Part 3—Select Seminar Papers
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permission was even needed at this point; the use of the organ is just assumed. So much is clear in that both the 1932 and 1946 BCW have rites for the dedication of an organ. If the organ were at all controversial at this point, the books would not contain such a rite.22 The Worshipbook (1970) The Worshipbook, published in 1970, again gives attention to pre-service music. A rubric on page 15 says “The session will guide a congregation’s preparation for worship. As people gather on the Lord’s Day, they may pray, or, when there is instrumental music, give silent attention; they may wish to sing or read hymns, or to greet one another, talking together as neighbors in faith…”23 The order of worship for the Service for the Lord’s day, like its predecessor volumes, continues to show the spoken “Call to Worship” as the first element of the worship service proper. Two small things can be taken away from the rubric in The Worshipbook. First is that music during the gathering is still considered something prior to the worship service. The things mentioned during the gathering are, as the note says, “preparation for worship.” The second thing to take away is that people are now being encouraged to give “silent attention” to the instrumental music if played during the gathering. This surely implies that the organ prelude is meant to be an aid to the people’s pre-worship devotions, not a detraction from them. In a related vein, many Presbyterian congregations in recent decades have adopted the practice of having the entire assembly listen to the organ prelude at/ near the beginning of the worship service. Whether this novel instruction in The Worshipbook is descriptive of that emerging practice or predictive of it is unclear. However, it is clear that once instrumental music becomes an object of the entire congregation’s undivided attention, it legitimizes it in a way heretofore unseen. It also invites the prelude to be interpreted in new and more substantial ways, since it is no longer seen as subordinate to or simply parallel to other gathering activities. In other words, the prelude, understood now as a long-established practice, is beginning to be theologized. The Book of Common Worship, 1993 and 2018 In its description of the Service for the Lord’s Day, the 1993 BCW says that during the Gathering, among other things, “music may be offered appropriate to the season or to the scripture readings of the day. The music should help people focus their attention on God and God’s kingdom.”24 Here we have a softening of the encouragement that the people give silent attention to the prelude as in The Worshipbook. In its place, there is the expectation placed upon the music makers that the prelude turn people’s attention Godwards. Peter Bower’s Companion to the Book of Common Worship25 has a discussion of the prelude as a part of worship. Bower’s rationale has to do with the concept of
