I have many musician friends, and one topic that frequently comes up among my LDS musician friends is music in the church. One friend, Douglas Pew, often poses a music related question on Facebook, and then a discussion (polite and respectful) ensues. Today's question was:
LDS friends, how do you define, describe, decide on what an "appropriate" musical number is for a Sacrament Meeting?
This discussion brought to mind memorable moments in musical numbers in sacrament meeting for me. And I realized that, just like I can remember many, many Primary songs, but hardly any actual Primary lessons, I can also remember very few sacrament meeting talks, but many, many musical numbers. This served to reinforce my own personal belief that we do not use music for worship nearly enough in the church--its use has diminished over the years, and I think that we need more music. Surely I am not alone in feeling the spirit, feeling comfort and unity, through music.
First: the only talk from sacrament meeting in my youth that I actually remember. Like, I can hear it in my head still, after about 45 years. The speaker was Lynn McKinley, the Man With the Golden Voice. He was a BYU professor and a KBYU announcer and I am sure is all but forgotten now. He came to Alberta as an Education Week speaker back in the day when it was held at Lethbridge Community College. Somehow, we got him as a sacrament meeting speaker in Taber Third ward. He spoke about the atonement of Jesus Christ in ways that made that event real to me in ways that it had not been before. That talk literally changed me. He had an amazing voice, and he was a commanding presence, so I am sure that I paid better attention for his talk than I might have to talks on the same topic in the past, or I might have learned more earlier.
But music! Where do I even start? So many memories.
First of all, I need to include Sunday School. Because Sunday School was not at all the same as what young people think of as an LDS Sunday School today. And by young people, I mean middle aged people, apparently, since I am now getting old! Until the block system started in 1980, the same month that I got married, Sunday School was entirely separate from Sacrament Meeting. It had its own officers. There were Junior and Senior varieties--the Junior version had a coordinator who was usually a woman, and then there was a Superintendent, and a board. Music was a vital part of Sunday School. There was an opening song, two or three practice songs, a sacrament song, and then we went to our classes. After our classes, we all met (including the Junior Sunday School (who had done all of the above in their own special small chapel) in the main chapel for the closing song and prayer. Then, we could all go home. Except that the men had priesthood meeting afterwards, and so our family stayed, and that was a wonderful time, because many of the farm kids stayed, waiting for their dads, and we all played, and the moms chatted, and a good time was had by all.
Three times a year, on Christmas, Easter and Mother's Day, the entire Sunday School time was used for a program. I was often quite miffed that Father's Day didn't get the same treatment; for them we usually had a special opening exercises, and then classes as usual. It didn't seem to bother any of the dads, though. These programs were exquisite. They were my favorite. So much music! Solos and duets and quartets and choruses and instrumental numbers. Poetry was recited. You know how sometimes mothers hate Mother's Day, even sometimes not going to church that week, because the talks make them feel like "not good enough"? Well, that was not a thing. Mothers loved Mother's Day programs, too. I remember that the Gough family would often sing "Your mother and mine," which I totally thought, as I grew up, was a "church" song--and here it is from Disney's Peter Pan! That song always touched me very deeply. There were no talks to make anyone feel inadequate--just songs and poems. Just a program. And then the women were given flowers. It was lovely.
My dad's cousin Bill Bullock (cousin-in-law, if you want to be technical; his wife had been Julia Conrad, who died as a young mother) played the marimba. A marimba! Imagine the novelty! Several times a year, Bill would be asked to play in our sacrament meeting. When I got to church and saw a marimba on the stand, I knew it would be a good Sunday. Bill played hymns on the marimba, always more than one. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes of hymns on the marimba. To sit and think of the words of familiar hymns played on the marimba was magical.
When I was in high school, our choir teacher was Mr. Malcolm Edwards. He was a very young father of two children, probably in his late twenties, who had come to our school from England. He was an amazing teacher! He made singing anything very, very cool. Mr. Edwards was also the music director for the United Church. (The United Church is a Canadian church that was created initially from a union of the Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Methodist churches in 1925. In Canada, Catholics are the most numerous, and then United Church is second, for membership in Canada.) He thought it would be great for our school choir to create a program of about an hour to take to various congregations in town. We went to at least two LDS wards and the United Church. (We did not have any Catholic students in choir, really, because of having the two school systems in town.) Our performance would probably not be allowed today in our more conservative church culture, but these performances were very memorable to me. I know we had a song that included brass--trombones and trumpets--and our version of "
There is Sunshine in my Soul Today" was definitely more jazzy than the one in the hymn book! We sang the Randall Thomson "
Alleluia," and Bach's "
Air on a G String" with no words--only oohs and ahs--and
Zadok the Priest, "
Day by Day" from Godspell--it was a wonderful opportunity for some interfaith cooperation. I am so glad I had that experience.
Sometimes, we had organ and piano duets by our ward organists, Clarice Harding and Gail Layton. And sometimes we got to sing. Actually, that started really young. The first time was when I was maybe four. The four of us children were singing "Favored Little Ones were they," from the old green Primary book. And Colleen had decided she didn't want to sing. You all know this story--that was the last time my dad ever used a belt to spank a child, because I bit him right through his many layers of winter wear. You can't spank a child into wanting to sing when she doesn't feel like singing! We sang, and it was a wonderful experience.
Singing was a way for me to share my testimony. I still would rather share it through music than the spoken word. Once, Arlene, Marie and I did our own arrangement of "He shall feed his flock" from the Messiah. (That was also in the old Primary song book.) It was a high council Sunday (Sacrament meeting has not changed much over the years--only it was always at night back in the day.) The speaker spoke about musical numbers in sacrament meeting, and he was kind of opinionated about what those musical numbers should be like. So it was kind of intimidating to get up after his talk and sing, but we did. And it was wonderful, because we had planned it to be wonderful, and that man did indeed tell us after that our musical number was just the way musical numbers should be. (Today--would it have been okay? I mean it was an aria, not from the hymn book!)
Marie wrote an arrangement of "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" that used the tune in our current hymnal (which is close to what was sung in the 1800s, but not exact) mixed with a tune of her own making that fit the mood of the words more exactly. At least, we thought so then, and I still do now. But it was definitely an art song, not a hymn, and I played while she sang. It was my first time accompanying someone and I was so scared--my piano teacher said I was shaking so badly she thought the whole piano might shake itself out of the room. But I did it, and Marie sounded beautiful and it was all good.
When a young man in our ward came home from his mission to Peru, Margaret and I sang "Santos Venid" (Come, come ye Saints) and we did our own arrangement based on what the Tabernacle Choir sang. I asked LeRon to play for us because we didn't have the accompaniment written down. He thought we should just get someone from our ward to play, but when he learned what we wanted, and we performed it that way, he agreed that the pathos of the song was so much better changing keys and tempos as we did. Actually singing the song makes the story come alive, at least for me.
Today, I attended our old ward for two missionary farewells. Mary Elizabeth Thomas and Dallen Engeman are both leaving on Feb. 14, she to Ohio, he to South Carolina. Dallen's dad Ryan and his brothers sang "
I believe" and that was a dream come true! I am too young to have been able to hear the original Lettermen sing live, but I knew that if Ryan ever sang it, it would sound just like his uncle's original recording. And I was not disappointed. And Mary Elizabeth and Glory sang "Heavenly Father Loves Me." What beautiful musical numbers! Dallen spoke about moving to California to play football for a university there, and living with his Aunt Sean and Uncle Larry (this is, yes, that Larry King) and for the first time, on that football team, he was the only member of the church. He took some teasing, did a lot of explaining. He was surprised to find out that his cousins had never seen the Harry Potter movies--and he loves those movies, so he made sure to share them with his cousins. And he thought--when you love something, you need to share it, And that was when he decided he needed to serve a mission. Mary Elizabeth talked about bearing testimony. If I did not write down what those kids said, I would forget it. (I have already forgotten a lot of what Mary Elizabeth said, because she was first and didn't really tell any stories.) But the songs that were sung--I will remember what was sung, who sang it, and how they sang it. Music does that for me.
