Listopad3,

First, Welcome to the comment side of the forum.

Now, to your question. There are people who believe that ambiance music helps prepare people for Mass. There are others who feel that silence is evil. Both groups promote recorded music any time the church isn't being used for Mass but people might be in the building.

Yes, it's becoming more common.

I’ve seen this to cover confessions before mass, but it’s typically Gregorian chant, not sacro-pop.

And rightly so.

My guess would be someone stole it from there.

Or the elevator at Macy;s

We used recorded Gregorian chant while the priest heard confessions, but the purpose was to cover the sound of the penitent and the priest, not to set some other tone in the building.

The parish in the town where I grew up used to play recorded music during Mass, specifically at Communion. (They have an organist and cantor now so thankfully this custom has fallen out of practice.)

Are there confessions going on? I have certainly heard recorded music, even before Mass, to help distort any voice audible during confession.

That’s what the really loud blower thing in the wind chamber on the pipe organ is for.

Whenever we had Adventen Penance Service (which included private confessions for all) I was always there to play the organ, especially since some confessions were being heard in the open air of the church, even if they were off in a corner.

Most people, looking at cost/benefit will say (therefore) that to get more people to go to confession, we should install a big, beautiful pipe organ in every parish Church

I completely agree! Time to start the capital campaigns now!

Well, I know that I •••cannot••• block out background noise. It is utterly impossible for me. A cricket three doors down at 3am wakes me up. (Chalk it up to an overactive auditory cortex; I am a musician afterall.) So, I can tell you that I absolutely cannot spend time in a library reading and synthesizing information if there is useless noise for noise's sake. White noise, yes. Music? absolutely not.

To be frank, I doubt that people who would prefer noise are much interested in frequenting the library to begin with. The lack of muzak is not what is keeping them away. If you can't take your earbuds out while you read, you probably aren't making a habit of deep reading. And if you are coming to the library, it's not for the music! Everyone and their cousin knows libraries are supposed to be places of quiet. Couple in the fact that even the poorest of the poor tend to find money for a cell phone, means that everyone has their music in their pocket to begin with. They aren't going to want to listen to what you pipe in anyway.

Meanwhile other venues are providing soundproofed spaces for those more sensitive to sensory input.

It must be a result from studying music, but I listen to everything. There is no background noise. Even at the dentist's office, I am listening, identifying, and critiquing all the background music. It isn't relaxing at all. I was once told that if I wanted to take the joy out of listening to music, the best way would be to study it. A study was done many years ago with college students listening to music. They relaxed. The experiment was duplicated with music majors. They tensed up.

This must explain why, after attending our Ordinary Form parish, I have to try to forget about the music and not complain about it too much to my family.

I’ve only had three weekends off in the last 3 years, and only one of them was vacation. It’s basically weather or illness. (Covid quarantine last year.)

I only get one weekend off per year (condition for employment) which is a mildly bitter pill to swallow, as I cannot even bookend a week of vacation. So, I think in my case, I’m hardly dotting around too much…

Whenever I travel, I go online to seek out the church in town with the best music, and go to high Mass there if reviews of their website and any available recordings indicate that their “choir” is truly a choir (of the sort that sings Palestrina well, and not a couple people approximating the harmony in Choral Praise or St. Basil). Then I can not only be inspired to worship, but also learn some things (new rep, interpretation, etc.) to take home and use when I get back to the office. If I don’t find such a place near my hotel, I look for the earliest Mass and hope it will be low, with no music to distract.

A few times, though, when neither option has been available, I have been greatly moved by the singing in small parishes in remote places, when it is evident the (volunteer) musicians are giving their all, singing naturally and freely, with devotion and attention to the text, and choosing music that’s actually within their capabilities (like a straightforward hymn). That to me is much more edifying and inspiring than the spectacle that is a weekend Mass in so many rich urban churches, where a staff cantor and a pianist are paid lavishly to do the commercial dreck and try to sound like what they aren’t: Broadway material.

Ideally, you could attend Mass without having the music critic running on overtime.

Amen to that.

There simply was no helping this summer, however, when we were in a well-known touristy area and, to their credit, they decided to sing Tantum Ergo during communion. Less to their credit, however, was the fact that they were doing it in some weird pseudo-praise band style, at a weird slow tempo with improvised piano and guitar, and two people in their 60's desperately trying to out-warble the other in a wannabe crooner style. It was one of the strangest things I've ever heard in my life, and I couldn't have tuned it out if Satan himself was slithering at my heel. It was equal parts horror, hilarity, and fascination.

Arguably New Britain, being a Sacred Harp tune (45 at the top), is traditionally sung loudly and with a bit of a twang.

"ST. THOMAS"

If you really want to drive the demons out of hell, do it with bagpipes.

Charles,

Bagpipes sound hauntingly beautiful in their original environment -- I've been in Edinburgh for the Military Tatoo -- but simply don't sound the same elsewhere. Hell, being hot and uncomfortable, wouldn't be ideal for bagpipes, unless the goal is to make them sound as horrid as possible.

Swerving back to the topic of the thread....

Does what's being played as recorded music matter? After all, a set of bagpipes can be made to sound either more resonant or less so through the magic of mixing, and the unique circumstances of the church's broadcast system, right?

I like the image of "degrees of abuse"!

I was once asked not to play a recessional at a wedding because there was a piper there. It was the first (and God, I hope only) time I've ever heard one indoors. And I thought pipe organs were loud... how wrong I was! lol

The superior of my old community was a bagpipe player since high school. He would play sans pipes, because it was “quieter”, and the neighbors wouldn’t complain. (Others in the community told me there was no discernible difference.)

Well, those work camouflage for Beige people. These work better for my complexion in vexed situations:

https://www.amazon.com/Macks-Slim-Soft-Foam-Earplugs/dp/B005YUW7A2/