Do you all know any good Christian-oriented ITM tunes? My church in Nashville has several musical combinations for worship services. The congregation is filled with great pro and semi pro musicians. Some members play ITM instruments and I would like to pull together a worship band whose repetoire is ITM oriented Worship music. Any suggestions?
You kidding? The tune section here is teeming with Christianity-themed tunes - and they go well with Halloween too!
Ahem... theres:
Paddy goes to Hell
Go to the Devil and Shake Yourself
The Devil in the Kitchen
Some Say the Devil is Dead
The Devils of Dublin
Thank God We're Surrounded by Water
Angel Island
Blue Angel
The Holy Land
Charley the Prayermaster
Crathie Kirk
and of course the Quaker hymn, Lord of the Dance.
(I know, yuck, but the words to the original song are pretty darn cool; one of the verses goes: "i danced in the evening when the sky turned black / it's hard to dance with the devil on your back" - which, when sung by an Anglican boy's choir can be rather unsettling to hear)
For a jig, you could take the intro to Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring.
But I'd go with Paddy Goes to Hell, what a cool tune title! It's a slide, but if y'all are charismatics, you could say it's a "back slide" ahahahahaha.
I can't believe the standingstones page quotes W Gratten Flood so much! I don't know if he's been officially discredited, but the edition I had of his History of Irish Music is prefaced with a cautionary disclaimer, to the effect of "What you are about to read is to be taken as a curiosity - where a historian's thinking is so clouded by nationalist pride that it is very difficult to separate the truth from exaggeration, supposition, speculation and outright lies".
There's a copy of it online somewhere - well worth a look. Just don't believe anything it says without corroborating the info elsewhere.
Try a search in Tunes for saint, priest, father, brother, nun, sister, reverend, and similar ecclesiastical words, to see what comes up. Although "The priest in his boots" may not be appreciated if the congregation got wind of the title
What makes a non-verbal tune have any kind of orientation, Christian or otherwise? It seems to me that any good tune or melody could be used in a worshipful manner. I certainly wouldn't think of limiting my choice of tunes to only those with religious words in their titles.
Thank you, chadmills. The Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts, was at least acknowledged by Aaron Copeland when he composed Appalachian Spring. Not so by Sidney Carter, the plagiarizing old fool. His pathetic, dribbling wannabee song Lord of the Dance makes me want to puke.
Sorry. I feel much better now.
"Well Bill, "Highway To Hell" has a nice melody but I think it would be impolite to play it in church but that's just me.
# Posted on Sunday, October 16th 2005 by bobgordon "
I'm not familiar with the tune. If it was a tune with lyrics that folks would associate together, then I wouldn't use it either. If it's not associated with lyrics. I'd use it but I wouldn't necessarily include title in the bulletin.
Re: Highway to Hell in church---My sister had ACDC's Shook Me All Night Long played as a recessional at her wedding.....My mother is still hiding her face.
I agree with Bill; a tune without lyrics is not necessarily Christian or secular. Our band has used all sorts of tunes for our Christmas sets and no one knew any different. People really liked our selections. Just pick tunes that fit the mood you are trying to evoke. Perhaps airs for meditative mood; jigs, reels, polkas, etc. for joyous mood.
However, if you need tunes with worship lyrics, then I would suggest arranging existing songs for ITM-type instrumentation. This is not particularly difficult to do, although how it sounds will depend on the type and style of songs you are attempting to arrange. Many classic hymns work well, and even some of the CCM material will work. It will depend on taste and the instrumentation of your band.
You might give a listen to Michael Card's "Starkindler" CD. While not strictly ITM, it has that flavor and might give you some ideas. The "Deeper Still" series CDs attempted arrangements of worship songs in a Celtic flavor with "ITM-instrumentation," but IMHO with a low success rate. There are quite a number of Celtic worship CD available, but I haven't listened to many of them. The few I heard didn't suit my taste. Search "Celtic" on a place like christianbook.com for a sampling.
There's a lovely melody that I learned in primary school and was later recorded (in the 1970s?) by Cat Stevens called Morning Has Broken. I believe it's a Gaelic melody, but don't know where the words are from. It could be called religious, but mainly it's about the beauty of morning.
Morning Has Broken Is from a Gaelic melody; the words were written in 1931 by Eleanor Farjeon. It's about rising each day with the Word of God, therefore the beauty of each day is as fresh as the first day in Eden. Beautiful hymn.
Must just say here that the major musical influences for me in my late teens were artists like Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, & even Donovan.
All had a 'real' sound & sang songs with stories, which probably helped me to move on over to Trad via The Dubliners & The Corries.
Thank you, Ptarmigan. I have all my original albums of everyone you mentioned, and I still play them. I was amazed when I took some of them to school for "listening day"--several of my 9th grade students were in awe that I had seen Donovan in concert. He toured here in the States last spring, and they all went to his concert. Shock. Just when I give up and think all the youth of America cares for nothing but rap-music, they totally surprise me.
Something my church does occasionally is take a traditional tune and put the words from a Psalm to it. Just two weeks ago we did Star of the County Down with lyrics from a Psalm. Of course, this idea would only work if you had a singer.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot... (really!)
Star of the County Down has many names. Two of which are real hymns. Oh Sing A Song of Bethlehem (obviously Christmas), and I Feel the Winds of God Today.
jim troy, it helped that I was a dreamy, romantic 17 yr old when I saw Donovan lo those many years ago. His voice wasn't the best, it was the poetry of the lyrics. I'm glad girls can still find romance in songs today in this "wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am" world. I don't know how you'd classify his guitar style; definitely like flatpicking, with a bit of classical thrown in.
Do you have the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band CD "Will the Circle Be Unbroken"? If you're a Doc Watson fan he's got some fine songs on it. And it makes me feel sad (and old) that Donovan's music is being used for car commercials.
More complete--I like that a lot.
I really do recommend the Will the Circle be Unbroken--it also has dialogues and interviews with Doc Watson and some of the other musicians. It's blue-grassy, but the older style. Maybelle Carter is on it, and does several of the old Carter Family songs. This is the CD I break out when the whole world seems wrong; after disc 1 (it's a double CD) life always seems better. Make sure you get the original, first relased in 1972. There are parts 2&3, which are also good, but don't live up to the first one. I think you'll like it.
I second the O' Riada suggestion from Conan (can't find the fada, sorry) - if I'm not well wrong he wrote 'Ag Chriost an Saoil' which is a lovely piece, especially in the right context - could be done instrumentally if the language barrier is an issue.
Le meas
Ruairi (still can't find the fada...)
Glad to see that people kept correcting until the accurate facts about the tune "Simple Gifts" showed up.
The new Methodist hymnal here in the US has two nice settings of the 23rd psalm, one billed as Irish, and one billed as Scottish.
We played Saint Anne's Reel in church one Sunday, and got chastised--we argued that it was named after a Saint, but too many people recognized it as a dance tune.
If you just go through just about any hymnbook, there are a lot of nice tunes that lend themselves to ITM instrumentation and approaches--no need to go searching too far and wide for tunes.
Dear Folks: Here's my two cents as a church musician who doesn't know a lot about ITM ( I had to figure out what that even meant) You might try to play some songs the congregation is familiar with, that'll be your foot in the door for ITM. I've played the 12-string acoustic guitar forever in church and after learning to play the harmonica and the pennywhistle slipped those two instruments in too. These instruments have brought some new life into some rather old traditional songs and given people a new perspective on those songs. Let us know what songs you finally chose and how it went. And don't forget, it's a worshipping rather than performing. mutepointe
Some churches may not like ITM as part of the worship service simply because of the enjoyment factor. I read a long, complicated book on the role of music in a church service; the gist of it was if the congregation notices the music, then it detracts from the worship service and shouldn't be used. I understand the underlying logic of this, but that is just too extreme. Of course the music will be noticed. I'm sure God notices it, and I'm sure He'd like to correct a note or two from time to time. But there is a very fine line between worshipping and performing. I think when you begin to worry too much about how you sound, then you've ceased worship and begun performance.
A Musical not a theological question
A Musical not a theological question
Do you all know any good Christian-oriented ITM tunes? My church in Nashville has several musical combinations for worship services. The congregation is filled with great pro and semi pro musicians. Some members play ITM instruments and I would like to pull together a worship band whose repetoire is ITM oriented Worship music. Any suggestions?
Bob
Nashville
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by bobgordon
Re: A Musical not a theological question
My favorite hymn based on an Irish melody is Be Thou My Vision--it's in most any hymnal.
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by dmarie
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Amazing Grace?
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by Pete D
Re: A Musical not a theological question
You kidding? The tune section here is teeming with Christianity-themed tunes - and they go well with Halloween too!
Ahem... theres:
Paddy goes to Hell
Go to the Devil and Shake Yourself
The Devil in the Kitchen
Some Say the Devil is Dead
The Devils of Dublin
Thank God We're Surrounded by Water
Angel Island
Blue Angel
The Holy Land
Charley the Prayermaster
Crathie Kirk
and of course the Quaker hymn, Lord of the Dance.
(I know, yuck, but the words to the original song are pretty darn cool; one of the verses goes: "i danced in the evening when the sky turned black / it's hard to dance with the devil on your back" - which, when sung by an Anglican boy's choir can be rather unsettling to hear)
For a jig, you could take the intro to Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring.
But I'd go with Paddy Goes to Hell, what a cool tune title! It's a slide, but if y'all are charismatics, you could say it's a "back slide" ahahahahaha.
*Ahem*
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by Q
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Here's some food for thought Bob:
http://www.standingstones.com/irishem.html
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Or you might like to investigate:
http://www.theology.ie/liturgy.htm
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: A Musical not a theological question
I can't believe the standingstones page quotes W Gratten Flood so much! I don't know if he's been officially discredited, but the edition I had of his History of Irish Music is prefaced with a cautionary disclaimer, to the effect of "What you are about to read is to be taken as a curiosity - where a historian's thinking is so clouded by nationalist pride that it is very difficult to separate the truth from exaggeration, supposition, speculation and outright lies".
There's a copy of it online somewhere - well worth a look. Just don't believe anything it says without corroborating the info elsewhere.
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by Q
Re: A Musical not a theological question
"Just don't believe anything it says without corroborating the info elsewhere."
Wise words indeed Q - which should be remembered when reading ANYTHING on the internet!
Except of course all the wise words of wisdom one can find here, in the happy land of the org-ers!
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Quite scarey really, when you consider that this particular site has already had - 156,261 visitors.
Och well, thank goodness you can only fool some of the people, some of the time...................
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Actually, Lord of the Dance was written in the 70's.
The Quaker Hymn that was the basis for that (and incidentally, part of Copeland's Appalachian Spring) is called Simple Gifts.
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by Pádraig
Re: A Musical not a theological question
no kidding? Well, it's in the new Anglican hymn book for its sins, so there you go.
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by Q
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Paddy Goes to Hell--a back-slide; that's terrific! Thanks, Q
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by dmarie
Re: A Musical not a theological question
PS I really enjoyed those websites, Ptarmigan.
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by dmarie
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Hey Q, why not email the fella who does the Standing Stones website and inform him about what you have regarding Flood?
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by Phantom Button
Re: A Musical not a theological question
You are very welcome dmarie. I like to bring a touch of class to this site, every once in a while, you know!
Seriously Jeremy, I 'am' only joking here! . crawl, snivel, ........pretty please, can I stay...............?
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: A Musical not a theological question
The Man Who Died And Rose Again.
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display.php/2424
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by dafydd
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Palm Sunday
Musical Priest
(Potentially
The Reconciliation
Providence
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by jasonb
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Simple Gifts. Not Quaker, Shaker.
# Posted on October 15th 2005 by TomB-R
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Try a search in Tunes for saint, priest, father, brother, nun, sister, reverend, and similar ecclesiastical words, to see what comes up. Although "The priest in his boots" may not be appreciated if the congregation got wind of the title
Trevor
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by Trevor Jennings
Re: A Musical not a theological question
The Flood books mentioned above are available here:
http://www.waterfordcountylibrary.ie/library/web/Display/article/96/
I just posted this in the Links section as well, under the Articles category,
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by tedium
Re: A Musical not a theological question
What makes a non-verbal tune have any kind of orientation, Christian or otherwise? It seems to me that any good tune or melody could be used in a worshipful manner. I certainly wouldn't think of limiting my choice of tunes to only those with religious words in their titles.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by Bill Reeder
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Didn't Peadar O'Riada pen words and music for an Irish mass? I suggest looking into that.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by Conán McDonnell
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Well Bill, "Highway To Hell" has a nice melody but I think it would be impolite to play it in church but that's just me.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by bobgordon
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Thank you, chadmills. The Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts, was at least acknowledged by Aaron Copeland when he composed Appalachian Spring. Not so by Sidney Carter, the plagiarizing old fool. His pathetic, dribbling wannabee song Lord of the Dance makes me want to puke.
Sorry. I feel much better now.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by oldstrings
Re: A Musical not a theological question
"Well Bill, "Highway To Hell" has a nice melody but I think it would be impolite to play it in church but that's just me.
# Posted on Sunday, October 16th 2005 by bobgordon "
I'm not familiar with the tune. If it was a tune with lyrics that folks would associate together, then I wouldn't use it either. If it's not associated with lyrics. I'd use it but I wouldn't necessarily include title in the bulletin.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by Bill Reeder
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Re: Highway to Hell in church---My sister had ACDC's Shook Me All Night Long played as a recessional at her wedding.....My mother is still hiding her face.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by dmarie
Re: A Musical not a theological question
I agree with Bill; a tune without lyrics is not necessarily Christian or secular. Our band has used all sorts of tunes for our Christmas sets and no one knew any different. People really liked our selections. Just pick tunes that fit the mood you are trying to evoke. Perhaps airs for meditative mood; jigs, reels, polkas, etc. for joyous mood.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by rob zouk
Re: A Musical not a theological question
However, if you need tunes with worship lyrics, then I would suggest arranging existing songs for ITM-type instrumentation. This is not particularly difficult to do, although how it sounds will depend on the type and style of songs you are attempting to arrange. Many classic hymns work well, and even some of the CCM material will work. It will depend on taste and the instrumentation of your band.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by rob zouk
Re: A Musical not a theological question
You might give a listen to Michael Card's "Starkindler" CD. While not strictly ITM, it has that flavor and might give you some ideas. The "Deeper Still" series CDs attempted arrangements of worship songs in a Celtic flavor with "ITM-instrumentation," but IMHO with a low success rate. There are quite a number of Celtic worship CD available, but I haven't listened to many of them. The few I heard didn't suit my taste. Search "Celtic" on a place like christianbook.com for a sampling.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by rob zouk
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Rob, did someone tell you that you get paid for each posting you make here?
OK So I fired in 'two in a row', but you just 'had' to go one better, didn't you!
Ah, don't you just love Sundays?
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Maybe this is a good answer - http://www.celticchristiantunes.com/
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by bobgordon
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Or perhaps these CDs might be useful:
http://froogle.google.co.uk/froogle?q=christian+irish+traditional+music+%26+Church+Hymns&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=ff&oi=froogler
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: A Musical not a theological question
There's a lovely melody that I learned in primary school and was later recorded (in the 1970s?) by Cat Stevens called Morning Has Broken. I believe it's a Gaelic melody, but don't know where the words are from. It could be called religious, but mainly it's about the beauty of morning.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by fiddlefingers
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Morning Has Broken Is from a Gaelic melody; the words were written in 1931 by Eleanor Farjeon. It's about rising each day with the Word of God, therefore the beauty of each day is as fresh as the first day in Eden. Beautiful hymn.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by dmarie
Re: A Musical not a theological question
I often wonder how many more beautiful songs Cat Stevens might have given us, if he hadn't 'Found Religion'?
Does this answer your question fingers?:
http://www.cgmusic.com/cghymnal/others/m/morninghasbroken.htm
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Ptarmigan, did Cat Stevens become a Muslim? I'm not being facetious; I know it's hard to tell here sometimes
; I really want to know.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by dmarie
Re: A Musical not a theological question
dmarie, check this out:
http://www.classicbands.com/catstevens.html
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Must just say here that the major musical influences for me in my late teens were artists like Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, & even Donovan.
All had a 'real' sound & sang songs with stories, which probably helped me to move on over to Trad via The Dubliners & The Corries.
Well, that's my Sunday confession over!
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Thank you, Ptarmigan. I have all my original albums of everyone you mentioned, and I still play them. I was amazed when I took some of them to school for "listening day"--several of my 9th grade students were in awe that I had seen Donovan in concert. He toured here in the States last spring, and they all went to his concert. Shock. Just when I give up and think all the youth of America cares for nothing but rap-music, they totally surprise me.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by dmarie
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Ptarmigan,
My three-in-a-row posts is a result of my "oh, I forgot about..." condition. I do that in real life, too. Scary, huh.
# Posted on October 16th 2005 by rob zouk
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Something my church does occasionally is take a traditional tune and put the words from a Psalm to it. Just two weeks ago we did Star of the County Down with lyrics from a Psalm. Of course, this idea would only work if you had a singer.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot... (really!)
Star of the County Down has many names. Two of which are real hymns. Oh Sing A Song of Bethlehem (obviously Christmas), and I Feel the Winds of God Today.
# Posted on October 17th 2005 by TJ
Re: A Musical not a theological question
jim troy, it helped that I was a dreamy, romantic 17 yr old when I saw Donovan lo those many years ago. His voice wasn't the best, it was the poetry of the lyrics. I'm glad girls can still find romance in songs today in this "wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am" world. I don't know how you'd classify his guitar style; definitely like flatpicking, with a bit of classical thrown in.
Do you have the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band CD "Will the Circle Be Unbroken"? If you're a Doc Watson fan he's got some fine songs on it. And it makes me feel sad (and old) that Donovan's music is being used for car commercials.
# Posted on October 17th 2005 by dmarie
Re: A Musical not a theological question
More complete--I like that a lot.
I really do recommend the Will the Circle be Unbroken--it also has dialogues and interviews with Doc Watson and some of the other musicians. It's blue-grassy, but the older style. Maybelle Carter is on it, and does several of the old Carter Family songs. This is the CD I break out when the whole world seems wrong; after disc 1 (it's a double CD) life always seems better. Make sure you get the original, first relased in 1972. There are parts 2&3, which are also good, but don't live up to the first one. I think you'll like it.
# Posted on October 17th 2005 by dmarie
Re: A Musical not a theological question
I second the O' Riada suggestion from Conan (can't find the fada, sorry) - if I'm not well wrong he wrote 'Ag Chriost an Saoil' which is a lovely piece, especially in the right context - could be done instrumentally if the language barrier is an issue.
Le meas
Ruairi (still can't find the fada...)
# Posted on October 17th 2005 by hurleystick
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Glad to see that people kept correcting until the accurate facts about the tune "Simple Gifts" showed up.
The new Methodist hymnal here in the US has two nice settings of the 23rd psalm, one billed as Irish, and one billed as Scottish.
We played Saint Anne's Reel in church one Sunday, and got chastised--we argued that it was named after a Saint, but too many people recognized it as a dance tune.
If you just go through just about any hymnbook, there are a lot of nice tunes that lend themselves to ITM instrumentation and approaches--no need to go searching too far and wide for tunes.
# Posted on October 17th 2005 by AlBrown
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Dear Folks: Here's my two cents as a church musician who doesn't know a lot about ITM ( I had to figure out what that even meant) You might try to play some songs the congregation is familiar with, that'll be your foot in the door for ITM. I've played the 12-string acoustic guitar forever in church and after learning to play the harmonica and the pennywhistle slipped those two instruments in too. These instruments have brought some new life into some rather old traditional songs and given people a new perspective on those songs. Let us know what songs you finally chose and how it went. And don't forget, it's a worshipping rather than performing. mutepointe
# Posted on October 18th 2005 by mutepointe
Re: A Musical not a theological question
Some churches may not like ITM as part of the worship service simply because of the enjoyment factor. I read a long, complicated book on the role of music in a church service; the gist of it was if the congregation notices the music, then it detracts from the worship service and shouldn't be used. I understand the underlying logic of this, but that is just too extreme. Of course the music will be noticed. I'm sure God notices it, and I'm sure He'd like to correct a note or two from time to time. But there is a very fine line between worshipping and performing. I think when you begin to worry too much about how you sound, then you've ceased worship and begun performance.
# Posted on October 18th 2005 by dmarie