Holy Week - after thoughts

This was clearly one of the top experiences of my sabbatical so far.

St Peters with their innovation and clear high participation, St. Thomas with its liturgical fullness and astounding choral work - both different experiences, but both quite invigorating. I'm full of ideas. The worst part is that I'll have to wait an entire year to put them to use. Don't worry - I'm writing them down, and I've saved all the bulletins.

I can't get over the choir and their director at St. Thomas. Every word and line, it seems, is thoroughly thought through with regard to how to sing it. Their expressive singing, variety of historical styles, clear and solid sense of harmony and pitch yet never at the expense of line was downright moving. They sang a total of 21 anthems/movements of the liturgy, 10 different psalm settings - both Gregorian and four-part Anglican chant, numerous hymn stanzas and descants. An astounding amount of work. No service felt short-changed to allow preparation time for another. How do they do it?

My experiences during these weeks have taught me to work on what great opportunity we have as Lutherans at Mount Olive, and with the National Lutheran Choir.

In France I heard the best of the improvisation (in liturgical context) for the organ. In England and at St. Thomas I heard the best of the choral tradition. Lutherans have the opportunity to analyze and think (we're not alone in that, by the way). What we can bring to the table is a synthesis of all these things. French organ improvisations, English choral tradition, embodied historical/liturgical context.

We do that to some extent already. And ours is a place where folks come to hear the CONGREGATION sing. We really have something going on there. (We're not alone, though - the folks at St. Peter's sing with amazing vibrancy too!)

However, rather than hand all the settings of the ordinary of the mass and psalms to the choir - can we come up with exciting settings (like that of Langlais) that include the people too? Same with the psalmody? Can the organ improvisation serve the singing of the hymns by the people - AND other parts of the service? I envision an improvised prelude that introduces the entire liturgy with the same purpose and function of my introductions to each hymn. Custom fit to that particular day and its thrust. And, the choir can do more: thoroughly think through and prepare all our chanting, all of our motets /anthems/settings within the flow of the liturgy. We are that church that could do something like the St. Matthew Passion on Good Friday at noon. (maybe not that huge a thing to take on both in prep time and financially, but something LIKE that). Who else?

We're going to do it all. Time to "gird our loins"!