No, I am not. I sing with our church choir and also every Sunday with my husband accompanying me on very tasteful guitar. We do a wide range of hymns from "Christians Let Us Love One Another" (PICARDY) to "Be Thou My Vision" to "Humbly Lord We Worship You" to "Sing A New Song" by Schutte, once in a while. I believe the congegration will sing good music of whatever genre. It would be great if there was more good music published from which to choose.

At 60+, I try not to think of myself as old. I had never sung "O Salutaris" until our church began having perpetual adoration of the Eucharist and the Sacrament would be transferred after morning Mass to the adoration chapel. It is just heartening to hear the church filled with a hymn. Father chanted and the people responded beautifully. Also, being a cantor or choir member most of the time, you don't get the chance to be in the pew and just respond with the congegration.

I have heard some organists who are far less skilled than my husband at providing accompaniment. Wrong chords, poor technique, and bad musical taste are not exclusive to guitarists. There are probably fewer organists who fall into this category simply because would- be church musicians don't have easy access to an organ in the same way that a person can buy a cheap guitar, find some chords on the internet and think they are ready to play in church. Guitar can be properly mic-ed to reinforce its sound. It isn't always the wrong accompanying instrument. It has more to do with the individual artist than the instrument. Please stop judging all guitarists in the same category. I have heard some really schlock-y organ playing in my own parish. Think lounge lizard meets baseball stadium organist!

I have been educated by some in this forum previously on the advantages of organ in a large church, the quality of hymns that are definitely better accompanied on organ and the "breathing" quality of the organ. After that I did noticed our current organist using the organ to highlight phrasing. Instead of either/or can you see any instance where guitar can be the better accompaniment?

Okay, I know that I am in the minority here and I accept that. Just FYI, we were ASKED by our pastor to provide music when our parish was between organists. We have been "filling in" now for 4 years, long after the parish has hired a new organist. I have been tempted to quit, especially when I have a sneaking suspicion that our new pastor would "fire" us except that we play for free and he would have to pay the organist to cover another Mass. Also, the PIP sing well when we provide the music and they like our selections, which are often more conservative and appropriate than what the organist chooses. As I have also said before, I have been in this parish since the age of 10 and been a cantor/choir member for most of those years. I will use my God-given talent for God's use as long as I am able, however I am able and whenever I am able. Pastors come and go around here every 6 or 12 years, but I am here for the long haul. Those here who may be pastors, remember that volunteers have feelings, too. Especially if you don't have a poker face.

A few years ago, I attended a Men's Retreat at a parish run by Canons Regular in West Virginia. (For those familiar with this community, no explanation is necessary. For those who aren't - no explanation is possible.) This was a retreat attended by gentlemen you'd generally expect to have a benign indifference to music. The priests began by exposing the Blessed Sacrament in Benediction. Mind you, this community has some interesting ideas about promoting a cappella, congregational singing - mixing Kyrie XIV with Gloria XII and Sanctus XVII, really? - but I must admit, it was the most robust rendition of "O Salutaris" I've heard in my life. And it wasn't even the regular tune - it was Jesu Dulcis Memoria. Even the superior commented on the positive quality of the singing.

Who knows? Maybe there's just something about the music of Benediction that sticks with you.

As a PIP, in order to sing a hymn well I need a clear understanding of the tune and rhythm. Percussive and plucked instruments are quite good at both, a piano duet demonstrates that, but it requires rapport between the performers. Congregational singing is inherently fuzzy, without rehearsal the participants will each have different ideas about timing and phrasing, and are spread over a large and reverberant space. Our ears are designed to be very precise about measuring time differences, location of a sound source depends on analysis of the time difference between arrival at each of our ears. I suspect that the precision of percussive stringed instruments makes them inherently less satisfactory for congregational accompaniment.
OTOH I occasionally get an organ intro which leaves me with no clue as to the tune I am supposed to launch into.

I was involved with the performance of a mass by Padilla, if I remember correctly without looking it up, it was Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, 1590-1664 approx. It had a guitar part throughout. While I certainly wouldn't object to guitar in such a beautiful and authentic setting, what I do object to are the saloon musicians who strum, thump, and play indistinguishably from what one would hear in secular settings. I admit I probably object to the style rather than substance.

Pius X certainly meant well in attempting to "restore" church music. However, he was another in a line of those who wanted to hearken back to an earlier age when music was pure and untainted by the world. A pipe dream, really, since such never existed. Certainly, standards are needed for church music, high standards in fact. But it seems to me that every time a purist tries to reestablish a "golden age" of music, it creates a terrible backlash of over reactions that destroy both the baby and the bath water. We often end up worse off than before.

I have a book of wedding music approved for Catholic weddings from 1955 or so. Approved, yes. Truly awful, yes. I have thought that the backlash against more traditional Catholic music that occurred after Vatican II happened because much of that "approved" music wasn't very good. It was itself an extreme producing a more extreme reaction. It seems ever thus. Really, how many more hymns to the Blessed Mother by Sister Mary Snorkelface of the Holy Visage did we even need or want.

It appears to me that there was in those earlier times a richness of musical styles and varied instruments for several hundred years before Pius X. Anyone remember serpents and trombones, for example? Makes me wonder how authentic some of those "restorations" really are. Some of our current crop of reformers are really promoting Solesmes as an ideal. Get real. There is nothing authentic about Solesmes. It was another attempt at restoration based on interpretations and assumptions not wholly accurate, but current with the scholarship of the times.

To the point of organ vs. guitar, I have not found that guitars have the power and presence to lead a large congregation in song. Certainly, if guitar is all you have, use it to the best of your abilities. I used to play organ for college chapels with approximately 1500+ in attendance. Accompanying was spread around with several groups responsible for playing. The guitars students sometimes used couldn't do the job, but the pipe organ had the power and presence to actually lead. I was asked to play more often because of the suitability and practical effects of large organ accompaniment.

My 2 and one half cents and ymmv.

Your mileage may vary... :)

https://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/7273/commonly-used-abbreviations-on-the-forum#Item_2

Carol, were O Salutaris and Tantum Ergo sung a cappella? I have a pet theory that a cappella singing strengthens congregational singing. On most Sundays I sing penitential rite C and it seems to me that the congregational response is much stronger than when we are singing something accompanied; likewise when the priest sings the dialogues. I'm not against instruments (of any sort) in the liturgy, but I do think that a cappella singing gives the congregation the feeling of, "well, I guess it's up to us."

Yes, it was a cappella and I have noticed the same phenomenon. Problem is unaccompanied singing does eventually sink in pitch or worse.

I became a sweetly patient (I hope) but firm first grade teacher because I encountered the public school equivalent of Sr. Mary Godzilla who told my mother in front of the whole class that I wouldn't need a cupcake at the Halloween party since I preferred to eat paste! (It was the old flour and water paste doled out on a little piece of paper from a 3 gallon container which I had tasted once.) Not the container, the paste.

Yes, Charles, I think I must tag on to Andrew's comment... both as regards St. Pius X and Solesmes.

It is one thing to say that certain things could be improved about the respective efforts of Pope St. Pius X and Dom Gueranger (especially as we access more manuscripts and undertake more research), quite another to dismiss the initial efforts of the reform as being simply "well-meaning" but with a clear implication of "poorly done".

One of my choir members wanted to argue with me that "they wouldn't have done it like this in the x'th century". Likely true... but unless we live in an ivory tower, probably not all that meaningful. The reforms initiated by St. Pius X and Dom Gueranger were intended to begin to restore balance, to begin to return liturgical music to its former glory - not to be the pinnacle of scholarly erudition in its own right. Chant had been suffering through several centuries of decay and decline. The work started by Solesmes has - as Andrew says above - turned that around. Not perfect, but certainly far better than what was present by the end of the 1800's. And I certainly don't see a problem with returning to music that represents the high point of Catholic culture and musicality - to music that provides a lofty setting for the Liturgy.

We can contribute to the ongoing reform in our own right without denigrating the efforts of those who went before us, in many cases which provided the platform for us to continue improving Liturgical music.

I think there are some for whom there is nothing beyond Pope St. Pius X... beyond Mocquereau. Perhaps what you were driving at is that we should continue to expand our knowledge and explore additional techniques. I couldn't agree more. But let's respect those who started us on this path of reform.

My two cents.

Chant has clearly been developed by the Church for singing a capella. It tends to be responsorial, as Penitential rite C, or alternatim, as the Creed. A competent cantor or schola helps keep momentum and pitch, but unaccompanied hymns tend to sag and drag. I know little of shape note singing, but it often seems quite slow.
My experience of congregations singing unaccompanied is limited but favourable, but it is limited because it only occurs on particular occasions. For example the Sunday after Christmas when the music group had decided not to turn up and I volunteered as cantor. I chose a familiar Mass setting from the hymnal, and told the congregation that if they wanted music they would have to do it themselves. I thank they sang more lustily than had the music group been there, but of course the congregation consisted of the more committed, the others had exhausted themselves (and their piety) by turning out on Christmas Day. My two penn'orth.

I have heard many discuss the glories of Catholic music in the past, depending on when that past was. I grew up with it in the fifties, then the sixties. It went from bad to worse. I suspect strongly my area wasn't much different from most. The problem with restoration is determining when that "former glory" occurred. I know, location, location, location.

Not Christian, Catholic. 19th century Russia was heavily Russian Orthodox.

Russian music is incredibly beautiful

My son just now is conducting an experiment on plants. The ones hearing the Russian chant have withered even more than the other plants.

What's that wonderfully disarming abbreviation? YMMV.

...plants...

I read once of an experiment wherein plants in group A were played Mozart, Beethoven, etc., and they flourished. The ones in group B were subjected to rock 'music' and withered in short order.

Or possibly encourage it and discourage the grass?

As for the whale, I can attest to the fact music can have a Pied Piper effect. I attended a penance service some time ago at a prosperous parish in the affluent part of our county. They had a very good lounge pianist playing the top 40 Haugen/Haas/Joncas type music. The affluent parishioners worn out, I suppose, from all the efforts expended making money, keeping up the large houses, and driving the expensive cars, were floating around humming and mouthing words to the soothing sounds of Catholic elevator music. They were almost in a trance-like state - or maybe a whale-like state based on the Alaska story.

Fake news. Many experiments do not even approach standards for genuine scientific research.