Holiday Music, Church Services and Our Students

This Christmas season has been a special one for many of my violin and viola students. All this fall even more than usual my students have been preparing special solos and experimenting more with improvisation to get ready to spread their musical wings in church services. It’s been really special to see them carefully pick pieces and make decisions about which bowings and fingerings serve the music best, all while their excitement to share has grown. In the next week I’m really looking forward to hearing how these performances go and hopefully catch a few recordings as well! 

Before I get too far into this post, I do want to preface by saying most of my studio celebrates Christmas - In the religious or secular sense. This is my personal experience of this time of year as well, so most of what I’ll be sharing here reflects that holiday and background. If you have similar stories for yourself or your students where you can see music and other holidays or cultural festivals intersect, I would love to hear those, too! 

Why is sharing music in a community important for students? 

You might be wondering why I even felt the need to get these thoughts down and share them with you. I think there’s a combination of factors at play - My students excitement, seeing my daughter become familiar with our church as we reopened our doors this past fall after being closed from March 2020 - September 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and remembering my own experience as a young musician growing up in a church. I consider myself very lucky to have received musical support I did from elementary school through high school at my church. 

There is a story I often tell my students as we get ready for recitals that fits in here. Only a few months after I’d started piano lessons my church asked me to play a hymn for Sunday morning offertory. I received the music the Thursday before and did my best to practice it, but frankly - I wasn’t very good yet! On Sunday morning, I got two bars in before it was clear I could not play it. I promptly closed the hymnal and walked out the back of the sanctuary, missing the rest of the service. How embarrassing, right? But everyone at church was still supportive and forgiving, asking me to play again and again until I became more comfortable. By the end of high school I was playing piano each week as part of the regular worship team and led the youth team for special events, too. 

Most students don’t have quite the scarring experience I did, but I think this story illustrates the importance of playing for a friendly and supportive community. It will not be perfect the first time you play, but there’s so many opportunities to share week after week in a church that it is a natural space for students to hone their skills. As I used to say when I was on the weekly praise team, it was reassuring knowing that if that week didn’t go well, there was always next Sunday. 

Other Benefits of Prioritizing Seasonal Music

Some other reasons I’m so excited for my students to perform are the cultural education they receive by studying these pieces. Through looking through several holiday favorites, students are learning about different traditions, what songs were popular and when. Learning tunes like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” opens the door to talking about what was happening in history at the time when this song was written (World War II and soldiers being away from home while fighting). Other songs like “Lo How a Rose ‘Ere Blooming” gives students a taste of the late Renaissance/early Baroque periods. 

Choosing their own solos encouraged autonomy as well. My students looked through collections online, flipped through hymnals and listened to different recordings to find the piece they wanted to focus on. We had to create a plan of attack to have the song finished in time to give a polished performance. These are all things we gain from a recital, but this is a little different since they’ve often alone, without their peers and part of something bigger. Being able to see how our effort can contribute to the whole, add to others enjoyment and happiness is another great thing to reinforce again and again for our young musicians. 

A few years ago I had a pastor ask me for my thoughts on children participating in music for church services. His concern was maintaining a certain standard for service, wanting to preserve our very best for worship. While I understand the sentiment, I think we have to remember that each person’s best is different. I’ve never had a student not take participating in service seriously and they’re given their best when they have the opportunity to share. I hope other worship or church leaders who are have the same concerns consider this and remember the world of good this can do for the students to encourage them to become contributing members of their community and receive encouragement from their congregation to keep going! 

Final Thoughts

Just a few weeks ago I was at church between our two services. My husband recently became the audio/visual tech for my church and he was helping one of the young girls who helps look after our daughter during the second service some weeks. Evelyn was delighted to see a guitar in the sanctuary and even more thrilled to hear it played during sound check. During the service, she was glued to the livestream and when I ran into this young musician’s father after her performance, I said how well she did and how glad I was that our church makes room for our young musicians to share. As we talked, it was heartwarming to hear this dad talk about how performing for others is like writing a paper, putting together a presentation and… Life. He got it. 

I hope this has helped you understand why I love learning holiday pieces with my students, encouraging them to perform for their communities (religious, family and friends or otherwise), and more! There’s so much to be gained by encouraging our students to take advantage of and search out these opportunities. Feel free to share this with your studio parents and church leaders as they plan for the holiday season so they understand how this can benefit their community and young musicians, too! 

How do you help prepare your students for these opportunities? Do you have resources you share with students at the beginning of the season? Do you ask students where they might be able to play some songs this time of year? How much lesson time do you dedicate to helping them with this? Share with me in the comments below or on Instagram @shawstrings!