Comments on an older closed thread - Folk Masses

[Sarabande]

Those are example of American (US) folk music.Every country has it’s own and many tunes that we think of as acceptable for church - even Catholic church - were originally written as ordinary folks tunes.

If a parish actually only used chant, and never sang a hymn, then they’d be free of folk music. But the reality is that even if you never hear bluegrass in church, you may have a folk tune or two lurking in your hymnal.

This is very true. And there is likely many more than just one or two hymn melodies which started out as folk tunes prior to being arranged and refined. Composers and song writers are known to do this often through the centuries. I have a book of classical vocal arrangements of folk songs by Benjamin Britten. There are 61 of them in this particular book and I love using them for recital work. They are mostly from the British Isles, France and Ireland. Some of the melodies would be recognizable in our hymnals, most notably “O Waly, Waly” which a few hymn texts are set to that melody in many of our hymnals.

I think, at least a child growing up in the 80s and 90s and having so many “folk” masses during that time from our parents’ generation who were still stuck in that era of music, is that a lot of what we heard at mass was no where as nice or as good as what you’d hear outside of mass. A lot of it sounded like what I called pseudo-folk. I grew up listening to all of my Dad’s folk records and actually really liked American folk music. What I heard at mass was no where near what grew up listening to at home, music-wise and performing-wise.

Also, the melodies which we don’t normally associate as folk music are typically rearranged for mass or for concert, which is often times why we don’t recognize them as folk tunes. As a singer, it used to amaze me how many different arrangements there were/are of folk songs from every part of the world… some staying as close to the original sound and some going as far as sounding like a modern classical piece of work with just the hint of the folk melody in them.