Church. Music. Solutions.
Earlier at Music Minus None…
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Happy last day of getting ready!
I‘m in aggressively Christmas-y Fredricksburg TX this morning, shopping in the letzten Minuten. Lots of German Heritage to navigate in this town, which hits different this year. My lateness feels like betrayal of my ancestors, and I‘m kind of reveling in it.
The 72 or so hours of CHRISTMAS MUSIC begins when I get home:
All the Palestrina and Praetorius
Voces8 until my husband begs for mercy (mercy usually means Tool)
Nostalgic mid-century crooner Xmas classics until they creeps me out
Ahhhhh, Baaaaaccccchhh.
Also I am playing a candlelight service in our tiny town tomorrow for a church without an organist.
Have you heard of Church Music Solutions? Hooo doggies.
This historic lil church has been using the service since the pastor retired a few months back along with his organist wife. I had no idea how widely CMS is in use. But here’s another section of the music business in which keyboard players continue to disappear. It‘s not just accompanists in the academy.
I attended the church yesterday to hear what it was all about. The organ and sound system are hooked up to an iPad, which plays the service music prepared by CMS. The sound quality is good. Real organists record the excerpts, so tempi are decent and it‘s possible to sing along. This church is liturgical, so the running of the call-and-response didn‘t really work; it might have been smoother with someone who understood better how to operate the program. My heart cracked a little at the thought of this small, aging congregation doing their Christmas Eve liturgy with a robot, backing away from the Kyrie or Let the Vineyards Be Fruitful because there’s no one at the bench to listen to them breathe.
To be fair, this service is programmed with the skills of real organists. Just like Appcompanist, a service whose recordings are made by humans, there are at least some keyboard players who are earning some compensation in the process. But there’s no getting around the fact that these services are increasing in use in place of collaboration with a live keyboard player.
I know, as the live music industry everywhere gasps for breath, that there are so many people and communities trying to stay in it despite so many out-of-reach expenses. Not least because accompanists are often women, under pressure to help, serve, and be humble, our positions have been historically underfunded. But maybe more significantly, pianists and organists have often become invisible behind our big, increasingly anachronistic instruments. Students and congregants alike have wondered how to get the instruments they need to work again, forgetting almost entirely about the musicians who have made them sound.
Here‘s a page from the Church Music Solutions website.
One order a week for the whole year works out to just over 2300 dollars. I don‘t know many professional pianists or even advanced students who would play a church service for 45 dollars, and no one who would commit to a church consistently for that money. But it‘s also true in my little town that churches can‘t find anyone to play for any amount of money.
I can‘t begrudge students who can‘t find a live person for their voice lessons or struggling tiny churches this access to something, even if that something can‘t listen or breathe or respond in real time. And yet, just look at the price point. How many people on the edge will keep turning away from human keyboardists, making sustainable keyboard jobs scarcer, making it rarer for people to study and shoot for professional careers, making keyboardists scarcer, making more people turn to apps, rinse and repeat?
Can we even hope to arrest the cycle at this point?
For what it‘s worth, I‘ll bring my rusty organ playing out tomorrow night and play my best. No idea if it will make a difference to the people who hear it. But I‘ll do what I can to thrust a tiny stick into the spokes of this wheel.
If you‘re sitting at a keyboard anywhere during this holiday season, please leave a comment! Let‘s celebrate us!
DKZ