Sounding the Congregational Voice Marissa Glynias Moore Yale University
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Yale Journal of Music & Religion Volume 4 Number 1 Voice, Media, and Technologies of the Article 3 Sacred Sounding the Congregational Voice Marissa Glynias Moore Yale University Follow this and additional works at: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr Part of the Christianity Commons, Ethnomusicology Commons, Liturgy and Worship Commons, Music Performance Commons, Music Practice Commons, Other American Studies Commons, and the Other Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Moore, Marissa Glynias () "Sounding the Congregational Voice," Yale Journal of Music & Religion: Vol. 4: No. 1, Article 3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1093 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yale Journal of Music & Religion by an authorized editor of EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sounding the Congregational Voice Cover Page Footnote Many thanks to Rebekah Ahrendt, Brian Kane, Monique Ingalls and Michael Veal for their guidance, and to Nathan Myrick, Marcell Steuernagel, Adam Perez, John Klaess, and both reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on this work. This article is available in Yale Journal of Music & Religion: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr/vol4/iss1/3 Sounding the Congregational Voice Marissa Glynias Moore Why are fewer people singing in church? This are pitched too high for congregants to sing. is a question that currently preoccupies main- Or maybe, as hymnologist John Bell has line Protestant and Catholic clergy, church argued, the blame rests with the musical musicians, and laity in the United States. 1 celebrity culture of the West, which disen- Through online listicles with titles like “Nine franchises individuals of their own voices by Reasons Why People Aren’t Singing in overly privileging vocal “talent.”3 Indeed, at a Worship,” “Six Reasons Congregational Sing- time when Evangelical megachurches are ing Is Waning,” or “7 Reasons People May thriving around the globe with a seemingly Not Sing in Church,” writers attempt to high level of participatory musicking, this diagnose the budding crisis in a variety of question becomes even more urgent for local ways: 2 maybe the musical style is to blame, American congregations to grapple with.4 because it is either too syncopated for congre- The fears being voiced in the contem- gations to replicate communally (a common porary mainline Protestant blogosphere are criticism raised against Contemporary Wor- only the most recent manifestation of similar ship Music, or CWM) or too stylistically concerns that have resounded throughout the removed from what congregations listen to in history of Christianity. From the Reformation their daily lives (a critique of “traditional” to the Second Vatican Council to the American Protestant hymnody). Perhaps the issue is “worship wars” of recent decades over the purely one of vocal range, as many selections appropriateness of popular music in church, Christian institutions have implemented re- forms targeting a perceived lack of congrega- 1 Thomas Day, Why Catholics Can't Sing: The Culture of Catholicism (Spring Valley, NY: Cross-road, 2013); tional participation within worship. Because of Ruth King Goddard, “Who Gets to Sing in the congregational singing’s ubiquity across most Kingdom?,” in Congregational Music-Making and denominational liturgies, it is often prioritized Community in a Mediated Age, ed. Anna E. Nekola and Tom Wagner (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015). For as a privileged site for these reforms, since it is more on the “mainline” and its current worship a practice that depends on the active vocal practice, see Jason Lantzer, Mainline Christianity (New York: NYU Press, 2012). participation of the gathered body of 2 Kenny Lamm, “Nine Reasons People Aren't worshippers. Currently, solutions to the lack of Singing in Worship,” https://www.renewingworshipnc. congregational singing proceed even outside of org/2014/06/11/nine-reasons-people-arent-singing-in- worship/; Brian Moss, “7 Reasons People May Not Sing prescriptive institutional change, as evidenced in Church,” http://www.pastorbrianmoss.com/7-reasons -people-may-not-sing-in-church/; Thom S. Rainer, “Six Reasons Congregational Singing Is Waning,” http:// 3 John L. Bell, The Singing Thing: A Case for thomrainer.com/2016/10/six-reasons-congregational- Congregational Song (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2000), singing-waning/. This is just a brief selection of many 95–113. articles of this type. Reasons also include arguments over 4 As just one of many examples, see the recently liturgy and reduction of the congregation’s role purely to published volume on the globalization and worship singing; for example, see Jonathan Aigner, “Why Would practice of Hillsong Church: Tanya Riches and Tom Anyone Sing in Church These Days?,” http://www. Wagner, eds., The Hillsong Movement Examined: You Call patheos.com/blogs/ponderanew/2016/06/06/why- Me out Upon the Waters (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave would-anyone-sing-in-church-these-days/. Macmillan, 2017). Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 4, No. 1 (2018) 28 by the emerging market for “worship inquiry to the act of voicing rather than the consultants” tasked with empowering con- voice as an object. Congregational singing is a gregations to reclaim their voices.5 performative act that must be communally But what is it about the communal act of produced; as a result, the voices (or communal producing sound through voices that inspires voice, if one prefers) are only the result of that such intense attention over its practice? Why action. And it is clear from the flurry of public does it matter if congregations sing? 6 commentary cited above that singing (or not) is Underlying these concerns is an assumption the primary concern, rather than “the voice.” about the power of vocal acts: voices have the As such, a performative model of voicing ability to do something in worship, both literally allows us to consider the specific priorities of and metaphorically. Congregational singing has congregational singing as practice.8 the capacity to accomplish liturgical actions, However, a shift toward vocal performance just as it facilitates community formation and has consequences for the material voice—the catalyzes encounters between congregants and sonic phenomenon produced by individual Christians around the world. An inquiry into bodies. What role does sound play when the the role of voices in worship represents a new voice is considered through its practice, rather way of considering the age-old problems of than through its materiality? Such a question is congregational participation raised above; and, particularly pertinent to music scholars, who by reinserting the voice into the conversation are understandably preoccupied with the around liturgical action and worship, we can characteristics and meanings of sound. begin to explore the kinds of meaningful Drawing on recent musicological work on spiritual efficacy that voices carry through voice by Brian Kane, I explore how the act of congregational singing.7 congregational singing has the capacity to In order to theorize vocal acts within redefine established relationships between congregational singing, I first suggest that the sound, content, and source, three components practice requires a model of voice that that comprise Kane’s model of voice.9 The act emphasizes the doing of voices, shifting my of congregational singing therefore destabilizes vocal sound as a category, due to shifting priorities over language compre-hension, 5 Well-known examples include John Bell and musical style, and intensity of community Alice Parker, both of whom travel extensively throughout the U.S. and U.K. for this purpose. The participation. In addition, I posit that the nonprofit Music that Makes Community holds work- practice of congregational singing represents a shops to empower laity to lead music congregationally and further invite their own congregations to sing; see fruitful case study for formulating theories of www.musicthatmakescommunity.org. 6 Note here that as an ethnographer, my concern is practical rather than theological. In essence, I am not asking why congregations should sing, but rather what 8 Marcel Steuernagel has traced the concept of motivates singing when it occurs, therefore prioritizing performativity into the congregational music scene in a the experiential motivations of congregational practice. recent conference paper presented to the Society of 7 I do not mean to suggest here that a theorization Christian Scholarship in Music (2016), “Between of voicing can fully account for the dearth of Kantor and Frontman: Gesture as a Source of congregational singing in mainline contexts; rather, this Authentication and Context Creation in South Brazilian work is intended to excavate the motivations under- Lutheran Congregational Worship.” girding concerns over congregational musical partici- 9 Brian Kane, “The Model Voice,” Journal of the pation through focusing on voices. American Musicological Society 68/3 (2015). Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 4, No. 1 (2018) 29 voice that are both performative and discourse has catalyzed a similar interest within communal. Through this exploration, I provide musicology, as music scholars attempt to tackle a conceptual framework for future inves- a subject that “is nothing if not boundless, tigations into the active potential of furtive,