It's a song that sounds like it's made for a hand-held portativ organ where the incompetent player/singer lets the bellows drain and the voice sag iteratively. (It's one of the songs that inspired my decades-old presumptive programming rule of thumb that one should choose congregational songs that do not need any accompaniment to sound good. HMGW sounds ridiculous in the mouths of congregants without accompaniment - it would become a wheezing, scattershot mess in terms of coherent tempo because its melody is an invertebrate, perhaps an amoeba.)

I faced this one on New Year's Eve evening and could not help but wonder ...why not just sing . . . the thing on the adjoining page in the annual music issue, the Mode 1 Ave Maria (Simple Tone) - once by the cantor, then inviting all to repeat? No matter how many people chose to sing either, it would all have sounded (and likely prayed) much better had the Ave been sung instead. It's not like the meaning of the Ave is obscure (and the melody is hardly more difficult than that of HMGW): everyone knows what it means. Rinse and repeat; people will learn it, people will own it - it's part of their birthright to own, if only someone bothered to help them own it. (Had someone asked me, that's what I would have offered in reply....)

I turned this one into an SATB a capella piece with the reduction of one verse and a time signature change. The melody got placed into alto because of the pitch.

I hate it, too.

The Gordon Lightfoot Ave Maria.

It also makes me laugh when people think chant is too difficult for a congregation but have no qualms about HMGW (or even “Be Not Afraid,” which I also sang today). I find this contemporary stuff much harder to pick up on than many of the ancient chants of the Church.

So true. Every verse is different. So much of the music from that era is like that.

I think the reason for that is that they want to sing a hymn to Mary and it's about the only hymn they know.

Ah, they only think that! Once I suggest others, they realize they also know them.

I find a large part of the problem for funerals is that it's the children who have stopped practicing their faith that are planning the funeral. That's the music they remember from their childhood.

A priest commented to me a few years ago that people often request Gentle Woman for funerals because they think the hymn is about their own (biological) mother!

I have never encountered that, but it wouldn't surprise me!

The problem of people picking that music at funerals goes away if you just have a church policy that they don't get the option of choosing anything. The church does that. It works great when you have a pastor who backs up that policy

And then those of us who are competent at picking music get stuck with the funeral classics. Even Pavarotti couldn’t escape On Eagles Wings at his funeral.

I wouldn’t mind if parishes just sang the Latin Chant propers for funerals. Funerals can become reverberatingly loud and pounding when they turn into a Canonization Mass to give the deceased “a good send off”. The deceased is gone. The time to give them a “good send off” was when they were still alive and able to receive last rites as they transitioned into the next life about to meet their maker and go to their judgment.

The problem of people picking that music at funerals goes away if you just have a church policy that they don't get the option of choosing anything. The church does that. It works great when you have a pastor who backs up that policy.

I sometimes think of proposing such a policy, but I doubt it would get support at our parish. The other issue is the "funeral choir", which is made up of older people who love those songs as well. They just show up and sing. The most beautiful funeral I have ever played was when the traditionally-leaning family requested a particular soloist instead of the choir, and we could pick proper music because she was actually capable of singing it (and the family supported it).

unerals can become reverberatingly loud and pounding when they turn into a Canonization Mass to give the deceased “a good send off”. The deceased is gone. The time to give them a “good send off” was when they were still alive and able to receive last rites as they transitioned into the next life about to meet their maker and go to their judgment.

That's a catechetical problem. People don't understand the purpose of the funeral rite.

That's a catechetical problem. People don't understand the purpose of the funeral rite.

It’s also an audio engineering problem. “Let’s build a huge futuristic fancy cathedral with tuneable acoustics and a boatload of various types of microphones, but not hire someone who knows how to use them or the sound system.” I feel like this is another area of liturgical worship that is rather forgotten about/not even a thought in many parishes/diocese.

I always thought "Whistle a Happy Tune," might have better theology in it than "Be Not Afraid."

Can you elaborate? BNA is based on Isaiah 43:2-3 and Luke 6:20.

Anecdatum: I've never found *congregational* engagement with HMGW strong - at best, middling.