Canadian Mennonite
Volume 10, No. 07
April 3, 2006
Sound in the land
Waterloo, Ont.
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Music and readings liberally salted with anecdotes was the fare served up at the Sound in the Land book launch last month in the Conrad Grebel chapel—along with lots of Mennonite food.
Music ranged from “Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne, sung by soprano Stephanie Kramer, to “Aunt Lizzie’s Old Order House,” written and sung by Rebecca Campbell. The latter was contextualized with a set of artifacts that would appear in a typical Old Order Mennonite house, including a marble roller.
The 2004 Sound in the Land festival and conference held at Conrad Grebel marked the first time that Mennonites, in their 300-plus years of being in North America, gathered for the expressed purpose of discovering, hearing, studying and celebrating collective voices in music. Some of the essays in the new Sound in the Land book from Pandora Press were originally presented at that conference. They examine the wide range of musical styles and practices that make up Mennonite music today, ranging from traditional hymns and concert music, to popular and non-western genres.
Eric Friesen, host of Studio Sparks, said of the book, “Music is the mysticism of Mennonites…our incense, our vestments, our iconography. Music is our soul. But, as with most things Mennonite,…there is rarely agreement on what is sacred or sacrilege.”
Maureen Epp and Anna Janecek read excerpts from several of the essays. Laura Weaver, a self-declared “Mennonite in exile” since 1966, complains in one that where she now attends church she can hardly hear the congregation singing over the organ. “In church, I want to be surrounded by four voices, preferably unaccompanied,” she wrote. “If I don’t hear four-part a cappella singing I shrivel up.”
The book notes that when Victor Davies was asked to write “The Mennonite Concerto” he was given 25 hymns from the General Conference and 25 from the Mennonite Brethren with which to work. He discovered they were largely Victorian English hymns and American gospel songs. “I knew nearly all these hymns from my United Church background,” he is quoted as exclaiming. Thus he discovered that most of Mennonite hymnody is borrowed.
Book launch host Carol Ann Weaver invited the gathered group to listen to—and identify—the familiar hymn tunes and other songs buried in a medley of sounds that she had created. A copy of the book was the prize for the person who was able to identify the most tunes.
As an invitation to the snacks to follow, someone quipped, “Women in Pennsylvania, when they go crazy they make a lot of food, and when they are sane they do the same!”