Missioner Fall 2019

STEPPING INTO
NASHOTAH’S musical
TRADITI
BY DR. GEOFFREY WILLIAMS
While my time at Nashotah House is in its early days,
my time as a church musician in Anglican Worship is
nearing four decades long. Here at the House we have
been blessed with a long tradition of fine music and
musicians. This has been accompanied by a variety
of instruments over time, and our current blessing is a
new Allen Digital organ with capabilities that many of
you will have heard during its inaugural recital given
during Alumni and Commencement celebrations last
May. The history of organs in worship can be traced
to early days of Jewish worship with the magrepha, a
descendant of the shofar which called priests to worship.
Wind instruments are mentioned in the Psalms and
pipe organs are essentially large collections of wind
instruments played via a keyboard. Obviously, the
first music took the form of singing, the human voice
being no less a wind instrument than an oboe or a
flute. As the seminarians will attest, after our weekly
music rehearsals in chapel, I am constantly drawing on
the use of breath to support and sustain our worship
through both spoken and sung prayer. That breath is
supported first by our own bodies, by the commitment
of our neighbors to the collective song, and no less
importantly by the new organ in our beautiful chapel.
While organ playing can accompany our private prayer
before and after worship, its primary role is to sustain
our singing both in pitch and breadth. The development
of organ-building and design has given us instruments
today which provide additional color and timbre to the
sound we make with our mouths, thereby enhancing our
worship in the beauty of holiness.
One of the early institutions in my tenure here at
Nashotah, however, has been to sing our Friday morning
Holy Eucharist without assistance from our magnificent
instrument. This proves to be a good exercise for a
few reasons. First, in observance of the tradition of
many of the Anglican establishments in England, we
remember Good Friday each Friday with silence from
our instrument. Second, the unaccompanied singing by
our community more purely focuses our prayer inward
and upward as we sing both at and with one another
in our collegiate-style chapel. Lastly, to strip away the
organ can remind us of the quiet joy that complements
the exultant glory of a more full-bodied musical
experience in worship. During our residential terms, we
sing nine liturgies per week, eight with organ – which
range from a simple accompanied hymn and Ordinary
of the Mass to our full expression of Solemn High Mass
on Thursday evenings with organ improvisations and
voluntaries, together with glorious congregational hymns
in harmony and anthems sung by our Choral Scholars.
The organ is used while we prepare incense before the
singing of the Magnificat or Te Deum at Solemn Offices.
It also provides color and tone to the singing of Anglican
Chant in Psalms and Canticles to further emphasize
Dr. Geoffrey Williams conducting the choral scholars