Contemporary Compline
  • davido
    Posts: 873
    Ran across this interesting video today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_16gDYHdd4

    Props to them for singing the office and developing a contemporary idiom psalm tone. Odd though, with the Salve Regina at the end, that they wouldn't just chant the whole office after traditional Gregorian formulae which are more artistic.

    Is it perhaps a love of "contemporary" style that neglects the traditional way of chanting the office?

    I often feel that Mosebach is correct, and that what we are combating is at essence 'formlessness' or translate it another way, 'informality.' The modern genre isn't so much 'contemporary' as it is 'informal:' in architecture, music, scripture translations, shorts/tanktops at mass, etc.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    tanktops at mass... that says it perfectly. nothing more. nothing less.
  • Felicia
    Posts: 110
    This reminds me of something (formerly?) done at a parish near me that serves a large university community. It was held on the evening of the first Friday of the month and called "Dark thirty". Basically, it was Compline with praise & worship music, similar to this video.
  • m_r_taylor
    Posts: 316
    Contemporary idiom requires mood piano or guitar, a cyclic chord progression and percussive downbeats to syncopate the voice off of.

    Non-syncopated, in that idiom, feels settled, traditional, stodgy.

    Syncopated, in that idiom, feels free, personal, emotive, spiritually liberating.

    It wasn't until I discovered Catholicism that I found even freer chant. ;)
  • donr
    Posts: 971
    Yuk
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