Mormons and musicians

ByBret Pimentel
Mormon Tabernacle Choir and organ pipes
Photo, More Good Foundation

Some of you know that I am a “Mormon“—a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I find that sometimes fellow musicians are curious about my faith and how it connects to my career in music, so I’d like to share a few thoughts.

Music in LDS (Latter-day Saint) theology

Mormons embrace the biblical Old and New Testaments and find in them reason to consider music, both vocal and instrumental, integral to worship:

And David and all the house of Israel played before the Lord on all manner of instruments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on psalteries, and on timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals. (2nd Samuel 6:5, KJV)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. (Colossians 3:16, KJV)

Books of scripture unique to the LDS canon also promote music in worship. The Book of Mormon describes gatherings of the faithful in the ancient Americas:

And their meetings were conducted by the church after the manner of the workings of the Spirit, and by the power of the Holy Ghost; for as the power of the Holy Ghost led them whether to preach, or to exhort, or to pray, or to supplicate, or to sing, even so it was done. (Moroni 6:9, emphasis added)

The Doctrine and Covenants, a collection of revelations from the 19th and 20th centuries, includes divine sanction for music in worship:

And it shall be given thee, also, to make a selection of sacred hymns, as it shall be given thee, which is pleasing unto me, to be had in my church.

For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads. (Doctrine and Covenants 25:12)

If thou art merry, praise the Lord with singing, with music, with dancing, and with a prayer of praise and thanksgiving. (Doctrine and Covenants 136:28)

Music in LDS services

Congregational hymn singing is essential to LDS worship services, and usually accompanied by organ or piano. The English-language LDS hymnal contains over 300 hymns, some of which are borrowed or adapted from Protestant hymnody. There is also a children’s songbook, and material from this book is well-loved by congregations and sometimes used in adult meetings.

LDS congregations have no professional music ministry (nor any professional clergy, nor any other paid positions). Music leadership and service positions within congregations are filled by members who accept assignments from local ecclesiastical leaders. This means that the technical quality of the music (though not the spiritual quality, most Mormons would argue) varies, depending on available talent. While musical ability is generally plentiful in large, well-established congregations in the western US, some resources are available for less-musical congregations, including hymnals with simplified keyboard parts, and even pre-recorded accompaniments.

Services may also include music performed by soloists or small groups. These may be vocal or instrumental, though a Church policy manual warns against the use of instruments with a “prominent” sound, and mentions brass and percussion instruments in particular as being potentially inappropriate. Final decisions on these matters are made by local leaders, and I, for example, have used the soprano saxophone on occasion, after assuring congregation leadership that it can indeed be played sensitively and worshipfully. As a musician, I find LDS congregations to be extremely attentive and appreciative audiences, although I do find the end of a performance to be a little awkward, as applause is considered inappropriate.

Choir music is also used occasionally in worship services. The well-known Mormon Tabernacle Choir is an official Church group, which contributes music to Church-wide conferences and other high-profile Church functions, and which also maintains a schedule of touring and recording both sacred and secular choral music. Local LDS choirs tend to be fairly casual compared to those of other churches that may have professional music ministries; rehearsal schedules are usually very light, regular church clothes are usually worn, and the performance may be nothing more than a well-known hymn, sung from the hymnal with little or no adaptation. However, more involved and ambitious choir programs are welcomed if there is talent and interest within the congregation.

Music in everyday LDS life

A Church-published pamphlet for teenagers gives the following guidelines for selecting music for everyday listening:

Choose carefully the music you listen to. Pay attention to how you feel when you are listening. Don’t listen to music that drives away the Spirit, encourages immorality, glorifies violence, uses foul or offensive language, or promotes Satanism or other evil practices. (For the Strength of Youth, p. 20)

As with many aspects of the LDS faith, the burden falls largely on the individual to interpret this. Some Church members go so far as to limit themselves to music with a sacred message, but most would see this as extreme. (Still, widespread interest among Church members in “safe” music has fed a surprisingly large Mormon music industry, despite some criticisms of the music’s artistic merit.) LDS theology lays claim to all “good” things, whether or not they are sacred in nature:

If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things. (Articles of Faith, 13)

So, it’s common for Church members to enjoy a variety of music, though some find it easier to entirely avoid certain genres or artists that more frequently feature sexual, violent, or otherwise offensive content.

Music as a career

There are some well-known LDS names in the music industry. “Empress of Soul” Gladys Knight, for example, is a church member. So are American Idol heartthrob David Archuleta, 1980s pop group The Jets, late punk rocker Arthur “Killer” Kane (who joined the Church after his days with the New York Dolls), and, of course, The Osmonds. My own experience is a bit lower-profile, but I do find that my faith affects aspects of my career.

One significant challenge is Sabbath observance, which in LDS theology includes avoiding working or doing business on Sundays when possible. Some professions require Sunday staffing (for example, there’s a Medevac helicopter pilot in my congregation), and some people may have to accept Sunday work in order to provide for their families. Since I can’t make an honest argument that I’m essential 24/7 personnel, and my Monday-through-Friday university teaching position keeps food on the table, I’ve been turning down Sunday gigs. This has been difficult at times, especially since my location in the Bible Belt means that many of the available gigs are on Sundays at (non-LDS) churches. I also choose to forgo practicing on Sundays, since it’s part of my work.

Alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs, prohibited by the LDS “Word of Wisdom,” are sometimes part of the culture of music-making. Although I have rarely felt serious pressure from fellow musicians to partake, there are some side effects to abstaining. Playing in bars with rock bands in Athens, Georgia during graduate school, payment often came partly in money and partly in free drinks, which of course I turned down, effectively agreeing to less pay than drinking bandmates. I also found that as the evening wore on and the band’s overall blood alcohol rose, the groove often got a little less solid, and the intonation a little less precise. The next day, my bandmates would rave about how great we had sounded, while my 100% sober experience had been a bit different.

Music and my relationship with God

It is my personal belief that I have been divinely blessed with a great love for music, and perhaps even some degree of talent for it. I believe that if I develop what talent I have been given, and use it for the benefit of others, that I will be further blessed and my talent will grow.

I also believe in the message of this passage from the Book of Mormon:

But behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul. (2 Nephi 32:9)

Although the “performance” discussed here can refer to any act of faith, the fact that literal, public performance is part of my daily life gives this verse special relevance to me. When I allow my faith to permeate my music-making, it blesses my life and brings me closer to God.

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    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

    It’s an article of faith among jazz musicians and educators that listening to jazz is crucial to learning to play jazz. This seems obviously true to me about jazz and about any style of music.

    (Doubtless one of the reasons the jazz-initiated like to bang this drum, so to speak, is because most of Western music education is so notation-focused. The “classical” tradition has developed hand-in-hand with a notation system that does a pretty good—not perfect—job of breaking down classical music sounds into visual symbols. That system, unsurprisingly, works less well for non-classical styles like jazz. But jazz music is still often expressed in classical-type notation, with some kind of caveat, explicit or otherwise, that the player must apply some significant additional stylistic know-how that will override the usual meanings of some of the notation.)

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    “Ya gotta listen” to classical music to play it well, too. But there’s also more clear, thoughtful pedagogy available to help you know what to listen for, and how to apply it.

    If you are a jazz educator and find yourself dodging questions or glossing over concepts with a “ya gotta listen,” can you add something to the picture? Try saying instead, “Ya gotta listen to how Cannonball Adderley ‘lays back’ in this particular phrase. He plays some notes later than expected in a way that sounds good. Listen a few times to see which notes, and how late.” Or: “Ya gotta listen to how Freddie Hubbard plays ‘outside’ over this turnaround. Can you figure out which scale he is drawing from? Where exactly does he resolve back to playing ‘inside?'”

    How long would it realistically take for an unguided young musician to listen to jazz until they had fully absorbed the nuances? I used to feel pretty overwhelmed and hopeless when teachers three times my age with thousands of well-worn records told me I wouldn’t sound better until I had really listened. Luckily I had others who were willing and able to accelerate and focus my learning by giving some direction and context to my listening.

    If you find that you have difficulty explaining some of the things you want your students to listen for, there are resources available to help you and them boil things down to understandable concepts. For improvisational theory, you might try free YouTube videos (or additional paid content) from teacher/players like Chad Lefkowitz-Brown or Aimee Nolte. For style, consider books like those by Caleb Chapman and Jeff Coffin or Ray Smith.

    And yes, ya gotta listen.

  • MS Excel music hack: Sort musical instruments by score order

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    For today’s Stupid Microsoft Office Trick, we will be teaching Excel how to sort musical instruments into score order. This has lots of uses for musicians and music educators:

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    Chaos!

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  • |

    Not good

    ByBret Pimentel

    I like to use a Socratic-ish method in my private lessons, and ask my students questions. It means that I have this conversation several times per day:

    [Student plays.]

    Me: How did that sound to you?

    Student: Not good.

    Me: What didn’t you like about it?

    Student: It didn’t sound good.

    Me: What aspect of it didn’t sound good to you? The tone? the pitch? the phrasing? the articulation?

    Student: Um, I guess the articulation?

    Me: What didn’t you like about the articulation?

    Student: It wasn’t good?

    It’s an ongoing battle to get my students to listen more deeply than that. Was the articulation “not good” because it started with air noise instead of tone? Because it was accompanied by an unwanted percussive sound? Was the articulation technique perfect but you failed to follow the composer’s markings? Or was it something else?

    Photo, David Bailey
    Photo, David Bailey

    Often the “not good” is a combination of factors, but if my students can identify even one of them, then they can immediately start working in a focused way to improve it. If it’s just “not good,” then they tend to just play it again from the beginning without any clear approach to making it sound better, and repeat until frustrated.

    Part of my job is to help them identify and verbalize the desirable and undesirable phenomena in their playing, and to teach them the techniques for manipulating the variables involved (breath support, voicing, embouchure, finger technique, and tongue technique, to name the most obvious ones). But it’s up to them to take that information and run with it. For my students to become independently-functional musicians, they need to learn to listen critically to themselves and troubleshoot.

    For yourself and for your students, don’t be satisfied with bland value judgments (it sounded “good” or “bad”). Be factual and descriptive about what you hear, and tackle problems in a methodical way. Practice smart!

  • Written jazz articulation problems

    ByBret Pimentel

    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

    Stylistically-appropriate articulation has long been under-taught in jazz education. (Or waved away with a “ya gotta listen”) . But that is changing , with some recent guides and method books starting to find some consensus about best practices. Concepts like which notes to accent, or how long to sustain certain notes, apply to all jazz instrumentalists. But wind-instrument players have the extra complication of which notes to tongue or slur. This distinction is critical to good jazz style.

    In classical music, wind players usually perform articulation markings with accuracy. But printed jazz music can take varied approaches to articulation markings.

    Some charts for experienced players have sparing articulation markings or none at all. The composer, arranger, and/or editor trust the performers to apply appropriate style:

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    Jazz tune with best-practice articulation

    But may otherwise well-written charts, bafflingly, use markings that are not stylistically appropriate:

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    In some cases, a composer/arranger might even choose a particularly anti-swing articulation as a kind of joke. This is usually followed by a figure that should be played with exaggerated, correct swing and articulation. This heightens the contrast between “good” and “joke” style:

    Jazz tune with "joke" articulation

    Jazz players and educators are responsible to know and apply correct articulation, using their best musical judgment to override the written parts when appropriate.

  • Basic tuplet math

    ByBret Pimentel

    A young music student with some basic competencies might be comfortable with these kinds of rhythms:
    tuplet-mathBut these are a little trickier to pull off well:

    tuplet-math-1 tuplet-math-2

    Divisions of the pulse into twos and threes is simple enough conceptually, but in most cases we really learn those kinds of rhythms better by ear—we just learn what eighth notes or triplet eighths sound like against a quarter note pulse. A division of the pulse into fourths, like sixteenth notes against a quarter note pulse, is something that could ostensibly be derived: you could start from a duple subdivision, then make the mental shift to hearing the subdivided pulse as the new pulse, then subdivide that. But the quadruple subdivision is common enough that I think most of us ultimately learn to play it by ear, too.

    The quarter- and half-note triplets in the first two bars of the example above are a little harder to place accurately, I think, because the “extra” pulses are hard to ignore. If I can somehow mentally block out the pulses (audible or implied) on beats two and four in the first measure, then I’m playing three notes per pulse again, and that’s really no different than, say, eighth-note triplets in 4/4. Same thing for the second bar: if I can tune out the pulses on beats two, three, and four, then I’m just playing that same triple subdivision.

    One approach to this problem is to simply learn the less-familiar subdivision by ear. Music notation software is the perfect tool for this; with a little skill you can usually enter rhythms as complex as you like, and hear them played back with the utmost precision against a pulse of your choice. But here are a couple of other useful tricks.

    Trick #1: Subdivide long-duration triplets

    To play triplets against a duple or quadruple pulse, you can derive them from triplets played against a single pulse. For example, this rhythm…

    tuplet-math-1

    …can be derived in this way:

    tuplet-math-3

    Trick #2: Approximate complex tuplets with duple/triple subdivisions

    “Tuplets” that are prime numbers greater than three can be difficult to audiate on the fly. But in many cases (not all cases) there is some room for complex tuplets to be somewhat less than perfectly even. For example, a composer might write a scalar “run” that contains a certain collection of pitches that doesn’t divide neatly into the number of beats allotted, and use a tuplet to make them fit into the score in a legible way. In such a case, it might be appropriate for the run to accelerate or decelerate a bit. If so, the tuplet can be reimagined as a series of duple, triple, or quadruple subdivisions.

    This, for instance…

    tuplet-math-2…could be approached like this (with a slight acceleration effect on each tuplet)…

    tuplet-math-4…or like this (with a slight deceleration effect on each triplet:

    tuplet-math-5Rewriting the rhythms into duple/triple/quadruple subdivisions of the pulse makes it easier to practice these rhythms methodically and consistently with a metronome, and allows for some anchoring which ran really solidify longer runs. Even if the intention is eventually to play the tuplet with more exact evenness, practicing them this way can help to shore up technique in the early stages.

  • Local vs. big-picture dynamics

    ByBret Pimentel

    An important part of interpreting music is figuring out how to use dynamic markings. They aren’t as simple as just playing louder or softer.

    It helps a lot to understand the difference between what I call local dynamics and big-picture dynamics. Unfortunately, they are marked in sheet music using the same symbols, so it’s not always immediately obvious which they are. When you study a new repertoire piece, ask yourself why the composer or editor has provided each dynamic marking:

    Is it there to call attention to a major event in the music, like a new theme, a return to an old theme, or some other kind of climactic moment? If so, it’s a big-picture dynamic. In many cases there is some other evidence that this is an important moment: a double-bar, a fermata, a key or tempo change, an entrance after some rests, etc. (If you have studied musical form, you probably have some more ideas of what to look for.)

    Or, is the dynamic marking there just to provide some shape and direction to a phrase? There’s no major musical event, just a hint about the momentary musical gesture. If so, it’s a local dynamic.

    When you think in terms of local vs. big-picture dynamics, it’s clear that not all fortes or mezzo-pianos or crescendos are equal. If the composer uses dynamics to contrast two themes or sections, for example with one being soft and the other being loud, that probably calls for a dramatic change. (It may also hint that some other unwritten contrasts are appropriate, like nuances of tempo, articulation, or tone color.) But a one-measure decrescendo from forte to piano in the middle of a theme might be more of a suggestion from the composer about what direction that phrase should take, and should be handled with more subtlety.

    Beware of the limitations of dynamic markings in music notation, and of careless editing, and use your best-informed musical judgment to interpret the meanings of those symbols.

5 Comments

  1. This was very enlightening. I have been curious about Mormon approaches to professional musicianship but have never been comfortable asking. Thanks for sharing this.

    Reply

    1. Hi Brett, I’m glad if this was helpful to you. My experience is that most Mormons don’t mind a bit if people ask honest questions about their faith, so no need to be uncomfortable about asking.

      Reply

  2. I am, myself, a Catholic, but seeing as there is only one God and only one Christ, that really doesn’t matter. For me, the Mormons have been a central part of Christmas since I was a child. Most unfortunately, T.V. has stopped showing short holiday “vignettes” that Mormons used to produce… they were truly inspirational.

    Can you answer this, or can you point to someone who might:
    The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra are probably among the five best in the world. I have been listening to them since my parents bought vinyl records of them in the early 1970’s when they sung with a pipe organ. Although they are absolutely astounding today, they had a certain flair, a different soul back in the simpler days of organ only. I have managed to find one of the Christmas albums (Spirit of Christmas) reissued on CD, but the other one, The Holly and the Ivy, really contained the best tunes, some of which have hardly ever been recorded since.

    Do you know, or can you point the way to anyone who might know, how I can find this album and/or CD reissue and/or MP3 archived files and/or….?

    Thanks and do maintain the musical sobriety!

    Reply

    1. Hi Robin, thanks for your comment. My quick searches turned up copies on vinyl on both amazon.com and ebay.com. As far as I can see it was never released on CD.

      Reply

  3. Hi there,
    I am one of those guys that some people think have 3 eyes and 2 noses and six wives and are so different to the rest of the population.
    Music is such a part of our life. I did a lot of research and found some notable Mormons in the music field and put together a web site based on that. I must say I was a little surprised at some of my findings. I hope you will have a look at my site. Many people hide their qualities under a rock.
    johnwright@internode.on.net
    John

    Reply

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