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iblessem
Guest
Quote:
“My concerns center around the instruments used. The electric bass and percussions are more along the lines of secular music and are not necessarily compatible with what happens at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is not about being edgy. It is about bringing solemntiy, dignity, beauty and awe to the Mass.”
Our Lord can take any instrument, any person, and anything else and bring dignity, solenmity, beauty and awe…even love and forgiveness to all. He can raise up believers from rocks! Peter is rock. Here is Psalm 150. This reminds me that it is not the big hitech pipe organ our adult choir uses nor the guitars or songbooks that our youth use to give praise; it is love flowing from the Holy Spirit through the instruments and people that give glory to God.
Chapter 150
1
1 Hallelujah! 2 Praise God in his holy sanctuary; give praise in the mighty dome of heaven.
2
Give praise for his mighty deeds, praise him for his great majesty.
3
Give praise with blasts upon the horn, praise him with harp and lyre.
4
Give praise with tambourines and dance, praise him with flutes and strings.
5
Give praise with crashing cymbals, praise him with sounding cymbals.
6
Let everything that has breath give praise to the LORD! Hallelujah!
“My concerns center around the instruments used. The electric bass and percussions are more along the lines of secular music and are not necessarily compatible with what happens at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is not about being edgy. It is about bringing solemntiy, dignity, beauty and awe to the Mass.”
Our Lord can take any instrument, any person, and anything else and bring dignity, solenmity, beauty and awe…even love and forgiveness to all. He can raise up believers from rocks! Peter is rock. Here is Psalm 150. This reminds me that it is not the big hitech pipe organ our adult choir uses nor the guitars or songbooks that our youth use to give praise; it is love flowing from the Holy Spirit through the instruments and people that give glory to God.
Chapter 150
1
1 Hallelujah! 2 Praise God in his holy sanctuary; give praise in the mighty dome of heaven.
2
Give praise for his mighty deeds, praise him for his great majesty.
3
Give praise with blasts upon the horn, praise him with harp and lyre.
4
Give praise with tambourines and dance, praise him with flutes and strings.
5
Give praise with crashing cymbals, praise him with sounding cymbals.
6
Let everything that has breath give praise to the LORD! Hallelujah!
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benedictgal
Guest
This is the response that so many give. However, the psalm was not addressing what happens in liturgical worship. What psalm 150 notes is not quite what happened in the cultic sacrificial worship of Ancient Israel. What we do is more along the lines of what Ancient Israel did when it comes to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Please, also, note what it says in Musicam Sacram, the authoritative document on music promulgated by the Holy See:
The Holy See revisited the issue further in 2005 in the Linemata, the working document for the Synod on the Eucharist. The Synod Fathers expressed this particular concern:
In response to this concern, the Holy Father noted that:
Thus, the manner in which music is used and how it is played is also a big concern for Rome.
In 2006, the USCCB submitted a directory of hymns for use in the Mass to Rome for recognitio. It has now been four years since that submission. Rome has not given it the approval because it is still studying each selection.
This is as much as I will say on this particular subject, as I do not want to see an otherwise useful and fruitful thread shut down. If you wish, you can send me a PM later to further discuss this matter.
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Jean_Anthony
Guest
aaa
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benedictgal
Guest
Something else to be noted is that on October 25, 2001, the CDWDS issued a letter to the USCCB regarding the American adaptations to the GIRM. It made one important observation regarding musical instruments:
So, that does not necessarily mean that it is a free-for-all. Again, we need to look at what the authoritative documents of the Holy See indicate.
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EasterJoy
Guest
We have this problem, I think: that people have had their palates ruined. They think that in food the salt and sugar should be impossible to miss; in music, they think the same about the beat.
A bass guitar cannot touch the low-register blast that a pipe organ could put on to you, if the musician wanted to do it. You can play a guitar so as to put all the listeners at a rock concert, but you can play an organ so as to put all the listeners at the ball park. We all know this, I think. The problem is, playing an instrument in the way that belongs in church requires considerable skill and self-restraint, as well as an appreciation for the qualities of truly great sacred music. People know it when they hear it, but getting the musicians to play it is another thing all together.
It might help if we’d go back to never applauding the musicians, but being willing to actually pay them what they’re worth. They’d be much more amenable to direction, I think.
A bass guitar cannot touch the low-register blast that a pipe organ could put on to you, if the musician wanted to do it. You can play a guitar so as to put all the listeners at a rock concert, but you can play an organ so as to put all the listeners at the ball park. We all know this, I think. The problem is, playing an instrument in the way that belongs in church requires considerable skill and self-restraint, as well as an appreciation for the qualities of truly great sacred music. People know it when they hear it, but getting the musicians to play it is another thing all together.
It might help if we’d go back to never applauding the musicians, but being willing to actually pay them what they’re worth. They’d be much more amenable to direction, I think.
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iblessem
Guest
Yes, on Michael J. Talbot’s Signature Album, there is a song “Healer of My Soul” on guitar. MJT plays the guitar is such a way that inspires holiness for many. I have seen people visibly touched, but more than that, the way the music was done supported the readings of the word and celebration of the Eucharist. I don’t think anyone who was there could say that his guitar and voice in that space and time was in violation of the church’s teaching. I think the key teaching for laymen like most of us is to pray the music and keep it holy and sacred. That takes many years of work, prayer and experience in liturgy.
In many parishes I see musicians that have limited training and talent, but their hearts are good and they are doing the best they can. They often volunteer because they love music, love the Lord and want to serve him; and the parish is too poor to hire a professional.
I have played liturgical music in the same parish for 31 years as a volunteer and I don’t understand half the documents and church laws cited on this thread. I never even knew they existed because I spend 60 hours per week supporting my family and about 4 hours per week serving my parish in music. I should read them and spend some time there.
Our current music director is a Catholic Priest with a masters degree in music and liturgy and he doesn’t make us attend classes, but we have Respond and Acclaim, Comp. Choral Praise OCP and use it when we can’t find the proper Psalm in Spirit & Song.
Finally, I will say that it can be very hurtful and discouraging to be told that your kind of music is inferior and only a certain type of music should be used during liturgical celebrations. It kinda takes the celebration out of it and I don’t think that is what those church documents were meant to do. People make judgments based on a song done poorly. I did this growing up with the worst parish organist west of the Mississippi. I hated organ music, until I heard a master. I love the organ now, but only when the organist knows how to play it liturgically. Same for guitar.
May the peace of Christ be with you all.
In many parishes I see musicians that have limited training and talent, but their hearts are good and they are doing the best they can. They often volunteer because they love music, love the Lord and want to serve him; and the parish is too poor to hire a professional.
I have played liturgical music in the same parish for 31 years as a volunteer and I don’t understand half the documents and church laws cited on this thread. I never even knew they existed because I spend 60 hours per week supporting my family and about 4 hours per week serving my parish in music. I should read them and spend some time there.
Our current music director is a Catholic Priest with a masters degree in music and liturgy and he doesn’t make us attend classes, but we have Respond and Acclaim, Comp. Choral Praise OCP and use it when we can’t find the proper Psalm in Spirit & Song.
Finally, I will say that it can be very hurtful and discouraging to be told that your kind of music is inferior and only a certain type of music should be used during liturgical celebrations. It kinda takes the celebration out of it and I don’t think that is what those church documents were meant to do. People make judgments based on a song done poorly. I did this growing up with the worst parish organist west of the Mississippi. I hated organ music, until I heard a master. I love the organ now, but only when the organist knows how to play it liturgically. Same for guitar.
May the peace of Christ be with you all.
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brotherhrolf
Guest
I sang in a cathedral choir for 20 years. When our state-of-the art 1967 electronic organ burned up in 1989 during the wedding of a cathedral choir member, we used a hand crafted wooden portativ organ, a Yamaha synclavier, and a baby grand until we got a brand new pipe organ (our 1870 model pipe organ was ripped out for the electronic organ when the cathedral was renovated in 1965). I have also sung with transverse flutes, Baroque flutes, sax, oboes, recorders, acoustic guitar, crumhorns, etc. in addition to brass quintets with tympani.
It is not the instrument. It is how it is used.
I believe that I am on the same page of music as benedictgal and, no, I am not a professional musician. I can barely read music. My musical training was limited to trying to learn to read music and to play the trumpet and to sing in my high school’s glee club back in the 60s. I am fortunate that I can sing and I learned all of my parts by rote. We practiced for three hours a week. Don’t ask me to sight read. Yes, we had section leaders who were paid professional musicians but everyone else was an amateur like myself.
As Catholics, we have a profoundly deep musical heritage. I have not heard any of the songs posted by benedictgal in the original posts except for I Am the Bread of Life which we always sang a capella in 4 part harmony.
I was forced to sing Simon and Garfunkle (Sounds of Silence and Hello, Darkness) at my high school graduation in 1969 with three of my classmates using instruments such as you describe. I recognize that the saxophone was once described as an “instrument of the devil” but it is how the instrument is deployed.
Way too much Catholic music sung today is influenced by “pop” trends No matter how pious the musician is, we don’t need to sound like the Baptist church or mega-church down the road with praise music. At the very least you could check out Taize.
youtube.com/watch?v=HNojQd_ri_o&feature=related
My choir has sung this. It is not too hard and allows for the use of instruments and the text is a classic Latin hymn - Laudate Dominium.
It is not the instrument. It is how it is used.
I believe that I am on the same page of music as benedictgal and, no, I am not a professional musician. I can barely read music. My musical training was limited to trying to learn to read music and to play the trumpet and to sing in my high school’s glee club back in the 60s. I am fortunate that I can sing and I learned all of my parts by rote. We practiced for three hours a week. Don’t ask me to sight read. Yes, we had section leaders who were paid professional musicians but everyone else was an amateur like myself.
As Catholics, we have a profoundly deep musical heritage. I have not heard any of the songs posted by benedictgal in the original posts except for I Am the Bread of Life which we always sang a capella in 4 part harmony.
I was forced to sing Simon and Garfunkle (Sounds of Silence and Hello, Darkness) at my high school graduation in 1969 with three of my classmates using instruments such as you describe. I recognize that the saxophone was once described as an “instrument of the devil” but it is how the instrument is deployed.
Way too much Catholic music sung today is influenced by “pop” trends No matter how pious the musician is, we don’t need to sound like the Baptist church or mega-church down the road with praise music. At the very least you could check out Taize.
youtube.com/watch?v=HNojQd_ri_o&feature=related
My choir has sung this. It is not too hard and allows for the use of instruments and the text is a classic Latin hymn - Laudate Dominium.
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benedictgal
Guest
But, I think that you are missing the point. It is incumbent, I believe, on those who are engaged in some form of music ministry to at least try and read the authoritative documents of the Church and the writings of the popes for guidance. You cannot just rely on what OCP tells you. OCP will tell you what it wants to tell you in order to get you to buy their stuff. The instruments also have a lot to do with this. Electric guitars and drum kits, some of which are used in these particular songs, are not compatible with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
You don’t have to attend conferences and the like. What is helpful is to read the documents. Sit with them. Read them in chunks so as to help you absorb what they are saying. The Church gives us the resources that we need, authoritative ones.
A lot of what is in Spirit and Song comes from the Protestant Praise and Worship anthems that are sold on late night TV. “Shine Jesus, Shine”, “Here I am to Worship”, “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High” might work for a retreat,but, not for the Mass. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass does have its standards.
These are the words of the Venerable Pope John Pau II, not mine. These paragraphs come from the Chirograph on Sacred Music that he wrote back in 2003.
Furthermore, why are you substituting the psalm for whatever is in Spirit and Song? That is not the original purpose of the book. The settings you use for the psalms need to be from approved sources and they need to match the official texts.
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EasterJoy
Guest
OCP has an oversight committee, but they also print what the customers ask for. OCP is not-for-profit, but it does have to be self-supporting. If they print “barely OK”, “good”, and “excellent”, and everybody asks for more “barely OK”, then “barely OK” will be the majority of what is printed. There are some very good songs in OCP missals, they always have settings for singing the Responsorial Psalm, but the “just OK” music in there is what the customers want. Again…I think the problem is that people have had their musical palates ruined. Could OCP had refused to have any part in that? Sure. They’d be out of business, but they could have done that.
I have this opinion because, in my experience, the worst “liturgical” music we get during liturgies in the parishes I attend is not even in the OCP songbook, but something they throw up on an overhead, printed up as a distributed flyer, or worst of all, sung by the choir without anyone else knowing or being able to understand the words. It is uniformly vapid, and sounds like something out of a Disney teen flick. Ick. Then when they play the old standards, like Panis Angelicus, at the 10:30 Mass, the tempo is like a dirge or the key chosen is too high for anybody to sing it. (Oh, thank you. Thank you very much…Ick, again, and almost worse!)
If the pastor or the liturgy committee doesn’t ride herd on the choir, particularly the youth choir, that is beyond the control of the publishing houses.
The other thing I have always dreamed of doing, if I were to win the lottery, would be to start a foundation that pays for training for parish organists and the upkeep of parish organs. Too many sound like pianists who very bravely volunteered to sit down and have a crack at the organ. Again, I’m sure the heart is in the right place, I don’t want to put the performers down, but: Ick. Playing an organ correctly requires very different finger work than playing a piano. The former is a wind instrument, and the latter is a percussion instrument. I think there would be many parish organists who would take advantage of and profit from free professional lessons, the poor brave things. This would do a great deal to revive the popularity of the organ. Properly played on a properly-maintained instrument, there is nothing quite like it.
(PS You knew you’d hear me coming to the defense of OCP, didn’t you? Regional hazard, I guess.
But you are absolutely right about this much: OCP prints the spectrum of what other parishes are actually doing for their liturgies, most of which leaves much to be desired.)
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TruthfulReign
Guest
Our Music ministry celebrates LIFE TEEN Mass aimed at liturgy and musical culturally for teens, youth and the young at heart. We have 5 singers, 1 guitar, piano/keyboardist, bass and drums.
My thinking on the Liturgy is that we as musicans should be engaging the congregation to full and active participation and supporting the Mass as a whole. I like to think of our band as a soundtrack to the Liturgy.
If you’ve ever watched a movie with and without the musical soundtrack in the background it can be boring and if you’ve ever watched a movie where the soundtrack is distracting it takes away from the movie.
Which brings me to my point. If it distracts from the Celebration of the Eucharist then something needs to change, if the congregation is distracted from the Celebration, something needs to change.
We have has an electric guitarist come play durring the Mass, most of what he did was swells using an ebow, making his instrument sound more like a cello. Durring seasons of Lent and Advent we limit the drums or move to using a cahone, and switch to an acoustic/electric bass. Use your best judgement and receive criticism from both your Pastor and lay ministers.
My thinking on the Liturgy is that we as musicans should be engaging the congregation to full and active participation and supporting the Mass as a whole. I like to think of our band as a soundtrack to the Liturgy.
If you’ve ever watched a movie with and without the musical soundtrack in the background it can be boring and if you’ve ever watched a movie where the soundtrack is distracting it takes away from the movie.
Which brings me to my point. If it distracts from the Celebration of the Eucharist then something needs to change, if the congregation is distracted from the Celebration, something needs to change.
We have has an electric guitarist come play durring the Mass, most of what he did was swells using an ebow, making his instrument sound more like a cello. Durring seasons of Lent and Advent we limit the drums or move to using a cahone, and switch to an acoustic/electric bass. Use your best judgement and receive criticism from both your Pastor and lay ministers.
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benedictgal
Guest
Actually, OCP’s tentacles are quite huge. WLP has a lot of their stuff, as does GIA (and vice-versa). OCP may have an oversight committee, but, it really does not do much. I contacted them and the USCCB about some issues with the settings of the parts of the Mass because quite a few of the Spanish ones, nine in all, are paraphrases of the Gloria and the Sanctus. The editor from OCP got quite defensive and said that the USCCB had approved them. I called the USCCB and was told by the Secretary (as in official, not staff) that his is a two-man operation and cannot possibly examine everything that goes atop the desk. I contacted the CDWDS and was actually surprised to learn that they, too, were aware of the problems with OCP. I was instructed to send them copies of the questionable settings (English and Spanish) and to write to the USCCB. At least the CDWDS is concerned enough to dig a little deeper.
They are also concerned about the musical instruments being used, especially since the kinds of music used at Youth Masses were a shadow that was discussed during the 2004 Synod.
They are also concerned about the musical instruments being used, especially since the kinds of music used at Youth Masses were a shadow that was discussed during the 2004 Synod.
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TruthfulReign
Guest
Correct! And since 2004 changes have been made concerning the teen aimed Mass. A document has been sent out, training occured and items that were addressed were taken into action. I would love to use an organ at our parish, unfortunatly it was built without one.
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iblessem
Guest
Oue struggle continues and will continue. Bad liturgiclal music will happen here and there.
But I like to remember the young armless footplaying guitar player praising God with his whole being in Monterey, CA. Pope John Paul II ran to him and kissed his feet. I can’t remember his kissing any organist’s hands.
Its not the instrument, it your pure heart and willingness to come to Christ and offer him love and your fellow human beings love that is the reason Christ came to give all mankind a way to salvation.
God Bless You All,
But I like to remember the young armless footplaying guitar player praising God with his whole being in Monterey, CA. Pope John Paul II ran to him and kissed his feet. I can’t remember his kissing any organist’s hands.
Its not the instrument, it your pure heart and willingness to come to Christ and offer him love and your fellow human beings love that is the reason Christ came to give all mankind a way to salvation.
God Bless You All,
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TruthfulReign
Guest
Amen to that 
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benedictgal
Guest
Please cite the source of this document. Did it originate from the Holy See (Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments) or was it an internal LifeTeen document?
Furthermore, the statement concerning music used at Youth Masses by the Fathers of the Synod on the Eucharist was made in 2005. Thus, the problem still persists.
Just becaue a parish is not built with an organ, that does not necessarily mean that you cannot have one.
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benedictgal
Guest
However, I think that you are still missing the point. The Church is very clear as to what she allows as far as musical instruments are concerned:
Electric guitars and bass guitars and drums are suitable for secular music only, as their association is more along the lines of a rock concert and not the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Their use is incompatible with the sacred mysteries that unfold before us at every Mass.
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Joannm
Guest
We recently had the organist from Yankee stadium substitute at our church when our organist was sick. We totally expected to hear one of those diddies he plays after a hit or to urge the team on. Actually he played well.
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LighthouseRon
Guest
With respect, you are missing the point. It isn’t only the instrument but the person using the instrument as well. Your opinion that electric guitars and bass guitars aren’t suitable for Mass as a blanket statement doesn’t take into account how the correctly set-up and played instrument can sound. I’ve heard many Masses where guitars are used questionably but others where the guitar music was beautiful. In fact, just two weeks ago I played my guitar (with our group) at Mass where our archbishop presided. He made a point to compliment our group at the end of Mass. I’ve been involved in our music department over 30 years. I went through the years where music wasn’t given the attention it should have. I was part of that and I’m glad we’ve moved away from it. I’ve since learned what’s appropriate and to play the more traditional music (not easy) and some contemporary music that is appropriate. I work very hard at making it as reverent as I can.
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TruthfulReign
Guest
They were internal LIFE TEEN documents that stemmed from both 2004 AND 2005, I assure you efforts are being made to enforce the GIRM. Music being as one of the topics. I take pride in the music that is chosen to support the Mass and adhere to the teaching of the Catholic church. I cannot speak for other churches of LIFE TEEN or any other church for that matter. It is a young program and still learning and being guided, but the positive impact that it has leads our youth the a deeper understanding of the Eucharist.
It’s OK if you’re not an advocate of the program, it’s not for everyone.I’ll keep you in my prayers
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