I just received this nice note re: my article in the new SACRED MUSIC. Seems worthy to run as a letter to the edito

Dear Mr. Tucker,
Your article "The Problem of Catholic Musical Illiteracy" in the most
recent issue of /Sacred Music/ is timely and well-fashioned. It calls
attention to a disturbing phenomenon that has appeared, not only in
Roman Catholic Churches, and not only in _all_ churches, but in modern
society as a whole. I'm writing you, not to argue with or to refute
anything you say. Indeed, I greatly appreciate your willingness to
address this distressing matter. I want to suggest, though, that you
consider it in a wider context, a context that (to my mind) both
clarifies and and greatly complicates the problem.

It's true, as you have noted, that congregational singing, once part of
the bastion of Protestantism, has declined dramatically in the last half
century. That is confirmed not only by documents from the past, but by
people older than I (people in their 70's and 80's) who still remember
what congregational singing in Protestant churches was once like. The
clue that puts this decline into perspective is to compare it with
singing in present-day traditional societies, notably in Christian
Africa, where both Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations are noted
for the vigor and vitality of their singing. That clue suggests that, in
order to understand this phenomenon, we should broaden our sights to
modern culture as a whole. Since the advent of the mass media and of
amplified and recorded music (in the 1920's and 30's), there have been
several generations in the developed world who have been subjected to
the entertainment paradigm: a soloist or a small group of singers (the
few) who perform for an audience (the many). The vast majority of people
in the modern world now assume without question that "music" is the few
(with musical talent and ability) performing for the many (without it).

Furthermore, the ubiquitous availability of recorded music has obviated
the necessity for people to sing. Singing lullabies to infants and
children, once an almost instinctive parental urge, has yielded to
playing recorded music to pacify children. Singing in the family, once a
primary way both of entertainment and of community-building, has
practically vanished. Most children, as a result, grow up with no model
for family or group singing, and with the assumption that one need not
sing, need only listen. If we grant that music is in many ways similar
to language, then we might ask ourselves the question, "If a child only
hears spoken language through the medium of a recording, will that child
be inclined to develop skill in speaking?" I don't know the answer to
that question, because (I hope!) no one has ever conducted that
experiment. But it's reasonable to suspect that, since young children
aren't sung to and aren't expected to sing, many of them will not grow
up with any _ability_ to sing, and many others will grow up with their
ability to sing impaired. It's a matter of connecting (or not
connecting) ears with throats. Whatever school music curriculum these
children are exposed to is unlikely to address their disability; school
music curricula these days are often modeled on the entertainment
paradigm. These children's attempts to sing are likely to be met by
ridicule, and to cause them intense embarrassment. The result is adults
who cannot sing, or sing badly, and who avoid singing like the plague.
Such people, in my mind, are to be pitied, not censured.

In your article, you raise the question of musical illiteracy. What
you've written is undoubted true. To my way of thinking, though, musical
illiteracy ought not to be considered the major concern; after all, most
Africans and singers in other traditional societies would not be
musically "literate" in the sense you're speaking of. The matter of
musical ability, specifically the ability to sing, ought to be the focus
of concern, if we want rightly to perceive the problems and the
challenges. The low, pitchless drone we hear when people sing "Happy
Birthday" in restaurants isn't the result of musical illiteracy; it's
the result of an inability to sing. That "Happy Birthday" is the last
vestige of communal singing in U.S. culture; the "Star Spangled Banner"
at sports events is now almost everywhere turned over to a soloist or a
recording. The "Kindermusik" movement, growing out of the work of Prof.
John Feierabend and others, has begun to address the challenge of
developing children's (and their parents') ability to sing, but of
course it reaches only a small percentage of the population.

If children have grown up in a singing-deprived environment, the onset
of puberty often seems to be the point at which they become completely
vocally mute. I'm now retired, but for many years I taught a course,
"The Music Experience," to non-music majors at the UNL School of Music,
a course that encouraged them to discern features within a musical
texture, and then to develop the skill to articulate what they hear. I
should tell you that, upon questioning each succesive class, I
invariably found that almost 100% of them had performed in a musical
ensemble, either vocal or instrumental, in high school--they were, in a
manner of speaking, the "musical elite." Acting on the sage advice of an
older colleague, who suggested that singing ability and hearing ability
are in some as yet unexplained way linked to one another, I began to ask
students first to join me in singing one low pitch. Once a majority of
them had found the pitch (there were some who never did), I led them in
singing the degrees of the scale (do, re, mi, but using numbers: 1, 2,
3). After engaging in this activity for several weeks, I finally gave
them an impromptu quiz: "I'm going to sing a melody for you. If you hear
that this melody goes up, rises, would you please draw a rising line on
your paper. If you hear that the melody goes down, gets lower, would you
please draw a falling line on your paper. If you hear that the melody
stays on the same note, would you please draw a flat line on your
paper." Then (being careful not to make any physical movement) I'd sing
the notes do, re, mi, fa, sol (all on the vowel "ah"). I'd then collect
the papers. Invariably 25% - 30% of the class would draw a descending
line or a flat line. Those results correlated well with a 1993 study by
Prof. Keith Thompson of Pennsylvania State Univ. Reporting on a survey
he conducted among 7th and 8th graders, Prof. Thompson stated:

"Urban, rural, and suburban teenagers have different listening habits
when it comes to popular music… [but] Urban, rural, and suburban
students were alike in describing rhythm as the most important musical
element to them. They paid little attention to instruments and volume
and none to melody or harmony."

You may be acquainted with the name "John Bell." Bell is an ordained
minister of the Church of Scotland (Reformed), and also the primary
musical figure linked to the Iona Community. Bell has published a little
book, /The Singing Thing/, in which he treats 10 reasons why Christians
should sing, and then delves into 4 reasons why people don't sing.
Here's what he says:

"If any group of people is asked, 'How many of you cannot sing?' one in
four will raise their hands to confess tone-deafness, no sense of pitch
or some other musical deficiency… One in four is an horrendous
proportion of the population. But it is a specifically European, and
more especially British, predicament. [This is of course not so; the
same predicament prevails in the U.S. and, I suspect, everywhere modern
culture has gained a firm foothold.] In other continents, the
presumption is that everyone can sing. In some tribal societies singing,
composing and teaching a song to others is part of the rite of
initiation into manhood. But in western Europe [and in the U.S.], the
presumption that all can sing is displaced by the belief that some can
and some cannot. Those who can't have been told…" [p. 95]

"…In the West we are going into uncharted territory where music is
increasingly seen as something which is the preserve of gifted
individuals whom others are expected to listen to and admire. The more
this aspect of musical culture prevails, the less will ordinary people
perceive that it is their prerogative to sing and participate in
communal music-making. Therefore when the Church invites people to sing
hymns, it is doing something profoundly counter-cultural. It is both
presuming that all can sing, and providing material specifically written
so that the whole community can participate…" [p. 118]

Most of what I've said is anecdotal: unsubstantiated and
unsubstantiatable. Given the state of research on this topic, that's
inevitable. There have been studies of the effects of particular kinds
of music (e.g., five days of uninterrupted acid rock makes plants wilt;
but of course there's no indication whether this is due to musical style
or sheer volume), and also studies on how a certain demographic (e.g.,
teens) perceives music. To the best of my knowledge, though, there've
been no broad-based studies assessing people's musical or singing
abilities. There's no money to be made from this information--in fact,
the results might be a national embarassment, and might make the popular
music industry look bad. This information isn't understood as critical
to national well-being. So there are no big grants to do studies such as
this, and the studies don't get done.

It may be up to the church to initiate the conversation, since the
church has a lot to lose if it's not initiated. I think that
conversation needs to be carried on in the broadest possible context,
both ecumenical and with society as a whole. And I think it needs to be
carried on with humility and patience, with gentleness and grace, and
with sympathy and understanding for those many people, both within and
without the church, whom modern culture has deprived of the gift of song.

Quentin Faulkner
Larson Prof. of Music, Emeritus
University of Nebraska-Lincoln