Agnus Dei guest blogger

Today's guest blogger is Pastor Kevin Born, who is the pastor at First Lutheran Church in Sauk Centre, Minnesota.  That church is my home church, where I was confirmed and where I began playing organ way back when I was still in high school.  Pastor Born is a brilliant preacher who helped shape my own faith and philosophy of church music.  I was so pleased that he was willing to participate in our Lenten discussion.  Without further introduction, I'll simply turn it over to him to share his thoughts on the theme of Agnus Dei:

"As I grow older, I am increasingly aware of the fact that the saints I know who have cashed in on their baptismal promise are growing in number.  Thus, when I sing or hear sung "Lamb of God," I am reminded that the Lamb in question is the same Lamb who will at the last host the high feast of which all our earthly feasts are at most a foretaste - the feast at which I will be reuinted with Him and all those aforementioned saints.  Call it anticipating the final Easter in the middle of this Lent."

Six services in eight days

If you needed proof that Easter is more important in the church calendar than Christmas, I think the count of services alone can provide some evidence! It's definitely the busy time of year for church musicians (as well as clergy, volunteers, and congregations, of course).

The interesting thing, however, is that while I spend more time in the church and play more hymns, I actually end up playing less organ repertoire. For one thing, guest musicians get put to work on Palm Sunday and Easter, but we also observe the continuity of the story by not having a postlude on Maundy Thursday and by having neither a prelude nor postlude on Good Friday.

During this week, we spend more time in silence. Our Wednesday evening services have also represented this meditative mood of Lent. At several points in the service, we observe a moment of silence. Typically, I'm a bit preoccupied with thinking about the next moment in the service, because it is often a hymn.

I appreciate the silence as the necessary canvas for the art of music, and I savor the change in pace from the noise of our lives. But I also wonder about the liturgical intention of those moments. Whereas the ELW sometimes notes very specifically the purpose of silence ("Silence for self-reflection," for example), at other places it simply notes, "A moment of silence follows." Is that a moment for prayer? For meditation? To listen? Or just to rest and take a moment to "be" rather than "do"? Maybe it can be all of those things, dependent on many factors.

I heard the host of "Radio Lab" preach on the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, and he noted that even though Abraham often spoke and even argued with God that when given such a strange order, the story progresses without recording any dialogue, simply an implied silence. Silence can be obedient or rebellious, empty or full of meaning. In the silence of this week's services, perhaps take a meta-moment to reflect on the very topic of silence.

Palm Sunday music

I think of Palm Sunday as a holiday of hope and expectation. It's not quite a celebration - we'll save that for Easter - but the kids and the choir will symbolically reenact the procession, and we'll sing optimistic hymns of faith, most notably "All Glory, Laud, and Honor."

Musically, it will be an exciting day at Bethany. The Rainbow Ringers will play along on our opening hymn. As far as I know, it's the first time that they will play along with a congregational hymn, and I hope you enjoy the experiment. (Thanks in advance to Sue and the kids for all their work!) We'll also have two guest trumpet players from Baldwin Wallace, who will accompany our hymns and liturgy.

I hope that some of you will stick around to hear the postlude, as well. One of the trumpet players and I will be playing a cutting from the fourth movement of Eben's trumpet sonata, titled Golden Window. It's a modern piece that few people are familiar with, but David is an exceptional player and I think you'll enjoy the unique opportunity to hear this piece played.

Easter prelude

Some organists love to begin Easter Sunday with a bang - a bombastic, praiseful piece of music. That's not me. Don't get me wrong, there will be plenty of joyous, loud music, with trumpet descant and all our voices raised in celebration.

But I believe that the celebration and joy we feel as disciples of Christ on Easter is best experienced in contrast to the sorrow of Good Friday, the confusion of His early followers following the crucifixion, and the quiet faith that sustatined the women who discovered the empty tomb.

My Easter prelude this year will be "Credo in unum Deum" by Samuel Scheidt, a 16th century German composer. It is a chorale setting of the Creed, the centerpiece of worship.

The liturgical mass parts (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus) make it clear that the Creed is the heart of worship. Musicians throughout the ages have placed it in the center of their mass settings. This is, incidentally, one of my isues with the ELW and its division of the service into Gathering, Word, Meal, and Sending. It omits the explicit mention of the recitation of the tenets of our faith!

How difficult it must have been for the followers of Christ to have faith, in the aftermath of His death and because of their own persecution. We all face challenges to our faith, personally and as a body of Christians (see the recent cover of Newsweek, for just the latest example of the latter). We are an Easter people, though, with confidence in our faith and a bold statement of belief.

So sing your heart out this Sunday on some of our greatest hymns! But use the prelude to consider as well the quiet voice of faith within us that can boldly state "I believe in one God..." Then let the celebration begin!

Faure, Liszt, and Silence

The Good Friday service at Bethany will include a wealth of good music, scriptural readings, and silence. The choir will perform selections from Faure's Requiem. It is a dramatic and challenging choral work that uses the text for the Catholic mass for the dead. I encourage you not to let the Latin text create distance between yourself and the music. Instead, use the beauty and drama of the work to enhance your Good Friday meditation.

I will be playing Liszt's Consolation III on the piano during the worship service. It's a piece that I have played numerous times for Holy Week over the years. To my ears, it conveys not just the heartbreak of the Passion week but also the hope and calm - the "fear not" message of Christ's ministry.

Finally, the service will include a great deal of silence for meditation. There will be no prelude and no postlude because Good Friday is part of the larger worship experience of Holy Week, not an independent service. For musicians, silence is the necessary space that surrounds a piece of music and that gives it shape, definition, and meaning. The moment before a musician plays is universally a time to take a deep breath and prepare. The moment after a piece ends - before any applause or movement begins - that is often the most beautiful and sacred moment of a piece of music.

Music is literally all around us - not just the junk elevator music and the noise from our ipods. Our hearts keep a beat; trees rustle and the wind whistles; trains and traffic and the conversations of passers-by can coalesce into a symphony; our homes and offices are filled with the sounds of furnaces and the hum and clicking of computers. Even when we are alone and quiet, there is a current of music running through our lives. The silence of Good Friday is a needed corrective to get past the "noise" of life to the contemplation of the beauty of the music of our lives and the story of the Passion narrative.

Helmut Walcha

Lest all you American Idol fans think that Scott McIntyre is the only famous blind musician, I want to introduce you to one of the great organists of the 20th century, Helmut Walcha.

Walcha was born in Germany in 1907 and became blind as a teenager due to a smallpox vaccination. Amazingly, he went on to a brilliant career as organist and is known as one of the preeminent interpreters of Bach's organ music.

Bach's music is famously complex, with interwoven voices in the fugues being difficult for any listener to identify. Walcha would listen to each line played independently and then hear the piece performed as a whole. His musical gifts allowed him to learn and memorize the music, and he had a famous gift for organ registration on Baroque instruments across Europe. His accomplishments are enough to make any organist gape in awe.

In addition to his playing career, Walcha composed a number of chorale preludes, one of which I will play on Thursday night. It's easy for us to be complacent when listening to preludes - all the German chorales can start to sound alike to a casual listener. But even if the tune or the style of music don't speak to you, briefly meditate on the amazing accomplishment and trials of this man as well as the incredible suffering and gift of Christ as the Passion narrative continues this week.