The Concordia Organist: Meeting a Genuine Need and Meeting It Very Well
The Concordia Organist has been purchased by hundreds and hundreds . . . and hundreds . . . of congregations that, for a variety of reasons, find themselves with no capable or competent person to play the organ for their church services. The Concordia Organist offers a complete recording of all the hymns in Lutheran Service Book and is completely adaptable for whatever the local situation requires. It allows a parish to provide music for the Divine Service. The Concordia Organist is also available via Lutheran Service Builder and offers the ability for the creation of a customized music recording for the entire service, easily and quickly.
The uses of The Concordia Organist are not only in situations where this is no organist. It can be used to create music for shut in calls, nursing home visits and services, funerals at funeral homes, and a variety of other uses in the parish, with smaller groups, etc.
If you are not familiar with The Concordia Organist, I encourage you to check it out and discover what a blessing it can be for you and your congregation. You can view the entire contents by downloading this file.
This 31-CD collection provides pipe organ accompaniments for all of the hymns and liturgical music in Lutheran Service Book. It’s a useful tool for congregations of all sizes that need accompaniment for worship, in a chapel or small group setting, or for visitation with shut-ins. Features organists Paul Grime, Kevin Hildebrand, and Richard Resch, playing the Schlicker organ in Kramer Chapel at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana.
The Concordia Organist is also available as an add-on subscription for Lutheran Service Builder, providing all the same recordings with full customization and no swapping of CDs. Call 800-325-2399 to order.
Please note that the liturgical material is included on Discs A & B. The hymns are included on Discs 1—29.
31 discs? Did CPH consider a DVD version? 8 DVDs would be just as easy to carry around. Laptops play DVDs, and portable DVD players are getting pretty cheap.
Nope, we have customers who have only CD players. Anyone who buys the collection can rip the whole thing on to their computer, if they choose to do that.
I find it hard to believe that there are a *significant* number of congregations in which there is not one person who can play or learn to play enough music for the average Lutheran worship service. I find it more likely that many congregations are not interested in investing the time and money to properly train and educate a musician in Lutheran theology, liturgy and music. I fear this CD set does not fill a need, but enables laziness on the part of congregations. What is needed is effort from the congregational level to train a proper musician to help lead worship. Hildebrandt and Resch are marvelous musicians and the Concordia FW organ is superb; however I would sooner worship with a live, untalented organist playing a broken hammond than with a CD player.
I am sorry, Erik, that you feel a need to make the worst possible assumptions and to level extremely uncharitable accusations at Lutheran congregations. That you are unaware of those situations where there is no access to a competent organist is obvious from your comments.
What about those churches that desire to have weekday Divine Services or celebrate Feasts/Festivals but cannot do so because the organist is not available? This CD set will fill a need.
My research indicate there are about (as of 2006) 6155 congregations in the LCMS (give or take). If 10% of those churches lack the resources of a regular capable organist or other music player for services, that’s about 615 congregations that could see a legitimate need for this resource, let alone those in temporary vacancies after something happens to a sitting organist. Give the number of congregations in synod that are in “rural” or “small town” settings (where even the only local high school level music teacher may not be Lutheran) away from major metropolitan areas, I can see a need for this resource, especially growing up myself in one of those small town areas. Luckily, my mother and sisters were capable players of organists/keyboards, so I rarely went totally without music in my services growing up. But not every congregtion can be as lucky as mine was…..
What a wonderful tool for those of us who are Chaplains and can not carry an organist in our pocket every where we go. I am a prison Chaplain and do not have anyone who can play the organ that sits in my Chapel. I must rely on volunteers or inmates to play and have many volunteers that rely on CDs as they can not find anyone to come in with them to play either. If you rely on an inmate they may be moved 1 or 2 days even before your service or activity leaving you with nothing and no back up. This is something every Chaplain can use no matter what their ministry field may be.
At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I would amend the lede to say “done ok.”
We use the disc set at the small country church I serve (25-30/week). We were excited that all of the divine services were available to us since the options were limited on the previous set for LW.
We have found a couple of challenges with this set. It seems two of the three organists are more concerned with show-casing their talents than helping a small group sing the hymns. One of them consistently plays even familiar hymns with the organ open all the way. The problem is that the melody gets lost. We are a small group in a small space not a small group in a huge but empty seminary chapel. People can’t pick out the melody for all the “fullness” of the organ. The other plays with what seems a little too much drama, holding notes longer than necessary and otherwise slowing the pace.
Another feature to consider would be to have a group singing the hymns. It seems to me that sometimes it is easier for a small group to catch on when they hear others who know the hymn singing it. Just a thought.
We do appreciate the the disc set. But, since you opened the discussion . . .