I've been saying this for awhile now, but only to people who are tired of me saying it: praise music makes it harder, not easier, for the congregation to participate. I could add ten more reasons than the ones offered here by Erik Parker, but I'll stick with two.
The more a tune follows a pop aesthetic, the harder it is to sing, unless you're the kind of tenor for which most pop music is written. The majority of hymn tunes, boring and unlovely as some of them may be, are written to be sung by almost any voice, and virtually all of them also have parts that can be sung by specific voices.
And, second, when the tune is all there is (and it's hard enough to catch that), the church misses out on the strangely theological wonder that is harmony, the unique sound that can only come when people sing different notes at the same time. Beauty is enhanced by difference--what a wild world our God has made for us!
This was a fun story: professors on a plagiarism sting op! I would love to be a full-time plagiarism detector. That would be fun.
In many ways, this is old news: Children with family routines have better emotional health. But just in case you needed an expert to tell you so, there it is. The sorts of things you imagine a healthy, happy family doing--reading, playing, eating, making music together--tend to make for healthy, happy families.
This was a fascinating article on Shakespeare performance. I was especially interested in how the company dealt with The Taming of the Shrew, which ceases being a comedy at precisely the point it offers the pretense of a happy ending.
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