The Recovering Choir Director

Sappy?

Insipid?

There are a number of appropriate adjectives.

Learn about step-wise motion!

LEARN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN METRIC, NON-METRIC AND JUST PLAIN DIRGE-LIKE, MR. HAAS!!!!!!!!

Yes, Todd, most of us here are capable of arranging Aqualung to make it sound appropriately liturgical and reverent.

That’s not really the point.

I know you like Haugen personally, and for all I know you’re buds with Haas as well, so I will refrain from trashing him, but the fact is we shouldn’t HAVE to be putting all this effort into making silk purses out of the sows’ ears that OCP and GIA have managed to foist on almost every parish in the land.

Your average little can-just-about-play-the-notes-as-written chruch musician CAN’T, and those with a greater skill level don’t see the need to — there is so much excellence out there why should they waste their time trying to make David Haas’s pitiful efforts sound good?

Peace, “You”

“That’s not really the point.”

It is if you’re stuck with a hymnal and repertoire your parishioners want to use. If you don’t like being part of the cash machine for religious publishers, you can just do your own parish hymnal. Lots of places are doing it. I did it once. It’s a lot of work, like arranging tunes for ensembles and choirs, but a worthwhile effort.

” … those with a greater skill level don’t see the need to …”

Too bad the greater skill level has a harder time foisting its own tastes on pew potatoes.

” … why should they waste their time trying to make David Haas’s pitiful efforts sound good?”

Generally, I would agree with you on this. I find about four or five pieces in his catalogue worthy.

“Too bad the greater skill level has a harder time foisting its own tastes on pew potatoes.”

I would in the past have taken offense at this, but it truly does display a large amount of confusion regarding music and the liturgy, and it attempts to make a blanket statement that doesn’t necessarily apply.

The “greater skill level” in my mind applies to David Haas, Richard Proulx, Marty Haugen, the monks of Solesmes and all others who have worked at their music craft and have made a job, living or vocation out of it, regardless of genre.

So, as we see the predominance of Haas, Haugen, etc. in the American liturgy, surely this segment of the greater skill level doesn’t have a hard time foisting their tastes on pew potatoes. To a certain extent we can say the same about Proulx. However, the monks of Solesmes are relegated to the classical or even “New Age” music rack at your local record store. If they’re even found there.

The tragic thing about this is they’re the editors, the most recent guardians if you will, of the Roman liturgical music tradition as handed down through the ages and illuminated in Church documents such as Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium and the latest GIRM.

Proulx, Haugen, Haas and their promoters have relatively no problem foisting their tastes on congregations. In fact, it seems that most of the “contemporary/traditional” infighting at the parish level occurs between styles embraced by Proulx and styles embraced by Haugen and Haas. But when one’s own tastes just happen to be the first thing that the Church asks for, one is ignored.

I don’t consider myself at the same level with all those mentioned above, but generally above average. I see that what’s asked isn’t considered. I go to a 1962 Mass and the faithful ask me, beg me to chant. I don’t chant that well. But my soul is comforted in the fact that what I’m doing conforms to the closest reading of Vatican II possible in light of tradition.

By the way, the Sunday Mass propers for the 1962 and 1970 Missals are largely the same - I checked the Liber Usualis and the reformed Graduale Romanum. Moreover, the GIRM mentions the Graduale Romanum as the first option for music at Mass. But I ask you, where are you more likely going to hear this first choice for Mass music according to the Pauline missal? At the Pauline Mass?