III. Organizing organ vespers
Design of organ vespers in the Goede Herderkerk
With the information provided by the Dienstboek and the examples of Rotterdam, Dordrecht and Goes in mind, an organ vespers format was designed for this research project. The vespers were to take place at the Goede Herderkerk in Rotterdam Schiebroek. The first step was to select a well-suited moment in the week for the organ vespers to take place. In consultation with the caretaker and the working group on liturgy in the Goede Herderkerk, it was decided to plan the vespers to take place on Wednesday evenings. The examples of Rotterdam, Dordrecht and Goes have the organ vespers on Sunday evenings, usually to replace regular evening services. The Goede Herderkerk has not had evening services in the past decade and it was assumed that organ vespers would attract more people halfway the working week. So for practical and organizational reasons, the Wednesday evening was chosen. The period of Advent is quite appropriate for organ vespers, since it is a period of reflection, but it also fitted the planning of this research project well. In order to have four organ vespers to observe and compare, it was decided to start the series of organ vespers on the Wednesday before Advent, November 27th, 2020. Furthermore, this first vespers could be combined with a lecture by main subject teacher Jos van der Kooy on composer Max Reger, as an introduction to the concert on the following Saturday with music by Reger. All vespers started at 7.30 pm and lasted about half an hour.
A second step was to decide on a couple of options for the structure of the vespers. The objective was to organize four vespers with the same format, but with different kinds of music, in order to draw appropriate conclusions on both the appeal of organ vespers as well as the appeal of different kinds of music. The design of the vespers was discussed with ds. Rik Radstake, Reverend Emeritus of the Goede Herderkerk, and the four congregants who would lead the vespers by reading the lessons and praying the prayers. It was decided to read the psalm and epistle reading that belonged to the preceding Sunday, so that there was coherence in the vespers. In the last two vespers, the canticle was a sung Magnificat. The first vesper however, was the Wednesday before Eternity Sunday, so it was found more appropriate to sing the Nunc Dimitis. In the second vesper, it was decided to play Bach’s choral prelude on the Magnificat in the second vespers instead of singing the Magnificat. For all vespers, the prayers and blessing were chosen by the congregant leading the vespers.
Four different styles of music were played during the vespers. As mentioned above, the first vespers was combined with a lecture on Max Reger. Reger composed a lot of appropriate choral preludes, so it was an easy choice to play Reger. In the second vespers, music by Johann Sebastian Bach was played, for his music and his many choral preludes are at the heart of the organ repertoire and remain popular among music lovers and musically interested churchgoers. The third vespers included English music, for the link with and popularity of evensong in the Netherlands, but also because the Protestant hymnbook includes many English hymns. To offer an alternative to the baroque and romantic repertoire in the first three vespers, the last one involved “meditative” or “minimal” music by Arvo Pärt and Toon Hagen, and an improvisation. The original orders of service can be found on the right. For an overview of the four vespers with English explanations, please open the PDF file from the Welcome page of this research exposition.
