It is the common denominator among nearly all church organists that we go about our weekly routine hearing one thing in our head and another in our ears. Nowhere is this more true than congregational singing – be it hymns, parts of the Ordinary of the Mass, or Acclamations. I’ve just finished a week with my colleagues of the Association of Anglican Musicians (AAM) which had its annual conference in Denver. Getting 250 organists together in a worship service, most especially when most of these colleagues are good friends, is a profound experience of the numinous. I cannot forget the sound of us all singing at full voice in the cathedral of St. John, or the small parish church of St. Andrew for Choral Morning Prayer. It affirms my belief in the power of hymnody to transform lives from the mundane to the called.
To what extent was this vigor due to the joy of being together as a pseudo-family – so many beleaguered in their places of employment and seeking the comfort of colleagues, and to what extent might the recent Supreme Court decision, overturning DOMA, created a sense of inner elation that needed to bubble out through song, we may never be able to gauge. But surely that decision has had an overwhelmingly positive effect on the esteem of those in the church music profession – the vast majority of which are gay.