Four Part Harmony for Hymns?

[MRittenhouse]

New Catholic here, moved over from the Anglican Church in North America.

Also new to Salt Lake City. None of the Roman Catholic churches we’ve visited have four-part harmony in the hymnals. I sing bass, and I get a headache trying to sing melody.

Is singing unison a common practice in the church?

 

[27lw]

Oh boy. You may as well join the choir, because you’re never going to see 4 parts in a Catholic hymnal. Isn’t there some wonderful cathedral there in Salt Lake? Maybe the music there might be better than average.

 

[MRittenhouse]

Oh boy. You may as well join the choir, because you’re never going to see 4 parts in a Catholic hymnal. Isn’t there some wonderful cathedral there in Salt Lake? Maybe the music there might be better than average.

Oh, the music is great there.

 

[Brandon_Cal]

New Catholic here, moved over from the Anglican Church in North America.

Also new to Salt Lake City. None of the Roman Catholic churches we’ve visited have four-part harmony in the hymnals. I sing bass, and I get a headache trying to sing melody.

Is singing unison a common practice in the church?

Oh boy have you touched on something that has quite bugged me about Catholic parish hymnals. I can sing tenor and baritone comfortably, but countertenor requires me to sometimes switch octaves. If provided with nothing but a melody I’ll usually sing countertenor for a verse and then entirely bow out of singing. Coming from a Mormon background I’m used to hymnals that have at least a four part harmony provided for all the hymns.

I can’t think of one single good reason to omit these and plenty of reasons why doing so encumbers congregational singing. I once attended Mass at a parish that didn’t have hymnals. They provided the “music” in the parish bulletin and encouraged everyone to enthusiastically join along with the choir. The entrance procession began, I opened the bulletin to find nothing but lyrics! No scores whatsoever! Needless to say one could only hear a small handful of parishioners joining in with the choir, most likely individuals who were longtime members of that parish and had committed the music to memory.

 

[SMHW]

I think you are going to find very few Catholic parishes with hymnals that have four part harmonies outside of the choir section (if even there.) The reason is the price.

 

[oldgraymare2]

I think you are going to find very few Catholic parishes with hymnals that have four part harmonies outside of the choir section (if even there.) The
reason is the price.

I agree with your post.

MRittenhouse, when I wasn’t singing with the choir and I was just sitting in the pews myself, I would just do my own harmonizing, or I would sing the alto parts from the hymn if it was something that had an alto part to it already, as I sing in the alto range. If I were you, I would just sing in the range where you are most comfortable.

 

[Tarpeian_Rock]

Most parishes I know would be thrilled if more than four PEOPLE sang, never mind four-part harmony.

 

[Convert1]

I am in total awe. Being tone deaf, I just stand up and belt out a “joyful noise”. (emphasis on the noise) I believe St Augustine said “he who sings, prays twice.” So maybe it’s just really important that people actually just sing. While I’ve never had any complaints from folks next to me, I’m sure there are those who would love to have more harmony available. Maybe if I joined the choir with you guys, I could be the page turner.

 

[jeannetherese]

It looks as though there might be some Latin Masses within driving distance in your area-perhaps there is a schola you could join.

 

[newcalling]

Most of the hymns in the hymnal at our parish just have a simple treble cleff, no bass cleff. I sing bass in the choir, we have a four part choir, and we have different hymnals than the ones used by the parish. It gets confusing because the hymn numbers are different and some of the hymns in one aren’t in the other. You might want to ask the choir director at the parish, because I am sure that they use a hymal with alto & soprano on the treble and bass & tenor on the bass cleff. I wish that parishes had better hymnals for the regular parishioners, but most people just sing the melody if we can get them to sing at all. Again, ask the choir director. Before I joined the choir I did miss having the bass clef because I can’t sing the standard melody for songs which go too high.

 

[pianistclare]

Oh boy. You may as well join the choir, because you’re never going to see 4 parts in a Catholic hymnal. Isn’t there some wonderful cathedral there in Salt Lake? Maybe the music there might be better than average.

The Gather hymnals come in 4 parts.
If they use Gather, buy yourself one. They’re around 20 bucks.
But all you have to do is sing in your range.

 

[27lw]

Also, MRittenhouse, welcome to the Catholic Church!! I joined 7 years ago myself. Don’t let the lack of 4-part harmony get you down too much. I would be tempted to try different parishes, and stick to the one that suits you best. I’m thinking that if you were Anglican, you might be used to rather higher-quality music than the average Catholic parish. Is there possibly an Anglican-use parish you could try also?

 

[pianistclare]

We go to church to hear the Word and to receive the Eucharist.
Great music is great, but it’s not the sole reason we go.
Don’t make too much of this.

 

[DaveBj]

Having come from a large extended musical family and a Pentecostal/Baptist background, I was (and still am) very disappointed at the lack of harmony in Catholic congregational singing. I sing the remembered bass line to hymn tunes that I know, and for those that I don’t know, I improvise. For those hootenanny songs that don’t have a perceivable bass line, I just lay out.

 

[Elizium23]

This is based on the notion that Catholics don’t read music, and the ones who do, don’t care that they’re being shafted.

My parish hasn’t used hymnals in years. We use WORSHIP AIDS! Also known as song sheets, those are the paper-wasting, copyright-violating handouts that are the bane of an usher’s existence. I am actually the guy who is tasked with proofreading them, because of course our music publisher couldn’t be bothered to provide these lyrics to us in electronic form, so they are always typed in manually from the source and maintained in a big messy file until the day comes to cut-and-paste a particular song into a particular sheet. Naturally, no niceties of formatting or rich text are preserved, the words are simply jammed in whichever way will best fit an 8.5 x 14 sheet of paper (used to be different colors, but in recent months we’ve punted to all-white.)

All this still happens even after our pastor purchased pew copies of the Lumen Christi Missal, which contains everything a Catholic parish needs to sing the Mass - propers, ordinary, Kyriale… all we use it for is the readings and the Gloria.

This past liturgical year, in order to cut down on massive copyright violations involved in giving all chiir members copies of songs, and in the inevitable admission of defeat that we’re not actually going to chant the propers in the Lumen Christi, each choir member was furnished with a copy of a “hymnal” which I lovingly refer to as Breaking Bad. This cheap, ugly, disposable paperback not only omits all harmonies and descants, but sometimes omits melody notation if a song is too long, such as the Gregorian chant, “Veni creator spiritus”. Our director still had to photocopy that one so we could see which notes went eith what words. For the life of me, I can’t understand why the choir was saddled with a book that hardly even belongs in a pew. I personally still have a “borrowed” copy of Choral Praise from the time a director bought one of those for every choir member, and guess what? CP has a durable hardcover, four-part harmonies, and doesn’t expire at the end of a year. Unfortunately it’s still OCP’s dreck.

Seriously, if you could see even a fraction of what went on behind the scenes to make liturgical music on any given Sunday, you would freak out. It is like making sausage.

 

[EasterJoy]

If you can sing harmony and you go to a church with anything you could remotely call “great music,” join the choir. Or just talk to the choir director, and see if you can get some help in contributing your talents to the effort. I think he or she will at least try! If nothing else, the chances are that they’ll want to call you in for the big holy days–Christmas, Triduum, et cetera.

 

[27lw]

We go to church to hear the Word and to receive the Eucharist.
Great music is great, but it’s not the sole reason we go.
Don’t make too much of this.

This is so true, pianistclare! However, it’s so discouraging to go to Mass week in and week out when the music is yuck, and that is due not to the lack of organ, or choir, but just due to darn poor taste and poor direction from the pastor.

 

[Edmundus1581]

I think you are going to find very few Catholic parishes with hymnals that have four part harmonies outside of the choir section (if even there.) The reason is the price.

The reason is more likely a lack of interest in “difficult” music - ie. anything other than simple sing-alongs. Having been involved in a middle class parish for many years now, I have seen that money which is “short” for things such as hymnals can suddenly appear for something else if the priest or parish leaders want it.

We go to church to hear the Word and to receive the Eucharist.
Great music is great, but it’s not the sole reason we go.
Don’t make too much of this.

An oversimplification. Church history and the liturgical directives indicate that music is an integral part of the Mass, and as such should be of high quality. We can’t dismiss it as an optional extra, or something where quality doesn’t matter. True, the music is ***less ***important than the Word and the eucharist, but so, for example, is the Homily - which doesn’t mean the priest can settle for less-than-best homilies.

However, for one’s own peace of mind and for the sake of practicality, yes, “don’t make too much of this”.

Most parishes I know would be thrilled if more than four PEOPLE sang, never mind four-part harmony.

I am in total awe. Being tone deaf, I just stand up and belt out a “joyful noise”. (emphasis on the noise) I believe St Augustine said “he who sings, prays twice.” So maybe it’s just really important that people actually just sing. While I’ve never had any complaints from folks next to me, I’m sure there are those who would love to have more harmony available. Maybe if I joined the choir with you guys, I could be the page turner.

Agreed. Actually singing, whether we like the music or not, is the main thing!

 

[spedteacherita]

New Catholic here, moved over from the Anglican Church in North America.

Also new to Salt Lake City. None of the Roman Catholic churches we’ve visited have four-part harmony in the hymnals. I sing bass, and I get a headache trying to sing melody.

Is singing unison a common practice in the church?

When I joined the Lutheran Church way back when… the hymnal was filled with wonderful hymns supported by 4 parts. Lutherans love their singing…Over time the Red Hymnal was replaced by the Blue Hymnal and they messed with the harmonies AND the words…seriously this is enough to make the average cradle Lutheran to get upset! The Burgundy Hymnal is not bad, although it is tough sometimes to try to harmonize, but they did return to some of the original music for the liturgies.

I guess I’m not much of wanting to changes something that doesn’t need a change (from my perspective )

God bless you all!

Rita

 

[Blacksword]

New Catholic here, moved over from the Anglican Church in North America.

Also new to Salt Lake City. None of the Roman Catholic churches we’ve visited have four-part harmony in the hymnals. I sing bass, and I get a headache trying to sing melody.

Is singing unison a common practice in the church?

This is the one sad thing frankly I’ve found in Catholic parishes too often too, and I’m a convert from a Baptist background where mostly everyone sings and sings loud, even if they maybe shouldn’t!

Many in the pews won’t/dont’ sing AT ALL, and the missals that are stocked in the pews have only the melody line. My solution as someone who is a classically trained tenor: bought my own hymnal. I liked the Adoremus hymnal, but it is short (sadly) on a lot of the pieces sung in my parish and probably many others today. So I found the OPC offerings and bought the 2nd Edition of Choral Praise Comprehensive hymnal, choir edition (very important to get that one!) for about $25. I bring it and just flip to find the hymn for each one, which is a little annoying, but getting the chance to sing some of the great tenor lines in hymns like “I am the Bread of Life” is worth the hassle! They’ve got a new edition out: ocp.org/cp3. I don’t know if it’s as good though, but I’d try that out as it does have at least most of the ones we regularly sing. I’ve noticed though that some of the most contemporary stuff still in this hymn book will also still not have any harmonies since apparently none were written for the “worship song” or whatever in the first place, but at least the traditional and real hymns all have it.