GV: What is your opinion of the whole "traditional vs. contemporary" worship music debate? How do you answer those who feel your music is not appropriate in a Mass setting?

DS: Because some of my early pieces of music have been around for nearly forty years (“Sing a New Song,” “You Are Near,” “All My Days”), there are people who call my music “traditional.” A friend of mine, a parish music director, tells the story of a lady who came to hear wanted to plan the music for her own funeral liturgy. The lady began by saying that she wanted the music to be traditional, not contemporary. My friend assumed she, therefore, wanted pieces like “How Great Thou Art” and “Amazing Grace.” “Oh my no!” the lady responded. “I want music like “Here I Am, Lord” and “On Eagle’s Wings” for my funeral. So what is “traditional” and what is “contemporary” is understood quite differently by people.

I suspect your question has more to do with what one might call the “style wars” that many communities are experiencing. It is a judgment about what kind of music is appropriate for use at worship. It would be important for someone to articulate why exactly they don’t think my music, or music in the style I write, is not appropriate. Many times, when you try to get them explain, the answer comes down to a matter of personal taste. They don’t like my music. They like what I’ll call the more classical “church” music, like plainchant, or Palestrina, or Proulx.

But worship, and vehicles we use to express our praise and thanks to God, is not about perfection or performance. That doesn’t mean that we don’t do all we can to create beauty in the visual, musical and ritual elements we use for worship, but it means that these art forms are never an end in themselves. All these elements are at the service of the prayer of the community and are judged by how well, or how poorly, they help people to pray. In every age, the new music that’s created must be judged by how well it can do this. The music must stand the test of time. How many years? It would seem that forty years is a rather significant amount of time. And over the centuries, both people of faith have used a variety of styles to express their faith and Church leadership has never “christened” just one kind of music. People are different and find different styles of music help them to pray. I myself find I can pray with many different styles and my music over the years reflects that. I suspect the people who are so critical of my music judge it by how they heard it sung in church. There are many elements of “classical” music in my compositions and I’ve used plainchant melodies in my music. It is simply not appropriate to say that the only kind of music should be used for worship, or even more, to impose the style that I prefer for prayer on everyone.