You Want Us to Prepare a Worship Video that Will Follow a Sermon by Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton? Yes! We'd Love To!

 (A version of this article appeared in the "Messenger" of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church.)

“Lutherans Restoring Creation is a grass roots movement promoting care for creation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.”

 

Last September LRC premiered a creation-centered worship service that 600 churches, including St. Mark’s, viewed as their Sunday morning worship service. It was an inspiring service of hymns, music, readings, prayers, and nature featuring photography.

 

Pastor Sarah Locke is on the board for LRC. When she told me they were preparing another virtual worship service and invited our St. Mark’s musicians to participate, I was happy to say “Yes!”

 

We were assigned a hymn that was completely new to me – “God Created Heaven and Earth” (ELW 738).

 

Immediately I saw a challenge of presenting this Taiwanese hymn in a way that didn’t westernize it.

 

A traditional Korean windchime.
Will handbells work?

Asian music, including much of its hymnody, is different from what we are used to. Western ears hear music vertically – each note of the melody has implied harmonies. We expect certain sequences (cadences) at the end of musical phrases.

But Asian melodies do not imply harmonies in the same way. They are more about forward motion and the turn of musical phrases.

 

I noticed right away that the tune was based on a 5 – note pentatonic scale. (If you play the black notes on a piano in sequence, you have a pentatonic scale. You can play these notes in any combination and find a pleasing sound.) This meant our accompaniment could be randomly played notes that would add an ethereal quality and provide its own harmony.

 

I decided to do something that alternated instrumental verses (oboe and viola, of course!) with singing.

 

At the very beginning a drone is struck, signifying the Spirit of God brooding over the waters as we hear the instruments play the melody for the first time. A simple drum rhythm leads us into the first stanza which is accompanied by random handbells gently ringing notes from the pentatonic scale.

The instruments come back, this time playing the melody in canon – or in a round. This allows the melody to create its own harmonies.

The drum leads us into stanza two, accompanied by a few additional bells with gentle random ringing.

 

A photo from our recording session.

The instruments come back with a simple bicinium stanza – two independent voice parts. In this case the oboe takes the melody while the viola plays a counter melody that mirrors the activity of rain as it falls to the earth and evaporates back to the atmosphere.

 

The drum leads us back into the final sung stanza. We add more bells. Their ringing is still random, but it’s also faster and majestic so that “All earth’s creatures, small and great, praise God for that blessed state!” A final chord is struck and the sound is allowed to fade.”

See the full worship service here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLnfqE6FFRQ&t=2061s

See a version of "God Created Heaven and Earth" by itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_1dZdZwhMs

This video was  premiered as part of our prerecorded Easter Vigil service and was also included in the Lutherans Restoring Creation worship service - right after a sermon by Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton.

Thank you to everyone who participated in creating it, Pastor Sarah Locke for the invitation, and to Pastor Daniel Locke managing our recording session.

sources:
Windchime photo: This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57866827

Musician's Guide to Evangelical Lutheran Worship

Evangelical Lutheran Worship

St. Mark's Has Much to Celebrate on April 25, 2021

 “Triority” is my favorite non-word. It rhymes with “priority” and refers to three things that all have to done first. It also has a certain sense of urgency that comes with it.

This Sunday we have three things happening during our worship at St. Mark’s – but there is no sense of urgency, at least not in the usual sense. We simply have three things that are happening at the same time.

First, it happens to be the fourth Sunday of Easter. The gospel reading is the comforting “I am the good shepherd” teaching of Jesus and the psalm is Psalm 23 – “The Lord is my shepherd. . .” During the Word portion of the service, we’ll all sing “The King of Love My Shepherd Is” to the gentle Irish tune “St. Columba.”

Second, it’s St. Mark’s Day! Our parish is named for St. Mark the Evangelist. The gospel of Mark was probably the first to be written and he is often symbolized by the winged lion – a symbol that comes from the book of Revelation.

It’s also Church Music Sunday! On the fourth Sunday of Easter we pause to recognize and bless the work of our musicians who rehearse diligently to lead the church’s song at St. Mark’s. Thank you to our handbell ringers and singers, and also to our instrumentalists whose music enhances our worship at St. Mark’s.

And we have a bonus event! Lutherans Restoring Creation has produced another on-line creation-based worship service for Earth Day. Watch the service to see some familiar faces from St. Mark's. Members of our Festival Choir, St. Mark's Ringers, and Eric and Ellen Olson collaborated to present the Hymn of the Day - "God Created Heaven and Earth." (ELW 738)

Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton brings the message.

Thank you to LRC board member Pastor Sarah Locke for inviting us to participate! 

Follow this link to learn everything you need to know about viewing the service.

https://lutheransrestoringcreation.org/creation-focused-service-for-earth-day-2021/

Singers, Ringers, and Instrumentalists preparing
"God Created Heaven and Earth"

Celtic Cross image:  CeCILL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=229038

Mark image: By Vittore Carpaccio - Google Art Project, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38019354

Singers from Our Festival Choir Participate in the Third Virtual Choir Video Project from the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians

 (A version of this article first appeared in The Messenger, the newsletter of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jacksonville, Florida.)

Every facet of society experienced shock from the shutdown that began March 2020 as we faced a global pandemic. Church choirs also felt the impact, especially since a choir rehearsal in Washington State was labeled as the first superspreader event in the United States. Things we had never seen before happened quickly: the American Choral Directors Association hosted an expert-packed seminar that mostly advised its members to not hold rehearsals, masks specially designed for singers hit the market, church services instantly moved to on-line platforms, and “virtual choirs” became a thing.

Recordings and videos of choirs have been around for a long time - but singing in a pandemic required new techniques allowing musicians to sing and play together without actually BEING together.

The Association of Lutheran Musicians attracted a great deal of attention with its first virtual choir project – “O Day Full of Grace” – a hymn for Pentecost. The project, a new arrangement by David Cherwien, attracted more than 1,300 singers and instrumentalists.

This is how it worked.

We received very complete instructions including a recording of someone singing our part (soprano, alto, tenor, or bass) with a simple background accompaniment. Our first challenge was to take the musical score with this video and learn the music on our own. (This is very different from learning your part with the whole choir, including the singers in your own voice section.)

Eric O. prepares a video for a virtual choir

The second step required two electronic devices (in most cases a laptop computer and a cell phone) and a set of headphones or earbuds. While listening to the recording through earbuds, musicians used the second device to make a new recording (recording B) that had only their voice or instrument with no background sound from recording A.

The third step may have been the most challenging – uploading recording B so it could be added to the growing cache of videos for final processing.

The final product included not just sounds, but all the videos that were submitted. See it at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJETTBbnf6w If you watch carefully, you will see Bill Ahrens and myself floating with all the other singing heads.

At St. Mark’s we did our own virtual choir video for our prerecorded Advent Lessons and Carols service. You can still see this video on St. Mark’s YouTube channel at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCWpd1AClTA&t=718s. The virtual choir piece, Nancy M. Raabe’s setting of “Savior of the Nations, Come” begins at the 36:49 mark.

A screen shot from the Festival Choir's first virtual choir selection.
"Savior of the Nations, Come" setting by Nancy M. Raabe

The ALCM has created its third virtual choir video - an arrangement of the beloved Easter hymn “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today” by Kevin J. Hildebrand. This video has an added component with a customized third stanza that highlights the videos submitted by our own singers. (You still hear the full ensemble performing.) Thank you to Bill Ahrens, Ruth Voss, and Mark and Lynette Weber for submitting videos. Our St. Mark’s community enjoyed this video at the end of our prerecorded Easter Vigil service.

Videos from Festival Choir singers in "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today"

The finished product combined the efforts of 1, 784 instrumentalists and singers and was made possible by the generous financial support of Mark and Kathy Helge.

Here is the link. It includes the words so that you can join in the singing wherever you are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laZqLPmhNAc

Some of the 1,784 singers and isntrumentalists