Holiday Sings: New and Old

by JFNafzigerNo Comments

Singing news for the holiday season.

First, there’s a new sing this year at Silver Lake Mill in Dayton, Va. Come and sing the (somewhat rare) Harmonia Sacra Christmas tunes (plus others) on Sunday, Dec. 4, at 4 p.m. It’s the mill’s bicentennial year, making it a rare sing venue that was around when Harmonia Sacra was first published. It’s a smaller singing space with good acoustics, but come early to get a spot. Andrea Early will be the moderator.

Next, on New Year’s Day, due to a construction project at Weavers Mennonite, we’ll continue the Weaver’s tradition in 2023 at Park View Mennonite Church, 1600 College Avenue, Harrisonburg. The New Year’s Day sing is the longest-running sing we have, and this is just one more wrinkle in its storied history. The sing starts at 7 and the sound will be just as glorious. Come and sing.

Here’s a version of the tune NEW YEAR, with Weavers references, to get to ready.

Weavers 2021: Postponed

by JFNafzigerNo Comments

To all our singing friends:

Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the impossibility of singing safely together on this New Year’s Day, the annual sing at Weavers Mennonite Church is postponed, with great regret, until we can gather again.

This is a tough one, and even though it’s not unexpected, having to tell it and knowing that it means we won’t see each other on New Year’s Day, the sound that has filled Weavers Church since 1903 on that day won’t be heard, and that we do not know when we’ll do this again is more difficult than I expected.

There have been two other years—1919 and 1929—in which the sing was postponed due to epidemics—influenza, in those cases. We believe that both were eventually held in March. That may be a little soon for 2021, given the known vaccine distribution schedule, but we pray that 2021 will not pass completely without a sing. There’s no fault to be found, just frustration—which I’m sure you have all felt with other planned events in this oddest of years. Keep the faith and keep singing, to yourselves for now, and think how glorious it will be when we can join our voices again in a better time.

Watch this page for more news when it happens. For now, from the tune New Year:

May each in the day
of his coming say,
“I’ve fought my way through,
and finished the work thou dids’t give me to do.”

The Great Community Give 2019

by JFNafzigerNo Comments

Harmonia Sacra Folks,

Tomorrow (Wednesday, April 17) is the Great Community Give, a day where dozens of Harrisonburg-area nonprofits take contributions at a central site and compete for fun and prizes. We’re a little more low-key than that (I’d say maybe like the Harmonia Sacra singing tradition itself, which is less at home in social media and the Worldwide Web than it is in annual sings in small and large churches, and in actual homes). But we’re participating anyway, and hope you’ll consider a gift today to the Harmonia Sacra Society.

Your contributions will build an endowment for the maintenance and preservation of Joseph Funk’s house in Singers Glen, which we hope one day will become a headquarters for the promotion of Harmonia Sacra singing and a repository for Funk research materials and historical items. The house, at 215 years old, can use all of our help. The society also helps to organize about a dozen annual sings around the Shenandoah and Page valleys. We obviously do less than your singing this music does, but we think our mission is valuable.

If you can contribute today, just go to this page (https://hrgcg.givebig.org/c/HRGCG/a/50292). Our goal for the day is $1,500, and we really can get extra cash if lots of you contribute. The minimum donation is $10 and honestly, we’d be pretty happy if lots of people gave that amount. Of course, you’re welcome to give more.

We hope you will make a donation today to help preserve Harmonia Sacra singing for a long time to come.

P.S. Some of you might prefer to contribute the old-fashioned way. It won’t count in the Great Give, but we aren’t picky. If you’d rather mail a check, send it to: The Community Foundation; P.O. Box 1068; Harrisonburg, VA 22803. Put “Harmonia Sacra Society” in the memo line, but write the check to the Community Foundation. They manage our endowment funds, and it will get to the right place. And if you miss the Great Community Give (April 17), you can always contribute online here: http://www.tcfhr.org/donate-to-hssf/

Update: The official giving day is over for this year, but your contributions added up to more than $2,500! Thank you very much. Remember, you don’t need to restrict your Joseph Funk house gifts to one day of the year; see the paragraph above to contribute any time.