Silence, Music, and Deep Prayer 3

Last night, we continued our consideration of prayerful music with a discussion of the Psalms.


From Bonhoeffer's helpful little book Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible:

The disciples asked Jesus how to pray. It's frustrating to feel that you don't know how to pray, to feel that somehow your prayers aren't making it to God. In response, Jesus gave them the Lord's Prayer.

The book of Psalms is a book of prayers which is a little odd given that we tend to think of the Bible as the word of God while prayers are thought to be the words of humanity to God. How can this be? Somehow, Jesus prays in the Psalms. As we pray them, the words of God become our words.

In the tradition of Luther, Bonhoeffer asserts that "All the prayers of Holy Scripture are summarized in the Lord's Prayer, and are contained in its immeasurable breadth." The Psalter and Lord's Prayer interpenetrate and are understood through each other. "Thus the Lord's Prayer becomes the touchstone for whether we pray in the name of Jesus Christ . . ."

With my students at Southeastern, I discuss that we Christian musicians and artists are psalmists.

By this I mean that we process life through our creative work with a mindfulness that we live and create in God's presence. This is what the writers of the Psalter did. They honestly expressed their struggles and joys but always did so with an eye to their relationship with God.

At times, we struggle with weariness, emotional turmoil and confusion. Prayerful music helps to orient us so as to be able to lift those things to God and to open ourselves to the Spirit's touch. We repetitively sang this brief new setting as a possible experience of these dynamics. We concluded our singing with a gradual diminuendo enacted by each singer ending his or her singing when ready to do so. This was a lovely way to enter into silence and a reification of John the Baptist's words, "He must increase, but I must decrease."




Following this experience, Dr. Larry Sledge (All Saints' Music Director) shared insight into All Saints' rich tradition of Psalm-singing based on his own numerous settings of Psalms. He highlighted the following topics among others.

The 1980s as "the decade of the hymnal" -
many denominations were publishing new hymnals and often including significant sections of singable Psalms

Exhortations in the Psalms themselves to sing to the Lord with a new song

Incorporation of expressive melodic notes and surprising harmonies to give a sense of newness

Invitations within the Psalms to praise but also to seek God in quietess at times
 
Use of melodic shape and text-painting to clearly indicate the priorities of the text and to add meaning to the singing so that the Psalms can be "brought to life" in such a way "that the congregation can take part in them" 

Use of various translations to refresh the singers' engagement with very familiar passages

Choice of texts for congregational refrains to provide a central message to the singing of particular Psalms

We concluded the evening with a worshipful compline service with liturgy adapted by Dr. Cotton and Dr. Sledge's beautifully harmonized, chant-like setting of the Lord's Prayer.

Writing this post on the following morning, I share this recording of the Lakeland Choral Society singing a Tallis Psalm-setting under Dr. Sledge's direction.