[alicewonders]

Thank you for posting this. I was beginning to think I was the only person that felt that way. Good post.

[hiho hiho]

“My generation ... had the opportunity to keep the good ... Instead, however, it went as bad as it possibly could, seizing upon all the old mistakes it could find and amplifying them.”

[Tax-chick]

This would include songs that indicated the mental or emotional state of the singer, the nature of his personal relation with Jesus, patriotic hymns excluding Christians who were not citizens of the United States, hymns that presumed the singer had undergone a “salvation” experience, especially since many of them frankly indicated that before this experience the singer had lived a life of moral squalor, and after the Cleansing sin and unhappiness went away: “Life now is sweet and my joy is complete, for I’m Saved! Saved! Saved!”

It sounds like this author would pretty must junk the Book of Psalms, then, even if it came with elegant 4-part settings.

[bboop]

I remember singing alto in church, when I was a girl and studying piano. My mom shushed me — ‘That is prideful, to sing parts. You have to sing the melody.’ This was in a Lutheran church here in California, nothing very fundamentalist going on there. She was raised Christian Science, and maybe this had more to do with what she said. Does anyone recognize this ‘theology’??? I have always wondered about it.

I have always loved the hymns and the harmonies. It must have been beautiful when folks knew how to sing them. Our German friends, young folks, break into 4-part harmony around the table, at dinner or cake and coffee.

Interesting article, thanks for posting.

[Larry Lucido]

Another long, convoluted discourse on how people other than the author are wrong in the way they sing.

[Mr. Brightside]

Even as a small boy I find this almost unbearably beautiful

Almost true in my case.

But it was more like this:

Even as a small boy I found this almost unbearable.