Death of the Organist
Joseph Swain on Church Music
Traditional organists are fast disappearing. The decline of this once thriving species began about three decades ago and is now precipitous, noticeable everywhere. What is the number of advanced organ students attending the “highly selective” college where I teach? One. Next year, in all probability, zero. What is the problem here?
Let us be quite clear about the term “traditional church organist.” This is a musician, many years in the making, who is trained to meet the precise demands of “a well-appointed church music,” in the words of its most outstanding exemplar, J. S. Bach.
Foremost among these demands is the accompaniment of traditional hymns, and yet this is the least appreciated. The underestimation stems from a general misconception about what constitutes a traditional hymn. A hymn is not a stately melody harmonized by chords. It is rather a complex tapestry of four simultaneous melodies, often named after the sections of a choir that might sing them: soprano, alto, tenor, bass. The topmost melody is the familiar one sung by the congregation, but the other three are nonetheless integral melodies. When sounded at the same time, they magically create rapidly changing chords that unify all the melodies in a harmonic dimension having its own kind of coherence and musical impetus.
Now the organist’s job is to preserve the individuality of each of these melodies while bringing out a sense of the whole that the congregation can follow. Generally, two melodies are played with the right hand, one with the left, and one with the feet. Each may have distinct patterns of rhythm and articulation. The requisite physical coordination alone is daunting, never mind the musical intuition that must give it all life. That is why organists learn hymns the way pianists learn sonatas, that is, slowly and with great care.
They also play a wide variety of service music (the Gloria, psalm responses, Sanctus, etc.) wherever parishes accept (as the Catholic bishops have made clear) that this music is of primary importance in liturgy, taking precedence over the hymns. Moreover, the organist can establish the proper sacred ambiance with selections from the vast organ repertory. Perhaps he will begin with a prelude that quotes one of the principal hymns for the day; perhaps he will offer a festal postlude, if appropriate, at the liturgy’s conclusion.
In any case, it is the organist who provides a musical frame and substance to the liturgy, a definite beginning and ending and all the transitions required to make of the liturgy a living, sacred artwork.
Losing Heart
Why should such a sophisticated musician be losing heart? Why do so few young people aspire to this once glorious ministry? Because, preceding the decline of the organist himself, there has been a calamitous loss of the essential incentive to become one: a demand for liturgical music of the highest quality, music fit for the glorification of the Most High. And the proximate cause of this loss, beginning in the 1960s, seems to have come from a most unexpected competitor, the pop guitarist.
How the pop guitarist came to church is a complicated matter. Arising first in Catholic parishes, the phenomenon was probably brought on by a coincidence of misinterpretation of the Second Vatican Council, whose documents clearly reserve pride of place for the traditional organist, and the so-called folk revival in American popular music during the early 1960s. The guitarist appeared as a timely and easy solution to the problem of the council’s directive to get congregations singing.
But his arrival, far from establishing a tradition of congregational singing, introduced instead a period of unabated rootlessness, and degraded the organist’s position to boot. By lowering both performance and compositional standards for liturgical music, pop styles in church undercut the demand for organists themselves. Organists began to lose their prerogatives and their esteemed roles as chief music ministers. At the same time, the new attitudes toward liturgical music and debased musical tastes increased the demand for the newcomers.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
32.1—January/February 2019
Sex, Women's Ordination & the Rejection of Hierarchy & Equality by James A. Altena
28.5—Sept/Oct 2015
on Our Sacred Duty to Teach the Devil to Death by Marcus Johnson
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
