Each week, as we collectively said the words of the liturgy at church, a playful musical curiosity arose in me. It’s the curiosity of: I want to sing this; I want to play this! What would the music of these spoken words sound like? Could my instrument “say” this too? I noticed a kind of music to the collective speaking itself: we find the voices, rhythm, and intonation of those around us as we join to the same scaffolding of words.
Eager to explore this, I invited Na’amah Cheiban (a fellow jazz-trained musician and delighter in the Lord) to collaborate with me. Working with Central Vineyard’s worship confession liturgy—written by Dan Sheed, with additional writing by Donald Goodhall—we would explore the musical direction given by the spoken liturgy, with singing and our instruments.
We chose to approach the recording quite unplanned, with responsive improvisation, beginning with just our own voices saying the liturgy together. From this, the key of D emerged (about the only “conventional” compositional decision made all day). Over the span of some hours, we recorded with various approaches, open to exploration. Firstly, we improvised over the spoken liturgy with our instruments, guitar and upright bass; we then independently sought out and sang “found poem”-style prayers; finally, we played our instruments again, this time recorded live together.
This was my prayer on starting our afternoon of recording:
“Lord, please be with us
in this project.
Let us delight in what you’ve made,
and the joining in of making.
Let it be refreshing,
to the listener,
Let it be thoughtful,
and good in some way.”
We experienced real delight in the unintended interactions between the recordings we had done separately, in what emerged as we added and tried ideas, and in the congregation of instruments and voices that resulted. There was a joy in playing with what the Lord has given us to play with. While the sounds we brought together don’t sound together in the way a song played off a chord chart does, they come together following the “form” of this collective, spoken prayer. Liturgy brings together many pray-ers, and contain many prayers, while being one collective work of prayer. A liturgy of worship spoken together each week recalls many prayers prayed just so in the past; and for us, it felt as though whispers of these things emerged in the piece of music.
Our hope is that this could be listened to with ears and hearts wanting to delight in the Lord and be freshened for a moment in what has been made for us to delight in. And another hope: that amidst this prayer of many people you might feel encouraged to join, to join a collective life of response, a work of prayer. Here is a work of several hands, a response to God who makes all things—and who in Christ is making all things new.
And here is a love in response, because the Lord has loved first.
