Last minute changes at our place really get our Director of Music uptight, especially if the request is for a “ modern” hymn. But as long as it is in the hymn book it is fair game, he won’t refuse, just grumble to the choir. Communication could be better on both sides. No music list was published in February, maybe because the pattern of services was tweaked. I am hoping to get to church in the morning, if I can get myself up and ready in time and as long as Mr P seems ok, but I have no idea what is to be sung.
All these well-organised churches! Here I get the list of hymns around Wednesday or Thursday, glance at it, start checking what I already have recorded on Friday evening and then having a minor freak out because one of the tunes is well known but written in the last 50-100 years so in copyright and doesn't exist as a midi file, meaning I have to transcribe it myself before I can record. Or discover that the person leading worship has picked a new hymn with a tune I don't know and I have to judge whether I can switch to a better known tune or just suck it up and learn the given tune. This is where it becomes important that I record my voice with the music (with the tune plunking loudly in my ears and the score right in front of me) so that when it gets to Sunday I can follow my own lead with the unfamiliar tune. This Sunday it's Gibbon's SONG 22 if anyone is curious (Spirit of God come rest upon my heart).
And doing it week-by-week makes planning well-nigh impossible.
And yet our experience is that it’s not only possible, it works very well.
Though to clarify in case it wasn’t clear, anthems and similar choir music is planned weeks if not months in advance. It’s the hymns that are generally chosen week-by-week.
Back in Fr F***wit's day, I had the job of choosing the hymns for the Parish Mass, which I did in conjunction with our volunteer organist.
We arranged a month's worth at a time, along with any special services that might crop up in the course of that month, and this seemed to work. Our current chap takes an intelligent interest in the hymns and music, which Fr F most certainly did not, and he co-operates well, both with the organist, and with his musically-literate Reader.
Well - of course, opinions vary.
Personally I would CTH any singing in church that smacks more of a performance than congregational worship.
That includes most professional-standard choirs and Gospel groups. where the words and the grammar are mangled to fit into the music, and prevent me from understanding the meaning of what is being sung.
Choral concerts, in a secular context, are less problematic as the I can forget about the words and just enjoy the sound, but I do have problems with opera, as I need to hear the lyrics to follow the plot.
That's where surtitles are so helpful, although they do distract from the stage.
Many years ago I made my one and only visit to Glyndebourne, to see an obscure Baroque opera. It was sung in Italian, the plot was typically preposterous, there were no surtitles, yet everyone laughed in the right places as they'd all bought librettos in the foyer (and there was sufficient light to read them).
Actually, I've now had a nice message from a member of Scotrail staff:
I tried this out and was also getting the same error. You can purchase this fare from the conductor aboard your train. I'll escalate this issue with our team for further investigation (and hopefully a fix!). Sorry for the inconvenience.
So although I CTH the Scotrail website, I wish nothing but good for their staff.
Well - of course, opinions vary.
Personally I would CTH any singing in church that smacks more of a performance than congregational worship.
That includes most professional-standard choirs and Gospel groups. where the words and the grammar are mangled to fit into the music, and prevent me from understanding the meaning of what is being sung.
Choral concerts, in a secular context, are less problematic as the I can forget about the words and just enjoy the sound, but I do have problems with opera, as I need to hear the lyrics to follow the plot.
And I consign you and all worshippers of mediocrity to the same place.
Well - of course, opinions vary.
Personally I would CTH any singing in church that smacks more of a performance than congregational worship.
That includes most professional-standard choirs and Gospel groups. where the words and the grammar are mangled to fit into the music, and prevent me from understanding the meaning of what is being sung.
Choral concerts, in a secular context, are less problematic as the I can forget about the words and just enjoy the sound, but I do have problems with opera, as I need to hear the lyrics to follow the plot.
And I consign you and all worshippers of mediocrity to the same place.
You may be on the wrong Hell thread if you are going to make this personal.
Well - of course, opinions vary.
Personally I would CTH any singing in church that smacks more of a performance than congregational worship.
That includes most professional-standard choirs and Gospel groups. where the words and the grammar are mangled to fit into the music, and prevent me from understanding the meaning of what is being sung.
Choral concerts, in a secular context, are less problematic as the I can forget about the words and just enjoy the sound, but I do have problems with opera, as I need to hear the lyrics to follow the plot.
And I consign you and all worshippers of mediocrity to the same place.
You may be on the wrong Hell thread if you are going to make this personal.
But thing is, you already have, because some of us here might indeed be part of those professional-standard choirs and gospel groups.
Many of the anthems we sing are in Latin so whether you can make the words out is secondary to whether you can understand them anyway. We do sometimes put a translation up though.
Well - of course, opinions vary.
Personally I would CTH any singing in church that smacks more of a performance than congregational worship.
That includes most professional-standard choirs and Gospel groups. where the words and the grammar are mangled to fit into the music, and prevent me from understanding the meaning of what is being sung.
Choral concerts, in a secular context, are less problematic as the I can forget about the words and just enjoy the sound, but I do have problems with opera, as I need to hear the lyrics to follow the plot.
Twisting words and grammar to fit the music is by no means unique to professional singing. In fact the types of singing that don't do it (generally chants, whether Anglican, plain, Iona or Taizé) are probably less common than those that do, and for songs of equivalent length are much harder to learn. Metrication, and the accompanying mangling of grammar, are a tool for congregational singing, not performance.
The Psalms I have about a joke
That meter sung in are
Grammar as humour twisted is
And hard'st to sing by far
Although this is a Consign to Hell thread, All Saints isn't the place for either discussing the merits (or otherwise) of different church music styles (that would be Ecclesiantics) or getting personal about other Shipmates' preferences (that would be Hell).
Choral concerts, in a secular context, are less problematic as the I can forget about the words and just enjoy the sound, but I do have problems with opera, as I need to hear the lyrics to follow the plot.
I was taught one should always become familiar with the plot beforehand.
TICTH Amazon - or at least their handling of breakable items. I broke the lid of my garlic crock a few weeks ago and ordered a replacement which arrived today. Even before I'd unwrapped the bubble pack I could see there was a crack - and of course it was in the lid ...
TICTH Amazon - or at least their handling of breakable items. I broke the lid of my garlic crock a few weeks ago and ordered a replacement which arrived today. Even before I'd unwrapped the bubble pack I could see there was a crack - and of course it was in the lid ...
Hrrmph. I ordered a year's supply of Marmite - two 500 gm jars at an astonishingly low price (from the UK to Canada via Germany). My punishment from the gods who wreak vengeance on people for buying from Amazon was one completely smashed jar inside what looked like perfectly good packaging. It was a mess. But I got half my money back.
Yes in Reformed terms they are chosen by the Preacher. This is quite simply because how do you know they fit with the message if you do not know the message. Sometimes that fitting is contary to simply match the scripture passages e.g. you may deliberately choose hymns that have a reflection on God's continuing mercy if you feel called to preach a challenging sermon on some issue.
Hymns are a valued participation in the liturgy by the laity. This at least includes Anglicans as well as the Reformed and Methodists.
Hymns have meanings other than their words. The metrical version of psalm 24 in CofS for instance, but a lot similar to "that was played at my Nan's funeral" also.
Visiting preachers are usually far more likely to go with the suggestions as they are likely* to be hymns the congregation knows. The reason given is because it is likely that the congregation knows those hymns. In my experience a visiting preacher requesting a hymn means usually that that hymn will appear in the sermon for some reason.
That said politeness means a phone call some days prior to the service to confirm the choice with whoever the musician is.
St Obscures' method is the oddest yet. We sing the same hymns as another congregation as their priest chooses them.
*I have known one musician who just gave the list suggested in a particular publication with no reference to whether the congregation knew them.
Going with "what the congregation knows" is a minefield. For example, there is one hymn we sing at our place at least once a year and, without fail, one small group always moans We've never sung it before. Conversely, the same group congratulated me on one hymn One of our favourites, which the congregation sang lustily, and it had not been sung for at least 30 years.
Going with "what the congregation knows" is a minefield. For example, there is one hymn we sing at our place at least once a year and, without fail, one small group always moans We've never sung it before. Conversely, the same group congratulated me on one hymn One of our favourites, which the congregation sang lustily, and it had not been sung for at least 30 years.
This is so.
When it was my job to choose the hymns, I was told by a long-standing member of the congregation that I must choose only The Hymns Everyone Knows™.
I asked him for a list of The Hymns Everyone Knows™, but for some reason or other, I never received it...
Going with "what the congregation knows" is a minefield. For example, there is one hymn we sing at our place at least once a year and, without fail, one small group always moans We've never sung it before. Conversely, the same group congratulated me on one hymn One of our favourites, which the congregation sang lustily, and it had not been sung for at least 30 years.
This is so.
When it was my job to choose the hymns, I was told by a long-standing member of the congregation that I must choose only The Hymns Everyone Knows™.
I asked him for a list of The Hymns Everyone Knows™, but for some reason or other, I never received it...
Our late, deeply lamented organist diligently went through both hymn books and compiled for the benefit of the new minister a list of every "known" hymn, noting which ones had been sung only a couple of times and which were sung to a different tune. It was a masterpiece and remained useful years afterwards for "rationing" the number of new hymns in a given service.
This is my system:
1. Mid month, the vicar emails me a list of suggested hymns for the following month, including a note of any she definitely doesn’t want to be altered.
2. I email our other two organists (I am the third) to finalise who is playing for which services.
3. I go through the list with the lectionary (as the vicar is sometimes a week out) and make some possible additions and subtractions to the list.
4. I check the previous month’s list to make sure we don’t have too many duplicates.
5. I make sure each week has hymns which are suited to the abilities and tastes of the organist playing that week (e.g. only M can really play St Patrick’s Breastplate; N detests “Blest are the pure in heart” and gets tearful in “O love that will not let me go”; M detests “Shine Jesus shine”).
6. I try and make sure we sing at least one hymn over 100 years old and at least one hymn over 50 years old, and not more than one that is completely new to the congregation.
7. I check the tunes for the hymns, to make sure we don’t have any duplicate tunes the same week (rare but possible) and that most tunes appear familiar, and note if we need an alternative.
8. I go through the list with my Big Purple Notebook. This has a couple of pages for each letter of the alphabet. Every time we sing a hymn it gets added to the relevant page, and I put a tally mark each time we sing it. This reveals what we actually sing most regularly (which isn’t what people think). I also have lists of tunes that we all know to common metre, long metre etc., lists of traditional and modern hymns for communion, etc.
9. I email the list to the vicar, the other two organists, and the person who puts all the words up on the screen.
Tiny rural church. No choir. The organist was away during the summer. We hired different local musicians to come in. Most often they would play the guitar. Hymns were given a week in advance, and they were told they could have a solo of their choice at the time of the collection. Fine he said, I can do these. At the time of the final hymn, he announces, this is a boring hymn to end on so let's all sing this instead. He was not invited back.
Parade Services are An Abomination Before The Lord™.
Our Place used to have just three - Mothering Sunday, Sea Sunday (early July - the docks are in our parish), and Harvest Festival, but this is now down to two (if the uniforms bother to turn up, which they mostly don't), to wit, Mothering Sunday and Harvest.
No matter how traditional or contemporary the hymns, there are always complaints.
Personally, I'd have just 3 hymns at the Parish Mass - Entrance, Offertory, and Post-Communion - but still with a simple sung Mass setting, Responsorial Psalm, and Gospel Alleluia.
Our usual is Murray's A New People's Mass, but we have in the past used one or two other bits and pieces, the music for which is also in our default hymnbook.
Actually, I've now had a nice message from a member of Scotrail staff:
I tried this out and was also getting the same error. You can purchase this fare from the conductor aboard your train. I'll escalate this issue with our team for further investigation (and hopefully a fix!). Sorry for the inconvenience.
So although I CTH the Scotrail website, I wish nothing but good for their staff.
Surprise, surprise - I could not purchase this fare from the conductor aboard the train. The conductor was lovely and said that the same glitch that prevented me from buying it online, prevented her from selling it onboard.
I was asked to go to the ticket office at my destination and buy my ticket retrospectively. Which, being an honest soul, I did. The man at the ticket gate, who let me through without a ticket, seemed genuinely surprised when I returned to give it to him.
The woman at the ticket office said that it's not a computer glitch, but that as the station I was travelling from had only been opened in 2020, it hasn't been added to the system for special offers yet. So she sold me a ticket for the same value, but for a different route.
I CTH the Scotrail ticketing fiasco. And I commend to Heaven the staff who cheerfully and politely work their way round it.
Apparently if you go to the new Inverness Airport and want to buy a ticket for ... wait for it ... Inverness, the machine won't sell you one! Scotrail seem to think that everyone will take the bus (which makes sense actually, as the bus stops right outside the terminal while the station is a 15-minute trek away).
I wondered if people commuting from say, Ardesier, to Inverness might use the Airport station as a park-and-ride? Cheaper to park at the station car park and take the train in than drive in and pay for parking in Inverness.
But I would also have thought that that would be a good thing.
TICTH our local supermarkets, for two reasons.
1. Today is St David's Day but - unlike in previous years - it might as well not be happening as far as they're concerned. Not a dragon or flag to be seen!
2. They are flagging up "Mother's Day" like made; I object to this because (a) it should be "Mothering Sunday" and (b) to my mind the apostrophe is in the wrong place.
TICTH our local supermarkets, for two reasons.
1. Today is St David's Day but - unlike in previous years - it might as well not be happening as far as they're concerned. Not a dragon or flag to be seen!
2. They are flagging up "Mother's Day" like made; I object to this because (a) it should be "Mothering Sunday" and (b) to my mind the apostrophe is in the wrong place.
TBH I didn't look, although I did buy some (genuine Welsh ones) the other day.
I did buy some (genuine Welsh) daffodils though.
Unsurprisingly, they didn't have any tubs of (genuine Welsh) "cawl" (soup). A couple of years ago we cooked a special Welsh dinner on March 1st, including a bottle of red wine which wasn't cheap and pretty ghastly!
2. They are flagging up "Mother's Day" like made; I object to this because (a) it should be "Mothering Sunday" and (b) to my mind the apostrophe is in the wrong place.
The apostrophe is in the correct place according to the usage of Anna Jarvis, who started the observance. Per Wikipedia, Jarvis
specifically noted that “Mother’s” should “be a singular possessive, for each family to honor its own mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world.”
Jarvis was very much opposed to the commercialization of the day, and fought against it throughout her life.
TICTH Mothering Sunday, and the saccharine nonsense served up in many churches.
Being a contrary sort of Old Git, I fail to see that being a wife, mother, godmother, grandmother etc. is a woman's sole purpose in life, but some clergy (FatherInCharge, I'm looking at you) seem to insist that it is. Spare a thought for those who aren't mothers, whether by choice or circumstance, and yet would long to be...
AFAIK, this is a UK thing. Other countries sensibly keep Mother's Day (or whatever they might call it) as a purely secular festival, at a different time of year.
TICTH those bloody meerkat adverts. OK, they were funny when they started 14 years ago, but the joke wore off about 13 years ago and now they’re just bloody tedious.
TICTH those bloody meerkat adverts. OK, they were funny when they started 14 years ago, but the joke wore off about 13 years ago and now they’re just bloody tedious.
From what I've heard, in the eyes of those whose accents they imitated, they weren't very funny in the first place.
TICTH those bloody meerkat adverts. OK, they were funny when they started 14 years ago, but the joke wore off about 13 years ago and now they’re just bloody tedious.
If they started 14 years ago, the joke wore off 13 years, 11 months, 30 days, 23 hours and 58 minutes ago.
You could improve the world significantly by just shooting anyone who ever says "simples".
Has anyone here tried submitting a photo online for a UK passport recently? I did it a couple of months ago for my (still MIA) Irish passport with no difficulty, but am close to giving up on the UK. I've tried all kinds of lighting, exposure, pose and distance as instructed, but the automated scanner tells me mostly that "it looks as if your eyes are closed" even when I open them to the point of looking like a gargoyle. It even said I had my glasses on when I didn't. It says the picture is black and white when you can clearly see the colour of my eyes in the version they send back. I sometimes worry about being ugly and/or invisible, but this is a new twist on it. It does say something at the top about it being a Beta web page, so while that may be a clue, it doesn't help much. Any wise words out there?
Mr. Plummer has just had the same problem: his eyes are rather deep set so the machine thought they were shut. In the end he just sent the photo in as it is, and hopes that there will be a human being somewhere in the office who can see what's what.
Only a mini-TICTH I suppose: people get on the bus and only then start tapping their phone to bring up the relevant app to pay (or digging around in their bag to find their pass or bank card), thus delaying everyone. Couldn't they see the bus coming? - it's quite large and brightly coloured.
Only a mini-TICTH I suppose: people get on the bus and only then start tapping their phone to bring up the relevant app to pay (or digging around in their bag to find their pass or bank card), thus delaying everyone. Couldn't they see the bus coming? - it's quite large and brightly coloured.
Before such technology, these people would spend ages rummaging around for the correct change.
Comments
And doing it week-by-week makes planning well-nigh impossible.
Though to clarify in case it wasn’t clear, anthems and similar choir music is planned weeks if not months in advance. It’s the hymns that are generally chosen week-by-week.
We arranged a month's worth at a time, along with any special services that might crop up in the course of that month, and this seemed to work. Our current chap takes an intelligent interest in the hymns and music, which Fr F most certainly did not, and he co-operates well, both with the organist, and with his musically-literate Reader.
Personally I would CTH any singing in church that smacks more of a performance than congregational worship.
That includes most professional-standard choirs and Gospel groups. where the words and the grammar are mangled to fit into the music, and prevent me from understanding the meaning of what is being sung.
Choral concerts, in a secular context, are less problematic as the I can forget about the words and just enjoy the sound, but I do have problems with opera, as I need to hear the lyrics to follow the plot.
Many years ago I made my one and only visit to Glyndebourne, to see an obscure Baroque opera. It was sung in Italian, the plot was typically preposterous, there were no surtitles, yet everyone laughed in the right places as they'd all bought librettos in the foyer (and there was sufficient light to read them).
Anyone who has tried to use it will understand.
I'm so glad I only have to use it occasionally now, and don't need to know when (or if) the trains are running to get me to work!
I tried this out and was also getting the same error. You can purchase this fare from the conductor aboard your train. I'll escalate this issue with our team for further investigation (and hopefully a fix!). Sorry for the inconvenience.
So although I CTH the Scotrail website, I wish nothing but good for their staff.
And I consign you and all worshippers of mediocrity to the same place.
Absolutely!
You may be on the wrong Hell thread if you are going to make this personal.
But thing is, you already have, because some of us here might indeed be part of those professional-standard choirs and gospel groups.
Many of the anthems we sing are in Latin so whether you can make the words out is secondary to whether you can understand them anyway. We do sometimes put a translation up though.
And who put on a fake breathy and/or American accent.
Twisting words and grammar to fit the music is by no means unique to professional singing. In fact the types of singing that don't do it (generally chants, whether Anglican, plain, Iona or Taizé) are probably less common than those that do, and for songs of equivalent length are much harder to learn. Metrication, and the accompanying mangling of grammar, are a tool for congregational singing, not performance.
The Psalms I have about a joke
That meter sung in are
Grammar as humour twisted is
And hard'st to sing by far
Although this is a Consign to Hell thread, All Saints isn't the place for either discussing the merits (or otherwise) of different church music styles (that would be Ecclesiantics) or getting personal about other Shipmates' preferences (that would be Hell).
Thank you.
Piglet, AS host
Hrrmph. I ordered a year's supply of Marmite - two 500 gm jars at an astonishingly low price (from the UK to Canada via Germany). My punishment from the gods who wreak vengeance on people for buying from Amazon was one completely smashed jar inside what looked like perfectly good packaging. It was a mess. But I got half my money back.
That said politeness means a phone call some days prior to the service to confirm the choice with whoever the musician is.
St Obscures' method is the oddest yet. We sing the same hymns as another congregation as their priest chooses them.
*I have known one musician who just gave the list suggested in a particular publication with no reference to whether the congregation knew them.
This is so.
When it was my job to choose the hymns, I was told by a long-standing member of the congregation that I must choose only The Hymns Everyone Knows™.
I asked him for a list of The Hymns Everyone Knows™, but for some reason or other, I never received it...
Our late, deeply lamented organist diligently went through both hymn books and compiled for the benefit of the new minister a list of every "known" hymn, noting which ones had been sung only a couple of times and which were sung to a different tune. It was a masterpiece and remained useful years afterwards for "rationing" the number of new hymns in a given service.
1. Mid month, the vicar emails me a list of suggested hymns for the following month, including a note of any she definitely doesn’t want to be altered.
2. I email our other two organists (I am the third) to finalise who is playing for which services.
3. I go through the list with the lectionary (as the vicar is sometimes a week out) and make some possible additions and subtractions to the list.
4. I check the previous month’s list to make sure we don’t have too many duplicates.
5. I make sure each week has hymns which are suited to the abilities and tastes of the organist playing that week (e.g. only M can really play St Patrick’s Breastplate; N detests “Blest are the pure in heart” and gets tearful in “O love that will not let me go”; M detests “Shine Jesus shine”).
6. I try and make sure we sing at least one hymn over 100 years old and at least one hymn over 50 years old, and not more than one that is completely new to the congregation.
7. I check the tunes for the hymns, to make sure we don’t have any duplicate tunes the same week (rare but possible) and that most tunes appear familiar, and note if we need an alternative.
8. I go through the list with my Big Purple Notebook. This has a couple of pages for each letter of the alphabet. Every time we sing a hymn it gets added to the relevant page, and I put a tally mark each time we sing it. This reveals what we actually sing most regularly (which isn’t what people think). I also have lists of tunes that we all know to common metre, long metre etc., lists of traditional and modern hymns for communion, etc.
9. I email the list to the vicar, the other two organists, and the person who puts all the words up on the screen.
This works well, but is time consuming.
Our Place used to have just three - Mothering Sunday, Sea Sunday (early July - the docks are in our parish), and Harvest Festival, but this is now down to two (if the uniforms bother to turn up, which they mostly don't), to wit, Mothering Sunday and Harvest.
No matter how traditional or contemporary the hymns, there are always complaints.
Personally, I'd have just 3 hymns at the Parish Mass - Entrance, Offertory, and Post-Communion - but still with a simple sung Mass setting, Responsorial Psalm, and Gospel Alleluia.
Our usual is Murray's A New People's Mass, but we have in the past used one or two other bits and pieces, the music for which is also in our default hymnbook.
As I said before, the place for discussing hymnody and church music is Ecclesiantics, where you are welcome to start a new thread.
Thank you again.
Piglet, AS host
Surprise, surprise - I could not purchase this fare from the conductor aboard the train. The conductor was lovely and said that the same glitch that prevented me from buying it online, prevented her from selling it onboard.
I was asked to go to the ticket office at my destination and buy my ticket retrospectively. Which, being an honest soul, I did. The man at the ticket gate, who let me through without a ticket, seemed genuinely surprised when I returned to give it to him.
The woman at the ticket office said that it's not a computer glitch, but that as the station I was travelling from had only been opened in 2020, it hasn't been added to the system for special offers yet. So she sold me a ticket for the same value, but for a different route.
I CTH the Scotrail ticketing fiasco. And I commend to Heaven the staff who cheerfully and politely work their way round it.
But I would also have thought that that would be a good thing.
1. Today is St David's Day but - unlike in previous years - it might as well not be happening as far as they're concerned. Not a dragon or flag to be seen!
2. They are flagging up "Mother's Day" like made; I object to this because (a) it should be "Mothering Sunday" and (b) to my mind the apostrophe is in the wrong place.
But are they selling leeks?
I did buy some (genuine Welsh) daffodils though.
Unsurprisingly, they didn't have any tubs of (genuine Welsh) "cawl" (soup). A couple of years ago we cooked a special Welsh dinner on March 1st, including a bottle of red wine which wasn't cheap and pretty ghastly!
Being a contrary sort of Old Git, I fail to see that being a wife, mother, godmother, grandmother etc. is a woman's sole purpose in life, but some clergy (FatherInCharge, I'm looking at you) seem to insist that it is. Spare a thought for those who aren't mothers, whether by choice or circumstance, and yet would long to be...
AFAIK, this is a UK thing. Other countries sensibly keep Mother's Day (or whatever they might call it) as a purely secular festival, at a different time of year.
Yes, I see that there is now a thread in Epiphanies. Thank you @Baptist Trainfan .
From what I've heard, in the eyes of those whose accents they imitated, they weren't very funny in the first place.
If they started 14 years ago, the joke wore off 13 years, 11 months, 30 days, 23 hours and 58 minutes ago.
You could improve the world significantly by just shooting anyone who ever says "simples".
Before such technology, these people would spend ages rummaging around for the correct change.