I have noticed that with the "strum along" music some churches play, the guitars are amplified to the point that nobody can understand what anyone is singing anyway.

Worst I heard at a funeral was "You've Got a Friend in Me" from Toy Story. I got up and walked out with my family.

On the livestream, the mix was just not right.

It's nice to try and stay positive, but no mixer will ever fix that abomination of a funeral.

If that's the worst Catholic funeral you've ever experienced, you're doing well.

As PaxMelodious said, not the worst certainly. There is barely any Catholic or vaguely Christian music at funerals and weddings where I am. It is quite literally top 10 pop hits from the radio done by random people, nephews, nieces, people from the pub down the road, etc... You just want to give up and die.... but then realise if you do, this is going to be your funeral music too, then suddenly you want to live, and change things for the better.

Things get much better when you ditch the guide. Very few people complain. Far fewer than when we had a guide. And that doesn't mean people can pick what they want, but that they cannot pick anything.

@OMagnumMysterium It must be 20+ years since I last attended a Requiem that was not EF. We do still have choices at our church, the timeless Gregorian chant or the Victoria 4 part.

Now that I no longer play full time in Latin Rite parishes, I don't attend their masses. Being Byzantine I have other options. But when I did play for funerals, I always had the very talented cantor/soloist sing the Faure "Pie Jesu" so I knew something decent would be heard. I also used the ICEL English chant mass and the best hymns I could. You could always count on some family member requesting "Amazing Grace" be sung. I have never understood the popularity of that song.

I have been thinking that with my list revision, I might stipulate that the traditional chants will be sung first (English or Latin, according to preference) and then other selections would be sung “time permitting”.

I still can’t believe once I refused to play Turn Turn Turn and the pastor allowed family and friends to show up as a rock band and play it from the sanctuary

Slightly off topic - but in a similar vein.
I play freelance viola in string quartets for a lot for weddings. Usually they are secular outdoor weddings. Last time I was excited that it was to be in a Catholic Church. Nice! I figured it would be standard light classical: Pachelbel, water music, etc. Not liturgical but not offensive, I thought.
The reality, though- instrumental versions of:
Bridesmaids - Beauty and the Beast (as in the Disney movie)
Bride's processional - Taylor Swift "Wildest Dreams"
Recessional - a movie song called "Married Life" from the movie "Up"
This wasn't a Mass, but still. I was extremely surprised because I thought that our diocese is fairly strict about these things.

@davido

Ditching the guide was my idea. He was all for it. We sing either the English funeral propers from Fr. Samuel Weber or from the Graduale Simplex. Mass setting is Latin, chant Ave Maria, and in Paradisum.

Can’t unhear… Can’t unsee… Can’t believe…

I've been patient and ambivalent about watching the link.

Perhaps to my surprise, I am not persuaded this Mass merited this attention.

Hey at least the pony Mass was alright.

"DMS is the Chinese buffet of liturgical documents; everyone finds something to leave on the steam table."

Particularly for the the postconciliar missals et cet., because of superseding ritual books and related instructions and legislation.

Recently attended a funeral Mass at the local ICK church.

ACCOMPANIED choral music, only a couple of Proper chants, ACCOMPANIED Ordinary....

ICK responds to large-donor requests.

...and the funeral Mass for Shane MacGowan was at St. Mary's of the Rosary Church, so I guess "anything goes" in Ireland, too.

What's an ICK church?

I usually see it as ICKSP.

Thanks to Reval for reminding us of that music video by the bishop. He went on to make this one a few years later: https://youtu.be/wWULyxY0GD4?si=thrz-Vr3Rfl4gD9k
The intervening years were apparently good for his hair, which went from white to red during that time. There are other oddities in the video, but I'll leave them for the viewer to notice.

"Gather your people" Aren't they all there?
The "Gathering Song" thing is somewhere between complete idiocy and total confusion

I have to agree. The use of a gathering song has changed the first part of mass into a gathering rite.
Wow the in every age is really really bad, bleaching my ears now.

Greg

Great Amen - what's so great about it?

'Now we see through a glass darkly' but in reality the offering by and of the Lamb Who Was Slain is inexpressibly great. This, the raising of the offerings to the Father, is key to our salvation, no?

I think you misundestand the point I was making

I have a get-off-my-lawn thing to say and another thing after that.

GOML: I feel that the deceased and his family, and Bishop Vann, deserve to have their feelings considered more than they have been in this thread. People leave funerals with feelings that are very complex. Music plays a big part in memory. To just jump up and down on a funeral, even in the cause of sacred music--well, imagine someone in his family reading this and tone it down, imho.

Realistically, though, this is what we are up against. This sound: the 12 string with the quick rhythm, very "upbeat." Or the piano-violin combo, very emotive. When a pastor and dm work together to provide sacred music such as polyphony and chant and solid hymnody, the pushback comes not just because people feel they don't like the new (which is often how criticisms are expressed), but because they liked the old.

(Let alone those who are more programmatic--who feel young people need "relevant" music at Mass in order to stay connected, despite enormous sociological evidence to the contrary.)

Let us imagine for one moment those souls in purgatory, that have to listen to this 'music' at their Requiem, and nobody present praying specifically for the remission of their sins. No one praying for them to be released from purgatory! While all their relatives are convinced, they are in a cat and dog heaven with all their pets and friends.

2 Maccabees 12:46

It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.

What would Jesus do? John 2:15

And when he had made, as it were, a scourge of little cords, he drove them all out of the temple, the sheep also and the oxen, and the money of the changers he poured out, and the tables he overthrew. And to them that sold doves he said: Take these things hence, and make not the house of my Father a house of traffic. And his disciples remembered, that it was written: The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.

I don't think that turning the house of God into a cheap variety show would have gone down very well.