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“Wasted opportunity”. That's the phrase that comes to mind when I consider the “Silent Song of Praise” that will occur at the worship service on July 11 at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas.

There are, it occurs to me, many opportunities for silence in the liturgy. Silence may be kept after the lessons. Silence may be kept during the prayers. Silence may be kept after the bidding to Confession. Silence may be kept (and rarely is in most churches!!) at the Breaking of the Bread.

But music is another matter. Music is rarely silent.

It is sometimes, of course. The famous 4'33" by John Cage is silent. That's the whole point. It has even recently been used as congregational song. But note that this was a congregational "performance" of 4'33" relating to a theme of confession.

It's not that I'm unsympathetic to the idea. General Convention must be (I imagine) a busy, noisy, stressful place. And who doesn't want some silence in the midst of that? But again, Song + Praise ≠ Silence (unless you are in outer space, in which case, please reach for Hymn 431).

But perhaps the “Silent Song of Praise” is just a symptom of a larger mix-and-match, kitchen sink approach to the liturgical planning that we see for General Convention.

Don't get me wrong, I know that planning liturgy and music for General Convention is very hard work. I once sat down with the Rev. Charlie Dupree and we discussed this very topic.

It is a very tall order to plan worship for a body as large and diverse as the Episcopal Church's Triennial Family Reunion, but an examination of the available service leaflets for this year's General Convention reveal a litany of errors and confusing choices.

The service leaflets themselves are marred by technical and typographical strangeness and inconsistencies. But more than this, the concept of these eight services seem to relish in a kind of "liturgical restlessness". It's more innovation than is really necessary, even at a gathering of this type, I would think. And it seems to me that by trying to please everyone, few people would walk away with a sense that this is the kind of worship that they could find in their home diocese. It brings to mind those words of C. S. Lews, “Jesus said to Peter, ‘feed my sheep,’ not, ‘experiment on my rats’”.

When I began examining these services I expected to find one or two mistakes. As I discovered more and more, however, some of which are somewhat ludicrous (Absolution before Confession, being one example), I became vaguely angry about the whole thing. If the national Episcopal Church cannot correctly juggle the limited amount of options without serious error, perhaps we have introduced too many already. Truly, we need to have “deep engagement with the structure, content, language and theological thrust of The Book of Common Prayer (1979), with a view to increasing the Church’s familiarity with the book in its entirety” as resolution A069 so aptly puts it.

July 5 - 79th General Convention Opening Holy Eucharist - Rite II, Eucharistic Prayer A

• The very first hymn, “We are one in the Spirit” appears in no published resource of the Episcopal Church (that I am aware of). Does this matter? We're just getting started, so perhaps more on this another time.
• The first line of this very first hymn is duplicated in error. It appears on both the first and the second page of the service leaflet. This type of mistake is highly confusing to congregations, and will not make for a very good debut of the congregational singing for the days to come.
• Where other resources would use dashed slurs to show that notes are sometimes slurred in certain stanzas where the underlay requires it, they are omitted here. Furthermore, the underlay uses a long line (sometimes called a “lyric line”) in cases of two syllable words where standard musical engraving practice is to use hyphens (notable examples being “Je_____sus” and “Spi_____rit”).
• In the Song of Praise “Sing to the Lord a new song” having the directions in quotes is very strange indeed. I laughed out loud the first time I saw it.
• A minor point, but there is no indication how many times the Psalm refrain is to be sung.
• The Sequence Hymn “Great is thy faithfulness” is printed in unison in D Major, not in parts and in E-flat as it is given at Hymn 189 of Lift Every Voice and Sing II (LEVAS). The fermata over the final “faithfulness” is omitted.
• A rubric about the Absolution, and its bolded “Amen” is printed directly before the Confession. I'm not a priest, but I don't believe this is permitted, even in Enriching Our Worship.
• In the Sanctus, the word Hosanna is spelled “Hosannah”. I know of no published instance of this spelling. (The Spanish translation, I notice, uses the correct spelling.)
• This is (possibly) a minor point, but the line breaks and indentation of the Lord's Prayer in the BCP have not been preserved here.
• Another minor point: the capitalization of the word Celebrant in the rubric “The celebrant breaks the Bread in silence” is not consistent with the Prayer Book. It also conflates what are two separate rubrics in the BCP. (“The Celebrant breaks the consecrated Bread.” / “A period of silence is kept.”)
• The word Celebrant is lowercase throughout in this service. Its Spanish translation is sometimes capitalized, but mostly not. I find it again strange to deviate from the Prayer Book style, but the inconsistency is easily avoided.
• The Agnus Dei is hilariously misspelled “Angus Dei”.
• The word Post-Communion is not hyphenated in the Prayer Book.
• Again a (possibly) minor point, but the sense lines from the BCP are not preserved in the Postcommunion Prayer (the word, without hyphens, appears on page 408 and 409 of the BCP).
• In the closing hymn, some of the slurs are drawn improperly. They are slurs over the first stanza words “preach”, “go”, and “-newed”.

July 6 - Holy Eucharist Festival [sic?] - Rite II, Eucharistic Prayer B

• Am I the only one to find the title of this service peculiar? I have attended a “Festival Holy Eucharist,” and a “Festal Holy Eucharist,” but the words at the title of this service strike me as out of order.
• I will be interested to hear how the pagination of these services appear if hard copies are printed. It strikes me as unfortunate that the four-stanza opening hymn will involve seven page turns if the first page of the available PDF is the cover of the document. I am of the strong opinion that the congregation should not have to flip back a page to begin a successive stanza of a hymn.
• Furthermore, “King” is not correctly capitalized the first time it appears in the hymn. (It is, though, capitalized at the end of the first stanza.)
• It is interesting to note changes to John Rutter's setting of the Benedictus es, Domine. The words “Glory to you, Lord God of our fathers” now read “Glory to you, Lord God of creation”. This seems like a willy-nilly change to both a familiar piece of service music and an approved text of the Prayer Book. I posit that texts authorized by General Convention should not be altered at worship services for a meeting of this very body.
• In this same piece of music the word You is capitalized in error on the second line (“glory to You”).
• In this same piece of music, Name is not capitalized. This seems to me more of an error than a deliberate choice, but who knows at this point.
• A minor point (probably) but the end of this same piece of music does not have the requisite number of bars required by the descant. If the descant is not being sung this is probably a moot point. In any case, the descant is not printed here as it is in the Hymnal.
• This piece also suffers from poorly rendered slurs. The first instance being the two notes above “your”.
• At the salutation below the heading Collect of the Day, the word Pray is errantly capitalized (“Let us Pray.”)
• In the Sequence Hymn “Cantad al Señor” the hyphenation of Señor is incorrect throughout (should be “Se-ñor”).
• Every instance of the word Alleluia after the Gospel is misspelled. Each is missing an L.
• The Agnus Dei is spelled correctly in this service, but it is not in small caps like the rest of the section headings.
• I have to object to the truncating of the closing hymn, Hymn 518 in the Hymnal 1982, ”Christ is made the sure foundation”. It is not a long hymn, and the Hymnal gives no provision to omit the second stanzas as is done here. (In the hymnal, stanzas starred with an asterisk may be omitted without hindering the general meaning/narrative of the text.)

I will continue examining a few more of these services (possibly all of them) in the coming days. I at least have more to say about the use of a Rite I Eucharistic Prayer on July 11. But for now, I have just one final observation.

When hymns in these service leaflets come from published resources of the Episcopal Church, there is no indication of this. There are no hymn numbers for hymns from the Hymnal 1982 or hymnal supplements.

But let alone any reference to published resources, there is no attribution of authors or composers of sacred music. The copyright permissions will be available online, each leaflet tells us, but what of material in the public domain? Will Henry Francis Lyte be credited as the author to “Praise, my soul, the King of heaven”?

There is a way in which creative input, both of the musicians in the room and the composers and authors of the sacred music being sung at these services, seems deeply undervalued. To not print anyone's name – living or dead – in these leaflets is a mistake, I believe.

As a church musician, I hope that my contribution to the life of the Episcopal Church is valued. If I wrote music and saw it used at an occasion like this, only to find no reference to my name in the printed material, I would be very disappointed.

These are not anonymous contributions. All of this music, all of this poetry, was born out of the ongoing creation of our loving, liberating, life-giving God (to borrow a phrase). Let's properly acknowledge the contributions of church musicians and artists at all gatherings of the Episcopal Church, please, and especially at General Convention.

My mother is here for the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), and she showed me their printed worship orders. Even they can get this right in their worship services.

At a time when Prayer Book revision (and by extension Hymnal revision too) is at least up for discussion, all of this warrants some deeper reflection.

19 June, 12:30 p.m.: An astute reader points out that the Offertory Music listed for July 5 also likely contains an error. "¡Recesito Alleluia!" is probably meant to be "¡Resucito Alleluia!"

Labels: General Convention 2018, liturgy