Norwich Cathedral Choir welcome Dippy the Dinosaur
We made the half-hour drive to participate in worship yesterday with our home congregation of Trenton United. We continue to observe COVID-19 protocols as a family of faith, with masks, distancing, sign-ins and saniitziing. Our personal exception is that we now sit with our daugther-in-law and two youing grandchildren. The collective change is that we have been singing for a few months now, although it feels a bit strange to be warbling with a mask on. This simple addition to our worship experience which involves both vocalizing and hearing others doing so has been encouraging.
During the service I thought about an episode of a BBC radio program called The Listening Service which I happened upon. It is called The timeless power of contemporary choral music. It covers a lot of ground in 29 minutes, looking back to the flowering of choral music in centuries past then pondering the extraodinary, dare we say mystical effect of blending human voices in contemporary music. The host points out that there are something like 25,000 choirs in Great Britain and that choral singing is second only to sports as a group activity. The episode is brilliant in exploring the power of singing together, and that even intentionally dissonant vocal music can be a sort of intimate sonic embrace, or hug.
Even before the pandemic so many churches in North Amercia were on the verge of being Cheshire Cat congregations, nothing much left but the grin -- or grimace. Needless to say, where congregations have dwindled so have choirs. Not only do many congregations no longer have choirs they can't find accompanists either. Some use recorded music for hymn-singing. Who knows what will happen when or if congregations come back together.
The BBC piece notes that secular choral music does have a contemplative, transcendent, spiritual quality and often these choirs seeks out less conventional venues which will be cathedral-like. Think of the pop-up Choir!Choir!Choir! gathering to sing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah at the decommisioned Hearn Power Plant in Toronto. That recording brings tears to my eyes because Cohen is drawing on the biblical story of King David yet many of the ecstatic singers may have been unaware of the connection.
I can't do justice to the depth and range of this episode, so give it a listen. I always welcome your thoughts on subjects, so feel free to comment. I've also included the link to an Eric Whitacre virutal choir with more than 17,000 voices from 129 countries. Brilliant.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010nx4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InULYfJHKI0
Hearn Power Plant Toronto
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