Well, we survived our concert Saturday night, but it did provide a new “war story”.
A few years ago, when I belonged to a 100-voice choir in Boston, the conductor told the group that we should know the piece we were singing well enough, and have a good enough sense of its rhythm, that if she were to fall off the stage, we should just keep going.
She’d even seem to test us sometimes during dress rehearsals by walking to the far end of the hall to check the sound while we continued the piece; and the group was often enough able to do so without a noticeable loss in the piece’s execution.
I’m out in the suburbs now, in a different group with a different choral conductor, but finally it’s happened for real. On Saturday, we were standing in the Episcopal parish’s sanctuary — and, by the way, have you noticed? they apparently still have altar rails, even in contemporary churches — doing the last of four variations on Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, when all of a sudden our maestra tumbled off the two wooden boxes that comprised the podium. (The top one had suffered a partial structural failure.) She made a staggering one-foot landing as her music stand went over, and she bravely continued. Alas, the shock disrupted us too much, and she had to restart the movement.
The recording engineer said after the performance, “That one’s going onto my blooper reel.”
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I was the student conductor of my high school choir (which is what happens if you can’t sing). We were perfoming an a capella Agnus Dei, which I was conducting, during our spring concert. I brought my hands up for a particularly emphatic downbeat and sent my music stand flying into the choir. About five of them had the ability to continue with me, although, bless their hearts, the rest recovered and we finished the piece. I could barely bring myself to turn around at the end. Even as I type this, I can feel my face turning red. I don’t conduct choirs anymore, and usually don’t use a stand during instrumental concerts.
FYI: every Lutheran church I’ve ever attended has had communion rails, and kneelers.
Altar rails are important in Anglican Churches in some places because they don’t use extraordinary ministers-only the minister (notice-not priest-invalid orders) will intinct!
Almost every Episcopal parish I have ever been to has altar rails. The Episcopal Church is the church that conforms its practice to whatever the congregation wants no matter what it is. In most cases, the parishioners liked altar rails so they stayed. It’s interesting that the resistance to liturgical revisionism in some ways is stronger than in the Catholic Church. It has something to do with the old battles of “ritualism” as well as greater lay control of the parish fabric.