When the Old Bones Speak

Iona Abbey Church, Isle of Iona, Argyle, Scotland

Call me crazy, but my approach to creating music in a church is rooted in several realities, all working at the same time.  The first, and probably the most interior, is a prayerful spirit – a sense of watchfulness, humility, and focus on listening.  The second, which is blatant and obvious, is musical and technical skill.  I wonder if many musicians have this as their sole criteria.  It would be lamentable if such were the case.

The third consideration for me is much more subtle.  Yet for the artist, I would venture that it is probably just as important as the ones mentioned above.  It is also, to my mind, the more slippery to put into words – in fact, sometimes bordering on the ineffable.  

For when an organist or a guitarist or a violinist or even a vocalist creates music in a sacred space, they are always working with two instruments.  The first is obvious, whether it be under their hands or coming from their vocal chords.  But the second instrument is the room itself, because the room speaks, responds, gives assent (or not, depending on many things, including acoustics).  One can approach this scientifically, by simply analyzing reverberation time, the surfaces involved, the kinds of music chosen for the space.  But I prefer another way – an encounter, a dialogue, between what is being created and what is being reflected back.

And so it was that, unlooked for, I was invited to play guitar for one of the Evening Prayer services at Iona.  The summer Director of Music is a person I've long admired – Sally Ann Morris, from, of all places, North Carolina!  We had an unexpected, happy reunion in that ancient church; I had no idea that she was there as a summer sabbatical.  Sally asked me if I would contribute on the guitar that evening.  

I had no instrument, but one was to be provided.  It's an enormous church, and the congregation seemed to appear out of nowhere – both evenings that we were in attendance there were close to two hundred people in the nave of the church.  And so some sort of acoustic amplification was also needed for such a group.  The electronic solution was simple; a pair of wireless lavalier microphones clipped onto a music stand.  

But when I began playing, the old bones of the church seemed to rise up and respond.  I played a medley to begin with – moving fluidly from an English folk tune to a Welsh one (Kingsfold to Ar Hyd Y Nos).  As I played, I got the undeniable feeling that the church itself was listening, assisting, rejoicing.  For this is a place consecrated to Celtic ways, and the selections I chose were deliberate, an homage to the spirituality and legacy of the place.

At the close, for meditation as the congregation dispersed, I played yet another medley, this time wedding together two contemporary pieces: first, from their resident composer, John Bell, came Take, O Take Me As I Am, probably one of Iona's best-loved pieces.  Wedded to this was Kathleen Thomerson's I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light, which seemed appropriate to the dispersing of the community into the evening dusk.

I played in a church whose footprints go back one thousand, five hundred years.  I listened to her responding back to me.  I had a song to offer, and she had one to share in response.  

Such is the world of those of us who create music, who listen for the Old Bones to rise up and speak to us anew.