Posted on 11/02/2007 2:40:04 PM PDT by maryz
“Join the club — we meet at the bar.” hahah. naw, but, truly it is poor. This too shall pass, surely. With our Latin Masses just instituted EVERY Sunday, as of last month, we have the most beautiful, heavenly choir and organ, and chants. Y’all come, it’s quite beautiful.
I can only go to the early, NO-music mass. Until the Latin Masses were instituted, of course. The ditties, for me, are agony.
Sometimes ear plugs and a rosary are the best alternative.
Hopefully future generations will have the fine, prayerful chants and other music that we had fifty years ago.
This thread is ridiculous. Flat out ridiculous. You’re bitching about hymns that say ‘Follow Me’ or ‘I will comfort you”? For real?
What’s a hymn for?
I don’t think this will turn into a Catholic - Protestant fight. The problem is the same on both sides of the river.
Amen!
Worked for me.
You want Hymns?
http://tinyurl.com/2qzdom (only a little heresy here!)
And my all time favorite, though not from the Mass, as I remember it anyway:
There's an entire volume of service music, which includes both chant tones and modern settings for the Ordinary. It's close enough so that the settings could be used for a Catholic service, too.
I would have to break my hundred-year rule in the case of some of the new hymn tunes in the Hymnal. Just one example is the new setting of "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy" No. 469 - text written by Frederick W. Faber, the English Catholic convert. I don't like the old tune, "Beecher", it's too square and clunky, but the new tune (which you can't find on the net because it's still under copyright), "St. Helena" by Calvin Hampton, is a perfect fit to the meter and the sense of the words. It's in 6/8 time and it rocks like the sea.
On the other hand, SOME of the new hymns are rotten in tune (usually because they're trying to include some ethnic music, e.g. Hispanic stuff which is too pop) or in text ("Earth and All Stars" is just as silly and ridiculous as any modern liberal trying to be all relevant could be). They have messed with the text of some hymns trying to bring them up to date, thank the Lord it's not "inclusive language" but you can always just sing the original words. You can't expect every number to be a hit, I suppose . . . .
But just stick your head into the bookstore of any large Episcopalian church or (especially) cathedral if you have one handy. You'll also be surprised at the lovely rosaries, icons, and other art they have on hand. They may be heretics, but artistically they are always in good taste, and many Episcopalians are just not-quite-Catholics. (We're probably going to see more of them swimming the Tiber as the ECUSA implodes. Better drop by that bookstore soon. . . )
You must not have heard “Be Not Afraid”. Aside from its doubtful place in hymnody, it’s a pop abomination.
I have no idea what melody you’ve heard it sung to but yes, I’ve heard it and I have no problem with it at all.
The melody is inappropriate for a Catholic hymn, as HH BXVI has pointed out, because it contains the emotional 'hooks' of a pop tune. It's also just not 'serious' enough musically for a hymn. For a song, o.k. if you like that style, but not a hymn.
But the words are a problem also, first because they don't serve the proper purpose of a hymn. Again, not all Christian songs are hymns. Second because they turn the focus away from God and towards the "I". Look at how many times the text contains the words "I" and "me". I know it's supposed to be God speaking, but when it's sung the congregation is singing. That's just backwards.
It's kind of frightening when you look at the productions specifically from OCP and the St. Louis Jesuits, and notice how many of the hymns are all about "I, me, me, mine."
Whatever the popular music idiom of the time happens to be -- whether Roman pagan songs, Italian opera, or Marty Haugen -- starts creeping into the hymns sung in church. After awhile the church says, "Enough! This is getting disrespectful!" and tosses them out and tries again.
The “I’s” in that are about God and that you can trust him. There is nothing even remotely pop about that song. I just called my 13 year old daughter down here and asked her if she remembered the song. She is not overly religious nor even remotely perfect. She was nervous to sing it outloud so she took my cell phone and recorded herself singing it. She remembered it. She would kill me if she knew I was telling you this but I need to. She didn’t remember it because it sounded like Christina Aguillera but because it meant something. It isn’t all about your preception. It’s a beautiful song.
Whether or not somebody likes it isn't really the issue. The music is objectively "pop" because of the structure - specifically: the chord progression (I could play it in my head, it's so typical), the syncopation of the first line of the verse, the steady climb upward in thirds, and then the resolution through a 7th to the tonic. That style (and specifically the cadences on "be not afraid" and "come follow me") is pop, not hymn. If you listen for it, you'll hear it in everything from Perry Como to an advertising jingle. But it ought not to be used during the Mass.
And as for the "I"s being about God, I noted that. Of course objectively that's obvious, but when you're singing it, it confuses the first person (the singer) with the Person who should be being praised. It's backwards.
We’ll get it right when the priest and the people face the same direction in a posture of jointly offering this unbloody sacrifice of Christ to the Father: in Christ, through Christ and with Christ. Until that happens...It’s all about US!
I think the "bitching" is not just about what these hymns say, but also about the fact the they have replaced other, more traditional hymns. The older hymns also say "follow me" but in different words and in a richer, more reverent and majestic manner.
He’s preaching to the choir here. :-)
Some of the modern Catholic hymns are sappy social justice
guitar-strumming feelgoodism. They are from (Oregon OCP???).
The hynmals need to keep the old time hymns that are better grounded both musically and spiritually. And it wouldnt hurt to import Anglican hymns as part of that.
Wasn't there some concern about this during the Council of Trent?
A spurious story has Palastrina's Missa Papae Marcelli (written well before the Council) saving the day for polyphony music in the Church. Many of the bishops were concerned that this new style of chant was too beautiful for the Mass - that it would detract from worship.
I vote more Palastrina for the Latin Rite!
“I would have to break my hundred-year rule in the case of some of the new hymn tunes in the Hymnal. Just one example is the new setting of “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” No. 469 - text written by Frederick W. Faber, the English Catholic convert.”
In the 1982(which is what we use)?
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