ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the complexity of musicking and how the totality of the experience needs to be taken into account by those in charge, particularly clergy and music leaders. It examines how the power of congregational song is created within the context of liturgy and the factors that influence this. In congregational singing in the Church of England and beyond, the chapter employs a combination of poetry and music intended for public communal performance. The chapter addresses some of the domains that have to be explored to enable such an environment to be created. It provides a practical frame which music leaders and clergy can use to understand and evaluate the totality of musical experience in worship. All music making consists of organizations of concrete materials drawn both from the human body and the environment. The vast majority of the music considered 'hymnody' in the English Anglican tradition has a strophic construction.
