Psalm singing / second of several

... reasons for not having pursued regular psalm-singing here at HBC.

2. Expired tunes
I can almost hear the howls! Look -- I have spent enough years as a Reformed Baptist and in the PCA to love most every tune found in the Trinity Hymnal. But that doesn't mean I think they all work well in a contemporary setting. I think, rather, that many (most?) sound and feel really old. Out of touch. Their musical language is dusty. I’m not saying that we can’t learn old tunes. I am saying that I don’t think that’s the best choice to make.


[Excursus begins . . .
I just put on my education-director-for-the-symphony hat. Every piece of music written (whether a symphony or a humble hymn tune) comes in the musical vocabulary (melodic theory, harmonic development, formal structures, etc) of its day. Stuff written in 1810 sounds much different from that written in 1910. Only a few pieces of any generation ever escape their own time and become true classics. Only a few. Most so-called “classical” music lies in dusty obscurity – and rightly so. But it’s the few that thrill us! They speak to us across centuries – and still have something for us to listen to in the 21st century. So we program the best from Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi, Dvorak, etc. Why? Because everything written in 1780 was wonderful? No, of course not. But once in a while a piece rose to the top.
Hymn tunes are no different. They didn’t come from a divine pen. No angelic help. They sound like the time & place they came from. I have a tune book for a New England hymnal (ca. 1810). Trust me – most of the tunes in that book should remain forgotten. We don’t want them! They aren’t good because they’re old. That’s goofy thinking. Let’s quit this idea that “old tunes are better than new tunes.” Many of the tunes in Trinity Hymnal come from Victorian England. They really sound their age! They aren’t better because they’re old, or because they come on the pages of a blue book!
My ideal church setting: many/most of the tunes we sing would be less than 50 years old; a few tunes (the classics) from earlier times would also be included.
. . . Excursis ends]

Further, in my experience (back east) we tended to use a few tunes repeatedly for several psalms. There's simply no way, however, that LEOMINSTER, for example, can adequately handle all the psalms we gave to it! Tunes speak their own truth; words speak in propositional language, but music speaks in emotional/affective language. So tunes speak to us with an emotional message, one that needs to fit the words. The better the fit, the more the song embraces us.
The psalms are so varied in their heart, passion, doctrine -- that we need all kinds of tunes for them. Read Psalm 56. Perhaps that should have some kind of blues tune?

Next time: Figuring out our worship