The communion anthem this morning is as universal of an anthem as most of them get. Harold Friedell’s Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether is a piece that you’d hear in just about any protest denomination that still uses traditional music. Unfortunately, many of the mainline denominations have discontinued the use of this sort of music. It makes me wonder how many free copies of this anthem are available in church music libraries around the country. Tons of sheet music has been left abandoned by churches, either because they are closing, or because the church has moved into a different style of worship. Rather than getting into the negative rhetoric that surrounds the loss of traditional church music, I thought it would be interesting to point out a little controversy that may have surrounded Harold Friedell’s appointment at a church in New York.

Friedell was an active American organist in and around the New York area. He was mainly noted as having served at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, a position he accepted in 1946, following what was reported to have been a fabricated story about his predecessor there, David McKay Williams. It was reported that Williams was losing his hearing, and needed to be let go. It was editorialized in the The American Organist, the journal of the American Guild of Organists in 1947:

“I consider Dr. Williams the world’s greatest exponent of the beautiful and forceful in Episcopal music and it is not at all necessary to hear every other Episcopal church service in order to make such a statement. It’s not necessary to be bitten by every rattlesnake in order to state without question that such an experience is painful…Will Dr. Williams return? I fervently hope so…And now, temporarily at least, the music of St. Bartholomew’s drops back to ordinary excellence. Its super-excellence will never return in this generation unless Dr. Williams comes back.”

— T. Scott Buhrman, The American Organist, January 1947

Even church music, dropping back to “ordinary excellence” doesn’t escape the scrutiny of opinion. It seems like church musicians (and parishioners and clergy!) have always had something over which to lament! Even J.S. Bach himself wrote to his town council (the financial managers of the church at the time), continually frustrated with the lack of funding for his program! The loss of musical style, the passing of the torch from one person to another, the inflexibility of church musicians, and on and on – they’ve been around forever. Church music and musicians have been a vulnerable target to the whims of those who prefer something different. Musical style has been so vulnerable in recent years, particularly in the church. It’s as fragile as the opinions that move it in a different direction, abandon it altogether, or lessen its value.

I write not to complain about this truth, but to give thanks that we have the opportunity to sing this piece and others like it, here in this beautiful church we call St. Andrew’s. Our collective preferences for beauty, tradition, and respectful worship at St. Andrew’s are gratifying and worthy of giving thanks. Our common bond does indeed draw us into the tethered spirit of community, one that always invites others into its warmth and appreciation for history and artistic expression.

I’m glad I don’t have to tip-toe around opinionated people who are pushy to get it their way, and who desire to abandon the “old” ways. I’m happy to work with a rector whose spiritual and aesthetic values are in line with mine own. My notes this morning are in no way an attempt to air grievances, but as a means of appreciation, that even though the choir is indeed holding yellowing, tattered copies of a this particular anthem written 70+ years ago, the music itself is as fresh and meaningful as when it was penned by its composer. I’ll take that over a meaningless, controversial opinion, any day.  Soli deo Gloria!