From the Organist's Bench
An Evening At the Fox
A few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of catching a practice session on the Fabulous Fox Theater’s Mighty Wurlitzer. Mighty is an apt description, because it represents the pinnacle of Wurlitzer’s output. It represents the third largest original theater organ design ever created, but it shares its position with 4 sisters. They are a model of theater organ referred to as the “Fox Specials.” The first and most famous of these instruments was built for the Paramount Theater in New York City and was often played by the rock star of the phonograph era, Jessie Crawford. It now lives in the Century II Center in Wichita, Kansas, which is considered to be the “Carnegie Hall” of the Theater Organ. The other locations of the Fox Specials include the nearly identical twin Fox Theaters of Detroit and St. Louis, and the Fox theaters in Brooklyn and San Francisco.
The Fox Special has 36 ranks, or sets of pipes, most of which are on very heavy pressure. This doesn’t seem like much compared to JAPC’s 68 ranks or Hill Auditoriums 137, but on a theater organ, everything is unified, so every rank is available on every keyboard, often at several pitch levels. This means that the fox organ have nearly 300 stops! It also boasts 13 sets of tuned percussion which include 3 xylophones, 2 marimbas, 2 sets of chimes, 2 chrysoglotts, (celestas) and many others. It also has a veritable laundry list of traps and sounds effects to fulfill the Foley needs of any film. The console sits on a lift at the center of the orchestra pit. While a marvelous position for an overture to a film, this position has left the console largely covered when live stage shows use the full stage. In recent years, they were able to connect the slave console up in the gallery to allow the organist to play for the Christmas shows. With this console, the organist is only able to access pre-set combinations of stops, so the sounds of the organ are manipulated blindly. Playing the instrument even from the main console is a bit baffling largely because the whole organ is behind you and is between 3 and 6 stories above you. Like many things, however, given a little time you find your ability to adapt and gain equilibrium.
If the movie palace is the “cathedral” of the motion picture, the Detroit Fox is the “Notre Dame!” The sound of the organ is a part of the architecture. Its energy seems to set the eyes of the various creatures in the walls and ceiling aglow. Its power challenges the strength of the mighty blood-red columns which flank the proscenium. This power actually originates from one of a pair of 50-Horse Power blowers in the basement. In comparison, Jefferson Avenue’s Skinner has a 15 H.P. blower! (After the blower refused to start on the opening night of the Paramount, Mr. Fox decided he would purchase two blowers for every remaining fox special so that the organs would always work!)
The instrument is a force of nature and like any real force in nature it is astounding in its contrast of subtlety, beauty, and sudden violent potential. It was marvelous to hear my repertoire issue forth from such an entity. I was so familiar with its sound from recordings, so it seemed like each moment in the music created a friendly, familiar feeling in me like “of course it should sound this way…it was always meant to!” This is one of the great privileges in the art of the organ which I have written about before: the sense that there is a give and take, collaboration, even communion between the musician and the instrument. It is so remarkable that one of the great treasures of the art resides in our own town. Indeed Detroit was host to so many theater organs. The few that remain are now worthy of recognition by the music world as a whole, rather than just the few, but faithful, enthusiasts of the ever diminishing crowd of organ buffs. I think about the rare opportunities I have had to experience those special instruments around the country and overseas that have claimed their place in organ history. It is a source of pride that a handful of these, including our own at JAPC, are right here in Detroit.
Ringing to the Glory!
January 2011
This last month, I have had the challenge and joy of starting up a bell choir here at JAPC. It was clear from the interview process last year that it was the church’s wish to bring this activity back to the music program. I was delighted by the idea, but rather skeptical of the process of recruiting and coordinating a volunteer ensemble in a medium which I had no experience in. As it turns out, we have had a good response, good enough to realize a full handbell choir and successfully performed our first arrangement together! I am excited to see where we can take this ensemble and what rewarding experiences we can have together ringing to the glory!
One interesting experience I had already in this process was the observation of a rehearsal of the Detroit Handbell Choir. They are one of the premiere handbell ensembles in the region, comprised of some very dedicated and talented people. I had the opportunity of meeting their director, Michael Burkhardt, at an American Guild of Organists’ event. He is a published composer of choral and organ works, a few of which we already have in our library. In fact, he was commission by the local chapter of the AGO to write a new anthem celebrating their 100th anniversary this year. It is my hope when he formally publishes it that we can use it at JAPC! What was more interesting, at both the AGO event and the bell rehearsal, was watching him work his craft of rehearsing. His energy level was always up and he was always positive. He was able to work on various details and at the same time teach larger concepts and ideas in the process.
Of course, I went to OBSERVE the handbell rehearsal. When I walked in, I found out that one of their ringers was sick and was immediately invited to ring in! I was thrilled and perplexed, because I have never played in a handbell choir before. As an organist, (particularly one who like to play orchestral transcriptions) I am accustomed to keeping track of it all! Even as a band musician, as one small part of a whole, your contribution is a linear musical entity. In a handbell ensemble, you wait for your note, ring, and wait again. It takes real teamwork and a sense of awareness to make music with handbells. Any single musical line or melody is created by more than one person.
In this particular rehearsal, they were preparing their holiday repertoire for several performances, including one at “Noel Nights.” The pieces they rang used just about every technique that you could find: They were playing bells with mallets, plucking the striker with the bell on the table, and swinging bells to create a tolling sound to list a few. I was scrambling to keep up, but after the rehearsal I felt kinda like a kid who just got out of the water after getting up on water skis for the first time! It was thrilling to make collaborative music like that!
Collaboration is the essential element in a handbell choir. One of my childhood mentors at my church who directed a bell choir in her hometown said it quite plainly, “If one of the ringers is missing, it is like having a key missing on the piano!” But more importantly, we have a chance to create together a beautiful peal of sound out of what could be complete chaos. The ringers have to become one instrument, sensing the music together. It is a real exercise in trust!
Bells are an ancient form of communication for humans. They have been used to connect communities for millennia. Even in the very refined, polite form they come in as handbells, there remains something deeply satisfying about ringing them. In rebuilding our bell choir at JAPC, may we create another vehicle for our faith community to communicate grace and love and ring to the Glory!
Advent Expectations
December 2011
Anticipation. Expectation. Those are some of the themes of Advent. It is a time when we sense God taking an active role in rebuilding his relationship with his people by sending his Son to us. With whatever grace we can muster, we respond with expectation and hope, and invite him into our presence. The music the choir will sing during Advent will carry us on a journey of expectation. The following is a brief summary of some of the pieces we will be singing in worship.
“E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come” by Paul Manz is an announcement of the coming of grace of our Lord. This a-cappella anthem is a favorite of many choirs and we have sung it before. It is poignant because Paul Manz passed away this year. The size of his contribution to the church music repertoire over his career was truly astonishing and I expect that many churches will be hearing this anthem this season. Another piece we will sing will be a Bach Choral, “Come, Dearest Lord.” A particularly lovely image given in the text is of peacefully waiting for our savior at dusk: “Now that the day is ended, darkness and light are blended, gladly I wait for thee.” In a sense this piece states that we can be at ease and be comforted in the darkness, knowing that God’s son is coming soon.
Light emerging from the darkness is a theme in the piece “The Advent Road,” by Douglas Wagner, uses the wonderfully folksy, almost “sea-chantey” like English hymn tune “Kingsfold” and excerpts of the tune and text of “O come, O come Emmanuel.” It declares that our Advent journey is “paved with promise and hope.” The key turning point in the text is: “But the light is drawing closer in with each step along the way; And a heavenly music now begins, as the night turns into day.”
The American composer, Dudley Buck, gives us a wonderful setting of Psalm 72, “He shall come down like Rain.” The image given in this psalm is that God will come down to us, and his grace will help us grow. It is wonderful that the psalmist’s image gives us a clear image of the over-arching purpose of God’s son as nourishment for our souls. As the rain gives life to all the vegetation, makes it grow, makes it beautiful, makes it rich, God’s son fulfills our lives by teaching us many lessons with his own life journey and eventually giving his life for our salvation.
Each season in nature and in the church year has its own flavor and feeling. It is my hope that we can all enjoy the journey through the season of Advent, our season of expectation and anticipation of Christ’s birth.
Ring in the New!
November 2010
The early 20th century London music scene has become a new personal hobby of mine. It started with our performance of “O Coward” with Phil a few years ago, but has taken on a new energy level as our household has come to terms with a departed saint, my mother-in-law, June. She grew up the daughter of a London theater musician and became the wife of an American opera hopeful turned jazz singer. As we have been slowly sorting through their possessions, we have discovered a huge collection of sheet music, recordings, scripts, and show programs from England. Succumbing to my family tradition of being propriety’s archivist, I feel responsible for making something useful of this rather rare collection. More importantly, this music speaks to me quite deeply, in all its over-sentimental and picturesque qualities. But most importantly, it is a legacy to my wife’s family, far more dear and personal than any china or furniture they owned. In essence, I’m finding my new-found love of this music as a way to continue to connect with my in-laws even though my relationship with them was relatively short.
Quite coincidentally, right at the beginning of my planning for this fall’s choir season, I made a point of sorting through beginning of our choir catalogue. We have over 1100 pieces in our library now, and I was interested in the first 200 of them. In this section of the library I found an anthem by a composer I only knew of because of one piece, “Fountain Reverie,” which has been recorded by both classical and theater organists. The piece was introduced on one album as a “Picture and Song.” The piece is by a composer that is not all that well known to Americans, Percy Fletcher. Percy was an English composer who worked as a music director in the London theater scene. These included the Savoy, Prince of Wales, Drury Lane and His Majesty’s Theater. He composed many light, depictive works for orchestra and other instrumentation. Some of the titles give a hint as to their esthetic, “Two Parisian Sketches,” “Rustic Revels,” “Woodland Pictures.” What I find interesting is to consider all the interactions that Percy might have had with all the other characters in the London Theater scene as the music director. I’m sure he brushed shoulders with the likes of Noel Coward, Noel Gay, and Ivor Novello as well as his colleague, Eric Coates. But back to the anthem……
The 1914 anthem we will be singing is Percy’s setting of a very famous section of the Tennyson poem “In Memoriam” called “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” This text, which Tennyson wrote as a 17-year literary journey coming to terms with his brother-in-law’s death, has been set for choir by many composers. Percy’s setting is full of Anglican pomp but is delightfully depictive with an ongoing motive which sounds like a bell peal. The text seems to suggest that we let go of trying to hold on to and control time. It also suggests that the nobler attributes, truths and meanings of life will emerge as we let go of it. “Ring out the old, Ring in the new!” There is a sense of celebrating our life in faith as a new creation. On “All Saints” Sunday, we can take comfort in the fact that our predecessors were able to become a new creation themselves.
There will be three of Percy’s works in the “All Saints” service. The prelude will be the wonderful, aforementioned piece “Fountain Reverie” which is a tailor made for an orchestral organ like our Skinner. The postlude will be an exciting flourish called “Festival Toccata.” It seems fitting for me personally to be using his music in this service. I hope that my happenstance and circumstance leading to this musical output on the choir’s part proves to move you into a sacred space.
Something Old, Something New
September 2010
In music and in the life of the church, there is a shared dichotomy in striving to bring the “new” into worship and yet maintain earlier expressions of art and music. There are endless rants in journals about preservation of “this” or striving to create the new “that.” That’s just fine. Typical to my personality, I appreciate both sides of the argument. However, I am wary of my position because of a wonderful statement by one of my best childhood friends, Brett. He said, (probably regarding politics) “It’s a common misconception that on a continuum between two extremes of thought the truth lies somewhere near the middle.” Well, in this case, we really aren’t searching for truth, merely preference. The truth lies in whom we worship, not how we choose to do so.
What evolved in the world of the pipe organ in the 50s and 60s is a period we refer to as the Neo-Baroque period of organ building. From all outward appearances (and in academic rants of the time) it was a desire to look to the past. In my opinion, however, it was a quest for something new and fresh. The historic instruments of Europe were really new to our ears as audiophiles and interpreters of organ literature and as builders. John Brombaugh, one of our most reputable builders in the United States of historically modeled organs (post neo-baroque) said that the recordings “Blew my mind!” The builders were truly creating “modern” instruments with these lean, clean sounds, qualities which could describe art and architecture at the time. The reality was a new discovery and a new delight in old sounds native to history.
Recently, I played a wedding at the Grosse Pointe Academy Chapel which has a one manual (keyboard) instrument of historic style construction with 5 stops. It represented a truly pure and distilled identity of the pipe organ. I actually accompanied my wife singing a modern cabaret-style ballad on this little thing! It didn’t sound authentic, but it sounded dignified. Its beauty made it more versatile than its designed scope. Truly something new was created on something old…..but not without some challenge!
”Old” is certainly a relative term in church music anyway. No matter the style of worship music preferred, the base text is still the Bible, the youngest portion of which is roughly 1950 years old. That makes the 300-400 year old Luther Choral seem downright adolescent and the 700 year-old Gregorian chant barely middle-aged! Personally, I draw great strength from singing tunes that people of faith have been singing for generations. It is something I experienced in Glee Club at U of M, singing Michigan Songs: it put the experience of college in perspective. So many things in the human condition are the same. Nostalgia may not be wisdom, but it may very well be the beacon that can bring you back to wisdom’s harbor.
At the same time, the understanding of our for-parents' music and liturgy gives us inspiration to be constantly creating. We must continue to create new expressions, new energy and new art for the Lord. And it must be done without fear! C.S. Lewis in his analysis of the Psalms had this to say about King David: “David, we know, danced before the Ark. He danced with such abandon that one of his wives (presumably a more modern, though not a better, type than he) though he was making a fool of himself. David didn’t care whether he was making a fool of himself or not. He was rejoicing in the Lord.” I am a rather self conscious person, so living out David’s example is difficult, particularly away from the organ bench. However, in so- called "traditional" Protestant worship, it is SO critical that we keep the notion of “abandon” in mind.
In our upcoming season of stewardship may we present old expressions of worship with new energy and may we present new expressions of worship with timeless devotion.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Count Your Blessings
June, 2010
I thought this month I would share a text with you of an old Gospel tune that I grew up singing. (Old is a relative term in church music. At about a century old, this hymn is merely an adolescent.) I rediscovered this hymn in a wonderful book by Kenneth Osbeck titled “101 Hymn Stories.” This book covers the back story of several of our cherished hymn, their authors and composers. This hymn takes me back to the small church I attended as a youth with a piano and Hammond organ playing away during the congregational singing. The song leader would slow us down and conduct us to emphasize each syllable of the second to last line of the chorus “name them one by one…….” I found myself smiling simply typing out the text.
There are certainly countless reasons to get discouraged these days, not that there haven’t been plenty all along. But as this hymn implies, putting ourselves in the right frame of mind is our choice. God blesses us continually, but it is our choice and sometimes our challenge to recognize it. Perhaps our most important choice to decide what to count! Enjoy!
“Count Your Blessings”
Johnson Oatman, Jr. (1856-1922)
When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings – name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
Chorus:
Count you blessings-name them one by one;
Count your blessings see what God hath done;
Count your many blessings – name them one by one;
Count your many blessings – see what God hath done.
Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings – every doubt will fly,
And you will be singing as the days go by.
(Chorus)
When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold;
Count your many blessings – money cannot buy
Your reward in heaven nor your home on high.
(Chorus)
So amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged – God is over all;
Count your many blessings – angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.
(Chorus)
A Gem Gains Back Some of Its Luster
May, 2010
Back in the winter of 2006, I announced a group recital that the AGO was performing to benefit the restoration of the organ at SS. Matthew and Joseph Episcopal Church in Detroit. The church, near Woodward and Holbrook, housed a slightly younger sister of our wonderful Skinner Organ. The organ at Matti-Joes (as we call it) has had a number of tonal changes done to it and also has had a lot of environmental threats from leaking roofs and backed-up steam pipes.
The recital was a sweet success and we raised enough money to do a small tonal restoration job. Several people from JAPC attended and donated. What I was troubled to find out was that since they were loosing their rector, they would be powerless to spend the money. Additionally, since they had lost their organist, there was no one to fan the flame of the project once a new rector was on board. Now, almost 4 years later, the first little project stands completed! They not only have a wonderful new rector, they now have a highly motivated organist who has the energy to see things through!
Ken Holden and I were able to return two missing voices back to the instrument. It was fortunate that the people who made the tonal changes were polite enough (either forward thinking or just lazy) to leave the original pipework in the organ. One of the voices was the “Vox Humana” which is a buzzing little organ stop which imitates the human voice. These days, a Vox is considered to be a luxury stop, but in the 1920’s, it was practically standard. If you were to buy a theater organ of only two ranks, one of the two would have been a Vox. At JAPC, we have two, one in the swell division up front, and one in the echo above the window. Ken and I are pleased that the Matti-Joe’s Skinner has its Vox singing again! We also moved the “Flügel Horn” back to where it was supposed to be. This is a wonderful, smooth oboe like sound which I use often on the JAPC organ.
We are also so grateful to those people from JAPC who were kind enough to come to our program a few years ago and help this fine church with their wonderful instrument! For pictures, please visit the NEWS portion of stephenjwarner.com!
Reflections on J. S. Bach
April, 2010
Recently I had the pleasure of reading a short article about Bach in “The American Organist,” the journal for the American Guild of Organists, and I would like to share some of its ideas with you. The article, by Roger W. Lowther, was titled: “The Spiritual Power of Bach’s Music in Japan” and I found it to be rather awakening. Mr. Lowther had the opportunity to spend an extended stay in Japan playing as an organist through “Mission to the World,” which is the foreign mission agency of the Presbyterian Church in America. He found that the music of Bach was immensely popular for concert and church goers.
Permit me to give you a few of my own thoughts about J.S. Bach. I, for one, am not entirely sold on the superlative view of his music as far as it relates to use in church. Don’t get me wrong; it is remarkable, consistently nearly perfect in construction and much of it sacred in nature. It is never wrong for church, but I don’t think it is always the “best” choice for relating to our liturgy and our hymns and our themes. It is also that the intent of tunes themselves, which would have all sorts of added meaning to the Lutheran congregations that sing them, that is somewhat lost. Again, it doesn’t make it useless, but simply not effective enough to make it worth playing “religiously!”
But here’s the rub: Bach’s ENTIRE output (over 1,100 works) of music sacred and secular IS meant to praise God. In “The Bach Reader, ” a marvelous collection of historic correspondence, documents and essays, there is a quote from an introduction which he put in a composition workbook for students: “The thorough-bass (a method of writing bass and harmony) is the most perfect foundation of music, being played with both hands in such manner that the left hand plays the notes written down while the right adds consonances and dissonances, in order to make a well-sounding harmony to the Glory of God and the permissible delectation of the spirit; and the aim and final reason, as of all music, so of the thorough bass should be nothing else but the Glory of God and the recreation of the mind. Where this is not observed, there will be no real music but only devilish hubbub.” Well! Despite being an intense, sometimes difficult, artistic individual, one certainly can’t question his divine intent!
It is the shear complexity of his music that is so very fascinating, but also troubling for use in worship. His congregations even complained! Yet now we hear from Mr. Lowther that in this modern age, Bach’s music is speaking to people in Japan in Christian worship. He argues that Japanese culture is “distinctly indirect” It seems the subtle musical hints that are woven into the counterpoint of his music speak to them in a deeply meaningful way. It is through the complexity that the meaning of the Gospel emerges. He even cited an example of a woman who had been helping him with the Japanese language was moved to tears in response to an Easter concert of Bach’s music and finally saying, “I had never thought about hope that way before….” It certainly gives me great pause to reconsider the power of Bach’s music with renewed respect, delight, wonder…….and hope. What a privilege it is to have occasion to express faith through music at times with profound simplicity and at other times with delightful complexity!
Music Notes for March
March, 2010
There is a disproportionately large amount of organ repertoire for the season of Lent! It is such an important season for us as the time when we follow Jesus to the cross and resurrection. Obviously, as the foundational event of our faith, it is one of the most inspiring for composers of sacred music. In the service music I have scheduled for Lent, there are a few pieces which I would like to tell you about so you can follow the composer’s message more closely.
On March 14th, the prelude will be a massive work by Gottfried Walther based on the choral, “Jesu, meine Freude,” or “Jesus, my Joy.” Walther was a middle German composer whose life and death paralleled his cousin, J.S. Bach’s within two years. (Handel was also alive for precisely the same time period as Bach.) Walther wrote one of the first musical dictionaries and was also known for creating organ transcriptions of Italian orchestral concertos. The piece “Jesu, meine Freude” is a partita. In this form, he takes the choral and sets it in different verses, using a different texture each time. The choral itself is in a typical Luther choral form called the “Bar” form. In it, the first line of music repeats, so it has the theme structure AAB. The text was written by Johann Franck in 1650 and the tune was written by Johann Crüger in 1653. To modern ears the tune seems a bit dour, but the minor key and severity of it does not imply that it is meant to be a sad tune! The text exclaims the desire to give up the love of the world and focus on loving God through Jesus. The first verse is as follows: Jesus, my joy, pasture of my heart, Jesus, my adornment ah how long, how long is my heart filled with anxiety and longing for you! Lamb of God, my bridegroom, apart from you on the earth there is nothing dearer to me. In the 6th verse, there is a remarkable statement: For those who love God even their afflictions become pure sweetness.
On Palm Sunday, the Postlude will be a piece called “Les Rameaux” or “The Palms.” It is from a suite called “Poèmes Évangélique” written by the French organist, Jean Langlais in 1932. He was born in 1907 in Brittany, not too far from Mount Saint Michel and was blinded by glaucoma at age two. He attended the Paris National Institute for the Young Blind which had a very strong music program. He later studied at the Paris Conservatory with Marcel Dupré (Widor’s student) and studied improvisation with Charles Tournemire. He succeeded Tournemire as the organist at St. Clotilde in Paris in 1945 and played there until 1987! Over his career, he performed 300 concerts in the United States.
“Les Rameaux” is a wonderful fantasy on the Palm Sunday Gregorian Chant, “Hosanna filio David.” The translation for the text of the chant is as follows: “Hosanna o Son of David: praise and bless him who comes in the Lord’s name to Israel. O king adored: Hosanna in the highest!” In the first of three sections, the piece only uses the first half of the chant tune and plays it in the long, low notes in the pedal. To accompany this, he takes small snippets of the tune and creates a lively texture in the hands with different voices calling after each other almost as if a crowd were all calling out the chant independently. The middle section is more intimate but teeming with a restless energy waiting to be unleashed. And finally, in the end, he opens up the whole organ to depict the energy of the crowds in Jerusalem and the joy of the upcoming fulfillment of prophecy.
Tuning
February 2010
The church has just passed through its first liturgical season of Advent. Organ technicians have also just pulled through their holiday busy season, tuning up all of their customers for their Christmas services and concerts. At Holden Pipe Organ Company, we spend at least 6 weeks visiting nearly every church on our roster. The real challenge is in making sure a church has the heat set properly before we get there. It is critical that the church is heated as it will be for its services. JAPC takes between 12-15 hours to get up to service temperature once the heat comes on during the winter. While most other churches don’t take that long, if we arrive and the church is cold, the day is lost. Even when things are set as expected, it is still a gamble sometimes on how to approach the tuning of the instrument. Different sections heat up more than others because they are at different heights in the room or are against a cold outside wall. Additionally, the instrument heats itself with the blower on. The lights in the case or chamber give off heat as do our own body heat standing inside it!
A given organ pipe that works like a flute changes its pitch by 2% of a semi-tone (or the difference between adjacent keys on the keyboard) for every degree in temperature change. Generally, all the flue pipes (about 3300 out of the 4500 pipes in the JAPC organ) will move together as the temperature changes. The pitch gets higher when the temperature gets higher. This is because the speed of sound gets a little faster as the temperature increases and the rate of vibration will increase for a given pipe?s body length. When we tune the flues, we adjust the length by moving a slider or a scroll or a metal flap or a stopper.
The reeds, which produce their sound by a vibrating brass tongue, will stay closer to their set pitch or even move in the opposite direction from the flues. At JAPC, we usually only tune the reed stops to the flues. It takes about 3 hours to tune 15 ranks of reeds or about 1100 pipes. The last time the whole organ was tuned was for the CD recording in 2002. That required nearly 3 days of solid work! You may note that the sound of the organ is often different on the last hymn. The sound may undulate because the Chancel is 10 degrees hotter by the end of the service than when we tuned the organ and the different divisions have started to pull away from each other in pitch. One of the truly redeeming features of the JAPC organ is that its colors and tone are so smooth, that it can pull off “out of tune” with elegance and even a bit of charm where some other instruments might just get disagreeable and ornery. It is as a fine woodworker said about a knot in a piece of wood: “It’s not a fault, it’s a feature!”
Hymnology 101:
What is “8.7.8.7 D” Anyway?
November, 2009
Do you ever notice the notation below the title of a hymn we are singing in church? First, there is the tune name. After that, there is a bizarre set of numbers and perhaps letters. This is the identification of the form of the text for the hymn. If there are numbers, it denotes the number of syllables in each phrase of the text. The letters mean thing like “D” “Doubled”, “CM” Common Meter” and “SM” “Short Meter” The back of the hymnal contains a metrical index of the tunes so that it is possible for worship planners to place a given text to any tune that supports that form. For example, Hymn 446, “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken” which has the tune “Austrian Tune” (gloriously composed by Haydn, and unfortunately chosen to be the national anthem of the Third Reich) has the form 8.7.8.7 D. If you read through the text, you will notice that each phrase alternates eight syllables and seven syllables. This is the same form as the tune “Hyfrydol” or Hymn 2 “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” and “Beach Spring” or Hymn 422 “God, Whose Giving Knows No Ending.” In fact, there are 20 tunes in the Presbyterian Hymnal with this meter. You can take the text from any one of these and place it in each of the other’s tune. Of course, the general contour and character of the tune may help or hurt the text. Some tunes are also chosen because they are simply easier to sing. Hopefully this knowledge can help bring a slightly deeper understanding to the sources of the music we sing together each Sunday.