There is a fellow named Bernhard. He seems amiable enough--sometimes, but he has a problem. He has a piano student, and—but let him tell it:

"I have a student who is a committed Christian, and she has decided that she is now only interested in religious music. She brought me a CD to listen to, with some ghastly pop Christian music saying this is what she wants to play from now on. I was horrified at the prospect of having to listen to this drivel, so I suggested to her instead that she should dedicate her musical studies to some of the greatest sacred music ever written – and gave her a number of CDs to listen to by Bach (St Matthew Passion, Mass in B-minor, cantatas, etc.) Mozart (Requiem), Beethoven (Mass in B minor) and Arvo Part, plus Gregorian chant and the like. She was suitably impressed and wants to have a go.

So here is the problem: Does anyone have any suggestions for "sacred" pieces? Preferably originally written for piano solo, that are not too forbidding (around grade 5 – 8 )? Although there seems to be plenty of "sacred" pieces for voice or choir, the only ones I could come up with for piano solo were [the following]:"

There follows a short list of pieces that Bernhard thinks might be appropriate. Now, as it happens, I generally share in ‘Mr. Bernhard’s’ low opinion of much of our contemporary pop Christian music. I hope you don’t think I’m a snob for saying so. I would however suggest the following modifications: 1) some contemporary pop Christian music is better than the rest; there is the awful, the merely bad, and the mostly harmless, and in a few cases, some that may not be all that bad, from a musical angle. 2) there are a lot of other issues involved in this sort of music which have nothing to do with the quality of the music. Among them the fact that if the church wants to attract lots of ‘regular’ people, most of whom wouldn’t touch Bach with a 10 foot pole, who have virtually no musical training and often little or no desire to make an effort to learn, you have to give them something they can learn instantly and sing every few weeks without having to even give it a thought in between services. Lots of repetition and a limited melodic range would naturally suit this sort of thing, as well as songs that sound like a lot of the other songs. That is the truth, but push it too hard and you sound contemptuous of your fellow man, who has his own opinion and is not really interested in what you think of as good music. A little farther on, and we sound not simply snobby and narrow minded but just plain phobic. Was he really ‘horrified at having to listen to this drivel’? There are plenty of people who seem unable to bear to be in the same room with people with cultural or ideological differences (including an atheist some years ago who started out suing over the pledge of allegiance so that his daughter didn’t have to say ‘under God’ if she didn’t want to—this was free speech--but apparently didn’t want his daughter’s ears soiled having to listen to anybody else say those words either, which is where ‘free speech’ tries to become tyranny).

I suppose the Bernhards of the world think they are doing their level best to uphold the highest standards in music in the face of all that depressing Philistinism, but perhaps they could do us a favor and be less ‘horrified’ by their encounters with mediocrity. Someone has said (before I got there) that God loves mediocrity because he created so much of it. It is probably pushing too far to suggest that persons like Bernhard would actually find a way to get along with music that does not seem ‘up to code’ but being ‘horrified’ seems rather comic, and is certainly not a good way to get other people to reconsider their own positions. It is like being a judgmental hypocrite—many people are convinced that Christian churches are full of them, and actually being one is all the evidence needed for a person who was looking for an excuse not to get involved anyway. There are better ways to uphold musical standards—and to encourage others to raise theirs—than to consider yourself polluted by having some of that ‘awful’ music fall on your ears once in a while.

Here is the twist, though. The student, given an encounter with ‘the classics’ decided that maybe she would consider what her teacher had in mind. In other words, she is being more open-minded than her teacher is. It’s a good thing somebody didn’t draw a line in the sand.

Unfortunately for Bernhard, though, she wasn’t much given to his ideas about what constituted ‘good’ church music. This is partially because she tends to assume that Christian music is whatever the Christians around her happen to know and like, and the rest is somehow ‘unChristian,’ regardless of how other Christians think of it. I don’t know whether she got her intolerance second-hand or came by it honestly, right out of the factory. But the narrow view of what is sacred, or appropriate for church, is shared by both those within various sects and those who have never set foot in a church, and don’t want to. Both sides assume that there is only a sliver of music that can be or should be played during an encounter with the divine. His music must be special--and not always in a way that would make it attractive for his children--quite the opposite, frequently. Perhaps it is thought that it would offend His ears if he should have to listen to the things that his children like to listen to on a regular basis. Apparently when it comes to traditional church music many of God’s children are teenagers. We each have ‘our music’ but we don’t think Dad will like it, so we make sure we are listening to something else (which we don’t like half as well) whenever Dad is around. We wouldn’t want to get him mad at us—not this Dad, anyway. When we’re off with our friends we like music we can dance to, loud, beat-ridden, exciting. But we know Dad is an old codger who thinks he knows better than we do so, grudgingly, we give in on Sundays for about an hour. We make sure the music is boring and doesn’t make us want to have a good time, which writers from Augustine onward have been convinced is by definition against the wishes of our Father. It is very nice of us to save our ‘noise’ for when Dad can’t hear us. With our earthly fathers it is a different story. There is another impetus for this course, however. If we don’t ‘brand’ certain music for church, and distinguish it from the rest, it will not be clear to people when they are in the House of God, and when they are merely out frolicking in the rest of God’s universe, the part he rarely visits. Of course, when 'having a good time', human beings are often at their most selfish and irresponsible. Perhaps dignified, funereal music is a sort of compromise. We are bored, but at least we are aren't being morons. If that is the case, the recent trend in Christian pop music is an experiment in whether we can live without this compromise or not.

Here is that sliver of music listed by our good piano teacher:

1. The Bach Chorales (not exactly for piano solo, but feasible)

2. Myra Hess’s transcription of "Jesus, Joy of men"

3. Schumann’s "Ein Chorale" from the album for the young.

4. Sgambatti transcription of Gluck - Dance of the blessed spirits

5. Tchaikovsky "In Church" from the album for the young

6. Alan Hovhaness – "The mystic Flute" (this one may be pushing it a bit…)

7. Liszt – The shepherds at the manger; Sancta Dorothea and Ave Maris Stella are the three easiest ones – everything else is more difficult. Transcription of Schubert’s Ave Maria.

8. Bach – Gounod – Ave Maria.

9. Granados – "The Evening Bell" (from Bocetos).

10. Messiaen – Vingt regards (but this is far too difficult for her level – and I doubt she will like it)

You’ll note that it has a healthy supply of Bach (items 1, 2, and 8). There are many (and there will be several participants in this conversation) who think that Bach is the first and last word in sacred music (and music in general). I personally have a deep regard for Bach’s music, but I think making him the alpha and omega is going too far. Among the problems this attitude creates is that it promotes a museum atmosphere, as if your church thinks nothing good has come into the world in the last 300 years, as if you worship a God of the past who stopped inspiring musicians some time ago. Bach worshippers frequently have an abiding scorn for anything ‘modern’. But I’ve noticed for every snob out there there is an equal and vehement reaction among the lazy. One lady commented on a message board recently that she was glad to know (her opinion being buttressed) that you didn’t have to like Bach to be a good musician. I imagine she was relieved of the responsibility of having to cultivate an appreciation of Bach. Bach’s music doesn’t always charm right away. In this respect I think it uncomfortably resembles a spiritual discipline, which means it requires some time and effort to discover what makes it so wonderful. There are a lot of things like that. Narrow is the road…and not so well traveled.

So much for the Bach wars. Pleasantly, Bernhard offered a little variety, and seems determined to find something from each era, even up to relatively recent. Unfortunately one of the most recent is certainly too difficult for anyone who is not a very advanced pianist (the Messiaen) and some of the others seem chosen based entirely on their titles, and do not sound very inventive (‘at church?’ How many of us play on our concerts pieces with the title ‘in the concert hall?’) or particularly orthodox (‘dance of the blessed spirits’? probably we’re talking about a more pagan concept of ‘spirits’ here, and I think he may have realized ‘mystic flute’ was grabbing at straws) Then we have occasional pieces (for Christmas) or Catholic pieces (which his pupil is evidently not) or pieces that probably have nothing to do with church but do have ‘bells’ in the title. All in all, it was a nice effort, but our valiant teacher knows this is a bit thin. Hence his question: is there any good sacred music for piano?

One reason I kept reading is because I’ve been asking that question myself for many years. Being a church pianist is not a glamour position; it is often assumed you are an amateur with a day job or a conservatory student who doesn’t place much importance on your ‘church job.’ Our most gifted composers generally do not spend their efforts for the church, and the piano is only a small and often marginalized instrument in many churches, providing traveling music for before and after but not during worship. The organ has a long history and a pedigree of professionals who have written challenging and effective works for it for those who have the ability and wish to make the effort, but the piano has only recently been invited into the church (it was actually banned by the Pope in 1903, a ban which some people still think is in effect, although I’ve been in many catholic churches and most of them do not seem to have noticed since they have grand pianos in them). There is now, however, a market for church piano music, most of which consists of well-behaved arrangements of familiar hymns, and would no doubt fail to impress Bernhard and company (with good reason in too many cases). However, since the participants in this forum were not churchgoers, they seemed to be completely unaware of this fact. If you allow for music written and marketed specifically for church pianists to play by publishing houses that send out catalogs twice a year to announce their products, the quantity of available repertoire is actually very large, whatever you think of it. If you are looking for ‘classical’ literature, or music that would pass muster to a musical mind that tries to sort out the best available from the basically serviceable, the mostly harmless, the trite, or the just plain inept, the size of the literature shrinks considerably.

I realize at this point that I sound like as much an elitist as Bernhard, with the difference that I am friendlier about it. There is, however, a reason that some music is held in higher estimation by some of us ‘snobs’ and this is not the time to get into why, but I’ll do my best at another time. Bernhard’s compatriots, meanwhile, did their best, too, and did not manage to come up with very much in most cases, but there was one exception. This fellow listed about 100 items that he had culled from various books of piano literature, and listed the pieces he found, though he admitted to no familiarity with most of them.

I found this list to be the most personally useful thing about this page, and filed a few of the suggestions away in my personal list of items to play in church sometime. Mine is an involved list, sorted by topic, possible scripture connection, or season of the year, hymns which seem to be cousins with the pieces involved, composer, style, and so on. I spent an hour trying to track down one of the rarer items on the posted list, and it is not the first time I have spent a lot of time trying to find a piece that might be useful some time in the future. Building such a list has cost me a lot of labor, which is why it is so valuable to find any resource that has already done some of the work for you.

Most of the remainder of the chat consisted of the same assumptions that people in and out of the church make about what is appropriate for worship. Some of these things narrow the possibilities, and a few broaden it. Some people observed that anything by Bach is ok for church. This is an interesting proposition. I’m almost certain Bach would have disagreed with it. He lived in a time when the leadership drew a very thick line between the language of the sacred service and the rest of life. He was accused occasionally of importing secular influences into his sacred music, and one cannot help but notice that many of the same principles govern his sacred and secular compositions. The two do not seem to be completely at odds. However, there are what we might now think of as subtle differences.

Someone else suggested that certain titles, or genres, were always appropriate. Elegy was one. This is a piece written to mourn someone who has died. If we think we gather every Sunday for God’s funeral, I think that is an excellent idea. Otherwise, it seems misguided to assume that this is one of the ‘golden’ (ie, always appropriate) genres. The idea, I suppose, is that churches are looking for anything somber (which must be why the Liszt ‘Funerailles’ made the list! I can only recommend that if your church is suffering from a funereal disease).

There were a lot of interesting contributions to the ‘title’ game. Pieces called ‘prayer’ seemed the most harmless and might be worth checking into, though I don’t necessarily expect to find much great music there. I also subscribe to the crazy notion that not all church music needs to be slow and quiet, which was, predictably, a major theme in the comments of several contributors, when they were not discussing the student’s ‘peculiar psychology’ or showing contempt for religious music in general. Bernhard did suggest that perhaps instrumental music doesn’t work so well in a religious context because music is too abstract and the church wants a more fixed meaning to its music, which is why most of it has words. This too is a pretty widely held idea about music.

Among the resources that a ‘peter in G minor’ posted were some collections by Maurice Hinson. Hinson is a professor of religious music at a university, and has published some collections of music ‘appropriate for church.’ I ordered one because it was only $4 used; now I am sorry I did. It is the usual unimaginative mishmash of ‘quiet and dignified’ pieces. Hinson sets out his thoughts on what qualifies classical music to be played in church, and among other criterion it includes music with titles like prayer, reconciliation, and andante religioso (there are not a lot of these) but when it comes to the selections chosen for his book the titles are a little more interesting. The first in the book is a barcarolle (boat song) which I assume was chosen because it is soft and somber, not because some of our Methodist churches resemble in their construction upside down arks. Others include ‘dances of naked boys and men’ –the subtitle, actually, which is not mentioned, but that is in fact the programmatic inspiration for the ‘gymnopedie no.1’ of Erik Satie, which is slow and somber, after all, but deals with an athletic ceremony in ancient Greece by the composer’s own reckoning. Then there is ‘solitude’ by Jean Sibelius, a quaint idea, but although many of us associate religion with solitude (private prayer, bible reading and the like) this is music to be played in the midst of a community, after all, which is perhaps its own strange commentary. The music is probably not so bad; perhaps I will like it when I’ve gotten acquainted with it, but I could probably find better pieces which are just as quiet and morose.

Which is just the tack one person suggested, clinging to something Rachmaninoff supposedly said about giving credit for his talent to God, which meant, the blogger said slyly, that anything by Rachmaninoff was fair game. This is liberating; I have played Rachmaninoff in church before, when a particular piece seemed to elaborate on the mood of the service or the tone of the message. The titles are usually generic, and require one’s own imagination to form the connection between the piece and the occasion for playing it. But I am a strange bird. I swim upstream in all kinds of directions.

Evidently one has to if one is to make church music for piano something that can engage one’s whole mind and soul and talent—at least if you are a person who gets bored by sticking to the most common assumptions above. I have at one time or another played things by Bach that were not written for church, I’ve played something for communion that was slow and quiet because it was slow and quiet, and I think I’ve even had a go at the Gymnopedie once for some reason (don’t tell anybody!). At one time or another I’ve probably shared in every assumption on this page. But I would caution against our being trapped by our assumptions. They form ways of seeing the world, but they also narrow our focus. Does church music have to be slow and quiet? 300 years old? Written by composers with lasting reputations? Written by someone who ‘gives God the glory?’ or is even a believer? I invite you to join the conversation that was continued (hardly begun) on that page (not literally--this one was over three years ago, but you can participate in others, no doubt), and to think about the attitudes and ideas expressed and to consider how opinions form our impressions and vice versa. Many of the participants seemed to think of church music as dry and lifeless, and believed that justified their lack of involvement. Others wanted to regulate what church music was based on their own familiarity and comfort level. One fellow even tries to make peace between the pop and art music camps. It is too bad that many of the participants did not seem to share his openness, though on the whole, especially for an internet conversation, it did seem like the participants respected each other reasonably well, if not their topic.

Which reminds me of another assumption. Are classical musicians all temperamental snobs? Last year a nervous bride admitted to the pastor that she did not want to talk to her organist (me) because ‘you know how musicians are.’ She’d never met me, but she assumed I’d be a handful. I eventually called her and we had what I hope was a very friendly, pleasant conversation. I’d like to think that, on some level, Bernhard and I would also get along

How I Survive: Four solutions to the problem of the constant need for church music (part one)
September 2, 2011