"We need more arrangements that are easier to play, so people can accompany hymns with less effort."
"Not everyone can sing these hymns."
"Today's listener doesn't understand the language, so we should update the language."
"It needs to be more accessible."
"I'm not a trained musician, but I can understand ___. Can you make resources that way?"
Church musicians frequently hear or receive these requests from parishioners regarding musical materials. My response is, are you sure that is really what you need? The musicians have been trained to look out for those needs and make those kinds of executive decisions. As these instances occur more and more, they only make the opposite point that that is what they don't need.
So your organist doesn't like isometric Bach settings, or pedal. He wishes that three-part settings of the hymnal could be available so he could just sit down and play hymns on the fly. Well, clearly he did have musical training to get to the point where he could sightread - what hinders him from going ahead and learning a four-part setting which supports all vocal parts in their original form?
"I don't have time to practice that. I have a job during the week."
Hmm. If this is continually going to take a back seat, your congregation deserves better than that. Maybe we need more trained church musicians who have that AS their job!
"So, how do you make any money doing that?"
That's a good question...
The thing is, every hymn you think of as easy was once hard for you. You learned to sing and pick up on a tune or read music when you were little. Then, by repetition in whatever degree, you memorized its patterns. What some think of as a "harder" hymn is just a less-coherent hymn, and may involve more repetition to memorize (but again, this may not be the same in all times and places). If you in a certain musical culture are expecting that a hymn will sound a specific way, you already have started learning it.
"But this is too hard for the modern-day church member." Why? People must have done it for years now, and survived. Standard changes of practice (like "you" for "thee," or musical notation) are allowed at the basic level, but if alterations are made with an outlook of accessibility, it begins to assume that people are not willing to learn. I know there's the 8.2-second average attention span to get past, but can't pastors and musicians teach people to learn, too?
I've done some reading about tone-deafness. Very few cases out there are lack of musical ear in a biological form. Most of a learning disability to do with music is 1. lack of musical exposure, and 2. not wanting to listen to others when they speak. Interesting. Being in an environment in which people make music (like a church) and learning to carry on a balanced conversation effects the difference.
Consider carefully if your congregation wants you to adjust anything for the sake of ease. Is it really a rare, necessary update? Or do you need to address the root of the problem instead?
Maybe so.
