Cultivating "emotionally charged worship"
  • ryandryand
    Posts: 1,640
    That's not going to do anything to promote sacred music, but be counter-productive and prove yet again how easily people get in their own way.


    The example isn't meant to be polemic, just demonstrate why some would balk at the notion of "emotional" worship.

    When I play funerals I never say anything like that when OEW is requested. I offer other options and explain simply the virtue of them. e.g. In Paradisum as the traditional end of the funeral Mass and how it connects us all with the universal church, even across centuries. I don't rag on OEW, that doesn't help anything. Just promote better things and let them know it is an option.

    Then they pick OEW anyway, so I sing that and then continue my day.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    I thoroughly detest OEW, and visualize Michael Joncas justly being carried away in the claws of a large predatory bird. Poetic justice, I think. However, I have little desire to fight over the corpse of someone's late relative, so I will play it for funerals if there is no graceful way out. Generally, I don't play for funerals unless no one else is available. That gets me out of playing it most of the time. That last verse is a real stinker.
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Charles,

    You illustrate perfectly why I voted against "emotionally charged religious experience". Some people have exactly the opposite reaction to OEW: Yeah! Wonderful! All's right with the world...... or words to that effect. Rather than allowing the liturgical texts to be proclaimed by melodies approved by the Church, too often we want to achieve the elusive (and illusionary?) "emotional experience".

    God bless,

    Chris
    Thanked by 3CharlesW ClergetKubisz hilluminar
  • NihilNominisNihilNominis
    Posts: 1,023
    Not just the elusive, but also the exclusive emotional experience. Absent objective norms for sacred music, and with only the subjective predilections of the congregation as they are perceived by the musician to measure against, there is nothing you can say to justify your choice of music (and text!), if you are aiming for subjective gratification, to someone who doesn't like it, other than, "Well, different strokes..."

    If some of the congregation are rocking out to "their music" that is not the music of the liturgy, enjoying a subjectively fulfilling worship experience, someone else is being excluded. Guarantee.

    Whereas, in Objective Worship World, even if you don't like the chant (but who doesn't, really? I think "dislike" of chant mostly stems from a desire for more familiar, emotionally-charged worship music instead; no one is seriously offended by the chant itself as music), you can still appreciate it as belonging to you, and proclaiming a text (98% of the time) from the Sacred Scriptures and appointed by the Church.
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    I have an emotionally charged religious experience most Sundays when I deal with choir, cantors, wailing children, and etc. I want to kill...LOL
    Thanked by 2NihilNominis JulieColl
Add a Comment