A JOYFUL NOISE

By Christine Burton

‘Paperless’ music a good challenge for church choirs

Last summer I was fortunate to participate in a pastoral music workshop hosted by St. Paul’s University in Ottawa and run by the All Saints Company of San Francisco.

The workshop focused primarily on what was simply called “paperless music.” Self-evidently, singing without sheet music, but in reality its reach was broader than this. The workshop involved a variety of approaches to “paperless” music — call and response, where words and music are repeated back to the leader of song; chorus repetition, which is similar to antiphon/verse model of the Psalms; longer episodes of “teaching” of a song with a fair number of words.

Interestingly, while some were what we might refer to as “ethnic” (Latin American music is only “ethnic” if you’re not Latin American), they ranged in style, with some being upbeat and dance-y, others being more contemplative, such as the Taizé experience. But as the instructors demonstrated to and through us, you don’t need sheet music in front of you to “make music.” After all, it’s called “the oral tradition” for a reason.

Now, you may think, “easy for them, they’re all musicians. . . .” In reality, though, such an approach actually presents some challenges for traditional church musicians. We are accustomed to the crutch of having sheet music. And when I say “crutch,” I do mean that. My current director, like many of my church and community choir directors before him, regularly exhorts the choir to look up and at him, and sometimes to sing without any music at all, assuring us that we probably know not just the first word of a hymn, but the entire thing. This was brought home in a recent church choir performance that included Randall Thompson’s Alleluia — a piece that uses no words other than “alleluia” — and still we were glued to our books. This workshop challenged me to get out my music-based comfort zone and consider the reality of what some assemblies live on a week-to-week basis.

Assemblies often sing without music in front of them, using all the styles and methods outlined above. It’s not surprising, really, as it’s how we all learned music in our childhood. Our mothers and fathers sang songs to us before we could speak. Then they sang songs where we repeated the chorus or were a note or two behind them in repeating the words of the verse. Then, if your family was like mine, you sang songs on long car rides — learning words and melodies, and maybe even harmonies.

These days, kids learn songs from watching the same TV shows and movies over and over again. Casting my mind back without much difficulty, I can still sing all the words to the theme songs from Gilligan’s Island and The Beverley Hillbillies. (Come on, admit it, you went immediately to “Come listen to a story ‘bout a man named Jed . . .” See how easy it is to get pulled off track by paperless music that has sunk into the depth of memory?) Our favourite Christmas carols — how often did we ever see the words or music as we learned them throughout our childhoods? Even as adults we learn songs from hearing them on the radio. All without paper.

We are simply the latest in a long line of people who have learned via the oral tradition. And proof-positive of how incredibly effective the oral tradition, the paperless tradition, can be in sharing music and spreading ideas, building on the experience of centuries of people singing, long before education made simple literacy commonplace, let alone the ability to read music.

Part of what I learned from the workshop was how engaging paperless music can be. Because we cannot rely on notes and words on a page, we need to watch and listen — think of how babies can be utterly rapt by someone speaking or singing. And when you really watch and listen to someone, you engage. You focus and pay attention, to content as well as to notes and musical and rhyming patterns. But when you get it right — well, we’re just like the babies who are very pleased with themselves as they match the song structures. It was fun! I wanted to do it again! We helped each other. And, just like babies, success begets success. We are willing to try again. Maybe something a little harder . . .

Another part of the session involved writing our own short compositions. Just a few bars, less than a minute long. I was pretty sure that, as a singer, I wasn’t a composer at all. Turns out I was wrong. I came up with a couple of workable pieces, one of which was actually very good.

However, in terms of learning, this exercise was of particular use to me as a musician. Knowing that I was going to have to teach my own song to the rest of the workshop participants made me realize how important all the elements of a hymn are. I was not going to be able to rely on them being familiar with an old hymn setting, at best they might recognize words if I took well-known Bible passages as my inspiration, which I didn’t. I needed something that would be simple enough to teach, but interesting enough to keep them engaged. A tougher assignment than it first appeared. But I was able to do it, and so were the rest of my workshop classmates.

Most churches and church choirs rely on printed music. It gives us the opportunity to try harder music, to learn more complex harmonies, to sing longer and more verses that allow for a fuller elaboration on a theme. Paperless music doesn’t work for every circumstance, but we shouldn’t assume that paperless isn’t an option. People can learn more easily than we may realize. Paperless music can offer a different kind of complexity and richness than traditional SATB arrangements. It can also provide another way to engage the assembly, and through that engagement, bring them more fully into the liturgy and an experience of the divine.

Those wanting to learn more about paperless music are invited to check out www.allsaintscompany.org. There you will find resources related to paperless music and more. And, yes, as the name often suggests, All Saints is an Anglican crowd. They came up from San Francisco to offer a non-denominational workshop at St. Paul’s Catholic University in Ottawa, and are willing to visit elsewhere in Canada as well. Good luck and good singing!

A Saskatchewan soprano, Burton has sung praises to the Lord in Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and now at St. Joe’s in Ottawa, where she is a chorister and cantor at two masses.