Shelf Life of Contemporary Music at Mass?

[Beno]

As a Music Director at a parish here, I was told by my priest/employer that he believed 50 songs was all a parish really needed to have in their singable repertoire. He is big on active participation as I am. For the most part, the parish prefers contemporary songs (you know the ones) and I tried to debate with him that contemporary music is just that - contemporary, and that there seems to be a shelf life to it. To me it seemed necessary to add new songs every year to replace the ones that get old and stale quickly. Time honored song forms seems to retain their musical and lyrical relevance in every generation. I’m not so sure this can be said about a lot of contemporary Catholic music. 10-15 years seems to be the shelf life. Other thoughts and observations?

 

[puzzleannie]

the people who lead the music at our “guitar Mass” are very capable musically, and as 30-somethings they relate well with the youth in their choir, but they learned liturgical music at their Catholic college in the St Louis Jesuit years, and that is about all they sing. Before Mass we sing praise and worship “classics”, the kind the Christian radio station plays as oldies. Our teens are tired to death of that music, regarding it they way my grandchildren to the Beatles or Mamas n Papas.

They enthusiastically learned the Latin chant for Advent, and the Latin hymns we learn for special occasions, and there is talk of forming a Latin choir. Fortunately we get plenty of exposure to traditional Catholic hymns at other Masses, which some teens attend, rather than the youth Mass, for that reason, by the way.

The teens are working on their own group but for what they regard as contemporary Christian (released within the last 5 yrs) and, praise be, some original music. It will be a while before they are “ready for prime time” but with some leadership I hope they can lead music for retreats, prayer services etc.

 

[SMHW]

Welcome to the Catholic Answers Forums.

The Liturgy and Sacraments forum tends to be fairly conservative when it comes to music. But there are some of us who like all types of liturgical music, including Gregorian chant, sacred polyphony, hymns, and ‘contemporary’.

As you have noted, ‘contemporary’ is a somewhat problematic name. To a 60 year old Catholic, contemporary probably means anything composed after 1965. To a 30 year old, it might mean anything in the last 10 years. I can’t even say what a 15 year old considers contemporary. In general I suppose contemporary means something that sounds better accompanied by a piano and/or guitar than it does by an organ.

I’m going to use the phrase ‘modern music’ to refer to anything composed from the late 1960s until the present.

If you look around here you will see any number of threads that debate the liturgical appropriateness of modern music.I won’t get in to that here. I’ll just say that I think the ‘keepers’ of any genre are the pieces that people like in spite of the accompaniment. People sing them whether they are a cappella, accompanied by organ, or accompanied by a guitar.

It’s been my experience that modern church music is similar to modern secular music in at least one sense. Sometimes it is the melody and words that that people like. Sometimes it is the presentation. We can probably all think of secular examples of songs we liked when we heard a particular recording of it but hated when we heard a cover or live version of it.

You say your pastor wants to maintain a singable repertoire of about 50 songs. I believe you are saying he wants this so that people are familiar with the songs and not so much because he is concerned about the expense of obtaining new musical scores. There is wisdom in what the pastor says. I understand the boredom factor. But keep in mind that musicians tend to have a much greater boredom threshold than other people in the congregation since they haven’t rehearsed a song 20 times before it was ever heard at Mass.

I do think there is a shelf life for some modern music. But rather than worry about the span of time that a song should be kept around, I think the bigger concern is how many new pieces a year it is reasonable to introduce. This will be determined by budgets, learning curves, and various other factors. The number of pieces to drop will follow.

I think that if you have a choir it IS necessary to introduce new music occasionally. Otherwise the choir itself will experience burnout. Some might say that this is unnecessarily catering to the choir but there are maintenance costs for everything. Some of the ‘new’ music might actually be ‘old’ music. It has been my experience that a parish that likes ‘contemporary’ music will embrace chant, sacred polyphony (in Latin), and traditional hymns if it is introduced by a choir they respect.

 

[rwoehmke]

Your Pastor is on to something. Our Music Minister picks new hymns every week and as a result we have a Parish that “can’t sing.” Once the “50” is learned and can be sung by most, then it becomes appropriate to add a few from time to time, but please sing them till people become familiar with them. Some hymns are so complicated that only the choir, who has practiced, can really sing them the rest of us just shrug our shoulders and drop the hymnal back into its slot. All of one kind of hymn is “boring”. Styles and era of composition need some variation.I think most Catholics, once familiar with a hymn, actually like to sing.

 

[daeve]

I like most types of music…I just don’t want to hear it all at Mass. There are a few in a category I call “Mass, the Musical”. They sound like they’re from a Broadway show.

We do have a lot of songs from the hymnal in our repertoire, but our director will spring a new one at the last minute. He seems to think everyone in choir and sight read. Not this girl, especially not the alto part. New songs are good, but people need time to learn them. When we introduce new songs we sing them just melody for the first few times, then break into the harmonies once the congregation is comfortable with the melody.

I was in the theatre department at St Louis University when the St Louis Jesuits were there. I met various of them at times, not like they were friends but to say hi. Nice guys, and yes, this old girl likes that music. Some of the songs I remember from the early 1960s don’t seem any “better”, although I do like them.

Our choir would like to sing more Latin things, but there seems to be some resistance somewhere. The congregation likes the Latin especially the old familiar ones. There are only 3 of us old enough to remember them from the last time around, and the other two generally defer pronunciation to me…probably because I’m Italian!

Our youth group is very contemporary and they do the 11am Mass. Again, the congregation seems to like it and the attendance at that Mass hasn’t slipped although the earlier Masses have. I don’t know if the folks prefer the kids’ music or if they’re just not getting up early enough!

 

[mercygate]

As a Music Director at a parish here, I was told by my priest/employer that he believed 50 songs was all a parish really needed to have in their singable repertoire. He is big on active participation as I am. For the most part, the parish prefers contemporary songs (you know the ones) and I tried to debate with him that contemporary music is just that - contemporary, and that there seems to be a shelf life to it. To me it seemed necessary to add new songs every year to replace the ones that get old and stale quickly. Time honored song forms seems to retain their musical and lyrical relevance in every generation. I’m not so sure this can be said about a lot of contemporary Catholic music. 10-15 years seems to be the shelf life. Other thoughts and observations?

I think it’s like everything else. The good stuff will last; the junk will disappear.

Some junk has a longer shelf life than others. I won’t name names, but there are sappy Victorian parlor songs still current in a lot of Protestant worship. For a good discussion of what is liturgically effective in hymnody, see Ralph Vaughan Williams’ introduction to Hymns Ancient and Modern written around 1921.

A lot of my favorite hymns are 20th Century: “Come Down, O Love Divine” and “My Song is Love Unknown” are two of them.

For a good collection of “chestnuts” – hymns that have stood the test of time – see the Adoremus Hymnal.

Personally, I think a few of the pop/modern things have a chance of holding up. But it is true that young people today think our “contemporary” church music is painfully dated.

They’d enjoy singing a little Gregorian and some Renaissance polyphony. They understand that stuff better than “adults” give them credit for.

 

[Beno]

You say your pastor wants to maintain a singable repertoire of about 50 songs. I believe you are saying he wants this so that people are familiar with the songs and not so much because he is concerned about the expense of obtaining new musical scores.

The priest said this to me after a particular Sunday during Lent that the singing wasn’t so swell. He took the opportunity to wrongly berate me about the number of new songs that we learned each year and insinuated that the singing wasn’t as full as it could have been because some songs in the repertoire weren’t being selected enough. (One of my legitimate responses to him was that some Lenten songs are to be used only during Lent.) The pastoral associate set a limit for the music director to teach only 3-4 new assembly songs per year, which I was in compliance with except for one year when I accidentally taught 5 songs to the assembly. The song styles would vary between older hymns written with new lyrics to more modern yet totally accessible compositions of various musical styles. We taught all new songs very methodically so as to integrate them successfully into the singable repertoire. I think that the priest believed that there was a connection between loss of familiarity with music selected less frequently and the addition of new music to the repertoire.

We originally had a repertoire of 323 songs that was pared down to 140 songs. What hurt was that the pastoral associate selected a lot of hymns to discard, reasoning that the assembly did not like singing hymns very well and that they were Protestant in origin. (Among these were: “All Creatures of Our God and King”, “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”, “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence”, From All That Dwell Below the Skies", Hail Redeemer, King Divine", “I Sing the Mighty Power of God”, “On Jordan’s Bank” “To Jesus Christ, Our Sovereign King”, and others.) I tried to argue that the last reason was not legitimate in itself when the musical forms of those hymns have stood the test of time in terms of musical integrity and that the lyrics are in accord with Catholic teaching. It is my personal belief that the p.a. preferred the music they grew up with (post 1965 including the music of the St. Louis Jesuits and their contemporaries). Plus very few of the discarded hymns were of the category as described by mercygate as sappy victorian parlor hymns. mercygate is right about that too. As a current organist and choruster in a Presbyterian church (until a position opens up for a Director of Music at a local Catholic church), I just grin and bear it when those kind of hymns are selected for me to play. They are so drippy!

I understand the boredom factor. But keep in mind that musicians tend to have a much greater boredom threshold than other people in the congregation since they haven’t rehearsed a song 20 times before it was ever heard at Mass.

SMHW also has made an accurate observation. those of us who are musicians do tend to have a greater boredom factor and the first complaints about music getting old quickly tends to come from the choirs and the cantors.

We do have a lot of songs from the hymnal in our repertoire, but our director will spring a new one at the last minute. He seems to think everyone in choir and sight read. Not this girl, especially not the alto part. New songs are good, but people need time to learn them.

I have visited churches where new music is introduced almost weekly. Boy that’s a guarantee for failure! I have also been at a church where there are no hymnals and the music is printed in a program that is used weekly for 4 to 6 weeks at a time (with all the appropriate copy permissions). But you know, it works for them and they are thus able to stay more current than those with hymnals.

Trained and experienced in both classical music and classic rock, I have a rich background with both secular and religious music. There is one deficiency in my musical background and it is chant. I want more exposure to these forms since there does seem to be at least a minor trend to reintroduce and use that music. I am so glad that many of you have spoken highly of chant and sacred polyphony. It is encouraging.

Regarding shelf life to music, it is good for me to have fresh perspectives that I wouldn’t have considered otherwise. You all are wonderful! I will take solace in mercygate’s comment:

I think it’s like everything else. The good stuff will last; the junk will disappear.