Traditional vs Contemporary

Doomsayers

There are those who say that traditional church music is doomed. They propose trading traditional hymnody - both text and tune - for music derived from whatever secular styles are currently popular. The counter argument is that those who are attracted to the church because of the use of currently popular musical styles are also doomed, because the popular styles will inevitably change, and those people will be left with out any connection to their roots, or, if the church's style doesn't change, will be put in a position of defending their style against the next generation of doomsayers. One of the contributing factors here is the disrepair into which public music instruction has fallen; our children are being brought up to consume music that others make, not to make it themselves. With that background they may tend to carry this habit with its secular tastes over into the church. Through the ages the church has continually tried out new music from the secular world, kept that which was effective, and discarded that which was not. We must keep doing this, without abandoning our traditional roots.

The Communion of the Saints

For me, the idea of the Communion of the Saints comes most alive when we use hymns - text and tunes - from the past. The Psalms, for example, are about 3,000 years old, and remind us of David and others. One hymn is especially meaningful to me in this regard - "The Glory of These Forty Days", with a marvelous text from Gregory the Great (540-604) and a tune from 1543 ("Erhalt us Herr bei deinem Wort", used in the church for the last 465 years). For this hymn to provide any sense of the "Communion of the Saints", of course, those singing it must be made aware of its antiquity, which can be done by including comments about it in the printed bulletin. While the "Communion of the Saints" addresses our connection with our spiritual ancestors, it does not consider our connection with future "Saints". That connection can best be insured by including in our music new hymns from a variety of sources. One such hymn (that was already in the 1955 hymbook) was brought into our consciousness afresh a few decades ago by the popular singer Cat Stevens: "Morning Has Broken"; happily it has remained popular in the church. Another, "On Eagles' Wings", in a somewhat popular style, nevertheless has a solid scriptural basis in Psalm 91 and might well be included in the new hymnal.