I'm straying into territory here of which I am ignorant, but if I only stuck to things I knew about.... I hope readers will correct me if I've erred.
Today in Oak Hill chapel we chanted / sang Psalm 98 using a score that seems to be called 'Joseph Barnby', though that sounds more like the name of a fella than a tune to me.
I think the method we used is called Anglican Chant? I've got a CD that does something similar and we did some chanting in our Psalms lectures, but I've never tried it in worship before.
The system is that each word is sung on the notes indicated in the score repeating as necessary untill you get to one of the vertical lines in the text which indicates that you should move onto the next bar. Sometimes a syllable has to be drawn out accross more than one note. A dot in the text indicates a change of note within a bar (i.e. the next sylabble takes a seperate note) and the * indicates that one ought to take a breath.
I found it extremely hard to follow.
But the Bible commands us to sing Psalms. How much better to sing God's Word than the mere words of men.
Metrical psalm paraphrases are good and can be sung like ordinary hymns but the great advantage of such a chanting system is that it allows for the use of any text, so that the Psalm can be chanted in as near to the original form as possible (there is no need for a metrical paraphrase).
The advantage of the music is that it makes it more affecting and beautiful - especially now that I've realised with the help of Mrs Lloyd that there are four vocal parts!
One could have a number of different settings that accord to the genre or mood of the Psalms. Obviously its easier if there aren't too many different settings to master but I guess we might want different music for a lament and a praise psalm.
I'm not sure how much this kind of musical chanting serves memorisation if a number of different Psalms use the same setting but I guess its still more memorable than just speaking? Through composed music might be better for memorisation in the sense of not confusing Psalms, but there'd be 150 pieces to learn! Maybe an individual chant setting for each psalm is the answer?
Surely for those who can read music, singing a through composed Psalm would be pretty easy as the words could be printed below the notes. One of the things I found tricky about the way we sang it was needing to know where we were both in the text and in the score.
But for me it was jolly hard. I need lots of practice.
Anyway, what I really wanted to say was, why doesn't one of you musos hold a weekly 20 mins. Psalm chanting / singing session in chapel? Presumably it would require next to no preparation for you and we could try to get some of God's word into our thick skulls as we praise him and edify one another. I'd come. And I bet I wouldn't be the only one. If there were only 5 of us, that would be okay, wouldn't it?
Thursday, March 22, 2007
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4 comments:
Have to admit I'm not a big fan of chanting -well the old gregorian stuff was fair enough but modern anglican chanting makes me want to chew my arm off -I guess that's a taste thing
but if we are chanting are we obeying the command to sing them? Were they chanted or sung by ancient Israel. Should we dig out the original tunes and sing them in Hebrew.
Is metrification a departure from the words? Does that depend on where you are on formal and dynamic equivalence. Indeed I'm not sure it goes that far -translation involves some tweaking of word structuring etc -maybe the metricals are as inspired as the NIV?
When we were told to sing Psalms did that actually mean "sing the Psalms" in the OT or did it simply mean sing Psalms as in a genre of music.
I'm seriously considering becoming an Anglican if they'll let me have one of those fancy shepherd's crook things though!
It's definitely called chanting; I don't know if it requires the disambiguating "Anglican" qualifier. It takes a bit of getting the hang of - particularly, as you say, having to keep track of both the text and the score. The way choirs solve this problem is learning the tune by singing "ma ma ma ma, ma ma-ma ma ma-ma" (or something similar) first.
Amen and amen! Thank you for this, Marc. If any of those "musos" could come to Oxford and help us, too, that would be muchly appreciated.
It is quite difficult, and I've managed to get by with singing along with the chapel choir in my second year (the congregation were encouraged to sing - only the chaplain and I really did, I think) and with my church at home.
It does sound beautiful though, and you can do it with good modern translations of the Psalms, rather than mangling them by putting them into metre, as long as they're pointed by someone who knows what they're doing.
And don't tell me it's weird to unbelievers. So is expository Bible teaching.
More Anglican chant please!
Marc,
In answer to your question, there are almost endless numbers of different settings. A lot of composers seem to have written psalm chants pretty much for fun. Some were written for specific psalms, many without any particular text in mind. You may remember we had Psalm 19 chanted at our wedding. The setting it was chanted to was a Herbert Howells version for Ps 122, and is my favourite chant ever. It really does become much more straightforward with a little bit of practice. Took me about 6 weeks in Oxford to get the hang of it.
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