From the Organist and Choirmaster
Over the last few weeks or so I have been sifting through our choral music library to organize and catalog our musical resources better. It hasn’t been updated in a good number of years. This task is a bit daunting; the choral library currently is five large filing cabinets with four drawers each housing around 40 pieces of music. Over the years, the Parish Choir has acquired books of choral music that contain some of the pieces that are in these cabinets, so as I go along, I’m able to pull things that are in complied books aside and organize the library more.
When I first arrived at Saint Andrew’s the choir expressed to me their desire to utilize the choral library more. We’ve pulled things out of the library that they both have sung and have not, but we’ve only scratched the threshold of an enormous room that houses truly beautiful music. Amid the dusty files of music and tissues in my office to offset the random sniffles caused by the dust, I’ve discovered marvelous pieces. There are things from when Saint Andrew’s first opened its doors even! Frail pages of dark brown music reveal the history of this wonderful parish. There are pieces dedicated or in memory of certain people or occasions. There are pieces composed by previous organist and choirmasters, descants, service music, introits, all sorts of great liturgical gems.
I understand music’s ability to help define the history of a place, sacred or secular (just look at the ways music on the radio has changed, the top charts aren’t the same as they were in 1990, no less 2020 even). The same is true of church music. Alongside an anthem by Thomas Morely, a sixteenth century composer, lies Lift up your heads, O Ye gates by William Mathias composed in the twentieth century. Both are wonderful and are appropriate for our liturgical expressions. To me, this emphasizes the rich musical traditions of our wider Anglican preferences for choral music, but even more so, our own parish-level love for classical sacred music. We could experience what going to church may have felt like in the 1600s by using anthems from the time we have. We could experience what going to church felt like in the late 1950s too. Perhaps even curating both time periods together (we often do this), complementing the diversity Anglican Church music has always deemed necessary. I so appreciate our parish’s support and love for music and our choral library is telling of that. Come take a look sometime (after I’m done organizing it)!