Vivaldi
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    When I see a drum set, a string bass, a grand piano, a college choir I rarely think beauty is about to rear its head.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdBmOBu0oz0&feature=related">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdBmOBu0oz0&feature=related

    Thanks to MaryMezzo for sending this on. Her Schola, incidentally, is preparing it's first Sacred music program.
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    "When I see a drum set, a string bass, a grand piano, a college choir I rarely think beauty is about to rear its head."

    What an awful thing to say! Especially, when it's obviously not an issue of what's appropriate in a liturgical setting. The fact that such a beautiful performance was on the same program as a piece requiring a drumset speaks volumes about what a well-rounded music education those students are receiving. Should college choirs not sing anything other than Palestrina, Mozart, Bach and Brahms?
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    When you see a drum set, a string bass, and a grand piano Palestrina, Mozart, Bach and Brahms are only in the history class and the choir is spending way to much time choreographing its moves.

    This college got lucky. The local college graduated a music major whose major was barbershop quartet. I use the library there and it is rare to find a book that has been checked out in the last 30 years!

    When you see drums in a Catholic church you know that one mass at least, is to be avoided.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    IF they are singing PMB beautifully then they should be free to sing other things to be well-rounded...especially if they intend to be employed by the average catholic church doing below average music.
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    The local college graduated a music major whose major was barbershop quartet. I use the library there and it is rare to find a book that has been checked out in the last 30 years!


    That's unfortunate. Doesn't sound like the place to go to study music.

    When you see a drum set, a string bass, and a grand piano Palestrina, Mozart, Bach and Brahms are only in the history class and the choir is spending way to much time choreographing its moves.


    Not true. Just not true. An excellent collegiate choir can do PMB and gospel. No, I'll go further. An excellent collegiate choir should do PMB and gospel. I feel as if we are applying the same musical ideals to music study as we are to the liturgy. And that makes me wonder what our real motivations are for the liturgy? Is it just musical preference or is it really motivated by a faithful desire for prayerful worship. It should be possible to appreciate styles of music that you don't feel are appropriate for the liturgy.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    Yes, we are all snobs with our noses in the air. And we are the reason that the music in the Catholic church is a joke today. Polka Masses and Guitar Masses should be performed by all college collegiate choirs if they truly aspire to be excellent.

    There needs to be a college choir that does only PMB and, if they desire, a separate show choir that wastes their time on hand actions, dance steps and fun performances.

    But forcing a serious musician of any age to do crap to be able to also do PMB is wrong. That's what the catholic church is doing today. Need to go to Mass while on a trip? Count on being in the presence of bad music.

    Should a budding symphonic trumpet player risk his teeth and embouchure by being forced into a marching band? Maybe that's why we never see the Juilliard Marching Band doing the "J" on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    Yes, we are all snobs with our noses in the air. And we are the reason that the music in the Catholic church is a joke today. Polka Masses and Guitar Masses should be performed by all college collegiate choirs if they truly aspire to be excellent.


    Within every style of music there is good and bad repertoire. There is bad sacred polyphonic music from the Renaissance, bad Baroque compositions, etc. Most of us just don't know about it because it has (thankfully) fallen out of general use. In our own time, we don't have the luxury of seeing inferior things pass.

    Need to go to Mass while on a trip? Count on being in the presence of bad music.


    Been there, done that. One of the problems (for me) with the bad music so common in Catholic Church music is that it has no particular style. What do you define Marty Haugen's music as to a musician who knows nothing of the Catholic Church, apart from concerns of appropriateness for the Mass? It's not folk, it's not rock and roll, it's not Broadway, it's not easy listening(!), it's some bizarre combination of all of this and nothing. There's not even a style it belongs in, so how then can one even evaluate it's success within a given style?

    But forcing a serious musician of any age to do crap to be able to also do PMB is wrong.


    Yes, if it's crap. But, you're making a value judgment on entire styles of music. Hopefully by exposing students to the best there is in spirituals, gospel, jazz, folk song arrangements, we'll avoid having them go the rest of their lives looking down on anything that's not PMB, without even evaluating it.

    Should a budding symphonic trumpet player risk his teeth and embouchure by being forced into a marching band? Maybe that's why we never see the Juilliard Marching Band doing the "J" on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.


    I think the answer to that is because the players at Julliard are that good. If you're that good of a trumpet student that your professional orchestral career is gauranteed, go ahead stick yourself in a hole or under a rock from other musical styles beyond your preference. The rest of us don't have that luxury.

    Don't get me wrong, there are problems in music in higher education, but don't confuse them with the problems in Catholic Church music, or assume that they're the same.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    Are you kidding me?

    The problems and music higher education are the same!

    And it is evident on every high school and now college stages. Going to hear a choir "concert" today is like dropping in for mass, musically. What you see on the high schools stage today is the product of higher education.

    The lower the age level of education the worse the music is in the schools. As this creeps into colleges, and it has, they end up spending hours on music that fails to improve their musical abilities.
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    Ok. You seem very convicted about this, so I will admit that maybe my own experience in my own ivory tower is different from what you're experiencing. It seems like we're both looking at a wall and I'm saying it's violet and you're saying it's green. I think it may be time for me to assume we're looking at different parts of the wall, and that somewhere down the line the color is different from what I'm seeing.

    The last thing I'm going to say on this - is that I've learned a lot about music (and performing) from singing gospel, spirituals, etc. in choir. It has made my PMB better, I'm convinced. Maybe I'm unique in that I had a balance, and the "fun" stuff didn't entice me into ignoring/forgetting/disregarding PMB. By all means our focus should be on the heritage of Western music, please just don't assume everything else is crap.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    I worked in Germany as musical director for Hair, playing in the band onstage - was musical director for another rock show, The Me Nobody Knows, and conducted the original cast recording of the german cast and also an english recording of it. At that time, Donna Summers, disco queen, was working for me.

    I've worked with one of the finest African-American choirs singing spirituals and was flown to LA to participate as a student in a conference on bring Spirituals alive again in the Black church and was really, really honored to be asked to play in the final service. One of the teachers was Jester Hairston's cousin, and was writing a biography of him - and she's a Juilliard grad.

    None of this music is crap. I've played jazz, very badly. It can be great music as long as I am not playing it.

    But choral music programs today are vastly different from what they once were and their inclusion of popular music forms has dramatically decreased the number of singers that we have available to us in the church.

    IF a college offers the choice of singing PMB and also a show choir, funding for the PMB is decreased as is appreciation for it. A local university farms out its show choir every weekend to an entertainment center in Pigeon Forge across from Dollywood and they make BIG BUCKS.

    When budget allocations are made, does the Bach Choir get equal funding? I'm sure they spend more money on bussing the show choir 189 miles each weekend than they do for the Bach choir overall. It's justified because the show choir makes money.

    Is that what a college education should be about? Doing music that people "like" because it makes money?

    At this point a music department becomes a glorified shop class.
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    At this point a music department becomes a glorified shop class

    ...taking that honor from the Engineering School.
  • Carl DCarl D
    Posts: 992
    Need to go to Mass while on a trip? Count on being in the presence of bad music.

    I'm glad to say that my two trips to London in the last year resulted in some of the finest liturgical music I've heard since the Colloquium. It's there if you look for it.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    We all assume that music outside the US is better. Nice to hear there is truth to it.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,821
    SkirpR said


    Been there, done that. One of the problems (for me) with the bad music so common in Catholic Church music is that it has no particular style. What do you define Marty Haugen's music as to a musician who knows nothing of the Catholic Church, apart from concerns of appropriateness for the Mass? It's not folk, it's not rock and roll, it's not Broadway, it's not easy listening(!), it's some bizarre combination of all of this and nothing. There's not even a style it belongs in, so how then can one even evaluate it's success within a given style?


    I LOVE your assessment ... "some bizarre combination of all of this and nothing" -- priceless!

    Exactly what I have been trying to argue on the OTHER thread we have been volleying back and forth.... this time, YOU SAID IT! Thank You!!!!

    The Roman Catholic church has a style of music. It's Gregorian Chant and Polyphony. It's the Church's own fault that it forgot. We are here to get them back on track and with the program.
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