The Recovering Choir Director

Education is the answer, of course.
We cant’ expect people to love what they do not know.
We cannot expect them to know that to which they are not exposed.
These seem so obvious, yet we have people in authority saying that “the people” cannot be asked to sing thus-and-such because they don’t know it, but we shouldn’t teach it to them because “they won’t sing it.”
Such circular reasoning is bound to leave us stuck, for good or ill, with whatever was sung in the pastor’s adolescence or seminary years.

Elevating the level of music that people are now used to and “like” is not going to be an overnight process.

I have third graders whose favorite “songs,” in no particular order, are “He Shall Feed His Flock” from Messiah, This Little Light of Mine, the Kyrie (Orbis Factor,) I Received the Living God , Shout for Joy (Personet Hodie) and Jesu Dulcis Memoria.

Can you discern the pattern?

Of course, there is none — these just happen to be the songs they worked on or sang the most when they were in second grade.

from Norman:
“Q: “why are we not singing this nice song anymore?”
A:” because we don’t come to Mass to sing nice songs but to pray” or “we sing this psalm this way because this is how Jesus prayed”

This is the exact opposite of what I had heard at my former parish. As we were going to a predominantly traditional program, a couple of choir members sighed while saying (in reference to such garbage as “Rain Down” and “Table of Plenty”), “There’s certain songs that I’m afraid we’ll never hear again”. I, of course, was fired just a couple of months later.

BMP

It’s not our whole life!

This is the true problem with the attitude of most modern Catholics towards both Tradition and Faith, and it goes far beyond Sacred Music.

One of the insights that I have received from the Orthodox Church is one that I heard from Fr. Sergei Glagolev (a great composer of Orthodox music in English): The Orthodox Church is the last oral culture in the world. Basically this means that in the Divine Liturgy and in the monastic hours, all communication is done orally. While we have liturgical books, the purpose of them is for the reader (be it priest, deacon, reader, psaltis, or choir) to communicate the text orally for and to the congregation, and for the congregation to respond to that oral message of prayer with their own response.

The whole process and purpose of chant is to make that oral communication more intelligible, memorable, and beautiful. In my little parish, I have seen and heard just about everyone in the congregation, by hearing the same chant over and over, learn to sing along for the entire liturgy, throughout the many hymns of the divine service.

This process of oral tradition, through chant and song, is one means by which the Church has taught its saving truths of faith throughout the ages. It is a pity that the West has recently forgotten this truth. It is my hope that it can re-learn it.

If the pastor does not like Latin chant, there’s not much you can do. Grudgingly, he gave me permission to introduce chant, but he was very lukewarm from the start.

I went ahead and introduced Jubilate Deo Mass setting in our parish, with a handful of middle-aged women who volunteered to form the choir, and got so much flak as a result.

1. Our pastor said he never had Latin the entire time he was training for the priesthood.

2. People complained of having to stand for the duration of the “Gloria.” With that attitude, I shudder to think how they would take a chanted Credo?

3. The liturgy committee never forgave me for trying “the unthinkable.”

4. Our volunteer organist does not like chant, either. It took so long for me to convert her to liking traditional hymns like “Holy God We Praise Thy Name” and “How Great Thou Art.” She barely made it with the chant, and the congregation actually sounded better without organ accompaniment during the Agnus Dei. But of course, no one dared tell her that. If she had her way, she’d rather play Weston Priory, i.e., “Come to Me,” and anything by Haugen or Schutte.

But the BIGGEST reason for the crashing failure was that the pastor really doesn’t like Latin chant. Period.

I think we all need to accept that church music is a means to an end, and not an end in itself.

If some people find ‘contemporary’ church music genuinely helps bring them closer to God then I think that it would be wrong to try to deprive them of it on grounds of taste. Similarly, if some people genuinely find chant or polyphony a hindrance to worship then I think that it would be wrong to force it on them. However, in return I expect equal respect for the views of those like myself who find chant and polyphony a natural expression of worship and find it difficult to worship when having to listen to or participate in music that (however well intentioned) we find inappropriate or so badly played as to be an actual hindrance to worship.

At my own church, I am concerned when some of those who prefer ‘contemporary’ music try to suggest that those of us who do not share their tastes are not ‘real’ Christians or are ‘only here for the music’. Some mutual tolerance is required.

Although regretable in terms of parish unity, the only solution may be for parishes to offer if at all possible a choice of musical styles at different services to cater for the different preferences of parishioners (including a spoken service for those who find any music a distraction), and let people choose what form of worship is most appropriate to them. Attempts to provide a range of musical styles at one service merely seem to annoy everyone. If some in time come to see the virtues of the music and style of worship that I prefer I would be pleased, but I do not think it right to force my own preferences on others. However, I do not care to have others’ tastes forced on me.

I do find it worrying when the leaders of the ‘contemporary’ group try to dictate the choice of music at services at which the traditional choir and not the music group is to provide the music, as has apparently happened at my own church.

Over twenty years ago,after a good deal of experience of choral music, including my college chapel choir and two cathedral choirs, I moved to a new job in a new town and joined the excellent choir. It immediately became apparent that the only way to avoid becoming embroiled in or having to take sides in a poisonous dispute between a particular clergyman and a small clique of parishioners on the one hand and a group of the choir and their supporters on the other was to leave both the choir and congregation and to travel to worship at a small church a few miles away that had no music. Neither side showed any Christian charity or made any attempt to understand the viewpoint of the other, and for me to remain in the choir or to worship in the congregation outside the choir would have been seen as supporting one faction or the other.

I did not sing again for eighteen years.

I have enjoyed singing and worshipping with the choir in my present parish, and would not wish to find myself in that position ever again. However, if people adopt entrenched positions and refuse to accept that others genuinely see things differently I might have no choice.

Can I please make a plea for tolerance, diversity and Christian charity?

David