Music

This is Monday. Yesterday I attended in-person church services for the first time since mid-March. I worked on a team processing attendees, you know, to keep us all within CDC COVID guidelines for safety.

Before this our Worship Committee has been meeting by Zoom weekly rather than the previous monthly schedule. We do this to plan each worship service in detail. Since March we have streamed each service live over Facebook. It is also recorded for later viewing by anyone so interested.

The services have been a blend of traditional and contemporary services previously conducted in the sanctuary. Fans of either of the two service modes are not pleased. They miss their preferred style of worship. This is a personal thing. It means a lot to those feeling the differences of worship.

Before leaving for the church I did my usual email, internet and Facebook scan. And wrote blogs for the week to come. During this time I found recordings on YouTube. I listened to two full programs. One was Mozart’s Requiem. The other was Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. Both beautiful. Soul searching.

And that’s what I miss from our worship services today. Music. Serious music with a message. Delivered with voice, instruments, organ and more in live performances.

Long ago I told my kids that the human singing voice was a window to the soul of the performer. I meant it then and felt it today while listening to the music. I also am a singer, amateur, but a long-time singer. I joined the adult church choir when I was 15 having sung in children’s choirs before that. I was also a student of piano and violin in my teens. But the voice is the instrument of choice all these years later.

I sung in church choirs almost nonstop up until the age of 60+. Still do from time to time.

The human voice does remarkable things when it makes music. It is an expression from deep within. The resonance. Vibration. Intonation of musical note, word and syllable. The vocal chords doing their thing while being steered by the brain for musical discipline. Wondrous.

Wondrous for the singer. And so too for the audience. It is personal, both the act and the sound. Each utterance is singular in moment and performance. Never to be heard again; only for that moment.

Our traditional worship service includes a musical Kyrie, and two or three musical responses sung by the congregation. These are participatory moments. They glue the participant to the rituals of worship. They intone the meaning of the service in ways not easily explained. They become critical parts of worship.

In the time of COVID-19 we are shorn of live music. Yes, the singer’s voice projects aerosol particles from the lungs 20 to 32 feet. Thus live singing was removed from social gatherings, concerts and church services. It is a very sad reality.

Now think of the people who perform these acts. They are orphans of their voice and art form. They can sing for themselves in private spaces. They can record their performance so others can gain some pleasure from it, but recall they are also distanced from fellow accompanying musicians. They too are orphaned at this time.

People wonder why this matters. Think on it. It matters much for those directly affected. Whether audience, congregation, or musician, it matters in ways so deep it is difficult to explain. Trust they are in pain.

August 31, 2020