July 11, 2009

  • Singing Psalms in our Church (4 points)

    1.
    In the past I have uploaded some videos on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=AE977F51C9D5DFDD). This week I received a message in my YouTube-Inbox from an organist/composer in Ohio. He expresses apprecitation for the singing of our church community:

    "How wonderful to find a congregation in North America that sings the Psalter, with an organist improvising properly! (...) I have recently begun introducing more improvised hymn introductions, as well as working the appointed Psalm as prelude. American hymn-playing is generally rather dull and static, and lacking in imagination. (...)"

    I can't comment on how other churches sing and the hymns they sing, but our Psalm singing seems to be different.

    2.
    On the Casavant Freres website (www.casavant.ca) there was an announcement posted about the new Psalm CD. Again, Genevan Psalms are not common in North American churches, but the CD did evoke something. They call our congregational singing "a large choir"...!

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    3.
    Then there are people that discuss things on closed discussion groups. Last year, someone from Vancouver discussed our new church organ with someone in South Africa, and with simple cut-and-paste the message was passed on to me, by someone in China .

    En réponse à Peter Black de Johannesburg...

    Subject: Langley organ on Pipeorg-L

    Date:    Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:40:12 -0700
    Subject: Re: Organ for St. Georges

    I attended the inauguration of Casavant Opus 3872 at a local church. The organ is powerful enough to lead the lusty singing of this Reformed Church.

    Church Organist Frank Ezinga spent many hours working on the proposal with his congregation and Casavant to achieve a great result.
    I know from chatting with Frank over the past year or so, there is a tremendous amount  of work involved in the planning and preparation of the building. You are also faced with huge travel distances which makes some communication difficult.  If you have the final result as good as the one last night, it will be an instrument that should serve you well for at least the next 100 years.

    4.

    Last Tuesday I received an email about the singing in our church from someone outside our province. Some questions about the singing of our congregation, but one sentence stood out: "

    We were in Langley church this past Sunday and were just wowed at how well the congregation sang and with the organ accompaniment it gave us the goosebumps.

    J.S. Back wrote it on every composition, and so may we sing and accompany the singing: Soli Deo Gloria!

    Have a blessed Sunday!