{"id":39,"date":"2004-02-03T13:17:36","date_gmt":"2004-02-03T13:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vhkssinging.wordpress.com\/2004\/02\/03\/secular-gringing\/"},"modified":"2015-10-07T14:08:26","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T14:08:26","slug":"secular-gringing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/2004\/02\/03\/secular-gringing\/","title":{"rendered":"secular gringing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk\/3451683.stm\" onclick=\"__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk\/3451683.stm', 'This');\">This<\/a> item of news appeared on the BBC website yesterday.  Of course it&#8217;s not really news because organists have been sneaking secular themes into their improvisations for as long as they&#8217;ve been able to improvise in church.<\/p>\n<p>I once spent a week in Canterbury Cathedral during which the organist decided to challenge the choir to keep a straight face as they walked in each day.  We were treated to, amongst other things, the theme from <I>Postman Pat<\/I> (evidently a favourite for this treatment) and the 007 theme.  The latter was slowed down so that had I not known in advance that it would be played, I would not have recognised it!<\/p>\n<p>Another friend of mine in my student days used to include Tristan chords in his pre-service improvisation at a local church.  His friends in the congregation would nudge one another as they came round.<br \/>\nThe organist in the article, Matthew Redman, is known to me as we were in Manchester at the same time and later in Bath he was organist at the church I then attended, although I don&#8217;t think he ever heard me sing.<\/p>\n<p>I enjoy the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shipoffools.com\" onclick=\"__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.shipoffools.com', 'Ship of Fools');\">Ship of Fools<\/a> website, especially comparing the Mystery Worshipper&#8217;s accounts of services at various churches I know with my own experience of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This item of news appeared on the BBC website yesterday. Of course it&#8217;s not really news because organists have been sneaking secular themes into their improvisations for as long as they&#8217;ve been able to improvise in church. I once spent &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/2004\/02\/03\/secular-gringing\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[568,1162,135],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3826,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/3826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}