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 The Verse
A monthly newsletter |
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The Hymn Society
in the United States and Canada |
December 2011 |
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Greetings!
Greetings during this last week of Advent! Can it be that the year is nearly gone? Was Thanksgiving really four weeks ago?? It seems that with every passing year, time moves faster and faster for me! I wish I could keep up! Do you ever feel that way?
As we focus on the last-moment preparations for celebrations with family and friends, final rehearsals for Christmas music and worship services and all the other "end-of-year" tasks that are looming, I hope that the deep peace of Christ will be yours and that you will find moments of quiet and joy in the busy-ness of these weeks.
Even as we take time to pause and reflect, this is also a time to look forward to 2012 with the promise and challenge that each New Year brings. May you walk each day with God!
Meanwhile, keep singing!!
Deb
Deborah Loftis
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January 6, 2012 - The LEUPOLD CHORALE will host a Service of Lessons and Carols, to celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas and the Festival of the Epiphany of our Lord, on Friday January 6th, 2012, 7:30 pm, in the Keffer Memorial Chapel of Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, Ontario, Canada.
January 26-28, 2012 - There's still time to register for the Calvin Symposium on Worship in Grand Rapids, MI. I'll be there to represent The Hymn Society and I'm looking forward to seeing many Hymn Society members there also. Come by our table exhibit and say hello! John Bell, FHS will be one of the leaders during the symposium. The 25th annual conference in Grand Rapids, MI will have the theme: "The Psalms: When Life is Prayer." For more information and registration forms go to http://Worship.calvin.edu/symposium/. See you there!
March 3, 2012 - Olson Campus Center, Luther Seminary, 1490 Fulham, St. Paul, Minn. "Maurice Duruflé: A Liturgical Musician", a conference of Music, Lectures and Workshops. James Frazier, an expert on Duruflé and author of Maurice Duruflé: The Man and His Music, will lead conference participants into this topic. He will be joined by Anthony Ruff, a monk who teaches at St. John's University in Collegeville; Dirk Lange, a former brother at Taizé who teaches at Luther Seminary; and Christopher Aspaas, a choral conductor who teaches at St. Olaf College. Pre-registration is preferable. Contact Luther Seminary's Master of Sacred Music Office at 651-523-1612 or at krongsta@luthersem.edu; or by the conference website www.luthersem.edu/sacredmusic.
Two upcoming seminars at Calvin College:
June 18-22, 2012, "Singing What We Believe: Theology and Hymn Texts" will led by Bert Polman, More information at http://www.calvin.edu/scs/2012/seminars/polman/
July 23-Aug. 3, 2012, "Globalization and Worship: Soundings from the Worldwide Church" led by Charles Farhadian. More information at http://www.calvin.edu/scs/2012/seminars/farhadian/
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Naming our Concern for Congregational Song
We've had a few engaging posts added to the website discussion led by Brian and Jonathan Hehn on some of the foundational questions around the future and health of congregational song. Please add your thoughts! The more people involved in the conversation, the more lively our discussion will be! Go to News and Views > Bulletin Boards > Discussion to find the threads. |
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2012 Summer Conference
 Alice Parker, FHS, will be the Emily Swan Perkins Presenter in Winnipeg this coming summer. Many of you know her through her work with Melodious Accord or through her many anthem arrangements and value the significant gifts she's given the musical world. If you've never met her, however, you're in for a real treat! Her winsome spirit combined with clear and gifted leadership makes a room come alive with singing. Her plenary address will delight and inspire.
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News of Members
Congratulations to Bill McConnell who been chosen as the new Executive Director of the Presbyterian Association of Musicians and will begin work for the organization on January 1.
Our prayers go out to Robin Knowles Wallace in the death of her father, Rev. Millard Byrd Knowles, in Baltimore, December 15. |
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Two New Hymnological Collections
The office has just learned of two new hymnal collections in other parts of our globe. Our congratulations to these libraries and the people who built these collections!
The Pablo Sosa Collection in the library at Instituto Universitario ISEDET (Instituto Superior Evangelico de Estudios Teologicos) in Buenos Aires was inaugurated on November 22, 2011. Pablo Sosa, a Methodist minister and creative musician, hymnal editor and teacher, is internationally known for his use of traditional Latin American (and particularly Argentinian) dance and song forms for congregational song. In 1999, he was one of the three leaders for the Hymn Society conference in Vancouver on global hymnody.
Though the office only learned of this recently, in December 2010 Dunedin Public Library in New Zealand recognized the donations from Colin Gibson of hymn resources over the past twenty years by naming that body of materials The Colin Gibson Hymnology Collection. Gibson, known best in North America for his musical settings of texts by Shirley Erena Murray, FHS, is well-known throughout New Zealand as a writer of both texts and tunes. Gibson realized that there were no national archives of the wide variety of hymnals used in New Zealand church or of the recent work of New Zealand hymn writers and composers. His efforts to build the collection in the Dunedin library quickly gained the notice of others who joined him in donating materials. The collection now numbers over 2200 volumes and is still growing. |
| New Hymn Contest
United Theological Seminary has announced a new competition: "New Songs and Hymns for Renewal: A Conpetition for Writers and Composers." This competition will search for hymns/songs in three distinct categories: (1) new text and tune, (2) new music for traditional hymn/song texts, (3) new hymn text for traditional hymn tune. The deadline for submission is April 20, 2012. Visit
http://united.edu/Music-Competition/New-Songs-and-Hymns-for-Renewal/menu-id-639.html for more details. |
| Continuing Hymn Contests
The Hymn Society has opened a search for new hymns on Unity in Diversity for the 2012 Summer Conference, "The Meeting Place." Visit our website www.thehymnsociety.org for more information, guidelines and entry forms. Deadline for submission is April 30, 2012.
See the October issue of The Verse, archived on our website, for more details on these contests:
St. Paul's on the Green Episcopal Church, Norwalk, Connecticut. Entries must be received by March 1, 2012.
The Alliance of Baptists. Entries must be received by January 15, 2012.
See the September issue of The verse, archived on our website, for more details on these contests:
St. Andrew's Episcopal Church of Kansas City, Missouri.
All entries must be postmarked by December 31, 2011.
Macalester Plymouth United Church of St. Paul, Minnesota. Entries must be postmarked by December 31, 2011.
Pascack Reformed Church in Park Ridge, New Jersey. All entries must be postmarked by March 1, 2012.
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Recent Hymn Festivals
October 30, 2011 - "The Way of Jesus: His Mission in Word and Song," a hymn festival by Hal H. Hopson, was presented at West Plano Presbyterian Church, Plano, TX.
November 13, 2011 - "One Spirit, Many Songs" was presented at Central Presbyterian Church in Louisville, KY. It was planned and led by Mary Louise Bringle, Immediate Past President of The Hymn Society. Other leaders were Adam Copeland, Mary Beth Jones, Charlie Frost, Paul Huh, and Karen Hastings-Floyd, all members of the Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song.
November 27, 2011 - Sacred Harp singers from Germany, Ireland, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States gathered in Prague for the 1st Sacred Harp all day singing in Czech Republic.
December 1, 2011 - "And the angel said, "Fear not. . ." a Christmas worship service for the Perkins School of Theology, SMU, was designed by Michael, Hawn, FHS. John Thornburg, President of the Hymn Society was narrator. Suzi Byrd, a 2011 Lovelace Scholar, was a soloist and provided a new composition. Other soloists were Kristen Hanna, Brian Hehn, and Budi Taniwan, all former Lovelace Scholars.
December 11, 2011 - The Annual Christmas Carols Service of the Memorial Church at Harvard University was presented, featuring the new carol "Born Among Us in the Night", with text by Richard Leach and music by Carson Cooman. A program with complete texts of all the carols, and their order in the service, is available as a pdf at http://www.memorialchurch.harvard.edu/
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Two Books Recommended by our Members
Carl Schalk, First Person Singular: Reflections on Worship, Liturgy, and Children (St. Louis: MorningStar, 1998). ISBN 0-944529-29-1. $15.00. See www.morningstarmusic.com/viewitem.cfm/item_id/90-26. Just 95 pages, this book contains the most compelling arguments I have heard on why children should learn the very best in hymnody. Schalk's writing style is informal, and the book is hard to put down. About half the book deals specifically with hymnody.
Joseph Herl, Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Three Centuries of Conflict (Oxford UniversityPress, 2004). ISBN 978-0-19-536584. $45.00 paperback. See www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Music/ChurchMusic/?view=usa&ci=9780195365849. This is the story of how congregational singing was gradually introduced into German Lutheran churches between the Reformation and 1800. It was reviewed in The Hymn in Spring 2005, pp. 64-65. It was reprinted in paperback in 2008, and so is now available at a reasonable price.
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