Save the church! (kill the organs)

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TimothyH said:
The piece is nothing but nonsense designed to provolk and drive readership.

The Boston Globe is hardly in a position to tell the Church how to save itself, nor is it in the position to tell the Church what it’s Mass is and is not and how or why it became what it is. Catholics “who have been driven away” are not problems, nor is music a problem. The only problem the Church has is a lack of virtue - humility being primary among them - in her individual members.

Linking the Year of Faith with organ music is simply a rediculous waste of words with no other purpose than to get people upset, have them post about the article on forums like this, drive clicks to the Boston Globe website, and ultimately to increase advertising revenue.

It is a waste of words, time, engergy and hard disk pace. The Holy Father could switch to bongo drums and trombones tomorrow, and it wouold do nothing to my faith in God as the creator of the univers and Jesus Christ as its redeemer.

-Tim-
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I remember when studying journalism at university, we were taught to write at a 7th or 8th grade reading level in order to encompass a larger population of readers. BUT we would be berated if we used shallow critical thinking and poor research, among other things, because we were to assume that everyone who read the paper would be intelligent, critical thinkers. This writer made both boo-boos with her opinion piece and she’s getting paid for it. Even though it is an editorial, her blatant ignorance on the subject does a disservice to those working writers who actually do put a lot of work and research to their pieces. In a way, she is the equivalent of a poor or mediocre organist at a church. Perhaps she should be let go in order to do the journalism community a favor? I’m sure she is aware of how that is dying a slow death, with the loss of “faithful” readers and subscribers. She and the Boston Globe are not doing anything to help revive it.
 
Sarabande said:
I remember when studying journalism at university, we were taught to write at a 7th or 8th grade reading level in order to encompass a larger population of readers. BUT we would be berated if we used shallow critical thinking and poor research, among other things, because we were to assume that everyone who read the paper would be intelligent, critical thinkers. This writer made both boo-boos with her opinion piece and she’s getting paid for it. Even though it is an editorial, her blatant ignorance on the subject does a disservice to those working writers who actually do put a lot of work and research to their pieces. In a way, she is the equivalent of a poor or mediocre organist at a church. Perhaps she should be let go in order to do the journalism community a favor? I’m sure she is aware of how that is dying a slow death, with the loss of “faithful” readers and subscribers. She and the Boston Globe are not doing anything to help revive it.
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Interesting about writing at an 8th grade level.

What they do is write a provocative and controversial piece in the hopes that it will develop some interest. The hope is that everyone gets all excited, goes to the website, reads the peice, posts in the comments, and that bloggers and people like us in forums write all about it and post links.

There is one concern at play here - increasing clicks as a means to drive advertising revenue. They even post their own provocative comments on their own articles to generate controversy, clicks and revenue.

National Catholic Reporter is great at it. They post articles with keywords in the title, and mix and match the keywords ramdomly. Anything with “Black”, “Abortion” and “Bishops” is a sure hit.

It’s all about controversy and revenue.

-Tim-
 
TimothyH said:
Interesting about writing at an 8th grade level.
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Yes, I found that interesting as well. Like most young, aspiring writers we want to show our wares by writing the most intricate and complicated sentences, using some of the most esoteric vocabulary hardly anyone would ever use in everyday life. 😛 I laugh at some of my early attempts at writing novels or news stories. It was fun to see how creative we could be with the English language. It took a lot of time to break us of that. That said, it can also be a fun challenge to write “normally”.
TimothyH said:
What they do is write a provocative and controversial piece in the hopes that it will develop some interest. The hope is that everyone gets all excited, goes to the website, reads the peice, posts in the comments, and that bloggers and people like us in forums write all about it and post links.

There is one concern at play here - increasing clicks as a means to drive advertising revenue. They even post their own provocative comments on their own articles to generate controversy, clicks and revenue.

National Catholic Reporter is great at it. They post articles with keywords in the title, and mix and match the keywords ramdomly. Anything with “Black”, “Abortion” and “Bishops” is a sure hit.

**It’s all about controversy and revenue. **

-Tim-
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Yes, it is. It’s one of the reasons why my idealism in being a journalist died fairly quickly after graduation and went out into the real world. The personality wasn’t me, as I’m not a controversial individual. I didn’t even want to do music reviews because I didn’t want to cut anyone up publicly. How funny would it be if I wrote reviews on my own performances? 😛 Music was/is really my calling, anyway. I’m where I should be now. Perhaps one day I’ll write articles for music journals and magazines, but right now my focus is on being a musician.
 
There hasn’t been organ music featured in horror movies since at least the fifties. Why should Hollywood or Broadway have any influence over whether organs are used in their natural habitat - the Catholic Church? Besides, Dracula would not have had a pipe organ, as they did not exist in Romania at that time.
 
Amidst the debate between the trads and the liturgical dancers, I think we forget our own experiences. Kids like pop music and adults tend to prefer the solemn. There’s no way that pre-teens can appreciate the EF like I do and there’s no way that I could appreciate guitar Masses like they do. Personally, I’d like a tradition to develop that differentiates between children’s and adult Masses.
 
johnmann said:
Amidst the debate between the trads and the liturgical dancers, I think we forget our own experiences. Kids like pop music and adults tend to prefer the solemn. There’s no way that pre-teens can appreciate the EF like I do and there’s no way that I could appreciate guitar Masses like they do. Personally, I’d like a tradition to develop that differentiates between children’s and adult Masses.
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I don’t know - do you have polls to back that up? It seems to me that a lot of young people and new families are the ones attending EF Masses. The timelessness of reverent liturgy is not lost on the young, it is a gift to them. If you want to talk about children’s Masses, well, start another thread and let me start the 🍿 snacking.

Personally, I did grow up with folk Masses and I did grow to appreciate chant and sacred polyphony as I got older. But I am just moving with the waves of the Church. In the 70s and 80s there was nothing but folk Masses and bad music. Now we are enjoying a reform of the reform, where sacred music is becoming more respected and popular. I think that it really matters what you are exposed to that factors into your tastes.

And I still love CCM praise and worship music, I listen to K-LOVE on the radio and I enjoy that kind of music to sing in private and I’d love to go to concerts, but I also realize that CCM isn’t appropriate for the liturgy, nor is Haugen-Haas or OCP adequate for the Sacrifice of the Mass. It’s not what the Church wants.
 
Instead of killing the organs, they should kill some of the “organists”.

I have heard some of the butcher hymns like a serial killer on a saturday night.😃

I used to play for my grandfather at his Presbyterian church, and I used to play for my own enjoyment (in my home), but due to a nasty arm injury, I haven’t played at all in almost 6 yrs.

Our parish organist, could play circles around me, and still can. He can make anyone sit up and take notice when he plays.
 
Elizium23 said:
Save the church! (kill the organs)

Of course I strenuously disagree with this. Gregorian chant is the preferred song of the Church. By its nature it is a cappella. But isn’t the organ to be afforded “pride of place” among the instruments? Should it not be retained and maintained in church buildings if only to put an exclamation mark into the liturgy at opportune times? Please, kill the guitars and tambourines and pianos and drums before you touch the organ.
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Well, the East has maintained that the only instruments worthy of praising God is the instrument that God himself made, our voices. By all means the West can go back to this tradition. Organs are expensive to have and maintain, and not many actually know how to play it. It is easier to get a group and harmonize their voices.
 
Elizium23 said:
I don’t know - do you have polls to back that up? It seems to me that a lot of young people and new families are the ones attending EF Masses. The timelessness of reverent liturgy is not lost on the young, it is a gift to them. If you want to talk about children’s Masses, well, start another thread and let me start the 🍿 snacking.

Personally, I did grow up with folk Masses and I did grow to appreciate chant and sacred polyphony as I got older. But I am just moving with the waves of the Church. In the 70s and 80s there was nothing but folk Masses and bad music. Now we are enjoying a reform of the reform, where sacred music is becoming more respected and popular. I think that it really matters what you are exposed to that factors into your tastes.

And I still love CCM praise and worship music, I listen to K-LOVE on the radio and I enjoy that kind of music to sing in private and I’d love to go to concerts, but I also realize that CCM isn’t appropriate for the liturgy, nor is Haugen-Haas or OCP adequate for the Sacrifice of the Mass. It’s not what the Church wants.
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I don’t have polls though I wouldn’t be surprised if they exist. I don’t think most people would disagree that appreciation of the solemn increases with age.
 
This forum is largely about the Latin Church and the organ, being part of Western tradition, makes this thread about the Western tradition of music, which is not Eastern and will never be, so I would appreciate it if people did not pit East against West as if one were superior to the other. They are both lungs of the Church, and it has been made very clear that the organ is a venerable tradition of ours that is to be retained.
 
Cat said:
The problem is that there are fewer and fewer organists and even fewer students. Many colleges have closed down their organ major due to lack of students. And many organists don’t even have one student, and many of the students are older (not children or teenagers).

If this trend continues, I predict that in many cities and towns, there will be no organists for the Catholic churches within 20 years.

It’s a darn hard instrument to learn! I’m a very good pianist and often play piano for Mass. (I’m 55 years old.)

I’ve been taking pipe organ lessons for a little over a year now, and I still can only play 3 hymns, and they are pretty bad. I am still unable to accompany singing on the organ. My feet on the pedals still sound very clumsy–most misses than hits. I can play a few Bach preludes and fugues, and I have been playing these as postludes for the Mass. But honestly, my repertoire is extremely limited.

My lessons cost $250/month–how many families could afford to pay this for a young child or several children? Yes, I have the best teacher in my city, but even a less-experienced teacher will charge at least $50.00 hour. And the music is very expensive, too. And most people don’t have an organ in their homes, so this means practicing in a church or university chapel, and in some cases, I’m sure that there is a rental fee for this.

Heck, it’s almost as expensive as figure skating! :rolleyes:
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You are absolutely right!!

I have played the organ for many, many years. I started playing in my grandfathers Presbyterian Church when I was 15, and I stopped playing at age 50 due to a severe hand/arm injury (I’m 55 also).

I like to think that I played well. I never received any complaints, but I am probably my own worst critic.

To do it well, you have to read 3 lines of music at the same time. Melody, bass or chords, and pedals. Besides the regular pedals, you also have the expression pedal(s).

You also have to “divorce” your hands. You do it one way for piano, and one way for organ.

Then you have to factor in the “registration”, which is the pipes you are going to use in order for the hymn, or song to sound good.

Depending on how the organ is set up in a church, there can actually be a slight time delay between what you play on the keyboard actually happens with the pipes. That adds to the complexity of playing well, and accompanying a cantor.

For example, our church seats about 2000 people. Some of the pipes are up in the loft, where the console is in the back of the nave, and others are in the front of the church, above the sanctuary.

Until my injury, I would fill in, or back up our regular organist, but he is much more talented than I am, and he is much more familiar with the organ itself.

I have a Wurlitzer organ similar to this one in my home, and would love to give lessons, if someone were interested. But it isn’t a popular instrument these days.

http://bluemoonwalkinghorses.com/WurlitzerConsole2_800x600.jpg
 
ConstantineTG said:
Well, the East has maintained that the only instruments worthy of praising God is the instrument that God himself made, our voices. By all means the West can go back to this tradition. Organs are expensive to have and maintain, and not many actually know how to play it. It is easier to get a group and harmonize their voices.
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While I don’t agree with this entirely, it really does hit upon a good point: Traditional pipe organs are ludicrously expensive. Electronic organs (in my experience) can be finicky, temperamental, and quite expensive to maintain. Frame this in the context of your average American parish, complete with struggling numbers and the constant threat of merging/clustering, then expensive organ maintenance may fall rather low in the parish budget. *** to the fact that proficient organists, due to the modern rarity of the degree, will cost a parish more than a trained proficient pianist.

It should be noted that I do not dislike the organ in anyway. When it is well maintained and well-used by a well-trained organist, it can be an incredibly solemn and awe inspiring tool for worship. However, when you put in front of it a less than proficient organist who has a piano or voice background, it can be rather difficult to achieve the majesty and power that earned the organ the “pride of place” which it holds.

On another practical note, I find that as a cantor the organ is not as well suited for vocal accompaniment. It does not have the natural percussive quality that other instruments such as the piano has that makes them so natural to sing with. The percussive quality makes it easier for the choir/congregation to find the rhythm of the song and more readily enter into the sung worship.

I guess that my bottom line is that the organ should be given a true “pride of place”: Use it for majesty. Use it for awe. Use it with a trained professional who can truly do the instrument, and more importantly, the worship justice.
 
Both of the parishes I have are blessed with organs. My primary parish has a 1980s vintage electronic monster that is pretty good sounding to my untrained ear. Our music director is a keyboardist and not well trained on the organ, but he picked it up quickly enough. Nobody has complained about bad organ music, and considering that the organ is now being played much more than it was in the previous five or more years before I got there, it is a welcome change.

My secondary parish has a “theatre” style pipe organ. It is compact and sits in one corner of the choir loft, where the temperature and humidity are largely unregulated, except with the building’s heaters in the mild winters. The summers are the worst. Our organist cannot bear to stay up there when it is 95 degrees in the loft. The organ constantly goes out of tune and he complains about it a lot. He is an accomplished player, but he’s one of those artists always blaming his tools, and he would like nothing more than for us to spend half a mil to get a new “church” organ to replace what’s there. Needless to say, that is not going to fly in our budget.

Overall, I would say that both of our parishes are well-served by the organ as it is now. In my secondary parish, it is the only instrument played for liturgy (aside from our voices of course :rolleyes:) and in my primary, it has pride of place above the piano which is used sparingly. This is a vast improvement over the Church of my childhood - I believe I mentioned incessant folk Masses - and the Church I reverted to 12 years ago, which was infested with Christian Contemporary dreck.
 
Elizium23 said:
This forum is largely about the Latin Church and the organ, being part of Western tradition, makes this thread about the Western tradition of music, which is not Eastern and will never be, so I would appreciate it if people did not pit East against West as if one were superior to the other. They are both lungs of the Church, and it has been made very clear that the organ is a venerable tradition of ours that is to be retained.
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Why do you see it as “pitting East against West”? The idea that we are in communion with one another is that we help each other into greater holiness. As Blessed Pope John Paul II said in Orientale Lumen, some truths are greater expressed and understood in the East, and some truths are greater experessed and understood in the West. That is why we must work together so that we can obtain the fullness of truth by learning from one another. It is not a competition. To reject the East on the basis that it is not the West is counter to what the Blessed Pope taught.
 
Moving away from the organ is not a bad thing. The organ came about during a time of plenty for the Church, when most people where there are parishes were Catholic and they threw a lot of money at the Church, even the kings and other wealthy people. Today that is not the case. Expenses to maintain a parish is high and most parishes don’t have enough people to afford even the upkeep of the parish, much less purchase and maintain an organ. I share stuff not to pit one tradition over another, rather to let people know that there is a venerable tradition out there that is also practical.
 
Elizium23 said:
My secondary parish has a “theatre” style pipe organ. It is compact and sits in one corner of the choir loft, where the temperature and humidity are largely unregulated, except with the building’s heaters in the mild winters. The summers are the worst. Our organist cannot bear to stay up there when it is 95 degrees in the loft. The organ constantly goes out of tune and he complains about it a lot. He is an accomplished player, but he’s one of those artists always blaming his tools, and he would like nothing more than for us to spend half a mil to get a new “church” organ to replace what’s there. Needless to say, that is not going to fly in our budget…
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Perhaps I am finicky, but the out-of-tune nature of the instrument would absolutely drive me up the wall. And if the organist is legitimately trained and carries himself in a professional manner, he wouldn’t be blaming his tools. Then again, you know his nature and temperament far better than I :).

I think that the organ has its time and place, heck, “pride of place” even. That isn’t to discount prayerfully prepared and presented music of other styles.

Honestly, I’m quite excited to hear a new generation of Catholic composers as they come into their own following the monopoly that Haugen/Haas had on the liturgy for the past thirty years. Its as if the younger publishers are almost back lashing against the extreme artistic liscence that the post Vatican II era took. A grand example of this is looking at the music of Tony Alonso of Chris de Silva. They are both distinctively contemporary, but regularly integrate traditional chant into their music.

Either way, should be an exciting time in the Church’s future; a future that no doubt includes the organ 🙂
 
ConstantineTG said:
Why do you see it as “pitting East against West”? The idea that we are in communion with one another is that we help each other into greater holiness. As Blessed Pope John Paul II said in Orientale Lumen, some truths are greater expressed and understood in the East, and some truths are greater experessed and understood in the West. That is why we must work together so that we can obtain the fullness of truth by learning from one another. It is not a competition. To reject the East on the basis that it is not the West is counter to what the Blessed Pope taught.
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Because every time you pop your head into a thread about the Latin Church, it is invariably to say something like “The East does it THIS way! Ain’t it great?” I’m also a great supporter of the Eastern Churches, but I get extremely tired of this kind of relentless cheerleading when it is wholly inappropriate and off-topic, such as in a thread on the organ.

In the same way that the Eastern Churches suffered from ghettoization and Latinizations in the early part of Uniate history, perhaps the lesson can be learned by us all that homogenization of liturgy is not appropriate when distinct patrimonies are a source of pride for members of those Rites, and that we should not boast or feel superior because of Earthly things like what instruments are used in our liturgies.

[BIBLEDRB]Luke 9:46-48[/BIBLEDRB]
 
ThePaladin said:
Perhaps I am finicky, but the out-of-tune nature of the instrument would absolutely drive me up the wall. And if the organist is legitimately trained and carries himself in a professional manner, he wouldn’t be blaming his tools. Then again, you know his nature and temperament far better than I :).

I think that the organ has its time and place, heck, “pride of place” even. That isn’t to discount prayerfully prepared and presented music of other styles.

Honestly, I’m quite excited to hear a new generation of Catholic composers as they come into their own following the monopoly that Haugen/Haas had on the liturgy for the past thirty years. Its as if the younger publishers are almost back lashing against the extreme artistic liscence that the post Vatican II era took. A grand example of this is looking at the music of Tony Alonso of Chris de Silva. They are both distinctively contemporary, but regularly integrate traditional chant into their music.

Either way, should be an exciting time in the Church’s future; a future that no doubt includes the organ 🙂
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If an organist is legitimately trained (not sure exactly what that means–there are lots of ways to train to play/maintain the organ), he/she will be able to tune a pipe organ if it’s just one or two clinker pipes. Now if the whole thing is out of tune, there are probably reasons for this that require a technician to come in and overhaul the organ.

Maintaining a pipe organ is a big job. If the organ is not faithfully and correctly maintained, it will deteriorate. And it’s not exactly the kind of work that a “parish handyman” can figure out.
 
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