Editor’s note: Earth & Altar editor Mary Grahame Hunter sat down recently to discuss hymnody as liturgy and spiritual practice with Jeremy David Tarrant, Canon Precentor of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Mary Grahame Hunter: Broadly speaking, what do you think are the current expectations surrounding congregational singing in the Episcopal Church? 

Jeremy David Tarrant: I think there is still the expectation that worshippers participate in congregational song, but I’m sure this varies from congregation to congregation. There is new hymnody all the time, and the singing of hymns still occupies an important place in the liturgy.  However, I feel we are becoming, culturally, less and less a singing society. This erosion is nothing new.  I’m concerned that we continue to label people as those who “can” or “cannot” sing, and oftentimes the criteria are impossible and lack any context. Of course, none of this is unique to the Episcopal Church. 

MGH: Do you ever have people say to you, “Oh, I’d love to enroll my child in the Choir School, but they can’t sing?”

JDT: Oh, yes. This is horrifying to me. Once at a parent expo of extra-curricular activities for youth in our metropolitan area, we had a booth for the Choir School, and at least ten encounters with parents were, “Oh, this looks really great but my kid can’t sing.” My response is, “How do you know?”

MGH: It’s like saying, “My child has never had a piano lesson so they can’t play the piano and I’m not going to enroll them.”

JDT: I shudder to think of the generations of kids who were and are told they can’t sing. Actual tone-deafness is rare, and only about one in twenty truly suffer from amusia, the technical term for tone-deafness. Often when we audition youngsters for the Choir School there’s a pitch matching problem. It’s not an ear thing, it’s just that they’ve never accessed their voice before, or at least that part of their voice. And usually by the end of the audition or shortly thereafter, they’re matching notes. I should say, too that when we “audition” a young person for the choir program, I’m not listening to their voice. Rather, we want to make sure they are a good fit for the program and the responsibilities that participation carries.  

MGH: I think there’s something particular about singing with other people. Much of the singing culture we experience is so solo-based. We talk about the importance of corporate worship and I think corporate singing is a huge part of that.

JDT: The absence or decline of singing in church, or getting away from the expectation that everyone participates, is damaging community. It’s a great treasure of the Church, and we must model and communicate the importance of congregational song to children, dispensing with the fallacy that youth “don’t like,” or “don’t respond” to great hymnody.  

Singing corporately is a universal activity that can bridge a divide. I often tell the choristers, “You are not required to like each other, but you are required to love one another.” I think starting from this place of respect is of utmost importance to corporate music-making. One of the markers of a great ensemble is the unison sound. Any choir can sing in harmony, but in unison you really have to listen to each other.

MGH: What role can congregational singing play in Christian education? How does congregational singing feed spirituality? 

JDT: The hymnal is one of the best books of theology, and when we stop engaging with it, I think we’ve lost a major educational opportunity. A friend of mine who’s a priest says, “To understand the song, we must sing the song.” Hymns also serve as punctuation in the liturgy and offer us an opportunity to reflect upon God’s word and deeds. 

MGH: There’s something visceral about the singing, about taking those words into your body. It’s different to sing them than to just hear them or read them on the page.

JDT: Unless you’re the lector or the gospeler, or you’re singing the psalm in the choir, your job for much of the liturgy is to listen. But the hymns are part of one’s response. 

MGH: It was brutal not being able to do any kind of singing together during the pandemic. Can you talk about the pandemic and how that affected our relationship with congregational singing at the Cathedral?

JDT: Brutal is the word for it. I think it was far more traumatic than a lot of people thought it would be. We did several virtual choir productions, and while this helped to fill a void, I know that for many choir members, just the act of recording the tracks was traumatic. For me, even recording the accompaniment to a hymn was a daunting task. When you take away just about every aspect of ensemble singing, it can feel pretty empty, and that’s why I dispensed with virtual choir pretty early on and didn’t make it a requirement for anyone in our ensembles. I’m so grateful for the work that we did do in this regard, as I know it meant a lot to many in our congregation. The inability to experience and participate in the music together was, for many, a grave reminder of being separated from community. On the last Sunday in June of 2021, when we finally resumed in-person worship, I know there were moist eyes in the nave when the first hymn started.   

MGH: What advice do you have for people who want to become more confident in their hymn singing and congregations who want to be more encouraging?

JDT: Singing is one of the most organic human expressions, and therefore I consider it one of the sincerest expressions. Singing is also an activity in which we feel vulnerable; and oftentimes people feel judged. It’s no great secret that our faith communities are sometimes a place of great judgement. 

MGH: What you say about singing being so vulnerable and about participation reminds me of shape note singing. One of the key aspects of Sacred Harp is that there are no spectators. And it is a fearless sort of atmosphere because it is wildly non-judgmental, like, “We’ve all made mistakes very loudly and it doesn’t matter because we’re here to sing together.”

JDT: I’m always very suspicious when someone encounters a tune they don’t know and says, “Oh, that’s unsingable.” How many times have you tried? If people think that I sit down with a Bach prelude and fugue I’ve never seen and by the end of the practice session, I have it, I don’t. So why would you set yourself up for that and shut yourself off to the possibility of learning?

As clergy and church musicians, we must highlight the fact that this is a part the work of the people – the liturgy.  If we want the church to sing, we need to sing. There may be a little “get over yourself” in my tone here, but I truly believe that hearing the priest sing the Sursum corda, no matter what one thinks of the voice quality, is a beautiful act of great love and sincerity. Please stop saying you can’t sing. What is a child to think when they hear that?

MGH: Well what’s the point of singing a hymn? Ultimately it’s for God. It’s not for us. I mean it is for us in that I think worship is good for us, adoration is good for us, good theology is good for us, but that’s also part of why it doesn’t matter how you sound.

JDT: Sometimes I wonder if people can be a little intimidated by the Cathedral Choir, I mean, it’s a very good group, we work hard, we strive to do the absolute best we can, and I sometimes wonder if people hear that and think “I can’t make that sound.” Well, we don’t need you to make that sound – we need you to make your sound. 

All this said, I understand that having the choir there to lead and encourage is most helpful. But if you’re a person in the nave who is confident in their singing, stand next to a newcomer, or someone you’ve noticed is not singing at all. I’m reminded of one of my dear, departed friends, Marjorie. No one has ever, in the history of Christianity, held a hymnal better. I never saw anything like it. She had a way of holding it at exactly the right height, but it was never in front of her, it was always just over to the side so that she wasn’t singing into the book. She was such a fantastic example. She had the tool of the hymnal, but she was fully engaged and engaging others, always aware of her part in the greater sound.  

MGH: So often we talk about what prayer or singing does for us, and that doesn’t always click for me. What I need is to say, “This is the sacrifice you owe God.” That is part of my own choral music making. What do you say to the person who says, “Okay, yes, I see this and I would like to try being more sure or more intentional in my singing as part of prayer? What do I do now?”

JDT: What you do is sing. It’s the only way to make it a part of you. Yes, people study voice for years, but we’re not talking about preparing the average parishioner for an art song recital. I think patient and thoughtful church musicians can give people some pointers at a very basic level on how to use their voice and not come across like you’re trying to give them a voice lesson. Now this does require the person to be open and vulnerable and a little comfortable in failing, so you have to cultivate a space where they can come to someone and say “help.” And something like a quarterly hymn sing can be a good way for people who say “I want to sing more in church but I feel like I don’t know the hymns very well.” Perhaps it fosters a completely non-judgmental “we are all here to have fun” sort of context.

The important thing to remember is that hymn is prayer and that we understand it best when we do it ourselves. It may take a bit of bravery, but it as the Sursum corda says, it is right to give our thanks and praise.