The Power of Music

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Speaking of the bad music folks complain about nowadays in Mass:

The Church is 2,000 years old. It has a wonderful and storied history of music. Why let the last 50 years or so dictate the kinds of music we have at Mass? Some of it is fine but we also have years and years of tradition in musical form that we should dig into.

The Problem? Resources. Possibly. Palestrina can be difficult without some training. Parishes with large coffers, use some of that money for a nice, paid choir a la a Cathedral. Parishes with less resources, it’s pretty easy to learn some of the older hymns that are beautiful. And a little bit of harmony goes a long way. Just do a little digging. We have 2,000 years folks. There should be no excuse for some of these parishes.
 
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Palestrina and Gregorian chant make sense, but the Baroque and Classical periods can be complex. I have seen some for chorus with the basso continuo which would be less flashy than the ones with strings accompaniment. I’m not well researched on the music that happened before the Rennaisance so that’s a bit of a mystery to me.
 
I haven’t done tons of research either. But it makes sense that the Church can find beautiful music to sing at Mass that isn’t super complex yet sounds uplifting and (my personal pet-peeve) non-sappy if you dig.
 
You speak to my heart and I am one of those oldies. Praying for you. Wonder if you have any eastern catholic churches you could go to…will make a world or should I say a heavenly difference in your life.
 
We have included a hymn called The African Blessing in our Liturgical music this week. Its one for the refugees, the young at heart and the children.
 
2000 years of Church History do not support a “silent Mass.”

Have you read any of Saint Pope John Paul II’s writings about music and Mass?
 
It will take me much time and thought to respond to the pointed challenges made early on, so I probably won’t do so until the weekend.

In these few minutes before work, I’ll give a brief bio revealing my ignorance and experience which may put my motives into sharper focus for those who are concerned about them:

Reared by militant atheists
Talked two women into abortions - even took one to the killing place
In choir and theatre from elementary to college
BA in Film Production (yes, you can laugh)
Worked 20 years in the poker industry
Converted at 32 over death of first hubby (lapsed Catholic, Vietnam Vet)
Was converted more by C.S. Lewis than RCIA (nearly left)
Two years after baptism, the emotion of my abortion role hit me - blessed, awful day
Been blessed with talking two women into keeping kid - one is now my son
Active in bereavement group, food pantry, fiesta committee, juvenile detention outreach with KofC
Spent a decade in church choir, attending liturgy conferences, cantoring
Spent a decade in an apologetic training group, have much experience debating JW’s and SSPX
On advice of my psychiatrist, I left a parish because of my emotional reactions to liturgical abuse
Cried for weeks over break - plus, lots of other stuff
Ended up on stress disability for a year; unemployment for a year; then fell through cracks
About a decade of sporadic Mass/Confession attendance. Guilt, shame, inability to act.
In 2014, I found a working medicine. Family, finances, friendships improved. Back at Mass.
Pray outside abortion provider, lector, emergency cantor

That is the good, the bad, and the ugly. I do not see myself as better than anyone because I clearly am not. I am simply trying (very badly) to figure what role God wants me to play in fulfilling the great commission. The kids I work with appear to me to be God’s will because He plopped them in front of me. And I love them. They remind me of young, stupid, goodhearted me.

My handicap is my emotional instability.

My possibly practical insight is that of having lived in two worlds in more than one area. C.S. Lewis converted me because he was once atheist and knew my questions. The RCIA I went through was not set up to answer them.

As to music, I’ve been a decade in the sanctuary and a decade in the pews. They are two entirely difficult worlds.

In closing, I love Haugen for some specific reasons which I hope to enumerate later. Right now, I’m late.
 
PetraG said:
If liturgical music is poor, the solution is to not to eliminate it but to make whatever sacrifices and efforts are necessary to make it suitable and then to sustain efforts in that direction to make it sublime.
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I apologize that I haven’t read this entire thread yet–I’m getting ready for work and have to take off, but I will get back to this. So please forgive me if someone has already said this.

I am a musician–I spent years studying piano and I’m very good at it. Several years ago, I started studying organ with a qualified (Ph.D, 50 years of experience playing organ in liturgical settings, involved as a leader in the AGO, etc.) teacher, and I now consider myself a competent church organist.

I have also been around musicians all of my life, and I have a daughter who is a professional in the entertainment industry (live theater), and she is around musicians and other artists constantly.

I’m going to say something that will shock, and perhaps it’s already been brought up in this thread. If so, I apologize for duplicating someone’s else’s post, but perhaps if more than one of us say it, it will have more impact.

I think that there is a scarcity of skilled/well-trained/experience musicians in the Catholic Church, at least in the U.S., because many of them hold viewpoints that are utterly opposed to Catholic teaching, especially when it comes to LGBTQ issues.

Many, in fact, almost ALL of the musicians that I know, are either gay, or very VERY sympathetic to the issues of the LGBTQ community, and in SOLIDARITY, they will not play or teach at a Catholic parish or school because of their stand on this issue.

And for that matter, Catholic churches and schools will not HIRE these musicians because of their strong stance on LGBTQ issues.

I don’t know how this will change because Catholic schools have to hire good music teachers, but they are really hard to find, and often the Catholic diocese does not want to spend a lot of money hiring well-qualified music teacher because they are under heavy pressure to emphasize STEM.

Also, even Catholic musicians, who have been educated at good universities, still deal with the LGBTQ issue because if they are to thrive in their communities, they HAVE to be involved with the local music scene, and that means coming into contact with LGBTQ individuals and those who are in sympathy with them, and if the Catholic speaks up–they WILL be blacklisted.

I’m just barely scraping the surface here, and I could easily write 20 pages about my experiences with music and LGBTQ issues, and I’m guessing that other musicians who are reading this thread could add their own 20 pages of experiences!

But IMO, it’s the reason that Catholic music is languishing.

In case you’re wondering about Protestant churches–most of the big Mainline churches that are still open embrace and welcome LGBTQ musicians!

As for the Evangelical churches–most of them use non-professional lay musicians, and they are vetted. Also, the primary music in most Evangelical churches is P&W with a mix of Traditional Praise–not a lot of skill or education required to lead or sing it.
 
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What disappoints me most about the music in Catholic churches is that we already have official chants and antiphons specifically set for each Sunday and major feast, yet no church ever uses them. We are completely missing part of the Mass every day! I know it’s a common phrase, but I wish we would actually sing the Mass instead of just sing at Mass.

Also unrelated, I just got back from Mass that had another pet peeve of mine: Gloria set to a responsorial music setting. It’s a prayer, let us pray it all the way through!
 
Peeps said:
I have also been around musicians all of my life, and I have a daughter who is a professional in the entertainment industry (live theater), and she is around musicians and other artists constantly.
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What does she play or is she doing something else?
 
Peeps said:
2000 years of Church History do not support a “silent Mass.”
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Many churches have “silent Masses” in the sense of no music, on a regular basis, either because some people prefer them or because they cannot have musicians on hand for every Mass. There’s nothing wrong with “silent Mass” as an option. However, it should be just that, an option, not the norm for every Mass.

I would say most of the weekday Masses I attend do not have music.
 
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Peeps said:
I’m going to say something that will shock, and perhaps it’s already been brought up in this thread. If so, I apologize for duplicating someone’s else’s post, but perhaps if more than one of us say it, it will have more impact.

I think that there is a scarcity of skilled/well-trained/experience musicians in the Catholic Church, at least in the U.S., because many of them hold viewpoints that are utterly opposed to Catholic teaching, especially when it comes to LGBTQ issues.
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Why would you think this is shocking?
There are a lot of gay or possibly gay musicians playing Masses all over USA. The only issue is that they can’t be going around the Church being openly gay or holding Church teaching in contempt. If they do either thing, obviously we can’t use them.

For that matter I’ve met a lot of other people in Church ministry who give all outward signs of being possibly gay. The odds are that some of them are gay, while some are not.

Being gay or gay-friendly is not a bar to you being involved in the Church ministry. It depends on how you are living your life and the attitude of your pastor.

I would also note that a whole bunch of the hymns commonly used at Mass were written by people who at some point came out as gay.

Setting all of that aside, I know dozens of wonderful musicians who are not gay. Some of them even play music at church.
We are not denying ourselves music even if not all the gay musicians can participate.

To the extent that some people don’t want to be part of the Church because of the Church teachings on gays, they probably also object to the Church teachings on sex, contraception, and a lot of other things too. We can’t very well change all our teachings just so some musician can feel happy clappy about being part of our Church.

I really think you are presenting a very biased viewpoint of your own on this thread. I know you love music and think the Protestants have better music and say so frequently on here. OK, I will grant that you’re probably right because Protestants see music as a central part of the worship experience and often Catholics don’t. However, these other sweeping generalizations you are making are just that, sweeping generalizations.
 
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my biggest peeve is the overuse of Beethoven’s 9th symphony aka Ode to Joy being used as the music to 10,000 different sets of lyrics. 🤷‍♀️
 
I haven’t experienced that myself, but i can imagine it getting pretty old pretty fast.
 
JanetF said:
my biggest peeve is the overuse of Beethoven’s 9th symphony aka Ode to Joy being used as the music to 10,000 different sets of lyrics. 🤷‍♀️
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While I try to avoid musical peeves, I have to agree with you there.

Another thing I don’t like is where they take a hymn old as the hills and write a whole new set of lyrics for it. I’m not talking about just tweaking the gender terms into neutral terms, I’m talking about a whole different song. I think it was “Faith of our Fathers” that got changed to something else most recently. Just leave it alone.
 
I used the word pet peeve initially, but what I was referring to (a responsorial Gloria setting) is really just shy of liturgical abuse, in my opinion.
 
I think Christendom is still learning to deal with the issue of how to help people who experience same-sex attraction. I’d go so far as to say we are generally going through a period in which responding to people in difficult moral situations has gone away from disdain (that is a good direction!) all the way over into permissiveness (which is not). When you decide not to be judgmental, that doesn’t mean going from judging people to be wrong and not doing their best to judging them as right and doing their best. (Both are judging, I’d say.) As always, the narrow way that isn’t on the extreme to either side is the most difficult to find.

As for the Catholic Church, I think we’ll get better music when we step up and pay a certain number of musicians for providing professional expertise and dedicating the amount of time required to support congregational singing in a professional way. A few lucky places have volunteers who provide that level of contribution, but it is neither fair nor realistic to expect that as a general pattern. In not a few cases, we also need to pay for keyboard instruments suitable for the sanctuary in which they’re played and acoustic engineering to ensure that the possibility of fine music isn’t ruined from the outset by the physical reaction of the space to sound waves.

People speak as if this kind of investment takes money out of the mouths of the poor, but that ignores the amount of discretionary spending a typical Catholic does.

If there is some unusually high number of people who currently identify with the LGBTQ community in music or the arts, it is possible that there is some kind of physical connection between a mind that is inclined to music or the arts and a brain that is prone to sexual confusion. (That is NOT to say that it is a requirement, but rather that the same brain wiring that leads to confusion with regards to gender or sexual attraction could also be free of some barrier or other that sometimes proves a barrier to musical facility…I mean like being tall could both make you feel as if you don’t fit in “standard” furniture and yet also could make it easier for you to excel at basketball, if you have the other physical attributes required for it.)
 
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That’s an interesting view, and I work in the classical music industry, and I totally agree - - they are part and parcel in with the LGBTQ movement.
However, Catholic music has been bad for a while now, longer than the LGBTQ agenda has been mainstream.
 
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