Can beautiful pictures enhance a musical book ??
  • RagueneauRagueneau
    Posts: 2,592
    Our newest Year A Chabanel Psalms Publication has a multitude of beautiful pictures (line art), such as this one, for Pentecost.

    THIS PAGE in particular, I absolutely love.

    I hope you can take a minute and look through the entire 180-page organist book or the 90 page vocalist book.
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,204
    Absolutely!

    Why do you suppose the publishers of altar missals went to such great pains to include all of those beautiful woodcuts?

    One of the things that drives me crazy about the majority of "in the pew" resources is that they're completely devoid of any beauty. Or worse, they're redolent with 1970's-style art work. It's as if everything is reduced to utility. Artwork is often included to fill blank space on pages, rather than inspire one or lead one to greater prayer.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    good point, DA.
  • benedictgal
    Posts: 798
    I might add that even if OCP were to insert some of the gorgeous artwork from the Vatican into its song books, it would not do anything to enhance the content of the dreadful music, itself. It would just give us some eye candy to look at while we are suffering through the bad music.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    good point, benedictgal.
  • Daniel Bennett PageDaniel Bennett Page
    Posts: 833
    Look at the significant use of visual art in Magnificat: it's integral.
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,204
    Benedictgal's point is spot-on. And, I think it's part of a total package of banal music and banal art that infiltrated the Church beginning in the 1960's, so far as I can tell, but perhaps even earlier. Before I converted I was exposed to average Catholic parish music and looked at various books, including altar missals and the like, out of curiosity. I found it puzzling that the artwork employed in so many of the books, hymnals, missals, and prayer books was ugly, banal, amateurish, clumsy and uninspired. Take a look at the gold embossed covers of altar missals and lectionaries from the 60's through the 80's - big, blocky, wedge-shaped lines, giving a "Flintstones" appearance to the illustrations. Currently, even the clip art resources available from places like LTP for use in service booklets, bulletins, etc., have a kind of primitive look to them. The music contained in the books with these kinds of illustrations seem to match up nicely.

    On the other hand, many devotional art works (prayer cards and the like) tend to be rooted in a kind of faux-romantic style, employing a type of cloying sentimentality in its depictions of saints and even Jesus and Our Lady. These styles come from the same period that give us cloying and sentimental devotional songs and hymn texts; for example: "On this day, oh beautiful Mooooooooooooooooooooo-ther . . . ", and "fondly we hooooooooooooooooo-ver." (N.B. The music does not indicate that hold on the first sylable of "Mother" or "hover", but I have yet to hear it sung without a lengthy hold). Thomas Day spoke at length about this kind of sentimentality in "Why Catholics Can't Sing."
  • RagueneauRagueneau
    Posts: 2,592
    David,

    N.B. The music does not indicate that hold on the first sylable of "Mother" or "hover", but I have yet to hear it sung without a lengthy hold


    Perhaps they need to read Shall the Accented Syllables be lengthened? ??

    ;-)
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,204
    @ Jeff - *snort*
  • matthewjmatthewj
    Posts: 2,694
    I once had to create a worship aid for Advent that included:

    Neumes for Sanctus and Agnus Dei XVIII
    Neumes for Kyrie XVII
    Line art
    and......
    Walk in the Reign... perhaps the most terrifying Advent hymn ever written.
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,204
    Walk in the Reign . . . second only in horror to "A Voice Cries Out."
  • JDE
    Posts: 588
    When what you are really thinking is, 'My voice cries, "OUT!"'
  • benedictgal
    Posts: 798
    I am dreading the near-certainty that I will hear "A Voice Cries Out" this weekend. AAARRRGGHH! I would rather hear "On Jordan's Bank" instead.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    I would rather hear "On Jordan's Bank" instead.

    You should swing by my Episcopal parish- that's the recessional. :)
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    not familiar with 'a voice cries out'

    how about 'O Come Divine Messiah?'
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    Re: "Beautiful Mother", it's not Victorian and it's not drawn out. (If you do it right.)

    Mo- and ho- are not sung as half notes, because -ther and -ver are eighth notes, not quarter notes. It's an Irish sean nos singing ornamentation, emphasizing the text, playing with the melody, and having the intended benefit of sounding and feeling ethereal when sung by people who know how.

    Standardized ornamentation length, the way the softening of the volume as you go is usually done, and the sorta marcato way people sing -ther and -ver instead of dropping it like a hot potato -- those are probably Victorian choral influence.
  • papalgal
    Posts: 35
    I got tortured with both "Every Valley" and "A Voice Cries Out" at Mass today. What was even worse was hearing the Mariachis (during the live broadcast of the Mass from our Cathedral) blare out "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" with full horns during Holy Communion. What a way to kill Advent solemnity. No amount of sacred images could improve on the drek I heard today.
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