The Hymnal Study: Pre- and Post-VII Hymns

[Nihil Obstat]

The thing they say about locked doors... They keep honest people honest. Not much more than that.

[vee]

 (Unless of course you find yourself in Churchill, where people are supposed to keep their car doors unlocked in case they need to quickly hide from polar bears).

!!!!  I did not know this!

Not that I have to know it but it is still interesting none the less

 

[Gabriela]

(Unless of course you find yourself in Churchill, where people are supposed to keep their car doors unlocked in case they need to quickly hide from polar bears).

[He is Risen!]

I remember an excellent article in This Rock magazine about this subject and it mentioned singing about yourself and speaking in the place of God.  I usually attend an FSSP parish with decent music, except when the warbley soprano is in the choir, (oh my gosh, I just want to take her out) It's amazing how distracting that can be (yep I'm a huge snob, I'm working on this) Charity...charity...charity, ugh

[CountrySteve21]

Propers and no hymns at Mass, and then Vespers every (Sun)day with the proper hymn

Yes!

[Gabriela]

I remember an excellent article in This Rock magazine about this subject and it mentioned singing about yourself and speaking in the place of God.

You wouldn't happen to remember the title, or a portion thereof, or the author, or the approximate date this article came out, would you?

[He is Risen!]

I'll see if I can find it, I'm thinking it was from 2008 or 2009.  I don't have any of the old mags but I feel like they may be archived online somewhere.  It was such a great article, my house had a subscription to This Rock and I remember making a photocopy of it for some of my church musician friends.

[Kateri89]

Great article!  I particularly loved the paragraph early on where you said you can guess the time period the song was written before even looking at the footnotes in the hymnal because I do the exact same thing.  I don't have as much of a problem with the style of music we sing at the N.O. mass as I do with the lyrics.  This might be splitting hairs but I just feel like the old hymns were so much more lyrically beautiful and poetic.  And of course as the article mentions, much less divine self-referencing occurred (aka "I am the Bread of Life") 

Ok maybe I misspoke.  I do have a problem with the style of music.  I can't help but feel frustrated and saddened when we sing "O Sacred Head Surrounded" during Holy Week and very few parishioners know the song to sing along.  It just seems to me that the older hymns were much more about adoration of God and veneration of the Blessed Mother and more modern songs tend to be vague and less focused on specific Catholic dogmas as opposed to generic Christian sentiment.  Music can have such a powerful effect on people and it's no wonder catechesis is so poor these days when we even eliminate it from our hymns.  Ok end rant.

*This is probably one of my less diplomatic posts here but I have to be honest because I feel like too many people overlook what the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is and that the music should be more reflective of that.

[He is Risen!]

I think I found the article : http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/pop-goes-the-mass

[Gabriela]

I think I found the article : http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/pop-goes-the-mass

amesome! Thank you so much, He is Risen! (Praying for your sister and her friend, btw. )

[Gabriela]

Another article on liturgical music just came out in the HPR today. I'm pretty sure this guy is referencing my article when he talks about the "us-focus".

I agree with some of what he says, but certainly not all of it.

http://www.hprweb.com/2015/08/the-great-catholic-music-debate/

 

[marigold]

I've been thinking about this a lot since you posted it, and comparing it with hymnography that I know, both eastern and western, modern and ancient... and I'm not sure it's just us-focus. Much, perhaps even most pre-modern prayer and hymnography uses the perspective of the worshipping body talking to God - from the Lord's prayer on down. To say it's just us-focus is only half the point. I think the difference is that it moves away from referring to ourselves as sinners. Cf. 'We are sign, we are wonder' etc. that you quoted in the article. What does that even mean? There's a shift away from our lowliness in relation to God's glory, towards our amesomeness which may or may not have anything to do with God, depending on which hymn you look at...

There's a lot I could say about the watering down of theology in contemporary hymnography, but that's another post.

[Gabriela]

I've been thinking about this a lot since you posted it, and comparing it with hymnography that I know, both eastern and western, modern and ancient... and I'm not sure it's just us-focus. Much, perhaps even most pre-modern prayer and hymnography uses the perspective of the worshipping body talking to God - from the Lord's prayer on down. To say it's just us-focus is only half the point. I think the difference is that it moves away from referring to ourselves as sinners. Cf. 'We are sign, we are wonder' etc. that you quoted in the article. What does that even mean? There's a shift away from our lowliness in relation to God's glory, towards our amesomeness which may or may not have anything to do with God, depending on which hymn you look at...

There's a lot I could say about the watering down of theology in contemporary hymnography, but that's another post.

Yeah, I agree. A pronoun study is very limited. The point of it is to launch deeper analyses, precisely of the type you mention, which would require what's called "thematic analysis". That's much more complex and involved and tedious, hence the simple study to get us started.

I think that lack of poetic language/linguistic skill and banalization (I made that up, but you know what I mean) of the music itself are also issues post-VII.

Edited August 14, 2015 by Gabriela

[marigold]

Yeah, I agree. A pronoun study is very limited. The point of it is to launch deeper analyses, precisely of the type you mention, which would require what's called "thematic analysis". That's much more complex and involved and tedious, hence the simple study to get us started.

I think that lack of poetic language/linguistic skill and banalization (I made that up, but you know what I mean) of the music itself are also issues post-VII.

Yes. Is it the fact that we are more lukewarm in the faith than the great hymnographers of times past? That we are not as well catechised and are used to swimming in shallow theological waters? Is it the birth of the hymnbook industry into the gameplay, as you mentioned in the article's comments, which encourages volume and new material over musical and theological excellence? I think it might be elements of all of these...?

I appreciate the work that you put in, even though you recognise it's only a beginning. I find it fascinating, and a little self-reflection in the arena of liturgical music is a good thing, I think.

[Gabriela]

Yes. Is it the fact that we are more lukewarm in the faith than the great hymnographers of times past? That we are not as well catechised and are used to swimming in shallow theological waters? Is it the birth of the hymnbook industry into the gameplay, as you mentioned in the article's comments, which encourages volume and new material over musical and theological excellence? I think it might be elements of all of these...?

I think it is all of the above, as well as other things we have not mentioned: Embrace of secular culture has made it seem okay to import secular melodies into sacred songs. The decline of education in America makes it difficult to find lyricists with real linguistic talent. A trend of "self-expression" as the primary goal of art among all artists has led to a total disregard for the effects that various musical products have on the congregation. Etc.

In short: Yeah, it's a trainwreck. But we still have hope.