Posted on 04/03/2008 10:11:04 AM PDT by NYer
For twenty plus years I have been told, mainly anonymously through the internet, how I have been personally responsible for destroying Roman Catholic worship. I have never responded; however, I wish to offer a few comments now.
First of all, although I am not Roman Catholic, I have a deep love and respect for and faith in the worship tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. My own hesitancy about joining the Church is not about its eucharistic theology, but rather around the unwillingness of the Church to commission, ordain and welcome all humans as Jesus did–male and female, married and unmarried, saints and sinners. I believe that the Church, God’s people and all of creation have suffered from this omission. [at least he's respectful enough to stay out and not corrupt the Church further from within].I do not think of my own music as central or important to Roman Catholic worship, present or future. I began writing as a parish musician; I still keep the vision that to be “catholic” is to learn and love and embrace the best of the past tradition and to welcome the “best” of what is new, as Gods [sic] speaks through all cultures and expressions (see “Lumen Gentia” [sic]). I leave it to communities and to the Holy Spirit that will (more than us, thank God) guide the future choices that will last.
I had nothing to do with the choice of “Mass of Creation” for a Papal Mass. Having said that, I believe that attacks upon Tom Stehle in his efforts to engage a congregation with what he hoped would be familiar and meaningful to them (using parts of the liturgy with currently approved texts) were unfair, un-Christian and beneath those of us who truly care about how God speaks through our Sacraments.
No doubt there will be plenty of callers to the discussion but ..... charitable? ..... hope someone will tune in and share it with us.
Bach’s Mass in B Minor
Beethoven’s Mass in B minor
Bruckner’s Mass
to name a few.
Well, now: I actually agree with him ... and the sooner it passes away, the better. Since it's not "central or important" to our Worship, it won't be missed.
Mr. Haugen is responsible for some of the most dreadful religious music ever written.
More than the people who programmed this music for years, the liturgical music publishers are responsible for installing Marty Haugen - not only a non-Catholic, but an indifferent composer - as musician in chief. Their selections pretty much determine what people will hear, and since the modern Mass is so hymn-based, they probably also determine a lot about other aspects of the Mass, too. And then there are all the peculiar reflections they stick in there, the petitionary prayers full of bizarre petitions for economic redistribution, etc.
In many ways, we have had a Mass that has been controlled by commercial interests for the last 40 years. I see many comments and much-deserved criticism of the bishops, but probably the worst thing they did is never mentioned: they turned over the Mass to the liturgical presses.
While Marty Haugen is a liberal non-Catholic with issues, he probably looks pretty good compared to the agenda driven folks at the powerful liturgical presses.
It's the fault of the parishes for choosing it over the many beautiful, appropriate, and musically coherent non-pop-music Mass settings available. Beethoven. Haydn. Mozart. Bach. Palestrina. Byrd. Victoria. des Prez. Ockeghem. Hundreds and hundreds of years of splendid musical heritage, and they choose . . . the Massive Cremation??!!!!???!!!
But it's also the fault of the musically ignorant parishioners who demand it. We still use it at our parish, although we're trying to wean the congregation off it . . . but I swear, it's like heroin.
Our choirmaster says, "The first time I heard this, I said to myself, 'it's awful, and everybody is going to just love it!'"
Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas.
I didn't know he wasn't Catholic. What is he writing music for our Church if he cannot understand or believe in it?
I knew you could, boys and girls!
I'm afraid I can't discuss this very charitably. Haugen's music is an offense to musicians everywhere.
You sound so..... haughty.
Love it, but this and other massed-orchestra compositions can't help becoming more about the performance -- crowd-pleasing aesthetics and individual virtuosity -- than about worship, an ecclesial action in which there are no spectators and no stars. The Church has reason behind her when she teaches that pride of place belongs to Gregorian chant.
I have known for years that his songs are beneath contempt, but I didn’t know till I read this article what a disgusting, loathsome, despicable lump of fecal matter the man is personally.
I cannot but think that clergy who allow this filthbucket’s caterwauling to pollute the Holy Mass will burn in Hell for it.
It’s truly awful. But my sister is a choir director, and she worked at a place where they actually used mass settings that were even WORSE than Haugen’s. (I don’t remember the composer.) And she just got an e-mail from a colleague who has been fired by his pastor because the parishioners complained that there was too much “serious” and “highbrow” music. I think they were referring, actually, to some of the standard 19th century hymns!
I think the Pope should just call a screeching halt to the whole Novus Ordo experiment, say it didn’t work, and go back to the old rite. In a short 40 years, so much bad music, awful language and compromised theology has grown up around the Novus Ordo that it would be almost impossible now to untangle it on a large scale. Individual parishes may be able to do so, but entire generations of Catholics are being lost to orthodox faith outside of these parishes.
It’s not only the usual corruption brought by bad taste. The fact that this occurs in a religious and in fact liturgical context also poisons them against the Catholic past, both musical and theological, and dumbs down their expectations of their own faith. Furthermore, it is promulgated, maintained and protected by commercial interests who have no interest in losing their juicy copyrights or other income streams from it.
I used to say we should get rid of the Novus Ordo and try again just to express how badly astray I thought things had gone, but I didn’t really mean it or think it necessary. In the last couple of years, however, I’ve come to the conclusion that this was not just my typical hyperbole after all. I seriously think it actually may be necessary, if we wish to restore not only good music, but orthodox faith to the Church at large, to go back to the old rite and start all over again.
You are thinking you can contain this discussion to one day? haha. People have such strong passions about it, just imho. I’m glad Marty Haugen didn’t join the CC, too. He needs to be where the theology matches what he believes, not where he wants to change something to suit him.
I hate the pop liturgies. There, the discussion won’t take but a minute.
I believe Marty Haugen started out life as a Methodist, but found them too conservative.
He is now a Unitarian I believe.
I believe it was his intent when writing religious songs to write generic Christian ones, ergo, he is not writing for a Catholic audience.
I believe Catholic “music ministers” and those who’ve compiled worship resources and hymnals for the Catholic Church are far more too blame.
And to say somethign nice about Marty Haugen’s music....at least it’s not as bad as Dan Schutte’s
In fairness, I don’t think his music being dreadful is because he is a non-Catholic.
I actually like some of the Methodist stuff (some of John Wesley’s to be specific) and my favorite Marian Hymn is Anglo-Catholic (Sing of Mary).
I lay the fault of inclusion of stuff like this squarely at the feet of where it belongs......60s liberalism and effiminate “music ministers”
I like his music and the Novus Ordo. Now I’ll go put on my flame-retardant suit.
This music is unworthy of the great history of the Catholic Church, which has given the world much of the greatest music ever written.
Great music is not necessarily difficult, in fact it is easier to sing than the pop-schlock because it makes sense musically in a way that the ephemeral stuff never can. When you sing a Mozart mass or a Bach cantata, it has a sense of inevitability and 'rightness' about it -- it seems as though it has to be as you sing it.
Everybody's ears have been so polluted by junk that it takes a little while to clear your head to hear great music. But it can be done, and it is not a function of intelligence, wealth, social status, or even musical ability. ANYbody can sing chant (now reading the notation . . . that's a bit hairy, but it can be translated into modern notation without too much trouble), and there are plenty of good old fashioned hymns that don't have a great range or difficult melodies.
And it is not haughty or elitist to seek for the very best we can offer God. "Close enough" is not the sort of attitude we ought to be bringing to Mass.
Perhaps in the context of Pope Benedict's explanation in his book on the liturgy of the incompatibility of pop/rock music and the Mass?
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