A Piper With a Purpose

This week I had the pleasant surprise of receiving an e-mail letter from a piper, a pastor in New Zealand.  He had searched the web to find especially arranged music for the piper who expects to play in church.  He found that I had published thirteen volumes of suitable music for “The Church Piper,” and he wanted them all.  His special desire has been to specialize in hymns, much to the exclusion of secular music.  He had already begun to transpose and arrange hymns, and knew it would be helpful to find a resource where hymns had already been arranged and could be learned.  In addition, he expected to learn the techniques of transposition and arranging from them.

I explained to him that by moving from Manitoba to British Columbia, I had let Hendersons Ltd., in Michigan, have the whole inventory and that he could order his complete set of music books from them.

I expressed my hope that he would find the satisfaction he desired by specializing in church music and that he would pledge his musicianship towards the glorification of God by doing his finest for whatever occasion he would be invited to play.  It might be in church for call to worship, for a funeral, a wedding, a banquet in which a piper is invited to pipe-in the head table or in a pipe band, coordinating his abilities with other pipers.  Always, it would be with dignity and pride that he would not only be presenting Scotland's kind of music, but assuredly, when playing a hymn, it would be with awareness that God wants him to represent Him well in all he does.

The Scripture reminds us that in everything we do, to do it as for God and not for man.  That is the highest standard, not only for all the music we play, but also for our deportment and the Christian example we set for others to follow.

I explained that one should be proficient in both kinds of music, because each style helps the other in practicing certain finger-work.  One benefits from playing before an audience, from the confidence that it brings, and the ability to maintain good time and perfection in playing.  Finger dexterity is learned from playing secular music as well as hymns.  The ability to count out time comes from playing more than hymns, and to play such pieces as "The Highland Wedding March" and "Trumpet Tune," is gained from hours of practicing music suitable for competitions.  Practice is always with the intention of improving for the next occasion.  One becomes able to play well before any audience.

From my experience as a band piper, and through the need to prepare suitable music for church services, my entire repertoire grew.  My mother's urging was to share the church’s beautiful spiritual music with pipers in the world and to introduce them to Christ our Saviour, so their music would be made meaningful too.  In other words, she explained to me, that I needed to tell pipers that they could only expound upon the love of Jesus once they knew Him personally.

The greatest essential in becoming proficient in playing church-related music is to have more than a book-knowledge of Christ.  That is, we must know Him, and know Him personally -to be able to talk to Him and have love and respect for Him, knowing He is God.  Because Jesus lived on earth as a Man, we can relate to Him in the same way as His own disciples.  That’s when one’s piping becomes meaningful and qualifies a piper to do as Jesus instructed; to go into all the world and teach about His love for everyone.

A little later, I received another letter from this piper and he agreed that he would be retaining his teacher and be associated with a pipe band where he could learn the techniques of piping so he could apply them to his church piping.  He already knew Jesus Christ in a way that he could speak of Him as a Brother.  With such ambition, he will be an outstanding Christian piper in New Zealand.