Wanted: 'worship songs' for men

This morning I was tackling another task I find particularly difficult, namely putting together an order of service for Sunday night. Others might find this easy: pick a few hymns, add some suitable prayers, top and tail with an introduction and closing blessing and that’s it.

Unfortunately, I usually get stuck at step one. When it comes to picking the hymns and songs, I go completely blank. This may, however, be connected with the fact that I find so much of what we sing fairly dire, and in particular I think much of it is totally unsuitable for men.

I was especially struck by this with regard to a new song we are going to learn for Sunday night. The author is well-known and well-liked, so I will spare his blushes, but to be honest, the lyrics read like a ‘rush job’ and the tune isn’t much better.

Now the next bit is very naughty, so if you might be offended look away now, but the following was actually generated by a computer script (with a tiny bit of tweaking by me):

God of Israel, I never told you how I truly feel
You mean to me a great deal
You are my eternal sunshine
When I first met you I knew it was a sign

God of Israel, you are unbelievably beautiful
You deserve the world’s largest jewel
Words from me cannot express
How you have captured my heart with success

God of Israel, you mean so much to me
I never knew that this could be
Eternal bliss is where I’m bound
In your loving arms is where it’s found

My life is yours, I hope you will like it
Because loving you, I will never quit
Until soon, when we meet again
In your heart is where I will remain.

The scary thing is, it does bear an uncanny resemblance to modern ‘worship songs’. All it needs is suitably uplifting music, and you’d be there.

It would also be just the sort of thing men would dread singing. Most men are quite capable in this regard. The problem is finding the right combination of words and music.

Indeed, music is crucial because it determines the impact of the song as a whole. Try listening to ‘O Thou who camest from above’ to this tune sung by Maddy Prior (via YouTube), and compare it with the usual ‘Hereford’. The latter is somewhat ‘woozy’, the former (in my view) rather more ‘robust’. And it is robustness that I think men need when it comes to public singing.

Far too many of our contemporary songs are set to ‘sentimental’ (or overly-complicated) tunes. Perhaps this is because the modern ‘worship group’ uses instruments which suit a style which doesn’t translate well into ‘congregational’, collective, singing. (Compare the modern group with the church ‘gallery band’ in the picture at the beginning of the Maddy Prior clip.) Yet for most of us, congregational singing is the only way we are going to let our voices be heard (or at least, ought to).

But do men want to sing? My view is they will, if they are given the right material. Try listening to this, from the repertoire of the French Foreign Legion. The song is J’avais un Camarade, and to my mind there is something almost monastic about the effect. Even the words would adapt — at least as readily as my computer-generated piece above — to express a Christian sentiment:

I had a friend
None better than he
In peace and in war
We were like two brothers
Marching in step.

I rather fancy the idea of someone writing truly Christian lyrics to fit the same tune. And when they’ve tried that, perhaps they’d like to try the Kepi Blanc — though one wouldn’t want the Legion getting upset over copyright.

Amongst John Wesley’s ‘Directions for Singing’ was the following:

Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.

Perhaps we could adapt the words of Winston Churchill as a plea for the writers of modern Christian music to think about the men in the congregation: “Give us the songs and we’ll sing the praise.”

John P Richardson
2 July 2010

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Music to die to

Last Saturday I was reminded why Martin Luther wrote about music, that “it alone produces what otherwise only theology can do, namely, a calm and joyful disposition.”

The occasion for this was a visit to the High Barn, at Great Bardfield, to hear Gordon Giltrap, my favourite solo guitarist, where we were also treated to a set by another guitarist, Clive Carroll.

Now I have to admit I’d never heard of Mr Carroll before this, and as I hadn’t booked the tickets I was a trifle disappointed to have precious ‘Giltrap time’ being taken up by someone else. But within ten minutes I was completely hooked. Carroll has a virtuosity with the guitar which has, literally, to be seen to be believed. A recording may capture the sound, but seeing him live you realize it really is just him, and it really does involve just one guitar.

As well as enjoying the concert, however (and Carroll duetting with Giltrap was an added bonus), I found myself wondering at the power and mystery of music. We refer loosely to animals such as whales and birds ‘singing’. But a biologist will tell us that the sounds they make serve not to entertain but to inform — to mark out territory, to announce danger or food, and so on.

Yet it is surely difficult to treat human music-making in the same reductionist manner. There is certainly a ‘visceral’ effect to some music. Certain beats and rhythms do seem ‘primitive’, in the sense that they draw on an almost biological impulse. But the sheer difficulty of some musical forms surely demolishes the notion that biology is the basis for our production and enjoyment of music.

Indeed, I would go as far as to suggest that music is one of the points at which materialism is confronted by a different view of reality. Luther believed that “the devil, the creator of saddening cares and disquieting worries, takes flight at the sound of music almost as he takes flight at the word of theology.” And the Bible speaks of how David’s music soothed the demon-troubled Saul.

We speak of how music ‘lifts us up’ —but lifts us up to what? To some illusory experience of electrical impulses in the neural cortex? Can it be that all the music of the world, and all the musicians, and all those who have ever listened to music and been moved to sing and to swing, to sway, to dance, to laugh, to march, to cry —all this is just the bumping together of atom and molecules, yet another fortunate by product of the Big Bang,  like the ‘Good Samaritan’ impulse of some to help, rather than beat up (or eat) the stranger?

Remember the scene in Philadelphia where Tom Hanks’s character is listening to La Mamma Morta, whilst wheeling his drip-feed round the room? OK it is acting, but the emotion of the scene is instantly recognizable. I am of the view that there is music not only to live for but to die to, precisely because there is (or seems to be) something about music which is truly transcendental. The music, says Hanks’ character, “fills with a hope” —and so do we.

So I want —amongst others —John Renbourn’s The Pelican, Gordon Giltrap’s Nursery Chimes and why not the Cocteau Twins’ Pearly Dewrops Drop? That’ll do for now.

John Richardson
24 November 2009

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