start a song on the spur
of the moment — this was not felt to be suitable aesthetically
in other than the merest handful of cases; there could also be
problems of pitch).
Next I asked:
Who generally chooses the tunes for these hymns/songs?
Clergy alone
MD alone
Musical director's view
Priest-in-charge' s view
Clergy & MD
Workg . group
+ + + + + +
10 20 30 40 50%
+ + + + + +
10 20 30 40 50%
There seems to be considerably less agreement over who
chooses the tunes. It is perhaps surprising, and certainly less
than satisfactory, that the clergy seem to be in total control in
as many as about one case in six. Given the small number of
working groups for music or for worship (page 122), it is not
surprising that they seem to play so limited a part.
Respondents may well have had difficulty deciding which of
1 A Joyful Noise, (Resource Paper 84:7), (Administry, St Albans, 1984), p. 8.
140
HE WHO WOULD VALIANT BE
two boxes to tick. For example, a musical director might
actually choose a tune, but informally ask the priest for his
agreement. The director would therefore tick the second box,
the priest the third.
Finally in this group of questions I asked:
Who generally chooses all the other music sung at regular services?
Clergy alone
MD alone
Clergy & MD
Workg . group
Not applic-
able
There was clear agreement that, in just under half the
churches, the musical director was given full control over the
other music and, in about half of the remaining cases, the
decision was a joint one. However, at one church in ten, the
clergy had full jurisdiction. I find this unsatisfactory, and
wonder whether the directors did not wish to take part in the
decision-making or were simply not allowed to. Alternative-
ly, however, the director and priest might be of such a single
mind on matters musical that there would be no need for the
former to be consulted at all. Was this really so?
Have the musical director and priest-in-charge an agreed policy on
music in worship?
Yes: Musical director's view Priest-in-charge' s view
Formal +^^^^^ +^^^^^^^^^^
No +^_ + H
Don't know+ B + m
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
10 20 30 40 50 60 70% 10 20 30 40 50 60%
It is encouraging that nine out of ten of both parties felt that
they had an agreed policy with their 'other half on the use of
music in worship. However, the size of the discrepancy
between the figures on formal agreement is a little surprising.
In some of the churches where the parties did not know
whether they agreed, one or other of them had only recently
arrived. In the others, I hope that the parties subsequently
gave the matter some thought. Perhaps they even got around
to discussing it!
141
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
This brings us to a related matter. Do the musical director
and priest work as a team or independently of each other? As
a pointer to this, I asked them about the meetings held
between them.
How often do the musical director and priest-in-charge hold
meetings to discuss the music? 1
Musical director's view Priest-in-charge' s view
Never +^^^^^ m +!
Rarely +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ m + B
Monthly +^^^^^^^^ +,
Fortnightly +^_
Weekly +^^^^_
+ + + + + +
10 20 30 40 50%
At just over half the churches, meetings either did not take
place at all or at best took place only rarely. However, at no
fewer than two thirds of the churches where the response was
'never', the musical director would welcome one. In the case
of the priests-in-charge the figure was even higher, at three
quarters. Perhaps I ought to have written to the priest and
musical director at those churches where both wanted to hold
meetings, but had never done so!
How long is a typical meeting?
1- 9 mins .
Musical director's
view
Priest-in-charge' s view
10-19 mins.
— +-
40%
20-39 mins.
Over 39 mins.
+^^^
+^^^^ m
+ + + +
10 20 30
+ + + +
10 20 30%
There was some disagreement over the length of meetings, in
particular the first two categories, probably because any
meetings roughly 10 minutes long could equally well fit into
either category. However, there was a good measure of
agreement over the average duration, namely 21 minutes
estimated from the musical directors' figures, and 24 from
those of the clergy. One director complained that the normal
'meeting' comprised being given the hymn list on a scrap of
paper three minutes before the service. On the other hand,
1 It was of course necessary to exclude, from both the priests' data and the
musical directors', those priests-in-charge who served as their own musical
director.
142
HE WHO WOULD VALIANT BE
one priest asked whether the time was inclusive or exclusive
of drinks.
Total time spent per year in meetings between musical director and
priest-in-charge
Musical director's view Priest-in-charge' s view
Less
than 1 hr .
than 2 hrs .
than 5 hrs .
than 10 hrs.
than 20 hrs.
surs or more
Less
_L
30%
_i_
~^H
~^H
Less
Less
+^B
Less
_l_
-+
10
--+ —
20
_L
— +—
20
~^H
~^H
20 h<
+
+■
+
+—
10
+-
30%
I estimated the total time spent per year in meetings between
the two parties by combining the previous two sets of
results. 1 Given the uncertainties, the charts are reasonably
similar. The averages were 5.3 and 5.5 hours from the
musical directors' figures and those of the clergy respectively
— consistent but depressingly low. Moreover, these figures
do not include the cases where there was no meeting at all. If,
however, these cases are included, we are confronted by even
bleaker figures. According to the musical directors, there was
either no meeting at all, or the total annual duration was an
hour or less, at more than two fifths of the churches.
According to the clergy, it was more than a third. In other
words, at such churches there seems to be virtually no
communication between clergy and musical director of even
a semi-formal nature. Indeed it is arguable whether a
discussion lasting 'between one and nine minutes', consti-
tutes a formal meeting at all.
In those cases where a priest-in-charge is sharing pastoral
responsibility, 'staff meetings' often take place weekly, with
a total annual duration of 100 hours or more. The times spent
with musical directors contrast sharply with such a figure. In
many cases not only does the priest not have any assistant, he
also has to spread himself over several churches. It is
therefore all the more distressing that clearly the musical
1 The figure for the range 'over 39 minutes' was arbitrarily chosen to be 45.
Particularly difficult was 'rarely', which was equally arbitrarily chosen to be
three times per year.
143
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
director is not seen as a colleague with whom matters, not
necessarily of a directly pastoral nature, can be discussed.
How helpful do you find these meetings?
Musical director's view Priest-in-charge' s view
Very unhelpful + m +
Unhelpful + m +
Neutral +^^^_ +^_
Helpful +^^^^^^^^^^^^^_ +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^_
Very helpful +^^^^^^^^^ H +^^^^^^^^^^
+ + + + + +- + + + + + + +-
10 20 30 40 50% 10 20 30 40 50 60%
Apart from the few unfortunate directors in the first two
categories, the overall forms of the charts are similar and
indeed encouraging. One priest did not answer the question
directly, but simply wrote 'necessary' against it. One musical
director confessed to finding the question difficult to answer,
since the priest-in-charge was her husband.
Meetings of a different sort were in my mind when I
formulated the next question. While the draft questionnaires
were being circulated to senior church musicians and clergy
for their comments, one of them received a letter of appeal
from an organist who felt that his vicar was trying to spy on
him. The vicar's presence at every choir practice was proving
intolerable. In the production questionnaires, I therefore
asked directors to specify which of the following statements
most closely described the situation at their choir practice (if
there was one):
• priest-in-charge does not regularly attend and would not be
welcome;
• he/she does not regularly attend but would be welcome;
• he/she regularly attends and is not welcome;
• he/she regularly attends and is welcome.
Whatever other problems may have been besetting the
musical directors taking part in the survey, this was not one
of them — no-one at all voted for the third option. The
director at one church in ten would not welcome the clergy's
presence if he/she appeared, but six times as many would. At
one church in seven, the priest regularly attended practices
and was welcome. In short, most directors saw nothing
144
HE WHO WOULD VALIANT BE
wrong in the priest attending, an indication of a satisfactory
working relationship. Returning to the case of the distressed
organist, it is surprising that the vicar found time to attend
choir practice but, given the fact that he did, perhaps his
intentions were being entirely misinterpreted.
Multiple or Shared Responsibilities
I asked: 'For how many churches, including this one, are you
responsible?' 1 Very few were directors of music at more than
one church although, if the national shortage of organists
continues, this will have to change, or more churches will be
without 'live' music altogether. One of the respondents
merits special mention as both musical director and priest-in-
charge at no fewer than four churches.
Unless a choir is very competent, it ideally needs to be
conducted, and this is of course not possible in accompanied
works without an assistant. So I asked: 'Do you have at this
church an assistant musical director who regularly shares
responsibility with you either as choirmaster or organist?'
The word 'regular' was emphasised in order to exclude what
might be termed 'holiday-locum' organists. At one church in
three there was an unsalaried assistant, but at only one in
i
This question appeared also in the clergy questionnaire. I asked it partly as a
check: if a group of questionnaires from the same respondent became
accidentally separated, they could be reunited. However, despite my
underlining the word 'including', it was clear from the number of 'zero'
responses that some had answered the question as if it had read 'excluding'.
The Oxford Diocesan Year Book 1988 (Oxford Diocesan Board of Finance,
Oxford, 1987) enabled me to discover the extent of this confusion — at least
amongst the clergy. Only a quarter of the churches were in the care of a
priest without pastoral responsibilities elsewhere, whilst almost half were in
the care of one with responsibilities at two or more other churches. Such is
the shortage of clergy and such is the pastoral load that they must bear. For a
priest to be in charge of six churches (and have to attend six PCC meetings
instead of one!) is surely far too much of a burden. Overall, the level of
clergy misinterpretation of the question was very low, and it would seem
almost an insult to the collective intelligence of musical directors to suggest
that the proportion of them misinterpreting the question was significantly
greater.
145
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
fourteen a salaried one. At almost three churches out of five,
there was no regular assistant at all. 1
Summary
Musical directors tended to remain in post at a church
somewhat longer than the priest-in-charge. However, the
number of musical directors with long periods of experience,
either in their current church or elsewhere, was unexpectedly
small. Very few directors had any written contract. In still
fewer cases was there more than one suitable candidate when
the director was appointed.
Where a fee was offered at all to a musical director, £2 per
visit (including choir practice, if any) was typical. However a
clear majority were satisfied with their rate of pay. A typical
annual budget for new music at a church was only £10.
Rarely was the director on the PCC ex officio. Hymns
tended to be chosen by the clergy, whilst the musical director
had at least a major say in the choice of tunes and, where
applicable, even more influence in the choice of any other
music. Although there was usually some sort of
'understanding' between the priest and musical director on
the role of music in worship, they devoted very little time
actually to discussing it. Where meetings were not currently
taking place, a majority of both parties nonetheless expressed
the wish that they should. Where meetings were taking place,
both parties usually found them helpful.
At two fifths of the churches there was an assistant musical
director on a regular basis.
i
I excluded from these figures the special cases of the churches where the
priests-in-charge saw themselves also as musical director. In three fifths of
these cases there was some sort of 'assistant' who probably better fitted our
definition of musical director. Whether that person was unwilling or unable
to complete the questionnaire, or why the priest was unwilling for him/her to
do so, we will never know. At the remainder there was no assistant. The
picture of an already overworked clergyman darting between pulpit, lectern
and organ console is therefore not quite as common as we might at first have
feared.
146
Come, Let Us Join
Our Cheerful Songs 1
The Church and its Music in Worship
So far we have been looking at the backgrounds and general
attitudes of clergy and musical directors, and their percep-
tions of what was happening overall at their churches. Now
we come to more controversial matters — the services and,
more particularly, the music in them.
I was seeking answers to a number of questions. For
example, how often could we expect to encounter a service
with music at a given church? How many people would we
find there? Would the music be 'ancient' or 'modern'? Ditto
the liturgy, and would the emphasis of worship best be
caricatured as 'bells and smells' or 'happy-clappy'?
Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity in itself. 2 Could
the same be said of the words and the music in the service,
the music and the musical resources, and — especially — the
priest-in-charge and the musical director?
Both parties were invited to provide information on up to
three different types of service with music regularly taking
place at their churches. Although we will be mainly examin-
ing the music, we look first at the more general questions
relating to these services.
1 H. Lahee, [in, for example,] The English Hymnal (OUP and Mowbray,
London, 1906), No. 376.
2 Psalm 122, v. 3 (BCP).
147
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
The Worship
Although we need to ask questions about the worship and its
participants, first of all we must discover when the service
with music is actually being held. Are we even safe in
assuming that all such services are held on Sunday? Whilst
said communion services on weekdays are not at all
unknown, I was unaware of the existence of weekday
services with music (other than in cathedrals and collegiate
foundations). I was right: with the exception of a weekday
eucharist with hymns at a couple of churches, and a weekly
mothers' and toddlers' service at a further two, all the regular
services with music took place on a Sunday. Few churches,
however, offered a choice of musical services on any given
Sunday: at just over two fifths there was on average only one
such service per week, while at a further quarter it took place
even less frequently. As many as two fifths of the services
had already begun by 10.15 a.m. — presumably to allow the
rest of Sunday for recreation.
What type of service could we expect to encounter? Not
surprisingly, the musical director and the priest-in-charge
were in close agreement on this.
Liturgy
Musical
director' s
view
Priest-in-charge' s view
Rite A Comm.
Rite B Comm.
BCP Comm.
+■
+ H
ASB Mng . Pr .
+ H
+■
BCP Mng . Pr .
+^^^_
+^^ m
ASB Evg . Pr .
+^^^
+^_
BCP Evg . Pr .
Family serv.*
+^^ m
+^^^
Other
(* Non-eucharistic) 10 20 30% 10 20 30%
Just under half the services were communion-based. 1 The
most common liturgy was Rite A, followed by BCP Evening
Prayer. 'Other' comprised services no longer in widespread
use, for example Series 2 communion, and hybrids such as
morning prayer and communion in the same service.
The liturgy of the Church of England can mean all things
1 These tables of course exclude any said services.
148
COME, LET US JOIN OUR CHEERFUL SONGS
to all men, and the above tables provide no information on
the style of worship. I therefore also requested information
on the services' degree of charismatic worship, and their
catholic or evangelical emphasis. When on page 105 we
looked at the personal preferences in worship of both parties,
we noted a lower response rate than in other questions. A
similar reduction occurred here.
Degree of charismatic worship in services
Very
char.
-3
-2
-1
1
2
3
Music
=al
direc
bor' s
— +-
30%
view
Priest-in-charge' s view
+■
~^H
_L
+^^^^^ m
~^H
+^^
_l_
+^_
~^H
Very
_|_
+^^^^ m
~^H
non-char .
+
-+—
10
20
+ + + +-
10 20 30%
The averages for musical director and clergy were respect-
ively 0.8 and 1.0 (i.e. verging slightly towards non-charis-
matic). Inevitably the grading of charismatic worship is sub-
jective, yet in three cases out of five where the question was
answered by both parties, they were within one point of each
other in their assessments. Most churches seem to be either
middle-of-the-road, or strongly non-charismatic. Making use
of the data on page 105, I examined the extent to which each
party felt out of sympathy with the charismatic content of the
worship taking place at the church. For three quarters of the
directors responding, the church's approach to charismatic
worship came to within one point of their personal preference.
One director in ten indicated a difference of three points or
greater, implying either significant dissatisfaction, or an error
in understanding or answering the questions.
Similar figures were found for the clergy. A priest, however,
has the power to angle the services towards his own viewpoint
while the director does not. The fact that a priest may choose
not to do so is likely to be to accommodate the specific
church's requirements (of which he would presumably have
been told before accepting the appointment). A deviation of
three points or greater should not therefore necessarily be seen
149
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
as a source of dissatisfaction in the way that it might be for a
musical director.
Degree of catholic/evangelical worship in services
Very
cath.
-3
-2
-1
1
2
3
Musical director's
view
Priest-in-charge' s view
Very
evang .
+ + + + —
10 20 30%
+ + + +-
10 20 30%
The averages for musical directors and clergy were respect-
ively -0.2 and -0.5 (i.e. slightly catholic, the priests' percep-
tion being marginally more so). Again there is good agree-
ment: in four cases out of five where the question was
answered by both parties, they were within one point of each
other in their assessments. The fact that there was a greater
measure of agreement than in the case of charismatic/non-
charismatic, is probably because the catholic/evangelical
divide is more clearly recognised. For four fifths of the
directors responding, their perception of the church's degree
of catholic/evangelical worship came to within one point of
their personal preference. One director in twelve indicated a
difference of three points or greater, as before implying either
significant dissatisfaction, or an error in understanding or
answering the questions. Again the clergy figures were very
similar, here also a large deviation should not necessarily be
seen as a source of dissatisfaction.
The Worship and its Participants
Next we look at the participants attending these services. At
just over half the churches, the size of congregation, excluding
choir, at the best-attended of the services was less than 50 and,
at one church in six, less than 20. The minimum and maximum
were respectively 5 and 600, the average being 63. The total
number of attendances at each church per month was also
calculated. The average figure for this was 293, the minimum
and maximum being 5 and 5160, an enormous range.
150
COME, LET US JOIN OUR CHEERFUL SONGS
At more than nine tenths of the services reported, there was
'always/nearly always' an organist, and at a further one in
twenty there was 'sometimes' one. Although this may seem
encouraging, a word of caution is necessary: the question
would fail to reveal a service which had become entirely said
because an organist was no longer available. One priest
remarked sadly: 'Unfortunately the organist can only be an
occasional treat.' A pianist can be used instead of, or in addition
to an organist. However, at only one service in 20 was a pianist
'always/nearly always' present: at a further service in seven one
was 'sometimes' present.
The use of non-keyboard instrumentalists was slightly more
widespread than that of pianists ('always/nearly always' at one
service in 25, 'sometimes' at one in five). This is perhaps
because different skills and hence different people are involved,
and because the pianist will in many cases tend to be guided
towards the organ console. Information on the nature of the
instruments was requested, but not always provided.
Sometimes the information was limited to 'instrumental group',
but at least this implied a range of talents being used. In the
following list, the instruments (or groups of instruments) are
given in decreasing order of usage: guitar (by far the most
common), flute, instrumental group, recorder, string group,
clarinet, electronic keyboard, percussion group, brass group,
orchestra, tape recorder (as a substitute for an organist),
trumpet, woodwind group, digital horn, oboe. The percussion
group at one church included bongo drums, perhaps more to
the liking of some than others.
Next we turn to the choir, which on page 88 we arbitrarily
defined as 'a group of singers (robed or unrobed) remaining
together during a service, even when they are not singing'. It
is by no means unknown in some churches for the choir to
outnumber the rest of the congregation. We looked on page
123 at the size of choirs: now we see from the following tables
that there would a roughly 50/50 chance of our encountering
one at a service.
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WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Choir present at services 1
Musical director's view Priest-in-charge' s view
Never +^^^^^^^^^^^^_ +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ m
Sometimes +^^^_ +^^_
Always /nearly +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ m +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ m
always + + + + + + + + + + + +
10 20 30 40 50% 10 20 30 40 50%
In some churches, especially those of a charismatic or evan-
gelical outlook, music groups of a less formal nature have
developed, sometimes being referred to as 'worship groups',
and existing either alongside or instead of the traditional choir.
(Choirs as such often seem to be regarded, rightly or wrongly,
by these churches as elitist.) Adult singing groups seemed to
find little place at those churches taking part in the survey
('never' 86%; 'sometimes' 10%; 'always/nearly always' 4%).
In contrast, in a survey of mainly evangelical churches,
singing groups were found in a third of the cases. 2 There
seems to be no widely held definition which differentiates
between 'choir' and 'worship group' (other than the type of
music sung, the persuasion of the church, and possibly in
which part of it the music is sung). We may, however, wish to
take note of the following comment from a vicar of
charismatic persuasion:
It would be tragic if, within renewed worship, the worship group
took on [the] negative traits previously belonging to the choir, yet in
some places I can detect this happening in very small ways. 3
Plus ga change? At four fifths of the services reported,
Sunday school choirs never sang (other than in perhaps a
1 The discrepancy between the two tables will have been caused by several
factors. First, in those instances where the question was duplicated between
questionnaires, and the priest-in-charge and director were one and the same
person, the result was included only in a clergy capacity. In such a situation,
a choir seems less likely than elsewhere. Other contributory factors included
respondents intending a blank response to mean 'never', or the fact that the
two sets of observations are not based on exactly the same set of churches.
Finally, despite the note drawing respondents' attention to the definition of a
choir within the questionnaire, there may have been minor confusion
between it and any separate adult singing group.
2 'Results of Your Completed Questionnaire Forms' in Music in Worship, 39
(Summer 1987), p. 5.
3 John Leach, Liturgy and Liberty (MARC, Eastbourne, 1989), p. 82.
152
COME, LET US JOIN OUR CHEERFUL SONGS
congregational capacity), and only 'sometimes' in almost all
other cases. This is despite the fact that in doing so, the
members of today might be encouraged to join — or even
form — the adult choir of tomorrow.
Other musicians did not seem to be widely utilised either
('never' 92%; 'sometimes' 7%; 'always/nearly always' 1%).
These (together with the number of churches using them)
were: solo singer 7, visiting choir 3, young people's singing
group 1, mixed-age singing group 1, instrumental group 2,
handbell ringers 1. (The last two groups were being used in
their own right, either instead of or in addition to accom-
panying any singing. It would have been interesting to know
the age ranges of these groups.) The director at one church
reported that the priest-in-charge occasionally sang and
accompanied himself on the guitar at family services. I could
not resist checking to see whether they were one and the same
person — they were not — but scrutiny of the questionnaire
revealed a less than complimentary description of the standard
of playing! I wonder whether the priest had ever considered
asking someone else to play and/or sing — one or more of the
older children perhaps?
The Worship and Its Music
We now turn to the specific subject of the music used in
worship at the churches: hymns and congregational songs 1 ,
psalms, settings of the eucharist, canticles, anthems, and
other vocal music.
Hymnals and Song Books
We examined earlier (pages 37-60) the centrality of
hymnody in worship, and reviewed a number of the hymnals
and song books in current use. The survey provided informa-
tion not only on the relative usage of hymnals at each church,
but also on their relative levels of acclaim by the two parties.
Not surprisingly, multiple usage of hymnals was not at all
uncommon. One church used no fewer than five in the same
1 The reason for using this composite term was explained on page 88.
153
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
type of service, although the maximum number used on any
one occasion was unclear. Whatever the figure, when
combined perhaps with an ASB and a weekly leaflet, it must
surely represent a formidable task for the sidesmen and
women. 1
Relative usage of hymn books
AM New Std
AM Rev
AM Standard
Anglican H Bk
New Eng Hymnal
English Hymnal
HF Today's Ch
100HFT/MHFT/HFT
Eng Pr
Mission Pr
Sound of Liv W*
Other
* and/or
Fresh Sounds
The leading position of Ancient and Modern Revised is likely
to be increasingly overtaken by Ancient and Modern New
Standard. Some respondents may mistakenly have voted for
the old Standard edition instead of one of the other two, yet
the fact remains that it is still quite often to be seen in the
pews of village churches. These three hymnals between them
account for almost half the total usage. However, The New
English Hymnal, published only two years before the
distribution of the first questionnaires, was already making
good headway. Mission Praise was rather more widespread
than either Anglican Hymn Book or Hymns for Today's
Church. Books listed in the 'other' category were, in
decreasing order of usage: church's own compilation,
Celebration Hymnal, Songs of Fellowship, Come and Praise,
Junior Praise, With One Voice and seven others. One priest
commented: 'overhead projector slides from all over the place'.
Ten years is a long time in relation to such surveys, but
Hill 2 found that Ancient and Modern Revised was then being
1 Discrepancies between the observations of the two parties will partly have
been caused by musical directors sometimes listing amongst their lesser-used
hymnals those used for alternative tunes or harmonies.
2 Berkeley Hill, A Survey of Church Music, 1982 (Royal School of Church
Music, Addington, 1983), pp. 54-55.
154
COME, LET US JOIN OUR CHEERFUL SONGS
used as the main hymnal at 61% of churches, and as a
supplementary hymnal at a further 10%. 100 Hymns for
Today was being used as a supplementary book at 80% of
churches. The English Hymnal was being used as the main
hymnal at 18% of churches, and as a supplementary book at
19%. Ancient and Modern Standard was the main book at
8%, and Anglican Hymn Book at 6%.
The questionnaire of the recent Archbishops' Commission
sought information only on the recently published hymnals
and on the numbers of churches in which they were being
used (and without asking respondents to specify the degree of
usage: in an extreme case the books could presumably stay for
months at a time in a cupboard!). It found that Mission Praise
or Junior Praise was used at more churches than Ancient and
Modern New Standard. 1 This is confirmed in my own data — it
is only when one considers relative levels of usage that the
form of the charts on page 154 emerges. The Commission's
statement that Mission Praise or Junior Praise were 'the most
popular of all the hymn books listed in the questionnaire' is
unfortunate not only for this reason, but also because the word
'popular' implies favour — which of course was not being
measured. Less seriously, it was not made clear at this point in
the text that the questionnaire covered only the newer
hymnals, so the press took the statement to mean that these
two books were the 'most popular' of all hymnals.
In other surveys, usage of English Hymnal in central London
was found to exceed that of Ancient and Modern 2 , while in
cathedrals the major books were found to be The New English
Hymnal 28%, The English Hymnal 25%, Ancient and Modern
Revised 20%, and Ancient and Modern New Standard 13%. 3
1 In Tune With Heaven, Report of the Archbishops' Commission on Church
Music (Church House Publishing, and Hodder and Stoughton, London,
1992), p. 275; based on: Jacqui Cooper, Music in Parish Worship (Central
Board of Finance of the Church of England, London, [dated] 1990 [but not
published until 1992]).
2 John Winter Music in London Churches, 1945-1982 (PhD thesis, University
of East Anglia, 1984), p. 229.
Berkeley Hill, The Organisation of Music in Cathedrals in the United
Kingdom (Cathedral Organists' Association, Addington, 1989), [p. 47].
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WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Average Levels of Satisfaction with Hymnals
Musical director's view Priest-in-charge's view
Very satisfied
i.o-
-1.3 r
New English Hymnal —
-!l.4r
-ii.5l-
(Songs of Praise) —
-jl.6j-
J 1.7 L
New English Hymnal
-ii.8r
A & M Revised —
! h
J 1.9 L
- A & M New Std
Satisfied A & M New Std
=2 0=
(Sound of LW / Fr Sounds)
100 Hymns for Today etc. —
■^•V-
— Mission Praise
-42.il-
— Anglican Hymn Book
Hymns for Today's Church —
- -i2.2r
- Other
—_ •—
— 100 Hymns for Today etc.
Anglican Hymn Book
J 2.3 L
Mission Praise
-= =-
- A & M Revised
English Hymnal
- -i2.4r
English Praise
-; •—
42.5;
— Hymns for Today's Church
Other —
-!2.6!
-!2.7r
— English Hymnal
-!2.8r
Results based on fewer than
— | j—
10 items of data are shown
-i2.9r
in brackets.
Uncertain A & M Std
- -i3.or
Results based on fewer than
-j j-
5 items of data are not
-i3.il-
shown.
-i3.2r
J 3.3 L
A & M Std
J 3.4 L
Dissatisfied
- 4.0-
Very dissatisfied
- 5.0-
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COME, LET US JOIN OUR CHEERFUL SONGS
In order to obtain a genuine measure of the relative
popularity of hymnals, I asked both parties to specify their
levels of satisfaction with their two most-widely used books,
on a scale from 1 (very satisfied) through 2 (satisfied), 3
(uncertain) and 4 (dissatisfied) to 5 (very dissatisfied). In the
subsequent analysis I linked these levels of satisfaction to
specific books, the average values for each book being
shown in the table on page 158.
Despite its high-church overtones, The New English
Hymnal had within a short period become the best received
of all hymnals by musical directors and clergy alike. Of those
using it, over nine tenths of both parties were either satisfied
or very satisfied. The English Hymnal was, however, marked-
ly less popular. Although more than seventeen out of twenty
of both parties were either satisfied or very satisfied with
Ancient and Modern New Standard, a few directors were
very dissatisfied — I wonder why. Ancient and Modern
Revised was somewhat more popular than AMNS with
musical directors, but considerably less popular with the
clergy. Not entirely surprisingly in view of its age, Ancient
and Modern Standard Edition was felt to be by far the least
satisfactory of the hymnals.
In the case of books in the 'other' category, the musical
directors had the greater misgivings, over 10% being very
dissatisfied. Since 'local compilation' was the largest
contributor to this category, one is tempted to suppose that, at
least in these cases, someone other than the musical director
did the compiling.
The New English Hymnal had not become established at
evangelical churches, nor had Mission Praise at catholic
ones. Satisfaction with both The English Hymnal and TNEH
increased with the level of catholicity. The same was true of
Ancient and Modern New Standard as far as the clergy were
concerned but not so for the musical directors. Another trend,
but one on which both parties agreed, was that 'other'
hymnals (often own compilations) were progressively more
acceptable the more evangelical the church.
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WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Despite their importance, hymns are not of course the only
form of music encountered in worship. We shall now
therefore proceed to examine the others. Like hymns, the
psalms are usually published as complete compilations, and it
is for this reason that we look next at psalters.
Psalms and Psalters
Relative usage of psalters for psalm texts 1
Said
or not used
ASB
Parish
Revised
Ps Praise
New Cath
Oxford
Grail
PI' song
Other
Musical
director' s
view
Priest-in-charge' s
view
Sung:
_L
— +
--+ —
+
1 l.llllll
+ + + + + + + + + +
~^H
l.lll
+ + + + + + H
+
-+—
— 1
10
20
30
40%
10 20 30
40%
We have already reviewed (pages 60-63) the singing of
psalms. Although this practice is now much less common
than in earlier years, psalms were still being sung at roughly
half the services reported in the survey.
The usage of psalters was analysed in a similar way to that
of hymnals, although multiple usage was found to be
considerably less common. Where psalms were sung, The
Parish Psalter was the most prevalent, followed some way
behind by the ASB Psalter, perhaps chosen in part because of
the convenience of having Rites A and B and the psalms all
in the same volume.
i
Several respondents, whilst answering other questions, left this one blank,
perhaps implying that psalms are either said or not used. If so, it would
increase still further the values on the first line of the chart, and reduce the
others.
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COME, LET US JOIN OUR CHEERFUL SONGS
Of the remaining psalters, none was making any real
headway, and indeed the two parties could not really agree on
their relative usage. 1 Items in the 'other' category included
responsorial psalms from The New English Hymnal, Psalms
for the Eucharist, and Taize-type settings. At one church the
psalms were said over a quiet instrumental background.
In a survey of RSCM churches, 2 The Parish Psalter was
found to be six times as widely used as the ASB Psalter (cf.
three times now), with the New Cathedral, Old Cathedral,
and Oxford all quite close behind the ASB. Only one church
in 50 reported that psalms were not sung. Even allowing for
differences between the two sets of churches taking part in
the different surveys (RSCM churches tending to be of a
conservative nature), it would appear that attitudes towards
the singing of psalms have changed substantially in only a
few years.
The usage of psalters in cathedrals has recently been found
to be: Oxford 30%, Worcester 20%, Revised and Parish each
10%, own compilation and others 30%. 3
Certain psalters provide music, either adjacent to the text
(for example Parish) or as a companion volume (for example
New Cathedral). Other psalters provide no music, and even
sometimes in the case of those that do, users take the music
from another publication, and the musical directors were
invited to provide information on this. However, in practice
only a few did so, which implies widespread usage of the set
music. 4
There may have been some confusion between the ASB Psalter and The
Revised Psalter. In addition, at several churches one party indicated New
Cathedral box, while the other indicated 'other' and wrote in Old Cathedral.
In such cases it seems likely that the Old Cathedral was in fact the psalter
being used.
Berkeley Hill, A Survey of Church Music, 1982 (Royal School of Church
Music, Addington, 1983), pp. 55, 61.
Berkeley Hill, The Organisation of Music in Cathedrals in the United
Kingdom (Cathedral Organists' Association, Addington, 1989), [p.47].
Six churches had compiled their own set of chants, while a further three were
each using more than one published book. The number of churches reported
to be using specific chant books was as follows: Anglican 6, Old Cathedral 5,
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WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Psalms, in particular those set to Anglican chants, have
sometimes been criticised because of the difficulties encoun-
tered by congregations in singing them. So I asked:
If psalms are sung, who sings them?
Musical director's view Priest-in-charge' s view
Everybody +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^B +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ m
Choir alone +^ +^_
Choir & cong . +^ m +^ m
alternately + + + + +- + + + + +
20 40 60 80% 20 40 60 80%
The third line of the table includes the use of responsorial
psalms (two respondents indicated that the singing was
alternately by congregation and cantor), but it is also not
unknown for choir and congregation to sing alternate verses
in a similar way to decani and cantoris in cathedral choirs.
Any discrepancy between the sets of figures may simply be
because the clergy describe what is supposed to happen,
while the directors tell what happens in practice — in the
words of one: 'sung by choir, muttered by congregation'.
Having drawn up a league table of the relative levels of
acclaim of the various hymnals, I did the same for psalters. I
asked both parties to specify their level of satisfaction with
their most widely used psalter, on the same scale as before,
namely 1 (very satisfied) through 2 (satisfied), 3 (uncertain)
and 4 (dissatisfied) to 5 (very dissatisfied). The average
figures for each psalter are shown on the table overleaf.
There was a wide range of views on the suitability of the
various psalters used. The only book to be rated highly by
both parties, albeit within a very select group, was the Oxford
Psalter.
RSCM and Parish each 4, New Cathedral 2, and four other books each being
used at only one church. One of these was A Manual of Plainsong, and it
seems likely that this volume, although not reported as such, was in use at
most if not all of the churches using plainsong.
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COME, LET US JOIN OUR CHEERFUL SONGS
Average Levels of Satisfaction with Psalters
Musical director's view Priest-in-charge's view
- 1.0-
Ver Y SATISFIED
(i) Oxford; (ii) Revised
ASB
Parish
Satisfied New Cathedral
(Psalm Praise)
Other
Uncertain
Dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
-1.3-
1.4
J 1.5 L
1.6
1.7
1.8
1.9
2.0
-!2.1 L
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5 L
2.6
2.7 r
2.8
2.9 r
3.0
3.1 r
3.2
3.3^
3.4
4.0-
5.0-
(Psalm Praise)
Oxford
Other
(Revised)
(Grail)
Parish
ASB
Plainsong
New Cathedral
Results based on fewer
than 10 items of data are
shown in brackets.
Results based on fewer
than 5 items of data are not
shown.
161
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Settings of the Eucharist and Canticles
If there is any music at all at a service, it will almost certainly
take the form of hymns. If slightly more elaborate music is
included, it will probably take the form of a setting of certain
parts of the eucharistic liturgy (usually the Kyries and/or
Gloria, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei), or the canticles
at Morning or Evening Prayer. In three quarters of the
services they were sung (in Latin at one service in 60).
A total of 79 churches specified their eucharistic settings.
These were, in decreasing order of usage: Merbecke, Richard
Shephard Addington or Wiltshire, Dom Gregory Murray
People's Mass, Patrick Appleford New English Mass, Martin
Shaw Folk Mass, Ian Hubbard (either his own or the
Salisbury setting composed jointly with Neil Cocking), John
Rutter, local composition, Darke in F, plus some thirty other
settings. One of the churches using Merbecke was doing so
in a Rite A service — it is unclear whether the words had been
changed to the Rite A version. Dakers, in particular, regards
such manipulation of the text as a poor compromise 1 , whilst a
similar adaptation of Shaw's Folk Mass was withdrawn at the
request of the composer's widow. 2 In a survey 3 of music sung
at services in British cathedrals during 1986, Darke in F was
first among the communion services, Merbecke 13th, and
Addington 48th=.
Twelve churches were, at least occasionally, singing the
evening canticles to a setting. These included, in decreasing
order, Stanford in B flat, Stanford in C, and Noble in B minor.
At cathedrals, Stanford in C was first among the evening
canticles, Noble in B minor third, and Stanford in B flat
fourth. Three churches were, at least occasionally, singing the
morning canticles to a setting. At all three, Stanford in B flat
1 Lionel Dakers, Church Music in a Changing World (Mowbray, Oxford,
1984), p. 55.
2 John Winter, Music in London Churches, 1945-1982 (PhD thesis, University
ofEastAnglia, 1984), p. 87.
3 John Patton, Survey of Music and Repertoire (Friends of Cathedral Music,
Chichester, 1990) [pp. 3-7].
162
COME, LET US JOIN OUR CHEERFUL SONGS
was one of the services sung. At cathedrals, it was top of the
morning canticles.
Anthems
Most of the music that we have considered so far has, at least
in theory, been open to everyone to sing. The same cannot be
said of the remaining music found in services, and this can
give rise to mixed feelings.
It is not uncommon to find the singing of an anthem which rings
more of 'performance' than prayerfulness, as the people sit back after
the 'act' has been announced to enjoy (or endure) the result. Anthems
should bring us to our knees, but this is not always so. . .
The principle of including words of a former age in a modern rite
is well established through the use of anthems. Well-chosen and
properly performed, these neither interrupt the flow nor intrude into
the service and can be a powerful means of proclaiming the Faith. 1
But just how frequently are anthems sung nowadays?
Frequency of anthems
Never + B
Rarely +!
One per 3 or 4 services + B
One per 2 services + B
One per service + B
Two per service + B
10 20 30 40%
At almost half the services an anthem was never sung, whilst
at a further quarter one was performed only 'rarely'. 2 Overall,
therefore, an anthem cannot be regarded as a common event.
In Tune With Heaven, Report of The Archbishops' Commission on Church
Music (Church House Publishing, and Hodder and Stoughton, London,
1992), pp. 42, 184.
In the ACCMUS statistical report (Jacqui Cooper, Music in Parish Worship
(London, [dated] 1990 [but not published until 1992]), p. 54), the question:
'Does your church's musical repertoire include Choir/singing group
anthems?' evoked a 54% 'yes' response, which implies 46% 'no'. This
corresponds closely to my 47% 'never' response above. The picture painted
by the Commission (page 275 of In Tune With Heaven) that 'over 50% [of
churches included in their repertoire] . . . choir/singing group anthems',
though true, is incomplete.
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WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
One director added the comment 'alas' to his tick in the first
category.
An earlier question (page 151) asked whether the service
was 'never', 'sometimes' or 'always/nearly always' attended
by a choir. When I re-analysed the frequency of anthems
using only those cases where the choir was 'sometimes'
present, I was surprised to find that an anthem was never
sung in almost half the cases. Presumably the function of
such choirs is merely to lead the congregational singing, but
why they should do this at some times and not others is
unclear. Possibly their level of commitment is such that they
can function only at the major festivals. Finally, I analysed
the frequency of anthems using only those cases where the
choir was 'always/nearly always' present. Here I was equally
surprised to find that one in seven of the responses indicated
that an anthem was 'never' sung, and one in three only
'rarely'. Such a scarcity of anthems suggests either that the
choir is incapable of singing them (in which case its ability to
lead the congregational singing must also be in some doubt),
or begs the question of whether the choir ought perhaps to be
used more fully.
I asked directors to specify up to three typical anthems
sung by the choir. The following table shows the thirteen
most-cited anthems and, for comparison, the number of times
that each was performed in British cathedrals in 1986, and its
position in the order of the 250 most-performed anthems. 1
It is reassuring that all the most-cited anthems in the
present survey find their way onto cathedral music lists,
although it is perhaps not surprising that there seems to be no
correlation between their relative positions. Possibly less
encouraging is the fact that Lead me, Lord appeared to be the
most widespread of all. Approximately a hundred other
anthems were also cited. The most- widely performed anthem
in Patton's cathedral survey, Stanford's Bead quorum via
1 John Patton, Survey of Music and Repertoire (Friends of Cathedral Music,
Chichester, 1990) [pp. 7-12].
164
COME, LET US JOIN OUR CHEERFUL SONGS
(162 times), was cited only twice in the present survey — but
then it was written for a six-part choir!
Relative Frequencies Of Performance
Of The Most Common Anthems
This survey
Cathedrals
No. of
No. of
Composer
Title times cited
Pos.
times sung
Pos.
S.S. Wesley
Lead me, Lord
14
1st
57
61st=
W.A. Mozart
Ave verum
* 10
2nd
138
4th=
Edward Elgar
Ave verum
8
3rd
101
17th
S.S. Wesley
Blessed be the God
6
4th
103
16th
William Byrd
Ave verum
5
5th=
145
2nd=
Maurice Greene
Thou visitest the earth
5
5th=
42
98th=
John Stainer
God so loved the world
5
5th=
31
139th=
J.S. Bach
Jesu, joy
4
8th
69
44th
Thomas Attwood
Come, Holy Ghost
3
9th=
43
94th=
Adrian Batten
0, sing joyfully
3
9th=
66
45th=
William Harris
Behold, the tabernacle
3
9th=
18
234th=
John Goss
0, Saviour of the world
3
9th=
23
187th=
Charles Wood
thou the central orb
3
9th=
108
12th
* Nine in Latin, one in English
For each church I assessed the choir's ability according to
the most difficult of the anthems cited. For example, if its
most ambitious anthem was Lead me, Lord or Mozart's Ave
verum, this was classified as '1'. Blessed be the God and
Father, or O thou the central orb were classified as '2',
whilst This is the record of John by Orlando Gibbons, or
Faire is the heaven by William Harris brought the choir into
category '3'. The result of this classification was: three fifths
in Class 1, three tenths in Class 2, and one tenth in Class 3.
More than half the choirs appeared therefore to perform only
music which presents scarcely any challenge either to per-
formers or to listeners. This was not necessarily through any
fault of either the musical directors or the choirs themselves,
but it may well be a serious disincentive for recruiting
additional members, especially those with some knowledge
of music.
165
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of
the primitive Church, to have publick Prayer in the Church ... in a
tongue not understanded of the people. 1
Attitudes change. Where anthems were sung at all in the
present survey, the proportion of those using only English
texts was 50%. However, when the figures were grouped
according to the director's perception of the church's level of
churchmanship, a pattern emerged. The proportion of those
using only English at catholic churches was 39%, at churches
in the centre 56% and, as might be expected, at evangelical
churches higher still at 74%.
Other Vocal Music
Musical directors were invited to specify the type of music
performed by Sunday school choirs and any adult singing
groups or individuals. The first seemed to perform only
music written for children and, although the answers tended
not to be specific, the clear impression was that in general it
had not come from the pen of a classical composer. Adult
groups tended to be polarised in outlook within their
repertoire, singing either from one of the more charismatic
hymnbooks or, in a few cases, items from the traditional
repertoire, but in general not both. Only one such group sang
the works of both Thomas Tallis and Graham Kendrick (the
two names were adjacent in the list!). At three churches the
singing group sang music from Taize. Several churches
appeared to see a major function of the singing group as
teaching the latest music to the congregation.
Solo singers too tended to be polarised between contem-
porary songs on the one hand, and classical arias on the other
{Messiah, Crucifixion, and Olivet to Calvary receiving
special mention).
1 Article No. 24 of the 39 Articles of Religion ('agreed upon by Archbishops
and Bishops of both Provinces and the whole clergy in the Convocation
holden at London in the year 1562 for the avoiding of diversities of opinions
and for the establishing of consent touching true religion') (London, 1562).
166
COME, LET US JOIN OUR CHEERFUL SONGS
A Couple of Barometers
There were two matters on which I felt that the musical
director and the priest-in-charge might hold significantly
different views. The first concerned the hypothetical dis-
banding of the choir (the question being asked only in those
cases where there was indeed a choir).
If the choir disbanded, how would the standard of
congregational singing alter?
Musical director's view Priest-in-charge' s view
Much worse +^^^^^^^^^^ +^^_
Worse +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ m +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ m
About the same +^^^^^^^_ +^^^^^^^^^^^^ m
Better + + m
Much better + + m
+ + + + + + + + + + + +
10 20 30 40 50% 10 20 30 40 50%
The two parties were certainly not of one mind on this
matter, the clergy taking a significantly more optimistic view
of the idea. Dakers takes issue with the view probably in the
minds of some of them:
We should have no illusions, nor should we be unduly influenced by
the thinking which dictates that if a choir is present the congregation
will not sing. The fact is that even when there is no choir there is no
automatic guarantee that the congregation will sing . . . because
Anglican parish church worship is conditioned to the presence of a
choir. . . . The belief, however fashionable in some quarters, that if
you dispense with the choir the congregation will take on a more
active musical role is not borne out by the results. 1
i
Lionel Dakers, Church Music in a Changing World (Mowbray, Oxford,
1984), pp. 89-90.
167
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
The second question concerned whether the choir should
do any more than merely lead the congregational singing:
In some churches, the choir sings alone for a considerable part
of the service. If there is a choir, which one of the following
most closely describes the situation?
Musical director's view
+
2
3
4
10 20 30 40%
Priest-in-charge' s view
+■
+ + + + +
10 20 30 40%
where: 1 = Choir does not sing alone and does not wish to do so;
2 = Choir does not sing alone, but would like to do so;
3 = Choir sings alone with general assent;
4 = Choir sings alone, causing some resentment.
Several points emerge. Firstly, the directors and clergy
agreed that the choir sang alone for a considerable part of the
service in roughly 50% of cases, although their perceptions
of how much constitutes 'considerable' may well have
varied. Secondly, in the case where the choir did not sing
alone, the musical directors reported that one choir in six was
not entirely happy with the situation, compared with only one
choir in 21 reported by the clergy. Finally, in the case where
the choir did sing alone, the clergy reported that there was
resentment amongst one congregation in eight, compared
with only one congregation in 93 reported by the musical
directors. The discrepancies in the figures are even greater
than I anticipated, and point to a failure of clergy and musical
directors to communicate — with each other, the musical
director with the congregation, and the clergy with the choir.
Summary
In order to bring together the varied strands of this chapter
(and one or two from earlier ones also) let us imagine that we
had decided to attend a service; what might we expect to
find? First, it is clear that we have to choose our time very
carefully in order to find a service with any music at all —
less frequent than once a week in a quarter of the churches in
168
COME, LET US JOIN OUR CHEERFUL SONGS
the survey. However, we can at least be sure of a seat — at one
church in six we would be most unlikely to find more than
twenty people in the congregation.
We pick up our service book and hymnal. The former will
probably be an ASB (for Rite A communion: a one-in-three
chance, or Rite B: a one-in-seven) or a BCP (for Evening
Prayer perhaps: a one-in-five chance). The most likely
hymnal will be Ancient and Modern Revised, although
Ancient and Modern New Standard or The New English
Hymnal will be more likely if the church has recently
obtained a new set of books. If psalms are sung at all, they
will probably be taken from The Parish Psalter.
Our singing will almost certainly be accompanied on the
organ, and there will be a 50/50 chance of it being led by a
choir. Although we may be impressed by the latter 's
numerical strength — sixteen on average — and by the
reassuringly high proportion of younger members, notably
girls, we may as the service progresses become less
impressed with its musical capabilities.
On our way out at the end of the service, as we return our
books, we exchange a brief word with the priest. However,
we find that we have missed the organist — he and the choir
have left through the vestry door.
169
Happy Are They 1
Problem Areas and Ways of
Improving the Partnership
Just how happy are musical directors with the pattern of
musical usage in worship today? How happy are the clergy
with this pattern, and how happy do they think other
people — musicians and non-musicians alike — are with it?
In this chapter we examine the levels of satisfaction of both
parties with various aspects of the music at their respective
churches. Armed with this information, we then go on to
explore some of the implications of setting up the equivalent
of a 'computer-dating agency' in order to optimise the
partnership between the clergy and their respective musical
directors.
Sweet are the Songs 2
I wanted to discover how satisfied the musical directors and
clergy felt about the state of music in worship at the
churches, following the various upheavals that we looked at
in Chapter 1. I therefore asked each party to indicate his/her
level of satisfaction with the following:
• the working relationship with the other party;
i
Robert Bridges from C. Coffin, [in, for example,] Hymns Ancient and
Modern Revised (William Clowes, Beccles, 1950), No. 261.
Part of verse 2 of the above hymn.
170
HAPPY ARE THEY
• the musical director's musical competence (asked of the
priest only); 1
• the musical director's understanding of the forms of
worship used (asked of the priest only);
• the priest-in-charge's understanding of the use of music in
worship (asked of the musical director only);
• the musical competence of the younger members of the
choir;
• the musical competence of the adult members of the choir;
• the general conduct of the younger members of the choir;
• the general attitude of the adult members of the choir;
• the main (or only) hymnal;
• the second hymnal (if applicable);
• the main (or only) psalter; 2
• the overall use of music in the worship at services.
In addition, I asked both parties to assess the levels of
satisfaction of certain other individuals or groups with the
overall use of music in the worship at services. These others
were:
• the priest-in-charge (asked of the musical director only);
• the musical director (asked of the priest only);
• the congregation;
• the choir (where applicable);
• a non-churchgoer who happened to be visiting the church;
• a Christian visitor with a reasonable interest in serious
music;
1 We have already noted that in those cases where the priest-in-charge and
musical director were one and the same person, the results have been
included only in a clergy capacity. However, a special case arises when we
are asking a priest for his opinion of himself in his other capacity, for
example, his own musical competence as musical director. These results too
have been excluded, although admittedly in some cases they were very
entertaining! The corresponding question to directors concerning the priest's
theological and liturgical competence could not reasonably be asked,
although the responses might have been most illuminating.
2 The results of this and the previous two questions have already been
analysed for specific books on pages 157-161.
171
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
• that same Christian visitor if he/she joined the choir (where
applicable).
Several respondents suggested that there should have been a
further question: 'In your view, how satisfied is God?'.
Others, however, might perhaps have misconstrued it as
flippant.
In each case, the scale was from 1 (very satisfied), through
2 (satisfied), 3 (uncertain) and 4 (dissatisfied) to 5 (very
dissatisfied). The average figures are shown overleaf. The
levels of satisfaction of the musical directors and the clergy
themselves are shown in the left-hand table; their perceptions
of the levels of satisfaction of others appear in the right-hand
one.
Nine musical directors out of ten, and a similar proportion
of priests, reported that their working relationship was
satisfactory or very satisfactory: this is most encouraging.
(However, a small note of caution will be sounded when we
look at these figures again on page 178.) They were only
slightly less happy with the other's understanding of what
might be termed the grey area between their roles.
Less complimentary were their views on the musical
competence of the choir, in particular the juniors. I wonder
whether this is a reflection on the type of musical education
provided by schools, or perhaps it is simply that those who
are more talented prefer to make music elsewhere. Whatever
the reason, it is far from encouraging, since today's juniors
will form the core of the adult choir (or even of the adult
church) of tomorrow. In between, lies the more subjective
question concerning the juniors' conduct. Quite possibly
some musical directors interpreted it in terms of musical
conduct, whilst the clergy considered it in a wider religious
context. Directors may well be anxious not to lose 'the adult
choir of tomorrow', and feel obliged to be correspondingly
tolerant.
172
HAPPY ARE THEY
Average Levels of Own Satisfaction
Musical director's view Priest-in-charge's view
Very satisfied
Working relationship with PC
Adult choir's attitude
PC's understanding of use of
music in worship
Young choir's conduct
Satisfied
Main psalter
Main hymnal
2nd hymnal
Adult choir's
musical competence
Overall
Young choir's
musical competence
Uncertain
Dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
1.0-
1.6-
J1.7L
1.8
J1.9L
2.0
^2.1^
2.2
^2.3L
2.4
^2.5L
2.6
■^2.1'-
2.8
-2.9-
3.0
-4.0
-5.0
Working relationship with MD
MD's musical competence
MD's understanding of forms of
worship
Adult choir's attitude
Young choir's conduct
Adult choir's musical
competence
(i) Main hymnal (ii) 2nd
hymnal
Main psalter
Overall
Young choir's musical
competence
173
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Average Perceptions of Overall Levels of Satisfaction of Others
Musical director's view Priest-in-charge's view
Very satisfied - 1.0 -
Satisfied
Priest-in-charge
Choir
Congregation
Christian with interest in
serious music in choir
Non-churchgoer
Christian with interest
in serious music
Uncertain
-1.6-
1.7
^1.8^
1.9
^2.0^
2.1
^2.2^
2.3
^2.4^
2.5
^2.6^
2.7
^2.8^
2.9
^3.0^
Congregation
Choir
Musical director
Non-churchgoer
Christian with interest in serious
music in choir
Christian with interest in serious
music
Dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
-4.0
-5.0
174
HAPPY ARE THEY
Although four out of five of both parties were satisfied or
very satisfied with the attitude of the adult members of the
choir, as many as one in twelve expressed dissatisfaction or
worse. The nature of this may well be different in the two
cases (differing views, for example, on the relative serious-
ness of missing choir practice and talking during the
sermon). One priest regretted the unwillingness of the adults
to assist in the training of the younger members of the choir.
Musical directors and clergy were less than satisfied in a
significant proportion of cases (more than a quarter and more
than a third respectively) with the overall use of music in
worship at their church. When they were asked to assess each
other's level of satisfaction, the musical directors were rather
over-optimistic (2.09, as opposed to the real clergy value of
2.47). However, the clergy were much more accurate in their
assessment (2.39, comparable to the real directors' value of
2.31). The directors' perception of the congregation's level of
satisfaction was a little more optimistic than the clergy's
perception, although one director suggested that the
congregation's state of satisfaction was more strictly one of
apathy. However impracticable, it would have been
interesting to learn the actual views of the congregations.
Neither musical directors nor clergy rated the level of
satisfaction of a non-churchgoer very highly, namely 2.46
and 2.73 respectively. Even more pessimistic were the views
expressed concerning the lot of a musical Christian visitor.
Half the musical directors, and almost two thirds of the
clergy, were not confident that such a person would feel
satisfied. His/her position would seem to be but little
improved if he/she were to join the choir — if indeed there
was a choir at the church in question. One in six of the clergy
felt that such a person would be dissatisfied or very
dissatisfied, whilst only one in ten of the musical directors
felt that their new chorister would be very satisfied. Again it
would be interesting to know the reasons for such pessimism,
especially among the clergy, and the extent to which this was
perceived to be a serious problem.
175
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
By a wide margin therefore, in the view of both parties,
those least likely to be satisfied with the role played by music
are the non-churchgoing visitor and the Christian visitor with
an interest in serious music, whether or not the latter joined
the choir. It may reasonably be inferred that a non-Christian
musical visitor would be equally dissatisfied. For whatever
reasons, both parties perceived the levels of satisfaction of
both the existing congregation and the existing choir to be
much higher. If the Christian Church exists for those outside
it, as has been periodically advocated, then on the musical
front at least, the churches taking part in the survey seem to
be fighting a losing battle (and there is no reason to suppose
that the situation is significantly better elsewhere).
Furthermore, if the Christian musical visitor is frustrated by
the music as it currently exists, there is surely a risk that
he/she will not wish to become involved, thus exacerbating
the situation.
I also examined the levels of satisfaction in terms of
churchmanship, only to find that in general the figures were
remarkably consistent. One exception was that although an
amateur musician would be more satisfied in the choir of a
catholic or middle-of-the-road church than in the congrega-
tion, this would not be the case in an evangelical church.
So where do we go from here? Is there anything that can be
done to improve the situation?
The Perfect Match
The secret of a successful computer-dating agency lies in its
ability to pair together two people whose various character-
istics are complementary. 1 In principle this sounded straight-
forward enough, so I wondered whether it might be possible
to launch a similar scheme enabling musical directors to find
that 'extra-special' priest, or the clergy to find the musical
1 For a good match, the agency will need large numbers of clients on its
database, and it is of course preferable that they be unattached. I gather,
however, some agencies are more conscientious over these points than
others !
176
HAPPY ARE THEY
director of their dreams. Details of the mathematics 1 are
outside the scope of this book, but some of the early results
in this field are very illuminating. Let us look at some of
them.
The clergy and the musical directors had both been asked,
on a scale from 1 to 5 (page 170), how satisfied they were
with their working relationship with the other party. As a first
step, for each party I ran a series of 'correlation tests', to see
whether that party's level of satisfaction could be statistically
related to any of the other 'variables' that had been under
scrutiny in the questionnaire. An initial revelation was the
fact that each party felt the relationship to be more satisfac-
tory where the other party was younger than him/her.
Similarly, each party preferred to have been in post longer
than the other. If the musical director felt that it was in
general advantageous for a director to co-operate in a flexible
way, then he/she was more likely to be satisfied with the
working relationship with the priest. On the other hand, if the
priest felt it to be advantageous, then the musical director
was less likely to be satisfied. As Professor Joad would have
said: 'It all depends what you mean by flexible'.
If a priest felt that a musical director's ability as a solo
organist was an advantage, then this boded well in the
priest's eyes for a satisfactory working relationship. If,
however, the musical director felt it to be advantageous, then
this pointed (again from the priest's point of view) to an
unsatisfactory working relationship. If a musical director was
involved with other church-music interests outside his/her
own church, the priest was likely to find the relationship
easier. Again, in the priest's eyes, a satisfactory relationship
was associated with much time spent in discussion. However,
we must be cautious here. If a priest finds a relationship with
a director difficult, is their failure to hold meetings a cause of
this difficulty — or an effect?
1 R.L.D. Rees, The Role of Music and Musicians in Current English Parish
Church Worship: The Attitudes of Clergy and Organists (PhD thesis,
University of Sheffield, 1991), pp. 321-337.
177
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Other correlations which might have been anticipated were
not found to be significant (or, as might be said, they were
'not proven'). These included: (a) the musical director's view
of how advantageous it is for a director to be a practising
Christian (one might have expected that a director who felt
that it does not matter would get on worse with a priest than
one who felt that it does); (b) the number of years that the
priest had spent in secular employment prior to ministerial
training (one might have expected that someone who had
spent longer in the 'real world' might be more tolerant than
someone who had not); and (c) the number of parties to
whom a musical director should have the right of appeal in
the event of dispute with the priest (someone allowing appeal
to a wider court might be expected to be more tolerant).
Although these correlations give us new insights, they do
not particularly help us with our 'computer-dating' project.
Since any relationship is ultimately a two-way process, it
may be argued that a truer view of each relationship may be
obtained by combining the views of the two parties rather
than looking at each in isolation. Before developing this, I
had in any case been wondering the extent to which (at a
given church) the parties took differing views on the state of
their relationship. As might be expected, at most churches
both parties held a common view, although naturally there
were minor differences of perception (for example a priest
being very satisfied and a director merely satisfied). How-
ever, there were instances of the director being satisfied and
the priest dissatisfied or, more remarkable, the priest being
very satisfied and the director being dissatisfied or (stranger
still) very dissatisfied. Such situations point to one party's
unwillingness to admit that there is a problem, or a failure of
the parties to communicate effectively with each other or
even, as a specific example of this, a differing perception of
what constitutes a satisfactory working relationship. A priest
might regard as ideal a relationship of total subservience on
the part of the musical director!
178
HAPPY ARE THEY
In the circumstances I decided not to put complete faith for
my 'dating' project in the two parties' stated perceptions of
their working relationship. I had other possible pointers to
the state of affairs (e.g. how satisfied each party was with the
use of music in the worship at services), so I could build up a
more complete picture of the overall level of musical
satisfaction of the two parties. For each church, I defined a
'Satisfaction Index', by summing the following individual
levels of satisfaction:
• director's view of priest's understanding of use of music in
worship;
• director's view of working relationship with priest;
• priest's view of director's musical competence;
• priest's view of director's understanding of the forms of
worship used;
• priest's view of working relationship with director;
• director's overall view of use of music in the worship at the
services;
• priest's overall view of use of music in the worship at the
services.
The items comprising the Satisfaction Index are not entirely
arbitrary: they are the ones most closely affecting the priest
and musical director. (The views of the choir, congregation,
etc. are all of interest, and merit further investigation at some
stage, but they do not directly affect the priest and the
musical director.)
I then ran further correlation tests, this time against the
Satisfaction Index. Further revelations were in store. In
particular, an increase in any of the following was associated
with an increase in the Satisfaction Index:
• time spent in discussion between the two parties;
• the number of qualifications (not necessarily musical) held
by the musical director;
• the closeness of the two parties' personal preferences on
catholic/evangelical worship;
179
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
• the number of church-music associations to which the
musical director belonged;
• the level of musical attainment of the priest.
Clergy may find it helpful to consider some of these points
when next they are interviewing a prospective musical
director.
Clearly the whole topic of levels of satisfaction defies
precise quantification. No doubt there are other factors
systematically affecting it, some being complex combinations
of variables in the questionnaire, some not asked at all (for
example, the distance that the musical director has to travel
to church). Over and above the systematic factors will be the
traits of human unpredictability. That having been said, any
attempt at systematically matching priest and musical
director is surely better than no attempt at all.
I am convinced that further statistical analysis will bring to
light additional predictors of the state of the relationship
between the musical director and the priest. Then, if a church
receives more than one application for the post of musical
director, an objective test will be available to determine
which of the candidates is likely to be the most suitable for
the specific situation. Of course the crucial word is 'if, but I
believe that yesterday's poor clergy/organist relationships are
in no small measure responsible for today's dearth of
organists. Have we found a means of breaking what is often
seen as a vicious circle?
180
Conclusion
The liturgical and hymnological upheavals of the sixties,
seventies and early eighties had, by the mid-eighties, left
many church musicians in a state of shock. Relationships
with clergy — never renowned for their warmth — appeared to
be worsening. It was in this context that I embarked on a
survey of the attitudes of clergy and musical directors to the
role of music in current parish church worship. This book is
the outcome of that survey.
Although much of the book has been devoted to the results
of a questionnaire survey, the questions within in it had first
to be placed in their historical and contemporary context. For
this reason, I devoted the Introduction and Chapter 1 to such
diverse matters as the Church of England's use of music in
worship over the centuries, areas of conflict in church music,
the scope of other church-music surveys, the effects of
liturgical and hymnological change, and the training courses
on the use of music in worship. As an introduction to my own
survey, I included three case studies demonstrating problems
that can arise when clergy and church musicians are in
conflict.
The questionnaires themselves, distributed to the priest-in-
charge and musical director (organist) at almost half the
churches in a large diocese, have provided a composite
picture firstly of respondents' personal backgrounds and
general attitudes, and secondly, respondents' perceptions of
the situation at their church, and of each other. The overall
response rate to the questionnaires was over 74%. This,
181
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
combined with the fact that the diocese has been shown to be
a typical one, suggests that any conclusions drawn from the
survey may be applied to the Church of England as a whole.
Perhaps the most depressing finding of my survey was that
there appeared to be little common ground between clergy
and musical directors. The clergy had little knowledge of, or
ability in, music (the same can perhaps be said of some of the
directors), whilst the directors' knowledge of theology was
very limited. Moreover, there seemed to be little desire to
develop this common ground, with little interest in either
church-related musical associations or discussion groups.
Added to this, neither party placed much value on a formal
qualification in church music. Especially noteworthy,
however, was the dissatisfaction expressed by clergy at the
quantity and/or quality of their music training at theological
college. The extent to which this perceived inadequacy is
causing major problems in parish-church music is unclear.
However, a full survey of the music training programmes of
theological colleges would seem to be a worthwhile future
project. Indeed, reference to no more than the present data
and Crockford's 1 would enable a comparison of levels of
satisfaction between different colleges to be compiled.
At the time of the survey, alarmingly little time and money
were being spent on developing the churches' musical
resources. For example, a typical annual music budget per
member of the electoral roll was less than 20 pence. In over a
third of the churches the total time spent per year in
discussion between the priest-in-charge and the musical
director was an hour or less (responses elsewhere in the
questionnaires provided additional evidence of the two
parties' failure to communicate with each other). At only one
church in three was the musical director a member of the
PCC; at only one in four churches was there a working group
for worship, and at only one in ten a working group for
music. Also somewhat alarming was the fact that at only one
1 Crockford's Clerical Directory (89th edn), (Church House Publishing,
London, 1985).
182
CONCLUSION
church in six was there more than one suitable candidate
when the present musical director was appointed. However,
there is hope that the seeds sown in 'National Learn the
Organ Year' will in due course yield the required harvest.
The shock waves of the 'hymn explosion' have reached
many churches, with Hymns Ancient and Modern New
Standard, The New English Hymnal and many other compila-
tions taking their places in the pews. Psalms, on the other
hand, are not widely sung in today's parish churches.
Apart from all-male choirs (where numbers are declining,
as are the numbers of boys in all choirs), membership of
choirs seems to have been maintained in the most recent
three-year period. This says much for the choirs' forbearance,
as S.S. Wesley's Lead me, Lord was the anthem most
commonly cited.
Both the clergy and the musical directors seemed to agree
that an interest in serious music was something of an
impediment to a worshipper in many of today's services. If
true, and I believe it is, this is a serious matter. Admittedly
thirty years ago, the Church of England may have had too
much of a middle-class approach to its worship and music.
Now the musical pendulum seems in danger of swinging too
far in the opposite direction. Music should be an aid to
worship, not an impediment to it, and every effort must be
made for this to apply to all. It is, however, a fact of life that
people's musical tastes differ (even BBC Radios 1, 2 and 3
can barely cover the spectrum), and finding a solution to this
in the church environment is not easy:
The relationship between music, Christian worship and culture is
very complex.... I suspect it is something with which we shall always
be struggling, because what is culturally meaningful and acceptable
to one person is anathema to another. 1
1 Alan Reeve, 'One Man's Meat' in Christian Music (Summer 1990), p. 18.
183
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
The comment of a former Poet Laureate is no less relevant
eighty years later:
It seems to me that the clergy are responsible. If they say that the
hymns (words and music) which keep me away from the church door
draw others thither and excite useful religious emotions ... all I can
urge is that they should have at least one service a week where people
like myself can attend without being moved to laughter. 1
Finding the right balance for a particular church between
traditional and non-traditional music is a very sensitive
matter, requiring considerable discussion between the priest
and musical director, and preferably other parties as well.
One Incumbent stressed the importance of treating all styles of music
seriously, so that modern choruses are sung well and not treated
lightheartedly In this way he had found new material was acceptable
to most people. 2
By a strange coincidence, two somewhat similar projects,
namely my own and that of the Archbishops' Commission,
were independently initiated within two years of each other. I
respect and at the same time regret the Commission's
decision that, for reasons of confidentiality, the two projects
had to remain independent of one another.
Both surveys do, however, agree that parish church music
is not in a particularly healthy state. However, despite this
gloom there are one or two rays of hope. Firstly, the
unusually high response rate from both the clergy and
musical directors to my questionnaires implies a measure of
concern. This can perhaps be seen as encouraging in the
longer term: a problem cannot be resolved until it is per-
ceived to be a problem. Secondly, I have suggested in
Chapter 7 ways of predicting how 'successful' a musical
director will be in a particular church with a given priest.
This will perhaps encourage priests to think more deeply
1 R. Bridges, 'About hymns' in Church Music Society Occasional Papers, 2,
(1911); quoted by Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English Church
(CUP, Cambridge, 1979), p. 321.
2 A Joyful Noise (Resource Paper 84:7) (Administry, St. Albans, 1984), p.3.
184
CONCLUSION
when appointing a new musical director. In fact, one of the
priests taking part in the survey reported that he had found
the questionnaire most helpful when interviewing applicants.
Clergy and musical directors may even be persuaded that it
would be in the best interests of both parties to spend more
time in discussion with one another. The absence of adequate
discussion was a factor common to all three case studies
(pages 75-85). However, the work so far undertaken on
matching clergy and musical directors is only a first step, and
many more interesting correlations undoubtedly lie beneath
the surface of the data, merely waiting to be trawled.
In response to a report of my project 1 , I received a poem 2
(page 186) which provides a fitting epilogue. Not only does
the poem confirm at least two of my findings, but it also
implies the need for a further project, namely a survey of
congregational tastes in church music.
1 'Role Conflict' in Church Times, 6461 (12 December 1986), p. 8.
2 This poem by H. Ford Benson is believed to have appeared in a Baptist
publication c. 1920. It is a pastiche of a poem by Lewis Carroll in Through
the Looking Glass.
185
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
The Parson and the Organist
The Parson and the Organist
Were walking side by side,
Said the Parson to the Organist,
'Your tunes I can't abide'.
'I'm sorry', said the latter,
'That our tastes should disagree,
But I really must say frankly
That your sermons don't touch me'
And so they fell discussing
From their different points of view,
The pulpit and the organ-loft,
But quite forgot the pew.
Till up came a churchwarden,
Who was passing by that way,
And hearing the discussion
He just thought he'd have his say.
'Look here,' said he, 'my brothers,
You both are in the wrong!
One shows the way to heaven
And the other leads the song.
'Let each to his vocation
His best endeavours bring,
For when we get to Heaven
We must all know how to sing.'
This ended the discussion,
For they felt that he was right,
So the Parson and the Organist
Shook hands and said 'Good-night'
To this I can only add 'Amen'.
Advent Sunday 1992
186
Appendix
Contact Details
Where available, the contact details of the organisations
below have been checked in 2012 and updated accordingly.
In a few cases (denoted by *), this has not proved possible. In
some others, it is unclear whether the relevant courses are
still being run.
CHIME*
1 Lioncroft Cottages, Upwood Road, Bury, Huntingdon,
Cambs., PE17 1PA
Christian Copyright Licensing
Chantry House, 22 Upperton Road, Eastbourne, East
Sussex, BN21 1BF
http://w ww ccli, co.uk
Christian Musicians' and Artists' Trust*
PO Box 45, Patchway, Bristol, BS12 6RT
Colchester Institute
Sheepen Road, Colchester, Essex, C03 3LL
http;//www^
Faculty of Church Music*
St Jude's Rectory, 49 Upper Tooting Park, London,
SW17 7SN
Guild of Church Musicians
St Katharine Cree, 86 Leadenhall Street, London,
EC3A 3DH
http;//www^
187
WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
Incorporated Association of Organists
13 St Flora's Road, Littlehampton, West Sussex
BN17 6BD
http;//www.iao...org.uk
Music and Worship Foundation
itte«//wwwjiM.prg.uk
Pratt Green Trust
http;//w w w. prattgreentru^Qrg.uk
Royal Academy of Music
Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5HT
http;//www^ r am^ac^k
Royal College of Organists
PO Box 56357, London SE16 7XL
hltPA// w . w . w ^rcOiOrg : uk
Royal School of Church Music
19 The Close, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP1 2EB
6ltJteA//^O^^cm A cpm
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ
http;//www.uea.ac.uk
188
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WEARY AND ILL AT EASE
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191