We love it when people rediscover and reframe different liturgical elements. It’s like suddenly finding out you have a long-lost great grandmother who was royalty. So When High Street Hymns started a series on Liturgical music, we were looking forward to further posts – and last week they delivered:
Liturgical Music Series Part 2: Gloria | High Street Hymns.
We recently had the privilege of meeting Lester Ruth, the new president of the Charles Wesley foundation. He was kind to send along a link they put together of all Wesley’s Published verse. Looking for lyrics? this will probably be a great site to bookmark! Charles Wesley’s Published Verse, via Duke Divinity School
The present online collection of the poetical works of John and Charles Wesley is intended to provide the standard for scholarly study and citation that has been needed. It was developed under a set of guidelines to maximize reliability and usefulness.
We like to focus both on theological as well as practical items here, and a friend of ours recently posted a link to this blog: 5 Tips for Better Practicing. There’s some good tips in here, and may be worth passing onto musicians (and we know we could use them as well!).
As someone guilty of many wasted practice hours, I’m happy to help others avoid the mistakes I’ve made. Productive practicing also translates to many areas of life beyond music; so I believe that every student reaps long-term benefits from learning to practice well, regardless of how long their musical education lasts. Here are the first things I cover with my students on the topic of practicing.
Luke Brodine has put together a really nice post on Transfiguration Sunday - it’s one of those Sundays that, if you’re not paying attention to the calendar, sounds somehow out of place.
Luke’s post puts together some brief history and theology, and then includes some really solid examples of music and liturgy. Definitely worth the read:
Just as with observing Jesus’ Baptism at the start of Epiphany, it is important to ask how the Transfiguration is an important moment in Jesus’ life. This is the penultimate revelation of Jesus’ divine nature that is celebrated in the liturgical calendar before the celebration of the Resurrection at Easter (the others being Christmas, Epiphany, and Baptism of our Lord). It is also the fullest revelation of his pre-resurrection glory, the very same glory on display as the presently ascended Christ and that will be displayed when he returns. To celebrate the Transfiguration is to worship Jesus in his full divine splendor.
Not to mention it also features some Sufjan Stevens’ lyrics.
If you heard about or were able to attend the recent Calvin Symposium on worship, then you (knowingly or unknowingly) were touched by the work of Greg Scheer.
He seemed to be everywhere at once, playing bass, leading groups, facilitating discussions and making introductions
Between the preparation, planning and leading, he also has quite an active blog where he’s been highlighting quite a lot from the Psalms recently. You can see a list of his posts here under his “Revenge of the Killer B’s” topic (a title we’re not particularly sure we understand, but fully appreciate nonetheless!). It even has it’s own graphic:
Go check it out for links and such to all sorts of psalm goodness.
We seem to be meeting more people from Austin recently who are doing some great music. Last year we posted on Austin City Life, and just last week we met some guys from All Saints Austin. Both have some nice projects out – one with a mix of hymns and originals, and one with some great contemporary versions of traditional hymns.
We love highlighting what’s happening in local churches, so wanted to make sure you saw these: One, from Austin City Life, and Singing Stones, from All Saints:
Up in Grand Rapids, at the Calvin Worship Symposium, we started discussing some cross-cultural implications of the Re:tuned hymns movement. One thing I forgot to mention to several of the people that had questions was the work that New City was doing. James Ward (and now his Son Kirk Ward, in Chattanooga and Saint Louis respectively), have done some great work in putting together cross-cultural resources for music that honors several historical contexts – both the rich tradition of the whole Church and the rich tradition of Africa-American spirituality.
I wold highly encourage you to go look over his site - New City Music - even if you don’t think you’re “in the need” for things like this, it is good for us to know and praise God for the work that is happening in different parts of the church.
From the site:
Many musicians leading this worship have been trained at New City Fellowship. This site hopes to further extend this movement, offering music, video, instruction, and reflection for those who want to take part in the vision of cross cultural worship.
Like the New City congregations that support us, we are passionate about the Biblical view of racial reconciliation through Christ. Yet we recognize the difficultly of cross-cultural ministry. Our unique histories and dreams, beliefs and biases, images and idioms, often seem at odds. But through the Lord our different lives interlock. In Christ we find the places where the pieces bind.
