First came a wonderful essay called “The Slow Death of Congregational Singing” by Australian blogger Michael Raiter in April 2008 over at a blog called The Briefing. Then Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk (albeit a Baptist one), published what he called a “riff” on the article on his own blog, internetmonk.com. Each article sparked many intriguing, even provocative, comments that are also worth reading. Now Michael has singled out one comment by Tom Schwegel and posted it separately under the title “Why Contemporary Music Makes Congregational Singing So Difficult”, and it has spawned its own set of comments.
As a pianist and organist for many years, I find the subject fascinating, and I have my own opinions, of course. I’m not going to force you to read these articles and comments by posting them here, but I have included links to them so that if you are the least bit interested to know what others are thinking on the subject you can spend an entire afternoon reading lo, their many thoughts, if you like. And if you’re not the least bit interested, wait a little while and another post, God willing, will come along soon.
You're welcome.
