Students at St Michael's Choir School have been playing the entrance hymn at the Friday 12:10 mass. We have not been using a cantor because the hymns are absolutlely singable by the congregation without the leader or even accompaniment. On the contrary, the P&W hymns require piano and a strong leader otherwise my congregations complain of a dead sound sand say that they expect a performance. That is simply not what sacred music is, and is certainly the polar opposite of the mass.

Other....
*O How Blessed-Schutte (only because of silly note value assignment)
**All Carey Landry songs (just because.)

Don't hand me that Schutte! LOL. I tend to throw out anything by him because I view him as a plagiarist. Landry, I can go along with "just because."

Well, OCP for the most part isn't in the business of contemporary worship music and much of what they market as such sucks.

I want the congregation to hear its own voice.

Me too! I'm not in the business of amplification and effects to the point that you can't hear yourself or ever the choir anymore. I only pick songs where the human voice is the lead instrument.

You seem to want them to have an emotional experience while singing along to a praise band.

All music of any genre is an emotional experience. That's why we sing the words rather than read the words. Music helps direct our entire person, which includes our emotions, to God.

There is a difference between this and just seeking out an emotional roller coaster, and I make a point of avoiding such songs.

I have done plenty of "praise music" unaccompanied. Yes it's doable. Yes it's fun. And only some of it works.

I stick to the some of it that works.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile here to introduce into the discussion a concept that hasn't been noted yet.

In the liturgy, some chants are sung as an act of worship in themselves, while others are sung to accompany some action, usually a procession. For example, the Gloria and the Credo are acts of worship in themselves. Nothing else happens while they are underway. On the other hand, the entrance chant, the offertory chant, and the communion chant are sung to accompany some other action which has priority at the moment.

The entrance chant, the introit, has the structure of an antiphon with verses, so it can be adapted in length, depending on the time needed for the entrance procession. That procession is meant to be the focus of attention when it is happening, and it should be performed with the aim of dignity, peace, and beauty, and not with casualness or mere efficiency.

In a small church, that might mean as little as singing the antiphon once, with no verses. In a long church, it might mean to sing the antiphon, and the psalm verse, and a Gloria Patri, and repeating the antiphon again in between.

Similarly, the offertory chant and the communion chant have the same form: an antiphon with verses, with the same flexibility.

Now, even though I've praised classic strophic hymns on the grounds of singability and harmonic interest, they do fall short in two ways. The first is practical: many hymn texts present a theological or narrative movement which calls for singing all the verses, which in many cases would leave the priest and the sacred ministers waiting excessively. So we end up sacrificing the completeness of the hymn for the sake of letting the liturgy proceed at its own natural pace.

The second is that the hymn texts, however good they may be, are usually not the texts the Church has prescribed in the standard liturgical books. For those who aren't familiar with it, the Church prescribes the texts of the entrance chant, offertory chant, and communion chant in the "Roman Gradual", the Graduale Romanum. They are provided for every Sunday, every feast day, every observance in the church calendar.

Those texts are official parts of the liturgy, and when we sing those texts, we are truly singing the Mass. But when we sing a hymn or a sacropop ditty or a P&W song that takes five minutes, we are singing some other words which are merely tacked on to the Mass.

Now, I don't think it's bad to sing an additional musical work during Communion or during the Offertory rite, or even during the entrance procession, if it's extremely long (e.g., at an ordination). But to add these extraneous works and omit the authentic texts of the Church is not right. Back in the 1970s, when the liturgical revisions were just being implemented, the liturgical authorities in Rome once made this point in their journal Notitiae, and said that if some other piece of music is done but not the authentic antiphons, then the people are being cheated. If I remember the Italian aright, the commentator said "the people are being given chaff instead of good grain".

+1 for Shape Note or Sacred Harp or Harmonia Sacra singing. The least performer-orientable sacred singing possible.

Many thanks for that, Liam -
It is literally thrilling.
Too, it sort of puts the lie to 'the people can't this and that', doesn't it!
These certainly aren't trained choir people, they are just people.
Complex rhythm.
Counterpoint.
An elementary polyphonic texture.
A rather predictable harmonic procedure.
Even a mildly challenging tessitura.
And, all from memory!

Unlike what has been pawned off on the Catholic Church -
This is genuine folk music!
Unvarnished tonal production, raucous diction and all.

Still, it would be a mistake to attempt to graft this cultural phenomenon onto Catholic liturgy for the misbegotten sake of inculturation. (Least of all just because somebody 'liked it'.)

On the other hand, if I had to choose betwixt Glory and Praise and electrocuted guitars, and this, I would choose this without blinking an eye. It's genuine. It's human. It's real.

And here's another thought - it isn't altogether impossible that polyphony sounded more or less like this in polyphony's day. (If the Sistine Chapel Choir are any guide, it's not at all unbelievable!)

MJO, have you ever been to a Sacred Harp singing? I can clearly remember the first time I did -- for this brought-up Anglican musician, it was a revelation!

Many or most singers are not singing from memory, but from the characteristic shaped-notation printed music. In its origins that notation was for teaching.

I think the MW is the Lone Ranger.

Interesting, Adam -
This would be a curious academic experiment -
still, though,
for liturgy I'd opt for the Tallis Scholars!

There are those who study pronunciation and vocal production who can tell us more or less how people spoke and sang at such and such a period and place.
A good example of this is that well-known recording by Paul McCreesh of a mass by John Shephard, featuring the English pronunciation of Latin before the great vowel shift.
Vocal production in song and chant seems to have varied all over Europe, having elicited various estimations of the singing of various lands, some being not altogether flattering.
English boys, though, seem consistently to have been praised for their angelic sound.

bhcordova - yes, except that it can be helpful to the amateur scratch group that has turned up early enough to practice the tunes, in lieu of a conductor - eyes for the words and ears for coordination. I am NOT saying this makes it a good idea.

bhcordova - yes, except that it can be helpful to the amateur scratch group that has turned up early enough to practice the tunes, in lieu of a conductor - eyes for the words and ears for coordination. I am NOT saying this makes it a good idea.

Dunno, I've been a part of that 'amateur scratch group', and it never helped me. Except maybe to keep tempo.

melo - If we all had sufficient musicians to be able to apply your principles, the world would be a happier place. But in my neck of the woods, we don't. The choice is to let music go totally, or have less than what the world would consider optimal.


BTW, I can honestly say that I've yet to go to Mass where the organ made the singing any easier. Usually they make it a good deal more difficult.

One problem with unaccompanied congregational singing is that it can very slow Psalm 23 to The Bays of Harris. We, or at least I, don't want someone having to wave their arms to keep things moving.

As a fan of Classical guitar, I definitely know there is better than just strumming - tasteless or otherwise. Apparently, the only guitarists who know how to to more than strum are the bass guitarists, and they all play the same 3 or 4 basic bass lines which could be (and have been) done better by a string bass.

Both. People's opinions about the suitability of the guitar to worship of God are, in my opinion, badly tainted by experiences of bad guitar playing.

˙pǝsɹǝʌǝɹ puɐ pǝʇɹǝʌuı ƃuıʇʇǝƃ sı ʇxǝʇ ǝɥʇ uǝʌǝ pu∀

Why not play the guitar as a continuo instrument? I doubt anybody objects to the theorbo accompaniment in many recordings of Monteverdi's Vespers of the BVM, so why not use the guitar according to accepted precedent?

By the way, Andrew!
HOW did you do that???

BRING BACK THE SERPENT.

It's never gone away.

" This is a copy of a fine serpent d’église (keyless) by Baudouin c.1810."

Serpent

Thanks to Protasius, who got there with continuo before I did. Not only organists, but also guitarists, should have at least a passing familiarity with figured bass. A bit of filled-out and slightly embellished continuo could be quite fetching with Anglican chant sung by a small choir.

I would add two other possibilities for appropriate guitar use within liturgy: intabulation and (really) accompanying chant. It is entirely possible for a guitarist to intabulate a favorite motet or hymntune (or even a chorale prelude or suchlike) in the style of lutenists and vihuelists past, and thus produce an entirely suitable prelude, communion voluntary, or bit o' filler.

A modern guitar accompanying chant may seem a little out there, but there is a long tradition of accompanying modal monody (both secular and sacred) with plucked instruments (usually harp, lute, citole, psaltery, etc.), and the practice is still used by many medieval ensembles performing these days. Here's an example with a chant sequence for Bl. Charlemagne:

http://www.meravelha.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/In-Karoli-snippet.mp3

Here's another one with a recently-composed monody and improvised accompaniment:

http://www.meravelha.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Foebus-Abierat-Teri-Jaya-snippet.mp3

(Full disclosure: that's me on harp.)

My one caution here is that modal chant (Gregorian, Ambrosian, etc.) is designed for Pythagorean tuning, and the modern guitar is not. You could, I suppose, fuss around with all the frets and such--or you could just approach it with the knowledge that organists have been accompanying chant for years in pretty much every temperament known to man, and as long as you don't strum or throw in vulgar diminished sevenths, it'll probably be fine.

And yes, let us agree that the electric guitar (along with the VibraSlap, the kazoo, and the bicycle horn) is not an appropriate instrument for liturgy. That said, outside of church I would love to hear some top-notch electric guitarists take on the Widor Toccata. It's a pity the late Jimi Hendrix never did.

It's clear that the priorities of Loisy are reversed, and so are the priorities of those who pitch 'feelings'.

The people on here pushing "feelings" are those who, contrary to the liturgical legislation from the church, believe that only chant and polyphony should be used.

JL has voiced some quite interesting ideas, all with a delightful reference to historical and patrimonial precedent (and taste!). I could accept them in practice. (One little reservation: surely one could intuit that the guitar, however played, would be, um, totally out of character in Anglican chant... n'est ce pas?

As for the so-called 'electric guitar', he is spot on here, too!. The guitar so unfortunate as to have been subjected to electrification, in music sacred or secular, is a piteous one, indeed; and the result is hardly different from (though worse than) a wailing Ondes Martinot - which, I'm sure, some soul, somewhere, would put forth, seriously, as suitable for Catholic liturgy. One of the many lessons I've learnt over my portion of years is that one reaches a point (successive points, actually) at which he thinks he's seen the worst and that there can't possibly be anything more reprehensible, but... sure enough, someone can be counted upon to come up with it from nowhere.

Thank you! Should be required reading—all of it.