J: And Matt Maher:
B: Even so, was a baptized Christian and besides, Taize is what I call, starting, begining, or introduction to chanting.
I can understand and appreciate all of that. My point is, why? There are 2,000 years of Catholic musical patrimony that we have had left to us. Although there are truly many non-Catholic composers who wrote incredible works, why must those works be performed during a Catholic liturgy? Is there such a lack of authentic Catholic work that a hole exists that must be filled by a non-Catholic?
This is nothing against the non-Catholic. In fact, many of their works bring tears to my eyes they are so beautiful. (The epitome of this is Handel's Messiah)
But the question I'm left with is why during the liturgy? If there is a hole in our own patrimony, so be it. But surely after 2,000 years there shouldn't be a hole.
(The modern archetype of this is the unfortunately ubiquitous Mass of Creation -- written by Marty Haugen....a Lutheran. There are perfectly competent Catholic composers out there even now. Look at James MacMillan as an example)
Because pretty much EVERY Roman Catholic parish insists on offering only short bus liturgies. They show no respect for the intelligence of the parishioners. They are like Cain offering up the crap.
No, but, leaving the late 20th century crap out of the argument, from time to time there are pieces that fit the Mass of the Day better than anything else that are not Catholic in origin. I.e., ANYTHING by Felix Mendelssohn who wrote a beautiful oratorio called "St. Paul" that has more than one movement that's in the standard repertoire. There's other pieces of his, including Hark, the Herald Angels Sing that work just fine and not many people complain about them. Most of them are done as anthems, or special pieces, not hymn singing. Doing without the spirituals and that sort of thing is probably not going to hurt anything.
If the goal here is pure, Catholic chant, it's going to be a bit of an uphill battle unless the parishes are willing to spend the money on musicians who know what they're doing. It's not as easy as it looks and after singing other genres accompanied, learning to connect the line and maintain pitch a cappella ain't easy. It takes a while to make it sound inspirational and there are choirs that can wreck chant. I heard it earlier this year and it was bad enough that there was banning involved.
Beware of idealizing this. It's a lot of work and it's going to take the bishops' taste to change before it all gets worked out.
It was the non-Catholic Taize chanting source which HELPED me both discover and appriciate the older Catholic sources of liturgy music. This is very important because I grew up, as a child of the VC II NOT knowing ANY of the older Catholic sources in regards to music. I have on my iTunes music roster chants from the Spanish Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos.
That is why, I say that Taize should be given CREDIT where CREDIT is DUE, for honoring this RICH music heritage. For this is why I say it is a begining level to chant.
Unaffectionately known as the "Massive Cremation".
-- written by Marty Haugen....a Lutheran.
Hah! We wish Marty Haugen were a Lutheran. He's an ex-Lutheran; a member of the United Church of Christ.