Ironically to all of this, you need years of conservatory piano training to even ATTEMPT any of Haas's "songs" or the Gloria from the Mass of Light...

Actually I have come to side with Haas here a bit more than I used to. I wouldn't hesitate from kicking out the tone-deaf; in fact I had a developmentally disabled woman attempt to join the choir that I sadly had to remove when even matching the priest's sung collect was a difficulty. But I think the nature of the liturgy almost makes the quality of the singing of secondary importance.

My experience comes from my visit to the new local Antiochian Orthodox mission, also my first visit to an Eastern Divine Liturgy. It's run by a former Lutheran and consists of a congregation of mostly the same. Their liturgy was, without fear of overstatement, enough to convince me that there IS an objective beauty and I was witnessing it. And yet there was nothing going on to make it beautiful: the congregation was mostly in jeans, the liturgy was held in a banquet hall of a charity center, the liturgy was in English, and the choir was BAD. When I say bad, I mean embarrassingly bad bad bad: all women, some off pitch, most with shrill nasal voices, and some with a heavy vibrato mockery of Eastern singing. And the congregation sang along in a country/folk style voice with some making up parts. And yet that is the most beautiful music I had ever heard. Why? Because the beauty was entirely in the liturgy.

Look at our western liturgy now. We have that beauty in the antiphons of Mass! The more I do chant the more I realize that which is proper to the liturgy is crying out to be sung at Mass, and yet so often I've refused to do propers because everything was "too hard" or psalm tones/recto tono are just boring. But there's the beauty of the liturgy - not in how we sing, but what! This Sunday, due to not lining up a cantor, I had to cantor for our early Mass. We had "The Strife is Over", and split up "O Fili et Filiae" for offertory and closing, and then at Communion I sang exactly what the Church told me to, what my title demands of me: "Put your hand into my side Thomas, Alleluia...." I sang it to tone VI, and for those 20 seconds, the liturgy was being done. Did it matter that I mangled the Alleluias? Well, yes, BUT it didn't detract from the liturgy being done. I could have (in a perfect world) done the Byrd Haec Dies with an octet of boys and men perfectly done, but it wouldn't beat the pure beauty that the liturgy provides.

I'm reminded of when I had my choir sing "Laetare, Jerusalem". One of them was fretting and going on about how terrible it is and how bad it will sound. We wound up roughly note-perfect in the end, but I kept telling her, "It doesn't matter. What does matter is that we are doing the music of the liturgy, not something foreign. It's good music and we're going to show to the congregation that it's good music by letting the music speak for itself." I have no doubt that all you on this board would s**t (that says "spit" and nothing else) all over our performance. You would probably even call my direction inept, stupid, and overly rhythmic. But I can tell you that we sang what the liturgy commanded of us, and didn't dare to think ourselves "above" that.

In short, there's a role to be played in Mass by the musicians. And anything keeping you from fulfilling that role is just an excuse.

"I have no doubt that all you on this board would s**t (that says "spit" and nothing else) all over our performance. You would probably even call my direction inept, stupid, and overly rhythmic. But I can tell you that we sang what the liturgy commanded of us, and didn't dare to think ourselves "above" that."

Gavin, dude! Speaking for myself, I'd wager (and GregP will attest that I DON'T gamble) that the exact opposite sentiments would be offered you if we had the honor of hearing your singers perform by "all of" us. The reason I joined CMAA at Colloquium is precisely because of the evident humility and unprejudiced demeanor of the folks gathered there to garner wisdom and practicum from equally enthused and experienced mentors. There ain't no preening of peacock feathers among the various levels of artistic and academic practicioners at CMAA. And that's why this ain't no NPM or, for that matter, ACDA.
Regarding inclusiveness, we're generations removed from the old anecdote about "Sister told me to just mouth the words, mommy!" and the lifelong stigma. We've all faced that, most certainly in church choirs, and many of us in secondary and university academic choirs. Deo Gratias we have the benefit of folks like Richard Miller and James C. McKinney who help us understand that: first-tone deafness is greatly exaggerated; two- those who have such issues can, with dedication, be guided into remediating those issues. Haas' citing of that sort of injustice is likely based upon stereotypes culled from anecdotes confided to his own experiences.
His "feel good" mentality is likely premised upon entirely different criteria than the "feel good" sense of accomplishment you and your choirs, however technically capable they may be, know as a result of offering your best efforts in realizing the best efforts of sacred composers in service to God and His Faithful.
Dude, we're with you! (Sorry for the Lebowski-speak!) In the words of JPII first spoken as pontiff: do not be a-fret.
Oops, my bad!;-)

It's long been my suspicion that the praise music crowd doesn't like quality. Certainly the ubiquity of their music has demoralized serious musicians from being involved in a choir. Interesting to see that openly admitted.

I spoke with a person in Tennessee whose parish has two Masses, in a fairly large parish. Both are crowded. The music is 100% haugen/haas etc. The morning Mass has one person playing piano and singing the melody to four songs. The mid-morning Mass has one person playing piano and three people singing the melody to four songs. That's the whole parish music program. The pastor knows it is awful and so does everyone else, but no one even knows where to begin fixing this. There is no joy here. It's very sad.

Well, the problem is unusually acute in Catholic congregations. We were thin on talent to begin with. Then when music came along that required next to nothing of the choir and even dramatically diminished the role of choir, it was all over. The rebuilding is going to take a long while, and there is no shortcut.

I can recall that I sang for a conventional parish choir for about 8 months, just to sort of pay my dues. I was just embarrassed at the infantile nature of this music. It makes anyone with actual training feel ridiculous.

Just luring existing musicians back to the Catholic Church is a struggle. People with ability have been burned very badly in modern times in the parish setting. I recall trying to talk to an ex-Catholic alto about singing for us. She used to direct music at a Catholic parish before there was a praise-music upheaval. I told her that we were doing chant and polyphony, good music. Her response was deeply cynical: "Yeah sure, and how long will that last? Until the new pastor comes along and tosses you all out." She was so bitter that she could hardly even speak about the subject.

Very interesting... At a workshop some years ago, Haas berated the gathered liturgical musicians for many lapses in musical precision. I didn't care much for the guy then and this notice hasn't changed my mind. His music is just plain inappropriate for the Mass IMO.

Well, I guess perceptions are dictated by experiences. And the truth is that I was raised in the midst of the most music-crazed protestant environment imaginable, so that nearly everyone in the church could read music, and singing was beyond belief. I recall a music summer camp in New Mexico for Baptists (Glorieta) that was higher-level that nearly any musical experience I've ever had, even at the university level. Then I look at now in the Catholic parishes I know, and I see nearly 100% musical illiteracy. Well, I'll stop writing on this now, since I wrote about it at length in the Sacred Music newly posted online. Essentially what I pointed out is that the world I grew up in has collapsed too. Glorieta once did Brahms and Mendelssohn. Now it is P&W and the quality is gone--as confirmed by many people who remember the old days. Anyway, the point is the future, not the past.

oh hmmm. The article with Arlene about the Advent thing. Ok. After a bit.

I'm more or less with Gavin on the talent pool being weak contention, Jeffrey. In fifteen years I could have picked any Sunday morning, walked up each of our aisles and pointed out high school/college kids who have/had been members of the Concert or Chamber Choruses of any of our four extraordinary high school choral programs; their parents who were known to me as former collegiate singers as well as instrumentalists, including many of the professionals in our symphony. Here's the deal: they're unwilling for a number of understandable reasons to make a 1.5 hour rehearsal commitment on a weeknight and an equal time commitment on Sunday mornings. Many of them are already booked solid doing other parish activities at night, or athletics, civic clubs and whatnot.
The weird factor is that when a parish choir manages to achieve, maintain and improve its artistic abilities over a consistent number of years, you don't have folks beating on your door to join in the fun. On the contrary, they think "Hey, they're doing okay, they don't need me." Mostly it's a matter of not wanting to make a time commitment, not a lack of actual musical or vocal talent in most places, I would speculate.

Some of the criticisms of praise bands I read here sound like hearsay. At any rate, in the setting they're meant for, they make very good use of resources..a good sound system, four skilled musicians with an empathetic leader can be very effective at moving the congregation, to the cross, to rejoicing, or whatever. However, the problem of leaving the congregation behind becomes even worse then and worship becomes ghettoized.

Plainchant is, ironically perhaps, better suited at building up the entire congregation in the use of their own voices, provided the schola doesn't take the congregation as a dumb lump of thugs and instead maintains an attitude of adoration to God and encouragement to neighbor.

That's my newbie perception anyway.

Perhaps, in some settings anyway, it might be more useful for a schola to be a "new evangelization" group rather than a parish choir?