But melodies that cannot be sung without accompaniment, that's what you need to ban to improve singing in your parish.

Brilliant. Of course. And if this were done, an added benefit would be that no one would "need" to accompany the congregation during Lent unless they were all practically tone deaf, so people could follow that ideal/rule of the Catholic church without trouble.

I really do think you've hit the nail on the head, but I don't think that anyone actually thought guitars were the problem. I think guitars are a representation, a symbol, of the problem.

I just decompressed from Masses by watching "Babette's Feast."
Sorry, Noel, melodies that utilize metre can be sung with or without accompaniment. Your paradigm doesn't hold water.
You were on more honest rhetorical ground just by dissing guitars ad libitum.
It is about the musician, not the instrument. What of that cannot you accept?
Yes, even in extremis, harmonium or harmonica, bongos even banjos.
Your thesis, even as noble and air-tight as you imagine, won't ever result in orthopraxis.
If the musician and his/her instrument can humbly support the Word of God sung by the human voice singing the patrimony of musics in the sacred treasury, then (in the words of McCartney) "let it be."
And let that music, if and whenever possible, be the chant from time immemorial.

Examples:

Wherever You Go
Verses to Moore's Taste and See
Who Calls You By Name
Sweet Refreshment
With This Bread
Pan de Vida
One Bread, One Body
Take and Eat
By The Waters of Babylon
Live In Light
Be Light
We Come to Your Feast
Gather in Your Name
Table Song
For Living, For Dying
In The Breaking of the Bread

All of these were not written as melodies and later set to harmonies...all of these were words set to a strummed rhythm on a guitar or other rhythm instrument. Words and notes fitted to a steady rhythm already in place.

Charles, I think you mis-interpreted what Noel's point is.

I would like to add to the list of examples:
Gather Us In
On Eagle's Wing
We Are Called
We Are Many Parts

I'm sure there's dozens and dozens more.

However, even older "traditional" hymns have accompaniments/harmonizations (Immaculate Mary, On Jordan's Bank, etc), but yet they can still hold their own without accompaniment. The above examples require accompaniment because of how they're actually composed, regardless of what instruments are to accompany them.

ESCHEW OBFUSCATION.

Many on this list are afraid to post because they fear their simple ideas and questions will be attacked.

Many on this list seek to be able to explain to a pastor why songs the people want to sing should not be sung. Telling them to sing chant instead is not going to solve the problem.

Showing them songs which limit the intervals sung and follow the rhythm of the words, songs that are then singable by the congregation, is a solution.

And these songs are, like Let All Mortal Flesh, chant-like. Because they follow the rules of chant composition. They tend to be in 4/4, some in 3/4.

I was talking about chant and still am.

Has anyone heard a congregation sing chorale melodies without accompaniment?

Funny, that's precisely the one I was thinking of! We sang that yesterday (Passion Sunday). I thought we could've handled it by ourselves, at least for one verse.

I wonder why it was called Passion Sunday! Because it is the beginning of the passion narrative? That is pretty neat, if so.

Palm vs. Passion Sunday: Wikipedia has an idea.
On the USCCB website, however, it's called "Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion."

Re: the topic
I'm mostly with Noel on this one. Though I'm not quite sure I understand the first lemma, "'All music to be sung must be limited to patterns of two or three notes", which sounds... very restrictive, the others just seem like good common sense. At least, they make great sense for the establishing of a basic, solid repertoire that can be utilized by the whole Church, or, at least, any one Rite of the Church, regardless of musical resources or monetary resources. If a piece makes musical sense when you just hear the melody, rather than depending on harmony lines or orchestration to complete the musical thought, then it can be used at any Mass. A priest singing unaccompanied in his preferred key can begin it, or even sing it alone (as I have seen many times at weekday Masses, where the celebrant will often begin a recessional hymn, after an otherwise spoken Mass.) If this kind of music is unavailable, or is perceived as unavailable, because chant is discounted as a possibility, then music can only too easily become a strain on the liturgy. Just imagine if every parish were attempting Byrd's polyphonic Mass for 5 voices! It'd be a disaster. A reliable default, still beautiful, is definitely needed.

But I personally think there is a time and a place for liturgical music that -does- rely on harmony lines, and perhaps orchestration as well (guitar or otherwise), to complete the musical thought. If a parish can handle it, polyphonic choral pieces are nice, and in my opinion the inseparability of the vocal parts in a polyphonic chorale is just about equivalent to the inseparability of certain vocal lines to particular guitar accompaniments. It could be a lousy piece of polyphony, or a poorly written guitar/vocal piece, or two fantastic pieces, but if all we're concerned about is having a separable melody, then I think polyphony too is completely excluded. Similarly, Bruckner's Mass in C, written for an alto soloist, NEEDS the organ. Some people might think that makes it a performance setting rather than a liturgical setting, but I'm not sure. I could see either way.

So yes, having something as difficult as "Be Not Afraid" for a parish's baseline default makes very little sense. But I think we should be careful lest we conceptually throw the baby out with the bath water.

If you want to hear congregations singing unaccompanied in 4-part harmony.... check out the Sunday services for the Church of Christ. (Church of Christ, not United Church of Christ.) It'll rock your world.

Noel wrote: ESCHEW OBFUSCATION.

Gesundheit.

Charles, we cited those "hymns" because it's what a lot of parishes are still doing, whether you like them or not, or whether you think they're ridiculously cliche or not. Plus, I've worked with those musicians who are only into "that kind" of liturgical music ... Discussing chant, and the like, with some of them is as effective as beating your head against a wall. What are you suppose to say when your own priest and music director tell you that chant is "obsolete", and that if we have to go back to it they'll start their own religion across the street?

Thank God I left that job ...

Trying singing "We Are Many Parts" without accompaniment, and see if everyone stays together in perfect time, like it should. Noel makes a valid point about this.

Oh yeah, I forgot about "Be Not Afraid" ... Even WITH accompaniment, it seems like no one can ever agree on any of the dotted rhythms. Singing it unaccompanied would be an even bigger disaster.

Rebecca, thanks for your kind question.

"All music to be sung must be limited to patterns of two or three notes.
No melodic note may be longer than two beats.
No melodic leaps are permitted more than a fifth, and these should be rare.
If the text calls for a note longer than two beats, the composer strings together quarter notes and the singer pulses each note when singing this string of notes on the same pitch. This should be rare."

This, off the top of my head, is a set of rules that governs the composition of early counterpoint as in the style of Palestrina. It is not a coincidence that this also describes the rules for composing Gregorian style chant. The list should also include the rules of permitted harmonic intervals...perfect, major...and so on.

It is not a coincidence since polyphony was a natural move from composing monophonic music, and started out with a few perfect intervals, organum, being permitted to be sung against chant melodies.

"To eliminate CCCM from your parish, you establish a simple set of rules."

If you and the choir want to sing CCCM that's fine! But what I am referring to is music for the congregation to sing....and for the choir, complex polyphonic works that go beyond the rules, that's fine...there should be levels of ability - simple for the congregation and more advanced for the choir. And when you choose music for the choir you choose things that are easy, harder and difficult, and that makes them grow. So these rules are to be applied to music that you expect the people in the pews to sing.

I do believe that hymnals that eliminate SATB settings and offer only the melody are insulting to Catholic in the pews. They should have the opportunity to read and sing it if they will....

Congregations that stand and sit, pray out loud and then stand mute during hymns...that's rude.

But they do so because people that choose the songs are often cantors and people that "like" a song and then want to sing it. Without a clue as to its singability. A chart listing songs and their accessibility to congregations would be helpful.

Protestants that want their people to sing stick with a repertoire from a hymnal that is created by a group of professional musicians who work in churches in most cases.

Protestant churches that REALLY want everyone to sing repeat choruses over and over again led by a song leader at a microphone. The choruses are short.

Catholic hymnals are more a track record of what has been popular among charismatic and other groups rather than being a guiding force to lead Catholic to sing.

Ison? I cannot seem to find a reference to using ison in relation to CCCM music....and not part of Gregorian Chant practice...nor how it specifically applies to eliminating CCCM in your parish.


You have a problem with CCCM in your Byzantine Parish, I take it? Byzarre.

Noel, I wasn't talking about CCCM music so much as the rules that you posted which Rebecca was commenting on. The rules seem to exclude some music which does fall under the "singable without accompaniment" category, like songs with ison.

As a side note, ison might not be a Gregorian chant practice, but most Gregorian chants can be sung with ison, and it makes them sound AWESOME.

"To "eliminate" CCCM from your parish, don't program it."

Amen to this, Charles.

I used Ison in a Holy, Holy I wrote last night, and on a recording of chant by a girl's choir earlier this year, it is a great effect and does help to keep people on pitch on the melody.

All that I was trying to do was to outline ways to identify melodies that are singable...by amateurs of little or no ability. Adding accompaniment to help them is fine....but if a melody HAS to be accompanied to be sung by a group, then that melody is suspect.

Eagles Wings in unison, a capella?

Quoth Jeffrey: The one by Michael Joncas? Good luck.

Precisely. And thus is harmony achieved on the boards, if not in the plainsong we have decided to make.

Charles, it's not an unprepared suspended V in 4/2 ... look in the accompaniment where the verses begin (ms 11). It's a plain old IV chord for the entire measure, with octave Ds in the right hand part going against the singer's C# on both beats 1 and 3. The left hand part also outlines the IV chord quite plainly. Even the guitar chords indicate a "G major chord" for the entire measure. So, I'm not seeing this resolution you're speaking of.

I've played this hymn quite enough in my past church jobs ...

Charles, There's an interesting article in the WSJ today about the use of long-dead composers such as Machaut being used in Jazz settings nowadays. Instead of trying to replicate what the music would have sounded like 4 or 5 hundred years ago, (Since there really is no way of knowing) the musicians use it as a starting point. One prominent exponent is a UK professor who is a member of the Hilliard group, whose name is John Potter a tenor and professor of musicology at Univ of York.
Article written by Corinna Da Fonseca-Wollheim.

Donna

Latin? No one has said a word about Latin.

No one has said anything about singing unaccompanied.

I bow out as this discussion has gone off topic. I sink this discussion.

I start my comment in the evening and finish it in the morning
and then find the entire Discussion has gone off the rails
and is tagged "sink".

Why is it so difficult to stay on topic?

you said that songs we sing in church ought...

Or, at least, that songs that the congregation is expected to sing ought etc. Exceptions were made for challenging choir-only pieces. But yes, "ought to at least be singable unaccompanied" was definitely the aim, vs. "must in fact be sung unaccompanied, always and everywhere". Nobody was trying to outlaw organs, or guitars, for that matter (hence, I believe, the title "guitars [and organs] are not the problem")

I also think "Latin chant" was used basically synonymously with ""plainchant" above, correctly or incorrectly, so I agree that nobody is really trying to dicuss Latin vs. other languages here. It was just an example of unaccompanied monophonic singing.

The particular chord patterns in "Eagles Wings" might have been an excellent chance to try out the new "whisper" feature :-)

As a test, songs that a congregation can sing ought to be able to sung unaccompanied, as a test.

Latin and Chant are dirty, fighting, words to some here, people who are not committed for one reason or another to the reform though they have a connection of some sort to the Latin Rite. But the first page of the CMAA site clearly outlines the goals of CMAA.

To participate in this forum with the goals of the association and not only not support the goals but talk against them...unfortunately, that causes friction, like eating a hamburger in line while protesting for PETA at McDonalds.

While Latin was not part of this discussion, it has appeared here, once again. Charles, the church you belong to does not sing in Latin as I understand it. I do not know this for sure, because I have no need to understand the Byzantine Rite. The church that pays you as a church musician does, according to Popes Gregory, Paul VI and Benedict of today, does want the Church to be able to sing in Latin.

The Latin Rite has always prized its universality. I listened to Mass in the Sudan last evening and I knew what was going on because the Latin Rite has a universal format. Once it had a universal language, now it permits vernacular at the order of the local Bishop.

There are those that want parishes to be able to participate in the Latin Rite in Latin...and that includes these Popes.

So here, instead of discussing ways to determine song melodies that are singable and unsingable by Latin Rite congregations, we are back in the struggle over Latin.

Nicely put, I hope, I am going to stop responding to posts that appear that come from people who are not in line with the goals of the CMAA and persist in not supporting the organization through their participation.

Sorry, I was responding to an ongoing thread against Latin by posters that has pooped up here. I mean, popped. Popped up? Reared its Latinate head?