Good Liturgical Music

[MarysLittleFlower]

I'm very blessed to be able to attend a Traditional Latin Mass and we have a choir that sings beautiful music.. We have polyphony (Palestrina etc), Gregorian chant, some medieval... Its acapello or with organ. I liked the music so much I ended up joining the choir :) I've also been to Eastern Catholic Liturgy which has chant as well. I find chant really lifts the mind and heart to God :)

[MarysLittleFlower]

I just read your question again and I think you were talking about recently written and vernacular music and I was talking about Baroque Latin polyphonies! Lol sorry about that! We do some English hymns too for the end of the Mass but they are mostly old.

[MarysLittleFlower]

I can relate to thise who said that after this kind of music its difficult to listen to contemporary style music at least for me.

Regarding singing... I think its great when everyone is singing but sometimes I get a lot out of just by listening to the music - and its not expected to sing the polyphonies with the choir though many sing the hymns at the beginning or end. I've gotten much more from listening to a beautiful chant than singing really mediocre lyrics because they don't help me to pray... I understand the point about wanting everyone to sing though :) I just find that personally mediocre music becomes a distraction that actually makes it difficult to pray better? Does anyone find that?

[veritasluxmea]

Lol, like what?  :mail:

I don't know? That you're here at mass? The song is based of of the bible story of Samuel hearing the voice of God, right? So maybe you need to open yourself to the will of God, or something?

 

I don't know, I used to know a group of Catholics who were somewhat culturally involved with the more charismatic-type, ex-Baptist, deep south type of Christianity, and they would always see God in stuff like that. Like, they would hear the message of the song, and pray it over, and see how it would apply to their life. As soon as I read your post I could almost hear them saying stuff like, "I went to two different masses and the same song was played, I feel I need to open myself to the Word of God" or something like that. I don't really know if God was actually trying to reach out or whatever (one could argue He's always trying to reach out, but you know what I mean)- but they probably would have viewed it that way so I tossed it out there.

Edited January 23, 2015 by veritasluxmea

[franciscanheart]

If you want something even worse, look up Ken Canedo's "Mass of Glory". That same parish used that Mass setting probably 75% of the time. So inappropriate, so stupid.
They would have jazzy little guitar interludes, a full drum kit, diva singers doing embellishments... Just, everything that can go wrong with modern church music.

[insert horrified face here] No, thank you. I'm grateful that even our "folk" choir doesn't include drum kits or backup singers. The "worst" that Mass gets (and people like it, vom) is something out of Spirit & Song or whatever that Taize book is.
 

I'm very blessed to be able to attend a Traditional Latin Mass and we have a choir that sings beautiful music.. We have polyphony (Palestrina etc), Gregorian chant, some medieval... Its acapello or with organ. I liked the music so much I ended up joining the choir :) I've also been to Eastern Catholic Liturgy which has chant as well. I find chant really lifts the mind and heart to God :)

I am grateful we almost always sing unaccompanied by organ. Sometimes we have it (Bach -- again, unpopular opinion, but vom) because it's necessary, but mostly we don't use it unless with a hymn or certain Mass parts during certain times of the year.

[HopefulHeart]

In my parish, where the Mass is reverently said in the Ordinary Form, the choir chants the Kyrie Eleison, the Gloria, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei. The organist provides accompaniment, and the parishioners join in the chant if they want.

We also sing a wide selection of hymns, usually older ones. Most of the parishioners prefer traditional hymns. Once, during a transitional period after our choir director left, the vocalist sang "I Am the Bread of Life," and many of the parishioners were not pleased.  :hehe:

On special occasions, the choir and organist are joined by musicians from a local music school, so we'll have trumpet and string accompaniment. For example, on the Easter Vigil last year, they performed selections from Mozart's "Sparrow Mass."

Overall I am pleased with our liturgical music. I don't really like when the vocalist sings "O Divine Redeemer" in operatic tones while I'm trying to pray after Communion, but that's a minor quibble.

[beatitude]

As a child I really loved 'Here, I Am Lord'. I remember being six or seven and sitting in church and hearing that sung and just being awed by the love of God and the sense that anything is possible for God, that I was wanted by God, that I had a purpose. My musical tastes have changed a lot since then, and I prefer more traditional music for Mass, but I haven't lost that memory and it means I don't have the same near-allergic reaction to contemporary church music that some people have. Basically, I'm happy anywhere people really sing. I hate it when almost the entire congregation is standing there with hymn books shut and all you can hear is the organ - so depressing.

[Nihil Obstat]

As a child I really loved 'Here, I Am Lord'.

Heh. Punctuated like that it sounds like contemporary church music in a nutshell. :hehe:

[beatitude]

Heh. Punctuated like that it sounds like contemporary church music in a nutshell. :hehe:

 

Oops...  :hehe2:  Still, you get my basic point.

[marigold]

How does the liturgical music get written, picked, weeded out over time?

[Nihil Obstat]

How does the liturgical music get written, picked, weeded out over time?

Through the magic of copyright law, incompetence, irreverence, and apathy.

 

We are still talking about contemporary church music, right? ;)

[Not The Philosopher]

I go to the Cathedral, which typically has decent-ish hymns, gregorian chant and sometimes polyphony for the Mass I attend.

[Gabriela]

How does the liturgical music get written, picked, weeded out over time?

 

There are 5 major publishers of Catholic hymnals, some of which also publish non-Catholic hymnals. 4 of the 5 are quite "modern" publishers. Check out the Musica Sacra forum to learn all about this: http://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/

 

FYI: I am conducting a study this semester that will map the lyrical content of Catholic hymns over the centuries. We are looking for a rise in egoism in hymns written post-1960. I'll let you know once the numbers are in.

[HopefulHeart]

FYI: I am conducting a study this semester that will map the lyrical content of Catholic hymns over the centuries. We are looking for a rise in egoism in hymns written post-1960. I'll let you know once the numbers are in.

 

That sounds fascinating! :)  Now that I think about it, a lot of the post-1960 hymns that I know often use the first person singular ("I Am the Bread of Life"). Meanwhile, many older hymns with which I'm familiar ("Faith of Our Fathers" and "Immaculate Mary," for example) use the first person plural or avoid the first person. I'm sure there are exceptions, but it's really interesting to consider! 

[marigold]

I'll be waiting with bated breath to read what the results are. To me it seems pretty obvious that there is a rise in egoism, at least in use of 'I' instead of 'we', including the hymn I mentioned in the OP. It's funny because when I visited masses and heard the hymns, it always made me think, what is it that's making this sound so Protestant? Eventually I realised it was that all the modern hymns seemed to be about 'me and the Lord' rather than 'we the people of God'.