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Musical follies

The music situation at our new parish has, if anything, become even harder to bear over the last few weeks than when we first started attending. I usually love singing at Mass, but I can?t bring myself to sing most of this stuff at all, much less with any enthusiasm, simply because it is so bland and/or even inappropriate for Mass. Two weeks ago there was a choir-only song at communion, with the first line ?This iiiiiiis, the moment of graaaaaace,? which sounded for all the world like a Broadway number. Standard sweeping piano intro, soft start, rousing chorus, etc. A pure performance piece. In fact, when I googled it later, it sounded quite a lot like Jekyll and Hyde?s ?This is the moment.? (Or Spamalot?s ?The song that goes like this? - heh.) I like Broadway quite a lot. I don?t find it particularly liturgical, though.

Last week, in addition to the standard Gloria and Sanctus that involve multiple gratuitous repetitions of, for instance, ?blessed is he, blessed is he, blessed is heeee? and ?hosanna (ho-sa-ha-na), hosanna (ho-sa-ha-na), hosanna,? we had the regular children?s liturgy song for children to process out. (?Children, listen to the word of God!? - complete with ?Children?s!? ? type happy piano music.) We also had two hymns that were so awful liturgically that I was still shaking my head for days afterward.

The first was called ?As a fire is meant for burning,? text by Ruth Duck, arrangement by Marty Haugen. Misleadingly, the tune was actually a traditional one, but the lyrics involved such choice lines as how we go out into the world ?not to preach our creeds or customs / but to build a bridge of care.? Gee, I thought the Catholic Church actually cared quite a bit about our creed. Right? We do recite it every week. And ?bridge of care??? The hymn also contained a feel-good reference to being ?seekers? and creating oneness ?'mid earth?s peoples, many hued.? Yeah, diversity! (I only get this, oh, everywhere on a weekly basis since school ended, thanks to academic and legal profession publications, etc.) You could not come up with a better collection of hippie-type platitudes in this hymn if you were trying hard to parody it. A bit of research determined that Ruth Duck is exactly who you might come up with if you were trying to create a parody of a hippie-type ?womyn?s? liturgist. Duck, who very unfortunately actually has an M.A. from Notre Dame, is an ordained UCC minister (hence the no-creed stuff - fits right in with the UCC, which honestly is great for her, but not the Catholic Church!) who lives with her ?partner? (at least he?s a guy) in a liberal Chicago suburb, has written a book about revising the names of the persons of the Trinity to not be so male, and has made part of her approach to hymns to be to ?revise old hymns that would provide an alternative to traditions showing God as exclusively male.? I could not roll my eyes any more than I am right now. Her music is used in many denominations, which - again, honestly - is great for her, but her theology is clearly not Catholic. I simply have no idea how this has worked its way into Catholic hymnody.

The second awful hymn last week, liturgically speaking, was called, ?Let us be bread.? This starts off with ?Let us be bread . . . life for the world / Let us be wine, love freely poured.? Okay. Well, while we are part of the Body of Christ, I?m pretty sure we aren?t the bread or wine ourselves. I?m pretty sure that?s just Christ. But move on to the first verse: we switch from at least singing in our own persons, to singing in the person of Christ (which we?re really not supposed to do), ?I am the bread of life, broken for all / Eat now and hunger no more.? Back to chorus. Another verse: ?See how my people have nothing to eat / Give them the bread that is you.? Again, this is a confusion of persons - I?m not even sure if this verse is supposed to be spoken as if Christ was saying to us, or what - ? What is this stuff? Whatever it is, the focus is certainly on us, much more than on the actual Body and Blood of Christ that we are supposed to be focusing on during the Eucharist. The writer of this hymn actually is Catholic, and unfortunately also has a degree from Notre Dame in music and theology. The focus is just unfortunate - I have to assume it?s the same poor catechesis so many of us have had in the last forty years.*

Here?s the thing - music during Mass is not supposed to be about drawing attention to the choir. It?s not supposed to draw automatic applause every week. It?s not supposed to be about telling ourselves how great we all are. And it?s not supposed to rely on sappy platitudes (contained in treacly musical numbers) that are completely devoid of any theological substance. It?s supposed to integrate into the liturgy as part of the prayer and worship, and it?s supposed to help us orient ourselves interiorly and exteriorly towards a more reflective, reverent posture in the Mass. I like participating in singing, but not at the expense of abandoning good music and good theology.

In any event, rolling my eyes throughout Mass is not a good posture to be assuming. I know that. So last week I decided to try and do something about it, and have reached out to my new music director to see if we can visit a bit and discuss the music at the parish. I have tried to take a very respectful, conciliatory tone, and he has been surprisingly receptive so far (and hey, we even got a "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name" yesterday at Mass - a good sign!). Even if it eventually comes to nothing, I appreciate the music director's willingness to listen - and at least I?ll have tried!

*For instance, one random thing I realized last week at Mass was that the first time I ever heard the words ?dona nobis pacem? and sang them was in my eighth-grade public school choir. (!!!) The next time probably wasn?t until I moved to Maryland after law school and started attending my little parish there - I distinctly remember that I had to pay attention to learn ?qui tollis peccata mundi?. Even at ND, attending the more informal dorm Masses every week (which I did love) the traditional Agnus Dei was rarely heard (though I have good word it is heard regularly at all of the Basilica Masses).

Full post as published by Irish Law on October 20, 2008 (boomark / email).