"Catholic" Music
You may have guessed I don't spend too much time listening to music that is popular these days - although I do spend a little. Quite a few years ago when I was still able to frequent HMV stores, I stopped in at a store they had on Bloor Street and was handed a freed CD - Coldplay's latest at the time.
It featured a song that got a lot of media play at the time, "Viva la Vida". I have since been amused about one line in the song: "Roman Catholic choirs are singin'". Perhaps the writer of the words hadn't read the famous book, "Why Catholics Can't Sing". In the context of the words I am somewhat edified to speculate that the words are somehow indicative of a positive vision of the next life.
My hunch is that there is some vision of sonic harmony and perfection. The truth is our musical and choral traditions are very rich. While we might think of Gregorian chant as the paragon of traditional, the truth is there is certainly a rich chant tradition that predates it and subsequent musical traditions that have also had their influence or been complementary to it.
In the years following the Second Vatican Council (1962 to 1965), some retreated from the monastic sounds of Gregorian chant quite explicitly. Of course, hymnody had already become part of worship. Our so-called traditional Catholic hymns date mostly from the 19th century and we have many traditional hymns that are an exercise in ecumenism. The evangelical quality of Methodist hymns have found a home also in our hymnals.
Both Gregorian chant and hymnody are primarily unison singing, although there are many SATB arrangements of hymns.
In the classical repertoire we have very complex and elevated settings of the Mass. Palestrina in Italy and Victoria in Spain are composers whose complex choral settings that we call polyphony are performed often still. Orchestrated Masses by composers like Mozart are numerous. Even into the present age "serious" composers may mark their careers by writing a Mass, whether or not they are Catholic or the piece is ever actually intended to be part of worship.
The form has come to be part of the canon of western music writing tradition.
As I suggested earlier, the experience of music at parishes does not necessarily reflect a truly angelic precursor necessarily. When I was younger the way to hear an elaborate setting of the Mass was to go to the symphony hall or buy a recording by professional musicians.
In a recent Gramophone magazine article that I have read, the author notes the current trend of record labels signing up actual believers! Monks and nuns, religious communities singing the music of worship. The author seems to wonder at the reasons for this. It probably isn't the quality of performance at play.
For too long, sacred music has been treated as simply a genre of music without reference to its purpose. Belief in God implies that I must allow God to be God, the God of my life. There is freedom in that and the words of worship carry their proper weight. At a time when the majority of the population has had little experience of worship it is interesting that the hankering for the real thing is there.
I will write a little in future of more of the texture of this great breath of worship over time.
It featured a song that got a lot of media play at the time, "Viva la Vida". I have since been amused about one line in the song: "Roman Catholic choirs are singin'". Perhaps the writer of the words hadn't read the famous book, "Why Catholics Can't Sing". In the context of the words I am somewhat edified to speculate that the words are somehow indicative of a positive vision of the next life.
My hunch is that there is some vision of sonic harmony and perfection. The truth is our musical and choral traditions are very rich. While we might think of Gregorian chant as the paragon of traditional, the truth is there is certainly a rich chant tradition that predates it and subsequent musical traditions that have also had their influence or been complementary to it.
In the years following the Second Vatican Council (1962 to 1965), some retreated from the monastic sounds of Gregorian chant quite explicitly. Of course, hymnody had already become part of worship. Our so-called traditional Catholic hymns date mostly from the 19th century and we have many traditional hymns that are an exercise in ecumenism. The evangelical quality of Methodist hymns have found a home also in our hymnals.
Both Gregorian chant and hymnody are primarily unison singing, although there are many SATB arrangements of hymns.
In the classical repertoire we have very complex and elevated settings of the Mass. Palestrina in Italy and Victoria in Spain are composers whose complex choral settings that we call polyphony are performed often still. Orchestrated Masses by composers like Mozart are numerous. Even into the present age "serious" composers may mark their careers by writing a Mass, whether or not they are Catholic or the piece is ever actually intended to be part of worship.
The form has come to be part of the canon of western music writing tradition.
As I suggested earlier, the experience of music at parishes does not necessarily reflect a truly angelic precursor necessarily. When I was younger the way to hear an elaborate setting of the Mass was to go to the symphony hall or buy a recording by professional musicians.
In a recent Gramophone magazine article that I have read, the author notes the current trend of record labels signing up actual believers! Monks and nuns, religious communities singing the music of worship. The author seems to wonder at the reasons for this. It probably isn't the quality of performance at play.
For too long, sacred music has been treated as simply a genre of music without reference to its purpose. Belief in God implies that I must allow God to be God, the God of my life. There is freedom in that and the words of worship carry their proper weight. At a time when the majority of the population has had little experience of worship it is interesting that the hankering for the real thing is there.
I will write a little in future of more of the texture of this great breath of worship over time.
