I suppose it was all down to lack of communication.

We decided to split the 3hr service 3 ways and haul in someone who has played the odd hymn before. Then the arrangement got changed at the last minute and 2 of us who turned up to play at our appointed time found that we had been replaced by a CD!

If the Good Friday vigil had been any other service then a loud whisper or furious winking might have elicited some kind of wordless dialogue with some kind of explanation. Instead I sat in a pew for one hour completely mystified, and then a second hour getting crosser by the minute. When the final hymn was announced I quietly left; no way was I going to sing again to a recording!

This was not the Vicar's fault, I hasten to add - at least I don't think so! My charitable side thinks that the CD was dug out because the Vicar thought that there wasn't going to be an organist after all. (It was the 12-1 shift that went AWOL)

OTOH, there had been no hymn list for Good Friday on the console, and the CD was handled very smoothly - almost as if rehearsed!

I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm irreplaceable - even by a CD - but I do regret the long hours I spent practising Dupre's Lamento pour Orgue (not to mention purchasing the thing - and it is French! and we all know what that means!) in vain.

Sorry to rant - hope no one else's day went pear-shaped.

As organist's wife, I get involved in the peripherals. I have to say I'm always grateful when Easter services are over because there are so many pitfalls, clerics have a tendency to change their mind at the last moment, and who knows if one of the singers is going to have an off day.

Today was not too bad on the whole - sounds a bit better than yours. Commiserations for all the time spent practising/funds spent on music unnecessarily. Hopefully you can use it at another time?

The music in every service in the Church of England is ultimately the responsibility of the vicar/priest in charge/minister.

Using a CD when there is an organist present and ready to play is a certain way of making sure the church will be short of an organist in the future.

I have absolutely no time for 'mistakes' (if it was a mistake) of this kind. In any event, you should have received an explanation and an apology.

You have not ranted. Your complaint is mildy expressed and totally justified. You have rightly identified a lack of communication. It is a pity you have not been communicated with by way of a justly deserved apology.

Barry Williams

I remember a number of years back when I was between churches and depping. One particular church needed an organist and three different people took it upon themselves to try and recruit an organist for a particular service. Three of us promptly arrived to play for Evensong....

I 'suffered' a service today in the congregation at one of our daughter churches, where the organist was really struggling to play. It was a painful experience.

mel2, I am so sorry for you. Do speak to the priest about this - it's just not acceptable, and I'm sure people would have much preferred live organ music to a CD. You are owed an apology and an explanation, and I'm sure once the vicar realises what has happened he will be quick to offer both.

At least there will be plenty more Good Fridays over the years for you to use your music, but you must be so disappointed today.

No, it's not acceptable, and I'm so sorry Mel, especially as you went to the trouble of researching and obtaining music specially for the day.

I do appreciate your thoughts, folks.
There will have to be a post mortem but already I have phoned the third organist to apologise for the foul-up even though I don't see how it was my fault. They either haven't picked up the message or they've decided to let me stew.

The Vicar wasn't picking up the phone either, but then it was less than an hour after the service.
As for the Dupre - it will be a year before I can play it again; it's seriously sad and only suitable for Good Friday.

If this kind of thing is likely to happen again I shall have to consider whether I will be available.

HG - have you ever been one of a congregation of 3 in a large building singing to a CD with exactly the same rendition for every verse? I suppose the day isn't meant to be fun.

It sounds ghastly.

Very much like the organ playing I suffered today, alas.

The day may not be meant to be fun, but it is meant to make you think and feel about the events which happened on it. It's very difficult to feel anything to mechanical, repetitive playing.

How sad that so few people were there on such an important day - do you live further north where Good Friday isn't a bank holiday? Our church was absolutely packed yesterday morning (the joint Churches Together service was held there), and then in the evening we went to an Anglican church where Stainer's Crucifixion was performed by a local chamber choir and the church choir - it was a wonderful service. As you'll know, the hymns are sung by the congregation as well as the choir, so we really felt it was a service of worship rather than a performance.

Hope your Easter Day services are better attended!

People tend to drift in by mid-afternoon, but for 2 hours there were only 2 or 3 plus Vicar. A few only made it in for the last half hour - (chicken!)

Vast caverns of silence lasting 25+ minutes do get to you - I wish I had been where you were, BM!
But you are right - singing to a recording does make it all a rather sterile experience.

I think I'll give Easter Sunday a miss. If they think I'm sulking then it's just too bad; perhaps I am a bit!

But a three hour long service?

I don't blame them....

Usually with a vigil you would just attend for part of the time. It's a great opportunity to just sit and pray or meditate - I don't think western people do nearly enough sitting in quiet, there's always noise from the TV or radio.

For my churches organ appeal (which shock horror has just got 36,000 out of 85,000 out of the lottery) we done a 24 hour singing session (The gentlemen of the choir) and sung the whole psalter. It's not quite quite meditation, but it was certainly a deeply spiritual encounter for those of us who sang through the night, in a church lit by candelight.

Our world is so quick. But by being slow, you can make it so beautiful (and i'm 19 before anyone says anything!)

That sounds lovely, Dave. It sounds as though you still need to raise quite a lot of money, so maybe you could do something similar later in the year?

Dave that sounds marvellous. Not sure I would keep awake, but marvellous none-the-less.

BM I agree about noise - it can be quite difficult to get away from it. I believe many people don't realise what real quiet is.

We did East vigil last night starting at 11pm - two sung services to do today.

A very Happy Easter to all fellow church musicians - and indeed to everyone who celebrates the day .

Sorry i should have clarified that £36,000 gave us a total of £91,000 (so six grand more than we needed:-) ) - it's taken a lot of concerts to get to the stage before.

And sorry to hijack the thread

That sounds really fun Daveinnorfolk. I've always wanted to do something like that. Our church forked out £12k for an electronic organ and I anticipated some fund raising activities, but they decided they could afford it all with help from the diocese. I was very sad.

Our Saturday evening service was exciting! We were joined by members of the local Polish community which was very nice, but those in the know had forgotten to tell the musicians (ie my OH on the organ) exactly what was happening, so it was slightly more hair raising than normal - such as the epistle being read twice, once in Polish and then in English, and same with the gospel. Can be a bit dodgy when you're expecting to come in with an alleluia verse somewhere.

My commiserations Mel. It shouldn't be this way. I can only hope that things were better on Easter Sunday?

[Rant mode on]

Sadly, the kind of situation that you describe is not that uncommon in my experience. Speaking personally, our own church seems to be full of people running around the Vicar and Curate, telling them not to lift a finger to do anything for themselves, whilst the unpaid volunteers are expected to spend more and more of their spare time working so the paid professionals don't have to.

I am sorry if this sounds a bit uncharitable, but nobody organises a rota to cut our lawn, do our gardening or decorate our house; but my wife is still expected to find time to manage the PCC accounts as well as doing a full time job as an Accountant and looking after our two school age children.

What I am saying, I think, is that the work of unpaid volunteers is taken far too much for granted within the church. If we take two of my personal pet hates, (applying for faculties and completing the annual Diocesan Accounts forms); I would suggest that if the church authorities had to pay commercial rates for this work, they would soon find a much more efficient way of doing things.

Had the clergy put as much effort in as you did Mel, you can be sure they wouldn't have been sitting quietly in a pew listening to music on a CD.

The fact is that, but for the work of unpaid volunteers, most churches would very quickly cease to function, and I think the paid professionals need to be reminded of this from time to time.

[Rant mode off]

SB

^^
You are not wrong, SB. I think I recognise the type of Clergy Groupie you describe; they normally run in packs and love to be helpful.

I have to say that here they are not quite so much in evidence as they once were, but it depends on the personality/ s'ex of the incumbent.

An organist is very exposed, and years of sometimes bitter experience teach you to be prepared to have things splat into your lap - which is why I spent so long working on Good Friday/ Easter Sunday stuff, because several times lately I have been called upon at very short notice because the 'regular' is indisposed. One would not want to appear incompetent .

To not be called upon can be a relief, but to find your services have been replaced by a robot is undermining.

I wonder how it would be received if the C of E were to consign all its clergy to desk jobs and have weddings and Sunday services done by video with a sermon recorded by the Archbishop of Canterbury? I'm sure there would be no theological slip ups (as there are no note blobs on a CD of hymns) but would it further the cause of faith? (For all I know, some or all of this may already happen during an interregnum. )

"....applying for faculties and completing the annual Diocesan Accounts forms..."

"...if the church authorities had to pay commercial rates for this work...."


Just for the record:

1. Completing accounts forms - probably about £175 per hour - more in London.

2. Specialist Ecclesiastical Law Work (of which Faculties are always very complex,) about £250 per hour out of London - more in London.

Barry Williams

Hi Mel,
We had an interregnum just a few years ago (I believe it was Diocesan policy that every parish should have an interregnum of at least one year whenever their incumbents moved parishes or retired), and I can honestly say it worked very well.

Most major services were taken by a retired Priest or a Canon from within the diocese, but many other communion services were by extension. Indeed, I led some of these myself. We certainly didn't have any services by video or CD, and music continued to play a central part of the worship.

However, what really irritates me (and which, TBH, is why I am a little wound up at present), is how paid clergy and their administrators seem to have no compunction about doing a slipshod job which wastes the time and efforts of the volunteers who pay their salaries.

In this regard. we had a concert planned for a Saturday evening later this month, to raise funds for our organ, which suffers badly from ciphers, and as a result is sometimes unplayable. However, with just three weeks to go, I was told that the event 'had to be cancelled, as they had been too busy to check their diaries, and the church was double booked'.

Having informed the choir I was then told to withdraw my comment about ‘an oversight in the Parish office’, and was left to shoulder the blame myself, rather than making our (paid) Parish Administrator look incompetent.

I think you can see where there priorities were.

SB




Precisely.

"...an oversight in the Parish office’"

Last Christmas I was asked to deputise at a church. I booked practice time. When I turned up the bell ringers were in full swing and would not allow me to practice. (The ringing chamber is the West Gallery. They were due to play for three hours.) The lady who let me in to the church (the wife of the choir master) pointed out the booking entry in the diary for my practice time. The bell ringers said they never bother to look at the church diary. They just ring when they want to.

This sort of thing, which is, regrettably typical, simply would not be tolerated in business life. Why do we accept it as normal in church life? There is nothing whatsoever in Christianity that encourages people to leave their normal business acumen at the church door, yet they so often do - and good manners with it. This is exactly what happened to Mel2 and started this thread off.

Barry Williams

This kind of thing has happened to us too. My OH wanted to give me a lesson on the new (at the time) organ as I was deputising. We checked with the PP who said it would be ok, only to arrive and find our Polish brethren hard at it in a service. (We went and checked their notices - a bit difficult because they're all in Polish , but the numbers are the same, and we couldn't find a service which appeared to be at the time we had booked.) On the way out, we ran into the PP who apologised, and said the Polish lot had turned up out of the blue and started their service. Grr.

All this makes me so thankful that I don't have a regular church appointment any more.

I think if I were mel2 I would have opened up the organ and played my voluntary anyway - even if to an empty church. I used to regard voluntaries as my offering to God, even if the congregation couldn't care less. Alternatively I might have arranged a recital which included the piece and then, in my introductory spiel, casually mentioned to the audience why I hadn't been able to play it at the appropriate time. The difficulty with the latter tactic is, of course, that it depends on having a congregation interested in turning up to organ recitals...

Very true, Vox.

However, personally, I don't provide voluntaries on Good Friday as I don't think they're 'appropriate'. How does everybody else feel about this?

However, personally, I don't provide voluntaries on Good Friday as I don't think they're 'appropriate'.
How does everybody else feel about this?
[/quote]

We have a noon choral service on Good Friday with readings, prayers , hymns and anthems.

The choral items were by Stainer, Purcell, Bullock, Gibbons, Richard Rodney Bennett and Anerio.

The titles of the readings were, Jesus foretells his death, Jesus prays for his people,
Jesus is betrayed and arrested, Jesus is tried before Pilate, Jesus is crucified,
Jesus dies, Christ triumphant.

This is the one service in the year where the organ is not heard until the first hymn,
however with a change of mood by the end of the service I find a short piece
as choir and clergy process out is not inappropriate.

I have an invaluable volume that goes in my case to every service and is frequently used - Ariadne musica
by JKF Fischer, it has 20 short (typically about 3 mins. each) Preludes and Fugues in 20 different keys and a
variety of moods, and 5 seasonal Ricercari, I felt that the E major Fugue (1 min. 20 secs.) was just right for
this occasion.

If anyone wishes to investigate this volume it is Liber Organi vol VII (Schott ED 2267).

Robin

[quote name='rac' date='Apr 14 2009, 08:57 AM' post='815080']
However, personally, I don't provide voluntaries on Good Friday as I don't think they're 'appropriate'.
[/quote]


I have an invaluable volume that goes in my case to every service and is frequently used - Ariadne musica
by JKF Fischer, it has 20 short (typically about 3 mins. each) Preludes and Fugues in 20 different keys and a
variety of moods, and 5 seasonal Ricercari, I felt that the E major Fugue (1 min. 20 secs.) was just right for
this occasion.

If anyone wishes to investigate this volume it is Liber Organi vol VII (Schott ED 2267).

Robin
[/quote]

I don't think the Almighty would have mistaken my voluntary for a piece of lightweight frippery (thinks of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life )

I appreciate the suggestion re the Fischer volume and shall see if it is available in the Academic library - thanks!

I am all in favour of the organ being entirely silent on Good Friday and the next day, but I also think that if one is accompanying hymns one might as well play a voluntary too. I can't honestly remember what I used to play, but nowadays days I would probably restrict myself to something introspective and austere from the Renaissance period, such as a Palestrina Ricercare, or a fantasia by Gibbons or Tomkins - something of that ilk anyway.

....

no voluntaries for me on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday (Easter Virgil). The Catholic Church (at my god-parents') did all singing unaccompanied (some of the stuff are in latin), hence i didn't need to play any voluntaries at the end.

i played voluntary for Easter Sunday: Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (BWV 542)

I think certain pieces can add to things on Good Friday, for instance, Folk Tune by Percy Whitlock. Its title sounds totally inappropriate, but it's spot on as a piece. I don't think sensitive voluntaries at the beginning on Maundy Thursday go amiss either, to be honest! Silence is often very powerful on such occasions though. It depends on the service and the congregation, I guess.

I think all the business about the church and its business decorum, or lack of, often shows itself in payment of organists... Perhaps I ought to leave this one alone, or I'll risk hijacking the thread!

To my mind, probably because of what i was brought up with, Maundy Thursday - Good Friday - Easter Vigil all form one service, for which we only enter and leave, but the drama doesn't stop. As such we have Voluntaries before Maundy Thursday (then leave in Darkness having a vigil until midnight) and after Easter Eve. This year it was the Franck Prelude Fugue et Variation, and the Hallelujah Chorus (Cheesy I know, but we have such a limited congregation anyway)

I'm a bit puzzled by all this hair-shirt-ery; it's not as if music is an indication of frivolity, far from it. We all (I think) know that it can express the inexpressible.( I'm not saying it does this in my hands, I hasten to add.)

It is just a question of the right kind of music. If Good Friday is a no-go area musically then why was music written for it?

I have to say that the most moving three hours I spent in Church on a GF included talks, readings, poetry and hymns. A bare, almost totally silent three hours is a discipline beyond the likes of me and if there has been little to exercise the mind in that time, then it has probably been time wasted.

A glance at the Church Times reassures me that many GF services did include music and if Stainer, Victoria, Tallis et al were ok with it then I can tolerate a few sniffs from people who can only bear to sit through 30 minutes of a Devotion. Oh, dear. I'm ranting again.

Personally, I prefer the worship on Good Friday to be free of all adornment. I think music an adornment to worship and would rather go without any music whatsoever on Good Friday. But I'm aware that this is a very personal view.

You would have been ok here then!

I would include CD players as 'adornment' too....

Well no one here has suggested that there is only one acceptable way to conduct these particular services. It depends on what you want. Liturgy, like music, is to a great extent about effect - effect specifically aimed at producing or enhancing an experience. To those who see music as an integral part of the liturgy, there is a good case for marking the desolation of Good Friday and Easter Saturday - the absence of Jesus - with an absence of organ. It can all help contribute to an austerity that makes the point most tellingly - and what more appropriate time is there to feel a bit hair-shirt? But it all depends on what atmosphere the services as a whole are intended to generate and, like I said, it is not the only way to do things. There is plenty of choral and organ music that can express this desolation just as well and you could argue that hymns could serve to draw congregants closer together at what, symbolically at any rate, should be a harrowing time. I suppose the important thing is to make sure that whatever you do or don't do musically matches the general aim of the services. In a church service, music should always be the servant of the liturgy.

Thanks for that, Vox. You've summed it up very eloquently, I think.

What, me eloquent? Ho! - must be a first! Just hope no one picks me up for my loose use of the word "liturgy".

'Litugy'?

Rats. Put it down to the sedation our local hospital administered to me this morning. Post corrected.

And there was me thinking it was probably due to a rather pleasant single malt....

Poor you! Hope you're ok.

Yeah, I'm fine, thanks. A single malt would indeed be my sedation of choice, but, alas, I'm not allowed any alcohol for 24 hours. Whether this will make me less or more coherent may be a moot point!

At this rate, you'll be praising 'The Foghorn' next!

Glad you're ok, though.

Please forgive my asking, but did you get the expected clerical apology?

Barry Williams

I have PMd you, Barry.