Pigs and Joyful Noises

The Alpena News, January 20, 2007

“Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.” My organist in Louisville posted this Robert Heinlein quote, complete with a picture of the uneducable pig, on the bulletin board outside the music room. Thankfully, the parish’s musically-challenged never wandered down that hallway, or they might have taken offense where only humor was intended.

I intend humor here. Heinlein may have been a science fiction writer, but he touched on a universal frustration of church organists and choir directors -- and me, though probably to a lesser extent. How can it possibly be that some people don’t appreciate music? More specifically, church music? More specifically still, the kind of church music I like?

I intend humor here. In my communion of the Church, the canons give the rector (pastor) final authority over the use of music in worship. I get to pick the hymns. I get to screen the preludes and postludes. I get to tell the bride that she cannot process to Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” from Lohengrin. The Church gives me this clout because music has power –power to affect the worshiper’s experience beyond almost anything a pastor can say or do. So, when a bride and groom request that “Silver Spurs and Golden Saddles” serve as an anthem in their wedding, I politely object as I repress my urge to say “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Of course, my authority over church music doesn’t mean I am an authority in church music. I try to be open, for the most part, to the tastes of others, and have in fact tried to somewhat emulate the English vicars I met in 1990. Their selection of music for a Sunday service is totally eclectic, since the Church of England does not have a hymnal, and in any given service, there is close to something for everyone. Short of rap – which most assuredly was not what the Psalmist had in mind when he said, “Sing to the Lord a new song.” (I do not intend humor here.) I try especially to be open to the guidance of my organist/choirmaster, who sometimes catches me picking hymns that nobody can sing.

Still, I believe, “It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises to [his] name… to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre.” (Ps 92 passim) As a nun once told me, “He who sings prays twice.” But then, there are those who for that reason you might wish would not pray at all! A late bishop used to call one of my priest-colleagues the “golden throat of the diocese,” because he sang loudly though poorly. However, the priest was Welsh and that particular people feels entitled to sing no matter what.