Advice from the Musicians of the ACNA

Recently the ACNA announced a new website and new task force for worship music:

The Anglican Church in North America’s Music Task Force has now released music resources to accompany the Psalms for the upcoming seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. It has also released today a Hymns and Spiritual Songs Worship Planner for the Advent season. These resources have been launched on the Task Force’s new website.

The Music Task Force was commissioned out of the Liturgy and Common Worship Task Force, the group responsible for the Book of Common Prayer 2019. Now, the attention turns to the musicality of the Anglican tradition.

For a comparatively small denomination with limited resources, the 1.0 version of the website is surprisingly polished and complete. The current site lists 11 pages behind the home page:

1. Home
2. Music Leadership Philosophy
3. Hymns and Spiritual Songs
4. Psalter
5. Service Music
6. Altar Book
7. Choirs
8. Handbells
9. Keyboards
10. Praise Teams and Folk Groups
11. Web Resources
12. Pastor and Church Musician Relationship

Across these pages are more than a dozen “highly recommended articles” — nearly all uploaded with November modification dates — as well as planning resources tied to Advent Year A in the ACNA BCP 2019 lectionary.

Despite the predominance of praise music in the ACNA — particularly in its largest parishes — the site is relatively balanced in the worship wars. For example, #3 lists quotes from Jaroslav Pelikan and Keith/Kristyn Getty. The former states:

Tradition is a good thing.  It is traditionalism that is bad.  Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. 

The worship planner on the same page includes references to hymns from Hymnal 1982 and Book of Common Praise 2017 (listed as the “2019” hymnal) as well as praise songs. For example, Advent 4 (Year A) lists these hymns

Hymns
Title	Tune	Hymnal 1982/REC 2019 Hymnal
Savior of the Nations, Come	Nun komm	#54/#10
Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus	Stuttgart	#66/#1
Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming	Es ist ein rose	#81/#32
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence	Picardy	#324/#263
Lift Up Your Heads	Truro	#436/#390
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel	Veni Emmanuel	#56/#7
People, Look East	Besancon	Internet/#12
Spiritual Songs/Communion Songs
Title	Tune	Hymnal 1982/REC 2019 Hymnal
Comfort, comfort ye my people (works well with instrumental ensemble)	Psalm 42	#67/#20
All Beautiful the March of Days(works well with instrumental ensemble)	Forest Green	Internet
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence(works well with instrumental ensemble)	Picardy	#324/#263
The King of Glory (Israeli Folk Song)	Betty Pulkingham	Internet
Lift Up Your Heads	Steven Fry	Internet
Emmanuel	Jeff Buchan	Internet
Awake, O Israel (Israeli Folk Song)	Merla Watson	Internet
Exodus XV	Frank Gallio	Internet
Waiting in Silence	Carey Landry	Internet

Task Force and Members

The task force consists of Mark Williams (Parish Musician, Christ Church Anglican, Savannah, Georgia), Rev. Darrell Critch (rector of Church of the Good Samaritan in St. John’s, Newfoundland) and Jeremy Redmond (Music Associate at St. Peter’s Anglican Cathedral in Tallahassee, Florida) While Williams “was chosen to chair the ACNA Music Task Force by Archbishop Robert Duncan” — i.e. more than five years ago — the website suggests the task force is relatively nascent: three is a relatively small task force, and there’s no discussion of the task force processes, meetings, or contact information.

Similarly, the “Musicians of the Anglican Church in North America (MACNA)” seems like the ACNA response to the “Association of Anglican Musicians,” which publishes a journal 10x/year for church musicians in The Episcopal Church. However, there no additional information about the MACNA, or a way for musicians to join this organization.

Advice for Effective Congregational Singing

While much of the material is specific to the ACNA — e.g. the chants and forthcoming altar book are modeled on the BCP 1979 and Hymnal 1982 — some aspects are of more general interest. Several articles offer advice on introducing a new hymn (or “song”) — helpful for any music director who has not thought out the right vs. wrong way to do so.

The interview with Williams makes some good points that would be relevant (in my research) to the music director of any liturgical church

To me then, what is important is that the choice of music has these quality traits: that it is singable by the congregation and was composed with this in mind (it is not a soloistic piece of music). That the melody of the song is well-crafted and that there is a good marriage between the melody and the text.  That the music, as much as possible, is in a key that the congregation can sing (no notes below the A below middle C and no notes above high D or E).  That the music carries some level of high intrinsic value; that it has stood the test of time, however long. And that the choice of music fits the liturgical year or the theme for the day for worship. 

Similarly, “3 Errors of Musical Style that Stifle Community,” an article by Canadian Baptist pastor Tim Challies, should be must reading by leaders on any side of the worship wars. Based on the book The Compelling Community, Challies explains those three errors are

• Music that’s difficult to sing corporately, particularly rhythmic complexity.
• Music with limited emotional breadth. “Much of church music is happy music. But if that is all we ever have, we substantially dilute the Christian experience. And the tone we set in our services will inevitably carry over into relationships.”
• Music that feels like a performance. “Musical accompaniment can help by leading us in song and helping us through sections of songs that are more difficult to sing. Or it can overpower congregational worship and turn us from active worshipers into passive listeners.”

A liturgy committee, membership association and newsletter are what the ACNA (and Continuing Anglicans before them) church musicians left behind in TEC. It is good to see the first step (at a realistic scale) towards knowledge sharing and professionalism among North American Anglicans.