WORSHIPINMUSIC | St. Thomas Episcopal

THE STRUCTURE OF OUR WORSHIP IN MUSIC

All of our singing in church is purposeful, and reflects the ancient structure of worship. We sing because in singing together, our imaginations (or our outlook, if you prefer) are joined together with one object. In worship, we do not approach the Lord as individuals only, but as one body. This is the drama of Christian liturgy: we come as individuals, and we share a space, an imagination, a picture of God in our minds, hear a common word, and finally share the Eucharistic Feast where we announce ourselves as a unique community.

This is a brief breakdown of the parts of worship and the music that attends them.

THE GATHERING

The first business of Christian worship is what’s called “the Gathering.” The Gathering brings us physically together and focuses us spiritually on the business of worship. It begins with the first assembly bells and includes the Acclamation, opening prayers, and the Gloria.

The Bell-Ringing

Yes! It’s music! Bells all through history have performed for people, issuing a tone or tones that communicate a message. In many churches, bells are used when the bread and cup are raised at Eucharist to call attention to the moment when the Holy Spirit is invoked. You’ll recall the Christmas carol that sings, “All the bells on earth shall ring on Christmas Day!"

At St. Thomas, the bell announces, “It’s time to gather!"

Prelude

From the Latin for “play before,” the prelude is a time where the congregation can quiet themselves before God, setting aside whatever preoccupations they’ve brought with them. It’s appropriate to pray if you want, meditate, or just listen. The mood should always be, “Now that I’ve brought my body to church, let me bring my focus to church."

Sometimes the music is “sacred” (that is, written specifically for Christian worship); other times it is “secular,” but employed as a way of drawing people emotionally together and towards the altar.

In no case would we intentionally use music that distracts or disrupts the communal life or the solemn joy of a Eucharistic service. It might be cheeky from time to time, but we hope to never be irreverent.

The prelude as a part of worship has evolved. In ancient churches that were often extremely cold (or sometimes overheated), musicians would often play a bit after tuning up to warm up their fingers and instruments and (as we would say now) get into their groove. Probably preludes first resembled the chaotic sounds you hear as an orchestra warms up before a concert. But by the 15th century, the prelude was becoming a more-ordered musical form, written as a “preamble” to worship.

Processional Hymn

A “hymn” is s song of adoration or prayer or praise. All our hymns are sung with the object of unifying our voices and our imaginations.

The Processional Hymn is always intended as a triumphant and solemn entrance of the ministers who announce by their presence that we are engaged in a Christian act of worship. (You’ll notice in solemn days when our focus is sorrow, such as Good Friday, the Processional will be dispensed with.)

The entrance of the Cross, the Gospel, and the Priest, may also include the Lectors (readers), Intercessors (prayer-leaders), candles, the Choir, and the Altar Servers.

The hymn is usually selected with an eye on the lectionary readings for the week, especially the Gospel. But any hymn that announces the Kingdom of God or offers joyful praise to Him will fit.

The Gloria

The Gloria, the heart of The Gathering, turns our attention from earth towards heaven. (In Lent, we may substitute the Trisagion or other appropriate ancient liturgies here.)

In the Gloria, we join our voices with all the saints who have gone before us. Notice how often we use the pronoun “I” (never); the pronoun “We” (five times); and “You” (eight times). This is where we set aside ego and self-interest (and with it, sin). The “We” is all the saints, angels and archangels in all times and all places, including yourself. In the Gloria, you’ve got more in common with a medieval Latvian peasant Christian than you do with your genial non-Christian next-door neighbor.

And one letter makes a difference: notice that the text reads, “You take away the sin of the world,” not “the sins.” It isn’t merely our individual bad acts that are redeemed, but the entire condition of humanity’s separation from God. The Gloria gives God the glory for that

THE WORD OF GOD

Now that we are emptied of ourselves and have come before God ready to be filled, we begin with the Ministry of the Word of God, which includes the homily or sermon. Not by accident, the readers or “lectors” of the lessons come from the Congregation. They are a ministry of people whose reading takes us out of the isolated place where we read silently to ourselves; instead, we share the experience of a sort of performance (the word means “to give form to something”) of the Word.

The Psalm

The Psalms are of course the devotional poetic heart of the Hebrew Bible, and they cover an astonishing range of emotional ground. The word “psalm” comes from the Greek word “to pluck,” and refers to poems intended to be chanted to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument.

From Christianity’s earliest days the psalm was chanted for this reason. With the advent of the printing press, of course, we have come to think of them as bits of Bible to be read, but they were meant to be sung. And so we sing or chant them.

The person who leads the psalm and chants the verses is called the cantor (or sometimes chanter).

The word “antiphon,” from the Greek word for “harmonies, ‘return of sound,’” is the Congregation’s opportunity to sing back in response to the verses delivered by the cantor (singer). The repeated phrases of the antiphon should carve a small groove in our imaginations by which we interpret the rest of the psalm.

The Gradual (or Gospel Hymn)

Named for the Latin gradus, “step,” the Gradual was traditionally sung on the altar steps or on the “ambo,” a raised platform from which the Gospel would be read. Since the gospels are our most immediate connection with the person of Jesus Christ, they were announced from this privileged place.

Since then, many theologians have gently suggested that the Gospel should for this same reason be announced from the midst of the Congregation, and that is the practice at St. Thomas; by reading it from the center of the Church, we announce that the Gospel is for the people who have come to hear it and not kept apart from them or above them.

But the Gospel is still peculiarly sacred, and so the ancient practice of singing it to its place remains the work of the Congregation.