Category: Music
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Blessings count! New year review of music at St Luke’s: part I
Happy New Year! The Church year began on 27 November, the first Sunday in the season of Advent. This post was going to be both a look back at the music program at St Luke’s in the 2015-16 Church year and a look at how we are starting this new 2016-17 Church year and some…
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I know that my Redeemer liveth
To celebrate the Reign of Christ and the triumphant end to the Church year, let’s listen to a great Handel aria! At Handel’s burial place in Westminster Abbey, there is a statue of him with pen in hand writing his own musical credo. It is the opening of the score of “I know that my Redeemer…
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Advent every day
The season of Advent isn’t here yet, but choirs have already been preparing for some time. Preparing for the season of preparation. Expectantly acting towards the season of expecting. We all work ahead of each season (as well as doing some quick, spontaneous work that responds to the current season), so we really live out…
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The Art of Hymn Playing
I heard some of our team of musicians chatting about how they map out organ registration in order to engage the congregation when we sing hymns, and I asked Michael Watkins to share some of his insights with us. Here is his response: Playing hymns for congregational singing is an art form. Accompanying congregational singing…
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Alive sound
Have you noticed that a church is not a concert hall? I confess I often blur the two in my mind when I think about sound, envisaging that to get a good sound for music and spoken word in church, we could look to the principles used in concert halls or lecture halls. But Acoustics…
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Lyrics: Voices distilled. A sneak preview of Local Voices 2016
How lovely is the depiction of poetic truth in the Song of Moses: “Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. May my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distil as the dew, like gentle rain upon the tender grass, and like showers upon…
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Who are we singing for, and who is singing?
I’ve been asked, “In church, who are we singing for?” so let’s play with the idea of an opera, with singers on stage enacting a story for the audience, and see what it suggests for hymn-singing. Put ourselves – the whole congregation – on the imagined stage of a service of worship. Sometimes we split…
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In the midst of generations
Once, I heard the diplomat Kishore Mahbubani speak with music performers and scholars, and his words became part of what I hold up to my everyday work and play. Kishore Mahbubani has served many years in the Singapore Foreign Service and in the United Nations, and is Dean of the School of Public Policy at…
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My Sister’s Hands, reaching
During our lectionary series on the book of Ruth, we’re enjoying Sally DeFord’s “My Sister’s Hands.” This song gets a lot of its emotional traction from the leaning notes (appoggiaturas) and the wide melodic intervals that are part of DeFord’s style. Both these features give you a sense of reaching. And this musical effect is…
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In memory of singers and voices
It’s a good time for mourning. As we enter our lectionary series on the book of Ruth, we play an elegy. One of our musicians has been moved to play Rachmaninov’s Elegy in E flat op.3, no.1, in memory of choir members. And when she brought this offering to the worship ministry team, they asked her…