Organ concert at Messiah Lutheran, Fairview Park

This week, residents of northeast Ohio have a unique opportunity to hear what promises to be an incredible organ recital. Cameron Carpenter will be performing at Messiah Lutheran in Fairview Park this Thursday night at 8:00 pm. He is an incredibly famous performer in the organ world today. He can perform melodies in the pedal line that some performers would struggle to play with their right hand, and he'll be inaugurating and showing off the church's newly rebuilt pipe organ.

Personally, I have a class on Thursday night and won't be able to attend. (Somehow I seem to have a class every evening all spring, which is a shame when it conflicts with great events like this concert!) But I encourage you to consider attending (call the church for ticket info). At the very least, you should take a look at some of Cameron's performances that are available online. Click here for one fun example from Youtube.

One year later

It's hard to believe, but I've been the organist at Bethany for about one year now. I honestly don't remember the exact date, but I know it was mid-April. Today is as good a day as any to note the anniversary.

There were numerous musical highlights of the past year, including Advent Vespers, the Service of Healing, and of course Good Friday and Easter. It's been great getting to know members of the church (and choir in particular).

I was trying to estimate what proportion of the ELW we used in the past year. Assuming 70 services and 4 hymns each (both generous assumptions), that's 280 hymns out of approximately 650 in the ELW. Of course, we also sing out of the Bethany hymnal and we repeat some hymns. Chances are that even if you attended every service, you only sang 250 hymns - basically the core repertoire of a traditional Lutheran church.

The year ahead will be a chance to retain that base while adding some variety as well - a new liturgy this summer for starters. Post-Easter is always an exciting time to plan the remainder of the spring and summer and start daydreaming for the fall. Share your favorites and your own list of druthers anytime - that's the only way we know about them!

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.

Church marketing

Some people get deeply offended at the combination of the words "church" and "marketing." However, as I mentioned in an earlier post, church attendance and membership is shrinking around the country. The only time the Plain Dealer puts a church on its front page is when it's closing. We'll never see the headline "Growing attendance at Bethany's Wednesday Lenten services" even though it's true. Churches sometimes act like the people will simply come through their doors because they always have. We know that isn't true, though; we know intuitively that something must be done to keep from becoming irrelevant.

I always hope that music can help draw people to the church. However, I have occasional doubts since the press also loves to run stories about some business using Bach's music to drive teenagers away. In my family's own experience, children won't approach a house on Halloween if Bach's "Tocatta and Fugue in d minor" is playing loudly on the porch! Whoopi Goldberg scares her students in Sister Act 2 when she announces they will sing in a choir.

What can a church musician do? Some churches switch to contemporary music or even "Christian Rock." The ELW uses inclusive language and world music. My approach is to use the widest possible variety of sounds within the Lutheran tradition, to write this blog as an attempt to communicate and connect with musicians and congregants, and simply to keep asking questions and searching for new ideas. Some days that seems like frustratingly little, but it's worth the struggle for the one person who enjoys a prelude or a new reader who connects with the church and its music differently.


Pastor's sermon on the 9th and 10th commandments pointed out the dangers of marketing, but I'd like to suggest that marketing is simply a tool for sharing information. The product can be of any quality. We might, like John Stuart Mill, distinguish between the higher and lower goods and activities available to us. What a shame if only the lowest quality, least fulfilling things are marketed! Let's pick up the tools and use them for good instead. How will people know about our church if we don't ever spread the word?

On Palm Sunday, Pastor noted that Christ asks us who we say he is. Maybe some of the best "marketing" is simply to follow his example and keep asking that question of the world and those around us. I don't claim to have a brilliant solution to any of the problems churches face, but it is so important that we keep thinking about them and exploring new options. What is our purpose? How will we measure our success? (One of my favorite blogs on this topic is here.)

Have a brilliant idea of how music ministry can help with marketing and outreach? Have a favorite piece of music you want to hear? Leave a comment or send an email anytime!

All Glory, Laud, and Honor!

It's Palm Sunday this weekend, which means it's time to dust off the great hymn "All Glory, Laud, and Honor" to sing as our opening hymn. I'll be playing a modern, multi-tonal arrangement of it as the postlude as well.

It's one of the great hymns of faith, and the tune has been around for hundred of years. The text, however, is even older - among the oldest in the hymnal. The author Theodulph of Orleans was a French bishop during the time of Charlemagne.

Political accusations and suspicions landed him in prison, and it was from inside a prison cell that he wrote the original Latin text of praise. My favorite verse is the final one, where God is referred to as a great author. It's reminiscent of the Gospel of John, and the symbolism of God as a creator, artist, and author can inspire us to raise our voices in song:

ELW 344, verse 5:

Their praises you accepted;

Accept the prayers we bring,

Great author of all goodness,

O good and gracious King.

Prayer will have to be enough

A personal reflection today: Only some of my readers may know that I lived in Fargo for two years while working on a graduate degree at NDSU. Every spring brings a flood and one year that I was there the water was high enough that a temporary dike was built, but nothing could compare with this year.

The picture I've posted was taken on Wednesday with the river at 36 feet - at least 5 more to go they're saying. My dad (whose comments appear regularly on this blog) has been driving bus loads of volunteers to help with the effort, and he has a bag packed if evacuation becomes necessary. My brother-in-law serves in the National Guard and is in the area on active duty to help as much as possible. My former colleagues, classmates, and friends are all hoping that somehow their homes and their city will be spared.

It's staggering to think of the challenges the city is facing. It's already a federal disaster area, and outlying towns, homes, and farms are already being lost. In the city, they're making evacuation plans and urging people to update tetanus shots. They've cancelled all classes and businesses are closed so that everyone can be a part of the desperate effort to hold back the river.

You and I can't fill a sandbag (much as I wish I could do more), but please keep them in your thoughts and prayers in the coming days. There are more pictures of the area at this link and plenty of news coverage this week.

The hymn I'm singing in hope today is ELW 626:

By gracious pow'rs so wonderfully sheltered,
And confidently waiting come what may,
We know that God is with us night and morning,
And never fails to greet us each new day.

The ill-tempered organist

Those of you who saw (or heard) me at church last night know that I'm suffering from the flu bug that has been going around. While that does tend to make me a little grumpy, I'm thinking of other meanings of the word tempered today: the tuning of a piano and the strengthening of steel.

Geeky musicians can argue for hours about the technical issues of tuning, and many of the arguments are about Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. To give the quickest possible summary, the musical scale cannot be perfectly tuned to all keys simultaneously. It would be like building new cupboards for a kitchen, with everything at perfect 90 degree angles. We all know, however, that the kitchen walls will probably require a shim somewhere to make everything fit and keep it all level. Basically, tempering is the process of "shimming" the notes on the piano so that we can play in all keys. Thus, the little-known fact that the modern piano is purposely "out of tune" in comparison to a pure tuning.

This week, my body is ill-tempered - out of homeostasis and out of tune. Being sick in Lent is always a vivid reminder of the Ash Wednesday scripture that we are dust and to dust we shall return. With rest and fluids and stretching, I'll hopefully bring my body back into proper tempering soon.

Lent is also a season for reflection and tuning of our spiritual lives. Like the tuning of the piano, our daily lives are full of little problems, mistakes, and sins. It's my understanding that when you temper metal for a knife blade the molecules line up, strengthening the steel. Similarly, Lent can be a season for integrating our lives so that mind, body, and spirit all point in the same direction. Then we will be well-tempered Christians, in both senses of the term.

Mendelssohn juvenalia

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn's birth. As a consequence, you'll be hearing quite a bit of his organ music over the course of the year.

Mendelssohn's reputation has varied immensely over the past 200 years. During his life, he was touted and admired as among the best composers of his day. He was a child prodigy, popular in his home country of Germany, and beloved by Queen Victoria. In fact, her daughter's wedding ceremony in 1858 included his now-classic Wedding March.

His reputation declined partly due to anti-Semitism (particularly the blistering criticism of Wagner), but also to his musical conservatism. He lived and worked at the dawn of the romantic age, the era of Berlioz and Liszt, but his music still reflected the classical and baroque eras, more akin to Mozart and Bach than his contemporaries. The final blow to his status may just have been his association with and love of Lutheran chorales.

Mendelssohn's family converted to Christianity, and he firmly embraced Lutheran music. Among his familiar works are the "Reformation" Symphony and the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." Musical critics may occasionally sneer or sigh at the number of works that echo a chorale, but Lutherans can listen to it from a different perspective, finding additional layers of meaning and emotion in the familiar tunes.

This Sunday I'm playing two of Mendelssohn's early works, composed while he was still a teenager. The prelude is a basic chorale, sweet and consoling, while the postlude is a jaunty march. For Transfiguration Sunday, a day when Jesus appears with Elijah and Moses, we can contemplate the faith of this convert and the beautiful music he composed in praise of God.

Why do we have two preludes every Sunday?

To understand why Bethany regularly includes two preludes, you need to consider the role or purpose of the prelude. There are at least two different perspectives:

1. The prelude is "background music" that creates an inviting atmosphere as people arrive for worship. In other words, it's okay to pay little attention to it while we take off our coats, greet friends, and scan the bulletin announcements before the service.

2. The prelude should be a time for prayer, reflection, and preparation for worship.

At Bethany, the worship and music committee felt the second philosophy was an important aspect of worship. For that reason, the prelude was played after pastor made the announcements and asked us "To prepare our hearts and minds for worship" during a brief prelude.

However, that created the dual problems of limiting the prelude to pieces of approximately one minute, while also creating an awkward period of silence as congregants arrived. This problem was addressed by creating a pre-prelude. Now, Tom is free to play more substantial pieces from the organ literature as people are arriving, fulfilling the first goal of the prelude. Then, after the announcements, the second prelude provides a transition from the ordinary business of life to the sacred environment of worship.

I don't know of any other church with this unique format, but I've grown to like it a great deal. I particularly like the freedom to program organ literature in the first slot, while reserving the second slot for short pieces that relate to the hymns for the day. I'd love to hear reactions both from members and from others reading about this for the first time.

Meet the (primary) blogger

Welcome to the music ministry blog of Bethany English Lutheran Church in Cleveland! We'll be writing more soon about a variety of topics, including the purpose and aim of this blog, but it seems to make sense to start off with an introduction of our primary blogger.

Tom has been the organist at Bethany for nearly one year now. He is a relatively recent transplant to Ohio, having grown up in the small town of Melrose, Minnesota. He has played the piano since age 5 and organ since age 15, when he began playing part-time at his home church. Tom studied piano and voice (though without majoring in music) at St. Olaf College, which is perhaps best known for their annual Christmas concerts.

After college, Tom taught high school choir and drama, while working with a number of amateur and professional theatre troupes as music director and/or keyboardist. His favorite productions during that time include Les Miserables (student edition) and Children of Eden. Among his major performances, Tom has performed the Beethoven Chorale Fantasia, the Grieg piano concerto, and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

Tom's philosophy of church music can be nearly summed up in one word: balance. By that, he means a balance of old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, simple and complex, community and individual, law and gospel, bombastic and peaceful, praiseful and penitent. He'll be bringing that same variety and balance to the pages of this blog. We hope you enjoy reading and participating in the dialogue!