by smiddy 40 Replies latest jw friends
There is no musical accompaniment anymore? My gm was the last pianist. No one else knew. Music is such an integral part of church. I finally purchased Bach's St. Matthew Passion with lyrics this month. I found out that I already knew at least one half of the songs. Why do classical recordings cost so much more?
Do they just play CDs now? I'm surprised ipods have not been banned.
The first song book I remember had a green heavy-paper binding. That must have been the "Songs to Jehovah's Praise" song book (1950). I was piano player using that song book at our KH, and I recall it had some nice songs. At the last international assembly held in NYC Yankee Stadium and Polo Grounds (1958), there was an orchestra and choir who performed some very sophisticated and beautiful songs that were subsequently performed at district assemblies for a few years thereafter. The melodies were beautiful, but some of it had some unusual lyrics.
At the time I often accompanied a pioneer JW who was a musician. He was a jazz pianist who played in local night clubs with two others, which allowed him to pioneer during the day. He told me that the orchestra leader at MGM was rumored to be studying with Jehovah's Witnesses and that he may have had something to do with the special musical arrangements presented at those conventions. For whatever reason, those musical presentations at district conventions ceased about the time the 1966 song book was released.
I remember trying to play the music in the new book--it was very difficult because the melodies were not as intuitively normal as intuitive as most are. It seemed the new songs were written by amateurs. They were difficult to play and difficult to sing. The singing at the kingdom hall dropped significantly because people could not seem to follow the tune, and neither could the accompanyist (me). I missed the better songs in the previous song book and wondered why they were replaced. It was soon revealed that it was because the songs had not been written by JWs.
I became inactive a couple of years later, so I wasn't around when I heard they switched to not having a piano accompany the singing, but it didn't surprise me.
Anyway, that's my recollection.
~Binadub
'Our Paradise: Present and Future'? - No. 19 in the pink/purple songbook from 1966; No. 220 in the brown 1984 one with the lyrics slightly modified. It's been dropped from this new one. I don't remember any issues with it, though.
Yeah, that's the one. Darn. Now it's in my head. Maybe I'm wrong about issues - it might be that every time they introduced the new song book they would give a spiel about how they had to remove certain songs for all these valid reasons. A lot of the songs they removed were the better ones!
I remember the spiel too - that there were issues - but not the specifics.
I have a feeling (and it could be off-base but I'm trying to think back ... ) that one of the problematic songs might have been 'God's Own Book - A Treasure.' It was No. 100 in the 1966 songbook. The 1984 songbook (No. 180) drastically changed the melody, to my irritation at the time. I can remember both tunes. The first one sounded like it could have been from an old musical or something.
The new songbook has it as No. 114 and it's unrecognizable. 
What the problem was this time, I've no idea.
Just come across this, if anyone wants to go down memory lane:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Davey7373
Interesting recollections, binadub :-)
The singing at the kingdom hall dropped significantly because people could not seem to follow the tune
The pattern repeats, huh?
Do they just play CDs now? I'm surprised ipods have not been banned.
Many Kingdom Halls in the U.S. have a white box genre of device hooked into their sound system. It's basically a custom MP3 player with a push-buttion interface. The operator simply enters the number of the song and hits the play button. --So simple, a child could operate it.
Some of you other 'Old people' might be amused by this:
TD,
I have all those in my library.
Marvin Shilmer
I remember as a kid attending meetings in an old arts hall (as i'm sure many do) when some older bro/sis would play the piano.
There was one old brother who always played the last song at break-neck speed in order to get to the pub before closing time.
In the early songbook, pre 1930, they included Oh Happy Day, if they'd have sung it like the Edwin Hawkings Singers maybe they could have retained some members.
Oh man the green songbook is tripping me out.
