"What Hollywood Can Teach Christians About Their Hymns"
A two year old article by Patrick O’Hannigan was recently found by David Ancell.
While Hollywood cannot be trusted in moral or theological matters, moviemakers understand the relationship of music to faith better than most liturgical composers do. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is just one example of this phenomenon. Moviemakers know that Baptists are more likely to sing Blessed Assurance than Kumbaya, for example. Similarly, when the 1992 comedy Sister Act needed Catholic music, it reached back in time for Hail, Holy Queen, rather than sideways in time for Morning Has Broken.
The preceding passage reminded me of an old Philips TiVo commercial, where a man was watching a game-winning field goal. In his anxiety, he “paused” the game and high-tailed it to a local church, raced down the center aisle, and fell on his knees at the foot of the sanctuary. The music at this point of the ad was the end of the Gloria from Mass VIII “De angelis”.
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And yet, “Dead Man Walking” has Sr. Helen Prejean singing “Be Not Afraid” to the death row convict.
Selective. Memory. Doesn’t. Work.
That said, and correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t “Morning Has Broken” an ancient hymn, or at least the melody being ancient? Just because it became a pop hit in the 70s doesn’t erase the history behind it. That’s like saying “ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA” didn’t exist before “2001 A Space Odyssey.”
A better example would’ve been one of the Glory & Praise or Gather original compositions.
Nick
Peace, all.
I think the usual tune sung to “Morning Has Broken” is an old Celtic folk tune and goes back a few centuries. I think it’s at least as old as “Hail Holy Queen,” but not in the Catholic worship memory.
The example of “Kumbaya” is curious, for I had understood it was originally a spiritual. I don’t believe it was composed in the 60’s, though that could just be because the blueprint copier didn’t have room for a composer.
The Straight Dope on Kumbaya:
[link]
Re: “Morning Is Broken” tune
Not in the _American_ Catholic worship memory. There are plenty of Catholics up in the Highlands…not so many in the islands, I don’t think, but some.
I did a bit of web research on the tune to “Morning Is Broken”, but it didn’t post. Check out my blog for all the interesting (to me, anyway) details.
“Morning Has Broken,” although gaelic and old, is not a venerable Catholic hymn in the way “Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All” or “Hail Queen of Heav’n, the Ocean Star” are. In the 1950’s “Morning Has Broken” would only be found in Protestant hymnals–particularly those of the Reformed/Calvanistic tradition (Prebyterian, Christian Reformed, etc.).
So you mean to tell me that Ireland had a Protestant Reformation before Luther did? Before the Orthodox did?
If the song is “old” enough, then it was written at a time where only Catholics existed, thus, it’s wholly Catholic. That it might not have been accepted by individual Catholic hymnbooks is as paltry an argument if ever there was one.
Nick:
Distinguish between a Celtic melody and the lyrics we associate it with. The melody could have been from a predominantly Catholic region, with lyrics from elsewhere, as it were. It was unusual for melody and text to be written together; metrical lyrics are often written so as to be used with a variety of melodies. This is, in fact, quite common with so-called Irish hymns.
“That it might not have been accepted by individual Catholic hymnbooks is as paltry an argument if ever there was one.”
Who was arguing? The words to “Morning Has Broken” were written by Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965). The tune is a Celtic folk melody. I was merely making the point that it was not a hymn found in Catholic hymnals prior to Vatican II.
Re: Sister Helen Prejean singing “Be Not Afraid” in Dead Man Walking– I don’t think it hurts my thesis. Prejean is, and was played by Susan Sarandon as, the kind of nun who would have that hymn at her fingertips. Moreover, “Be Not Afraid” is the kind of consoling message with which you’d probably WANT to comfort someone on Death Row. It’s not used in the script as a “Catholic cue” the way the choir in Sister Act sings “Hail Holy Queen,” for example.
Peace, all.
The other lesson Hollywood can teach is to present music with competence. Any piece of music can be butchered into something to be detested. I think Patrick’s observations about Be Not Afraid are spot on.
“Any piece of music can be butchered into something to be detested.”
This is an excellent skill to posess. In an earlier life as an actor, if given a piece of direction with which I disagreed, I would follow it to the letter, making it look as wrong as possible so that the director would change it.
One can make Be Not Afraid sound better than it is, but one can also decoupage a pile of organic fertilizer.
Just because someone is sentimental about fertilizer is not a good reason to do so.
Well, “MHB” came to Catholics from SOMEwhere. I grew up with it in the 1950s at a parish school in Boston. It may have been in a book where, I learned many years later, we picked up a number of idiosyncratic tunes: the Pius X Hymnal edited by Theodore Marier.
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