Five Part Harmony
I was about six years old when I first heard of the words “soprano, alto, tenor and bass.” At the old West Huntsville church building, a brother from Tennessee, A. J. Vetito, conducted the first of several singing schools at the church. By the end of that week, we all knew “do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti do.” We all could sing the scale and learned so many new songs. The singing at that congregation vastly improved in these annual schools.
I learned to listen to all the various parts and how they harmonized. There is nothing which sounds more beautiful to me than blending of voices in praising God.
In the sixth grade I began attending Christians schools. The first was in Athens, Alabama, and the second was in Huntsville. I am so thankful for the choruses at both of these schools where I grew in my appreciation for singing in worship. I owe to one of the choral directors, Wayne Hemingway, an even greater debt. He constantly emphasized understanding the words of songs and their meaning. In fact, before we learned a new song we would spend time discussing what we were trying to say to each other as we sang. He even did this for older songs and I soon learned that while I had known the music of those songs, I did not know the songs meaning!
You see, there is another aspect of singing harmoniously that has nothing to do with “do, re, and mi.” Look carefully at Ephesians 5:19. Our use of the music attached to psalms, hymns and spiritual songs is not emphasized. Paul said, “Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Look at it carefully. The emphasis is not on the melody made with the voice, but the melody made in the heart!
Now look at the passage again. The verse does not say making melody in your hearts (plural)! It is singular. In the Greek, the word “your” is plural (congregational), but the heart is singular. There is the harmony of every individual heart, as we sing with one heart to the Lord. In Colossians 3:16, the text speaks of hearts, but the emphasis in Ephesians is on the singular heart we bring before God. God does not care how skilled you are in harmonizing “do, re, mi”! We do not just blend our voices, we blend our hearts.
Look at singing as it ascends to heaven and enters the throne room of heaven. Do we really think that God judges our singing based on four part harmony? The melody that sweetens heaven is that fifth part harmony when it comes from the one heart of His people. Let’s learn all we can about four part harmony, but may we never fail to place the right emphasis on the harmony of our souls as we worship our Maker!