[Magdalen] Hymnals and Perspective.o

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

Dieter has a rather well appointed classroom named after him at Union.  I
should think that would be more than enough.

The main reason people sing in parts is a simple matter of range.  That
really settles it, it seems to me.

If all the people cannot sing the melody, one wonders what the lilly pure
martyr would have us do. perhaps he wants us to do it his way or shut up.
How very 30s-40s German of him.

I sorta agree that some need to be "weeded out," as he puts it, but I'd
focus on a different grouping. I have always enjoyed singing harmony, as it
seemed to me to make the sound all the more unified.  Mom always sang the
alto parts, although she never joined a choir until after Dad died.

I would not wish his ending on anyone -- taken naked into the wintry
morning to be hanged, merely because they knew they were losing, and they
wanted to kill him so he would not be able to be freed.

I wonder if the text is a hoax....

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 10:41 AM, Jim Guthrie <jguthrie at pipeline.com> wrote:

> Very Interesting!
>
> Thanks for passing this along.
>
> Cheers,
> Jim
>
>
> From: John Robison
>
> Some of the reason, I'm told, comes from that noted shabby thinker Dietrich
> Bonhoeffer:
>
> "The essence of all congregational singing on this earth is the purity of
> unison singing – untouched by the unrelated motives of musical excess – the
> clarity unclouded by the dark desire to lend musicality and autonomy of its
> own apart from the words; it is the simplicity and unpretentiousness, the
> humanness and warmth, of this style of singing….There are several elements
> hostile to unison singing, which in the community ought to be very
> rigorously weeded out. There is no place in the worship service where
> vanity and bad taste can so assert themselves as in the singing. First,
> there is the improvised second part that one encounters almost everywhere
> people are supposed to sing together…There are the bass or the alto voices
> that must call everybody’s attention to their astonishing range and
> therefore sing every hymn an octave lower. There is the solo voice that
> drowns out everything else, bellowing and quavering at the top of its
> lungs, reveling in the glory of its own fine organ. There are the less
> dangerous foes of congregational singing, the ‘unmusical’ who cannot sing,
> of whom there are far fewer than we are led to believe. Finally there are
> often those who will not join in the singing because they are particularly
> moody or nursing hurt feelings; and thus they disturb the community." ~
> Life
> Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 5, Minneapolis, Fortress Press,
> p. 67
>
> As I recall, he's got a line about it in Discipleship and Sanctorum
> Communio.
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 2:38 AM, Roger Stokes <
> roger.stokes65 at btinternet.com
>
>> wrote:
>>
>
> On 14/10/2015 01:47, Grace Cangialosi wrote:
>>
>> SE&B??
>>>
>>> Probably Sung Evensong and Bebediction.
>>
>> Roger
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> John Robison Asc. Episcopal Carmel St Teresa
>
> Check out my online Book Shop:  http://astore.amazon.com/friarsrumi-20
>
> "Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic
> uninterestingness as an intellectual position." - John Updike
>
> "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life:
> The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that
> often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading
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>