MERGED: Looking for opinions from young people regarding Chant

[kmuestwin]

I would love to have chant in our services. The mass I attend while at college uses more contemporary music with guitars, a bass and a synth drum. (I can handle the guitar and the bass but a drum solo during Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord.) I would appreciate any traditional music. I like a more traditional mass.

On a side note, I believe that mass shouldn’t be popularized or made more “relevant.” Our catholic religion is based about 50% on tradition. Why do we want to water it down with popular music or services. A traditional mass was good enough for the Saints, it should be good enough for us too!

 

[Eric_Olsen]

Suppose a pastor or parish music director says something like “one reason we don’t do Gregorian Chant (or sacred polyphony) is because young people aren’t drawn to it, they would rather have contemporary-sounding music.”
/QUOTE]

and I would say “how do you know Father? Do you know this from experience?”.
That line is typical of the VII crowd in MY EXPERIENCE that hates anything traditional and that follow the false spirit of VII. Many in my own parish. Once they find out I attend the EF form of mass most sundays they look at me like I am the devil.

 

[Eric_Olsen]

In my area, the ones who say young people won’t like chant are actually older people near my age (51) or a bit older, who were the ones responsible for the wholesale destruction of Church music after Vatican II. They project their own (bad) taste on younger people who are in fact attracted to the aesthetic of the genre. I talked recently with a young musician (young lady in her early 20s) who was exasperated by her parish’s lack of interest in chant, and she was thrown exactly the same argument by the 60-something children of Vatican II.

DING DING DING!!!
We must belong to the same parish!

 

[Eric_Olsen]

My favorite chant is

The traditional Litany of Saints.

See link:

youtube.com/watch?v=KiM9uJIN64g&feature=PlayList&p=458152267320B764&playnext_from=PL&index=0

 

[Charlotte408]

Suppose a pastor or parish music director says something like “one reason we don’t do Gregorian Chant (or sacred polyphony) is because young people aren’t drawn to it, they would rather have contemporary-sounding music.”

How would you as a young person (let’s say, those under the age of 30) respond to that assertion and to the assumptions underlying it? And if you knew that both Vatican II and subsequent popes have made it clear that the Church has not abandoned Gregorian Chant, would that change your response?

I’m 28 so I think I still meet the criteria (under 30) even though I feel like I’m 40 most of the time-

Dont laugh, but I have no idea what ‘Gregorian Chant’ is. Before I ‘came back home’ to the CC, I had been to other protestant, and even non denomination churches- one that rings fresh in my memory is one where they had a ‘rock band’, and they played, I guess contemporary christian type rock…

Everyone else sang along, but I didnt enjoy it. I mean, they could play well, but there was something just WEIRD to me, watching the pastor finish his sermon, tie up his hair into a ponytail and pick up an electric guitar

It just didnt have the, reverence , I guess?? It just seemed commercialized and like it just didnt have the level of ‘respect’ that worshipping our Lord, to me, should have. Dont get me wrong, I’m joyful for our Lord, but when I get to worshipping Him- Its a very **humble **experience…

Anyhow, I have much more respect for tradition…and giving whole hearted…solemn…respect, and I found that in the CC. If a Priest approached me with the OP question, I would say that I disagree and that tradition is part of what drew me to the CC, and that instead I would like to know ‘Gregorian Chant’…by hearing it, knowing what it means…I want to re-learn everything I’ve known…I’m like, in a way- disowning my deeply ingrained secular beliefs…I feel like more than half of them are lies anyways…I would greatly appreciate any introduction to a tradition that has been lost, or at least lost to me.

 

[Charlotte408]

I’m a 19 year old male who loves Gregorian Chant. I also love folk, indie, pop, and hip-hop. But not in Church, obviously.

Ha aha ha…funny you say that…I went to a big Billy Graham thing up in SF once…omg it was years ago though…and swear on it they had at the end, christian music artists…and they had ‘christian rappers’

Dont get me wrong, at least they were ‘christian’, but…idk…the two mixxed…and then in church…its just…weird to me. I kept waiting for back up dancers in spandex with crosses on each booty cheek to get up and start bouncin’ around behind them…LMBO…

sorry…I hope that visual wasnt inappropriate…lol