Guilty Pleasures
  • ChoirpartsChoirparts
    Posts: 147
    Guilty pleasures change with time and circumstance. Sacred music does have something for everyone at some time in one’s life. But what has really provided me with “guilty pleasure” , and great surprise, is the worldwide appeal of Latin hymns. I should have realized it sooner, but it took “Youtube Analytics” to prove it to me. Just about every Latin hymn on the "Choirparts" channel exceeds worldwide viewer counts over the English hymns on the channel.... with the lone exception of Handel’s Messiah. It looks like Latin is still alive and does very well on a worldwide platform. and ....no translation required.
    Thanked by 1BruceL
  • ghmus7
    Posts: 1,483
    Any Gershwin song
    Anything by George Shearing
    ditto Keith Jarett
    Leroy Anderson
    Edith Piaf
    Cajun accordion music.
    I'm a huge fan of Jarrett- anyone else here?
    My real guilty pleasure is playing French Baroque harpsichord music,
    since I am not allowed to play this in church.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    Cajun accordion music

    love it
    Thanked by 1Jeffrey Quick
  • canadashcanadash
    Posts: 1,501
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjqUH0pvZ0U
    Thanked by 1Jeffrey Quick
  • CindyCeciliaCindyCecilia
    Posts: 65
    My current guilty pleasure - Mnozil Brass
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKwbD-g6mKg&feature=player_detailpage
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=YU5J8-P2lpg

    Great talent and great humour.
    Thanked by 2ZacPB189 expeditus1
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,510
    RECTO TONO REBECCA BLACK
  • Mad_Dan_EcclesMad_Dan_Eccles
    Posts: 51
    RECTO TONO REBECCA BLACK


    Is there any other sort?
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,086
    Canadash, that's an amazing rendition of Trompeten-echo. Almost makes me miss being in the Oktoberfest biz. But it's kind of silly to have 60 singers doing what 6 instrumentalists can do better. But then, silly's kind of the point here.
    Thanked by 1canadash
  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,933
    I'm reviving this thread because I'm back on break, and methinks it might break some of the Mozart-inspired contention on another thread . . .

    1) Certain composers of the French Romantic era (but I've gone on at length about them, so moving on)
    2) John Rutter's Magnificat. Perfect for Anglican Zumba excercising but I can't resist.
    Thanked by 1Casavant Organist
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,510
    Feliz Navidad.

    Also my students have been sharing videos with me. Our current favorite is It's Raining Tacos.

    You're welcome.
    Thanked by 1chonak
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    "Simply Irresistible" by Robert Palmer. "She's so fine......"

    PS- "I Wanna Be Sedated," Ramones
    Thanked by 2CharlesW StimsonInRehab
  • Casavant Organist
    Posts: 805
    How Great is our God.

    Ban me now.
  • FidemInFidebusFidemInFidebus
    Posts: 611
    Everyone here hates me anyway so I'll confess to being a kind of Haugen junkie. I like his melodies, words can be ridiculous sometimes, but overall I enjoy his music.

    Also,

    Country music, new and old, mostly old.
    Gaither anything
    Victory in Jesus. Favorite hymn growing up, still a favorite now.
    Heavy metal
    Let's Have Some Old Time Religion, arr. for choir by Marilyn McDonald. Our choir learned this and performs it once a year for one special member of the congregation to brighten her day. It's crazy fun to play!

    :-)
    Thanked by 1Olivier
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,086
    Polka music..MY 3-chord guilty pleasure.
    Thanked by 1StimsonInRehab
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,981
    My guilty pleasure is ice cream and not working out when I know I am supposed to. Musically, mine would be Raison and Boyvin organ works.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    ...would be Raison and Boyvin...

    I see the pleasure here, but I don't see the guilt.
    Thanked by 1francis
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    Musically, I have no guilty pleasures.
    Why would anyone listen to bad music?
    Much less take pleasure in it.
    Much less consent to become inured to it.

    Bad music is pornophony.
    (It was Stravinsky who asserted, in Poetics of Music, that 'surely, music is a moral category'. With this in mind one should be wary of what one listens to, for it does shape, or mis-shape, the mind.)
    Thanked by 2Casavant Organist bhcordova
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,981

    I see the pleasure here, but I don't see the guilt.


    I don't do guilt, I am Byzantine. LOL. Guilt is a Latin thing.
    Thanked by 3M. Jackson Osborn Olivier bhcordova
  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,933
    As far as secular music - Gordon Lightfoot.
    Thanked by 4Kathy mattebery canadash Jani
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,510
    Me too.
    Thanked by 2StimsonInRehab Jani
  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,933
    I don't do guilt, I am Byzantine.


    You Easterners don't know what you're missing!!!
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,981

    You Easterners don't know what you're missing!!!


    I can do without all that Latin angst. LOL.
  • bhcordovabhcordova
    Posts: 1,165
    "We See The Lord" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    @Kathy, isn't "It's Raining Tacos" just another disguise for Pachelbel's Canon?
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,510
    O wow, you are right!
  • CantorSJVCantorSJV
    Posts: 3
    There are some hymns that speak to the heart and/or the soul more than others. Among my favorites are:

    Amazing Grace (of course - when sung with deep feeling)
    What Wondrous Love is This
    How Great Thou Art
    Be Thou My Vision

    Some hymns are just plain beautiful pieces of music:

    Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring (or anything else by Bach)

    If you haven't guessed already, I am a former full-time opera singer and I have been an RC leader of song for many years now.
  • Casavant Organist
    Posts: 805
    Amazing Grace is an extremely guilty pleasure...
    The whole Cantata 147 is beautiful.
  • CantorSJVCantorSJV
    Posts: 3
    Since some posters have indicated some secular music "guilty pleasures," here are some of mine. Disclaimer: I also love classical music, including operas, symphonies, sonatas, etc.

    Country music
    Classic Rock
    1970s Disco
    Billy Joel and Elton John
    Whitney Huston and Celine Dion
    Gershwin, Berlin, Kern, Rogers & Hammerstein, Sondheim, even some Lloyd-Webber

    A lot of my old music professors would consider all of the above list to be guilty pleasures. I just think they are different kinds of music.

    Enough
  • musiclover88
    Posts: 156
    I really love a lot of Gospel. It's so much fun to sing and I find a lot of pieces very moving. I like a lot of the versions that country singers have done, like In the Garden, Peace in the Valley, etc.

    I don't feel guilty about it though because I wouldn't play it for Mass.

    There is one I sort of feel guilty about, though. I kind of love singing Kumbaya. It can be a beautiful song if it's done right.
  • Jani
    Posts: 441
    Gordon Lightfoot, me three.
  • bonniebede
    Posts: 756
    pentatonics -Mary did you know.

    I know I know....
  • musiclover88
    Posts: 156
    I sort of like Mary Did You Know. Theology aside, the song meant a lot more to me after my son was born and I started thinking about Mary's perspective as a mother.
    Thanked by 1bonniebede
  • francis
    Posts: 10,827
    Yes (almost always listened to this group since I was 17... still my largest playlist by far)
    MJ
    Huey Lewis
    Rhoda Scott
    Blue Man Group
    The Beatles
    Bela Fleck
    Chicago
    ELP
    Dave Matthew
    Deep Purple
    George Benson
    Michael McDonald
    The Guess Who

    Igor Stravinsky - Rite of Spring (so funny, MJO) 'surely, music is a moral category'. With this in mind one should be wary of what one listens to, for it does shape, or mis-shape, the mind." - OK... Satanic sacrifice of a virgin ballet? What are you and he thinking!

    Mannheim Steam Roller
    Manhattan Transfer
    Norah Jones
    Pat Metheny
    Virus

    I like GL's If You Could Read My MInd

    but NOT MOZART!!!! (also majorly financed by Satanic organizations)

    Here is one of my electronica comps
    http://tetonvirtuoso.com/images/quintetMixdown.mp3

    I also do not ascribe to any guilt listening to music... However, you might want to say a Hail Mary for the soul of Igor.
  • vansensei
    Posts: 219
    Robert Ray's Gospel Mass. Gospel and the order of the Mass don't seem to fit but they do HERE and it's SOOOO much fun.

    Some of the Haas/Haugen sap isn't bad.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,827
    the ultimate non-sacred serious easy listening music of all time

    this guy was one of the 'saints' of jazz

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dccju4gUfg
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    I sometimes use Sir Edward Bairstow's I Sat Down while the choir is receiving Holy Communion. I have also been known to use (composer escapes me) Let All Mortal Flesh. I've also used Sir Charles Parry's I was glad during the procession. Do these count as guilty" pleasures?
  • MikeHalloran
    Posts: 5
    A song I always wanted to include in Worship but never did: One Love by Bob Marley & Peter Tosh. It's ok if you drop the 3rd verse but ... I didn't want to have to justify that song to others. Still love it, though.
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • bhcordovabhcordova
    Posts: 1,165
    Our Christmas choir usually sings 'Joy to the World' for the recessional. I've asked many times if we could do the Three Dog Night version.
    Thanked by 3francis Casavant Organist mattebery
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,981
    Don't think it too far-fetched to happen. The "contemporary" group at a large parish here did that one year.
  • MikeHalloran
    Posts: 5
    >Our Christmas choir usually sings 'Joy to the World' for the recessional. I've asked many times if we could do the Three Dog Night version.<<br />
    It's too bad that Hoyt Axton isn't around to write a version more appropriate for church. That would certainly be fun.
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    I keep hoping that we'll not sing Joy to the World, in part because, due to overuse, the piece sounds trite.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,093
    When it's programmed on Xmas Eve/Day, I refer to it as Joy To The World, Dammit! It's a song that, if it must be programmed, I'd recommend be used as a recessional on Epiphany or Baptism of the Lord rather than Xmas Day.

    Here's the thing: Christmas Eve/Day are a minefield, pastorally speaking. Yes, we are summoned by the angels to joy at the Nativity. But ... it's also a day when people for a variety of reasons are quite vulnerable to not feeling quite as joyful as they would otherwise want to be. So, take care about force-feeding of joy.

    (My own personal preference for recessional on Xmas Eve/Day: Angels We Have Heard On High.)


  • matthewjmatthewj
    Posts: 2,700
    Joy to the World is a short hymn. If one has a desire to do a form of the proper, a hymn, and a motet during the Offertory at a principal Christmas Mass - JTTW seems a good choice.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,315
    Hark the Herald at Midnight, then Angels at dawn, and JTTW during the day.
    Thanked by 3StimsonInRehab Richard Mix MarkS
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    Joy to the world and Deck the halls are about equal in their utter lack of ecclesiastical or ritual gravitas. One doesn't belong at mass because of the text. The other because of the silly jig of a tune to which 'everyone' is (astonishingly) addicted. Its true place is over a great bowl of wassail in the parish hall after mass. It's notable that it didn't pass muster for the 1940 - until, that is, some clutz shoved it in the appendix to a later-day edition.

    The two Christmass hymns with the most ritual gravitas are O come all ye, and Hark! the herald. They belong as Entrance and Dismissal hymns.

    As an interesting aside, Hark! the herald angels is probably the richest theologically of any of the Christmas carols-hymns-songs (except, perhaps, Of the Father's heart). If a hymn rather than an anthem is sung at the offertory, then it should be Hark!, and Once in royal should be the Entrance, and O come the dismissal.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen MarkS
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Back to guilty pleasures.....
    Despite any/all rationality and rubric, I would love to program the Barber "Adagio" and Bruce Cockburn's "The Rose Above the Sky" on Good Friday. Mmmmm.

    https://youtu.be/d_NhmBB33Bs
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,093
    Hark The Herald is way way way down on my list of preferred Xmas hymns/carols. Hearing once a decade is perhaps sufficient.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,510
    I love me some Hark the Herald.

    No animals, no winter's night, the fact of the Incarnation.
    Thanked by 2Adam Wood MarkS
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    Carmina Burana *ducking and running*
    Thanked by 2a_f_hawkins Adam Wood
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    But, Kathy???
    How could you not like Christina Rossetti's paean to the Nativity of the Man who made the world, with its little bit of imaginary (or was it real! Who knows?) wintry charm?

    In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan,
    Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone;
    Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow,
    In the bleak mid-winter, Long ago.

    Our God, heav'n cannot hold him Nor earth sustain
    Heav'n and earth shall welcome him When he comes to reign;
    In the bleak mid-winter A stable-place sufficed
    The Lord God incarnate, Jesus Christ.

    Angels and archangels May have gather'd there,
    Cherubim and seraphim Thronged the air;
    But his mother only, In her maiden bliss
    Worshipped the beloved With a kiss.

    What can I give him, Poor as I am?
    If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
    If I were a wise man, I would do my part;
    Yet what I can I give him - Give him my heart.


    Here is incarnation and lordship
    Angels, too - and a loving creaturely mother of him whose father is God.
    And icy metaphors of the world that gave him a 'cold shoulder'.
    Granted, there is neither ox nor ass.

    This is pleasure - and no guilt about it.





    Thanked by 3noel jones, aago melofluent StimsonInRehab
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