Do We Have to Sing Along During Mass?

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triumphguy said:
In their culture probably yes.

If anyone has seen the Catholicism series by Fr. Barron you will recall the applause in certain cultures when the Host is elevated during the Eucharist.
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The question I would have is where were these cultures 50 years ago?
 
ProVobis said:
At the Spanish Masses I go to, they hand-clap through almost every song, whether they know the words or not. Does that count in participating? I’m serious.
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I go to Spanish Masses sometimes, too. I just do what they do, even when its clapping, spontaneous singing that seems a little out of place to me, even standing and kneeling through the whole Mass. I don’t consider it a bit odds there, as it does seem to be culturally related.
 
ProVobis said:
At the Spanish Masses I go to, they hand-clap through almost every song, whether they know the words or not. Does that count in participating? I’m serious.
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In other words, it is participating. Not only in the Mass, but in the Universal Church!
 
liturgyluver said:
Only in the Catholic Church can you go to a service and hear an organ silently playing a hymn or a setting of the ordinary while everyone sits - or stands - like dumb spectators. I can’t believe that in a congregation of 400 maybe 20 people sing - it is shameful.

I am increasingly thinking that Thomas Day’s book “Why Catholic’s can’t sing?” accurately describes the majority of US, UK and European experiences at mass. It seems that only German and Austrian Catholics know how to sing and understand the value of music in the liturgy. We need to try and learn from them and stop buck passing and pretending that we can just ignore important parts of the liturgy with pathetic excuses and 100 reasons why it’s okay not to sing.
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In those small German churches where everyone sings all the verses very loud, they don’t use contemporary music with bad theology and difficult rhythms played on guitars and bongos. They sing singable, common-sense Catholic hymns like Grosser Gott (Holy God, We Praise Thy Name) accompanied by a strong organ.

Applause for musicians is never appropriate during or after Mass, since their role is not to perform but to assist with prayer. What amuses me is that in the parishes where this tends to happen, the music is of a very poor quality. If they were in a theatre, they would be booed.
 
ProVobis said:
Could be. They could have done the same for citar music, but I know that they’ve done studies on certain Sanskrit sounds and its effects on one’s nervous system. Transcendental Meditation techniques, for example, assign these as mantras, different depending on the person. However, I’m not a TM teacher so I don’t know how they select the mantra. The explanations of how we are moved to certain songs are endless. I’m glad you as a musician are interested in such a study.
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I think, for me at least, it would be difficult to not be interested in this subject and study due to the fact that I am a musician and a singer. It has always fascinated me how a voice or the tone quality of an instrument could affect the listener in positive and negative ways. This has become more of an interest for me in the last few years, for various reasons, but in sort of keeping with the topic, also in regards to cantoring at mass and getting people to sing.

I have mentioned a few times in past threads when the complaint of hymns that the cantors sang being to high to sing would come up, how people in different congregations would often thank me for not singing hymns so high as compared to other cantors so that they could also sing. The funny thing was that neither I nor the organist changed the keys of the hymns. We sang everything in the exact same keys as the other cantors. What I’ve determined was that our techniques were different. I was trained to sing with my entire body, to have a balanced voice. Many singers aren’t trained like that, so they will often sound like they are in the stratosphere when in actuality they aren’t.

The study you brought up in regards to the frequencies of the tones would also, I imagine, be a part of this. The tone quality of some voices is probably tapping into certain frequencies which may be more “palatable” to others for singing with or listening to.
 
One trick I noticed some organist like to use is this. They’ll play the first verse loud, the second soft, and then they’ll let the congregation do the third on their own. It’s surprising how many will sing when they sense sudden quietness. (Maybe they’re afraid they will be chastised or something and who wants to be chastised on a Sunday morning?.)

There must be some psychology classes offered for musicians, no? 🙂
 
Cavaille-Coll said:
In those small German churches where everyone sings all the verses very loud, they don’t use contemporary music with bad theology and difficult rhythms played on guitars and bongos. They sing singable, common-sense Catholic hymns like Grosser Gott (Holy God, We Praise Thy Name) accompanied by a strong organ.

Applause for musicians is never appropriate during or after Mass, since their role is not to perform but to assist with prayer. What amuses me is that in the parishes where this tends to happen, the music is of a very poor quality. If they were in a theatre, they would be booed.
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Gotta give those Germans credit. They do seem to have produced a great wealth of good, strong hymns with rock solid theology. Incidentally, one of my favorite hymns, O Sacred Head Surrounded, is actually by Bach, though it was a Christmas meditation.

The French have also given us some great hymns, such as Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence and, of course, Christmas carols like Angels We Have Heard On High.

While German hymns seem to me to be solid and unerring theologically, French hymns seem to be more mystical and poetic.

But that is just how it seems to me. I have never taken any music classes.
 
Cavaille-Coll said:
In those small German churches where everyone sings all the verses very loud, they don’t use contemporary music with bad theology and difficult rhythms played on guitars and bongos. They sing singable, common-sense Catholic hymns like Grosser Gott (Holy God, We Praise Thy Name) accompanied by a strong organ.

Applause for musicians is never appropriate during or after Mass, since their role is not to perform but to assist with prayer. What amuses me is that in the parishes where this tends to happen, the music is of a very poor quality. If they were in a theatre, they would be booed.
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triumphguy said:
There’s a ton of good Anglican hymns that the English RCs co-opted.

youtube.com/watch?v=yGBrq-C5VYE&feature=related

Hymns that men can sing lustily!👍
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Didn’t know that was Anglican. Good song! It is awfully hard to beat Holy God, We Praise Thy Name, though. Every time we sing that one (about once a year, it seems) I just want to cry! I love the imagery.

OK, enough-back to the youtube link-thanks for providing it…it is beautiful!!!
 
triumphguy said:
There’s a ton of good Anglican hymns that the English RCs co-opted.

youtube.com/watch?v=yGBrq-C5VYE&feature=related

Hymns that men can sing lustily!👍
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Sine Nomine is one of those tunes I’d rather play on the organ than sing to. (Personally I have a problem matching syllables to notes.) Probably no one notices but the pedal board plays a delightful tune somewhat to contrast.

youtube.com/watch?v=cGo6_D-RTXA&feature=fvwrel

youtube.com/watch?v=kFNaUUHZT5I&feature=related
 
First video: Pure power! Amazing beauty! The constant sussurration of the pedals is like the ocean, strong and unrelenting. Wow!

Second video: What a talented kid! This one really allows the listener to understand the role of the pedals. Seeing him play and hearing it at the same time helps differentiate the sounds.

Thanks!
 
Elijah_Baley said:
Obedience in little things leads to obedience in big things.
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I think I would assert that there is a greater “cogent point” in play: the GIRM is the current expression of the Church with respect to the Mass. If you feel that a Catholic is above this expression, by virtue of their personal point of view, then that presents a particular hermeneutic that is rather interesting…
this assumes a right reading of the GIRM.
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Interesting. There’s a ‘better’ “right reading” that you have in mind?
But the GIRM may be changed.
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Perhaps. However, by this logic, Friday abstinence should be eschewed – after all, as a discipline, it “may be changed”…
If it is read correctly in this thread, it should be changed.
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Wow. Just… wow. We judge the validity of Church statements by their reception among the faithful? Really?
It should also be noted that the GIRM on at least three occasions mentions that the choir alone should sing
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OK… so there are places in the liturgy at which the choir alone should sing. What does this have to do with the general notion that the faithful should sing? Umm… nothing! After all, there are more than “three occasions” where the GIRM mentions that the priest celebrant should pray – does this imply that the faithful shouldn’t pray? Of course not!
the cited prooftext in favor of the requirement to sing
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OK … I have to admit; this statement is really what prompted me to reply. I’m assuming that you’re referencing the quote I provided from the GIRM, way back at the beginning of this thread. “Prooftext”? Really? I haven’t been following all the twists and turns of this thread as they developed, but… “prooftext”? C’mon … if you want to assert prooftext, you’re going to have to explain why the quotation isn’t applicable, especially since it appears in the chapter entitled “Duties And Ministries In The Mass” and the section within it entitled “The Functions of the People of God”. Prooftext? Hardly…
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Cavaille-Coll said:
In those small German churches where everyone sings all the verses very loud, they don’t use contemporary music with bad theology and difficult rhythms played on guitars and bongos. They sing singable, common-sense Catholic hymns like Grosser Gott (Holy God, We Praise Thy Name) accompanied by a strong organ.

Applause for musicians is never appropriate during or after Mass, since their role is not to perform but to assist with prayer. What amuses me is that in the parishes where this tends to happen, the music is of a very poor quality. If they were in a theatre, they would be booed.
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You misunderstood me! I wasn’t advocating applause at all. The silence I was referring to was when the organist plays the hymn tune and nobody joins in with the singing. There is nothing worse than this.

I wasn’t just referring to small German churches - I have been a vast array and everyone sings. The Lutherans and Catholics have borrowed hymns from each other and there is a core of croos-over hymnody that both sing happily and without reservation. When I was in Dresden recently some of the hymns were more modern ones but everyone joined in with those as well. You are right to say that the Germans have not adopted the guitar which many other European Catholics seem to have.
 
Except for verses of the Gospel acclamation or the psalm, for example, where either the cantor or the choir sings alone, there are places in the GIRM where the Choir MAY song alone, but from my reading of the GIRM that is always the last option:

For example:
  1. The singing at this time is done either alternately by the choir and the people or in a similar way by the cantor and the people, or entirely by the people, or by the choir alone.
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liturgyluver said:
You misunderstood me! I wasn’t advocating applause at all. The silence I was referring to was when the organist plays the hymn tune and nobody joins in with the singing. There is nothing worse than this.
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I wasn’t implying that you were advocating applause. I was just putting my two cents in on the topic. As for the latter, I just experienced that this morning. A guitarist at my parish who, despite her lovely voice and musical talent, constantly selects music that is hard for non-musicians to sing (mostly 1980’s “contemporary” OCP junk), filled in this morning. Out of perhaps 300 people at Mass, maybe five of them were singing.
 
Just out of interest: what are people’s favourite hymns?

“For All the Saints” has to be mine.
 
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