Posted on 12/09/2013 2:05:42 AM PST by markomalley
Every choir has a few folks who're a little off the mark. And it's different people on different days. Sometimes, it's me. But that's the way live music is, it isn't perfect and it shouldn't be. Our music director has a riff about Beethoven wanting "a little schmutz in the music" and Richard Strauss complaining when the orchestra played one of his works too correctly - and Thomas Edison predicting that the Victrola would be the end of music because it creates a false ideal of a "perfect" or "definitive" performance.
I listened last night to the audio of our daughter's wedding, and on the recording you can hear occasional errors - standout voices, missed entrances, fluffed cutoffs, wrong notes etc. I missed one entrance in the Mozart "Benedictus". We are definitely not the Tallis Scholars or The Sixteen, although we aspire to that sound. :-D But at the time it sounded glorious and you can't flyspeck these things in retrospect.
As a general rule, unless a singer is outrageously loud it's not a problem, and older cracked-voice folks like Brother Eyer (a forced rhyme for "choir") are completely inaudible beyond the choir loft rail, so nobody worries about it. We have a couple of very elderly people who love singing in the choir, and it would be horribly cruel to disinvite them because they're not hurting anyone.
Even the occasional foghorn bellower (we have one) doesn't need to be tossed out of the choir - our music director asks them to sing a little quieter "for balance" and concentrates on vocal coaching.
You sing the best stuff you can without crashing and burning, and you don't obsess over minor bobbles. As our music director says, "Nobody died, and nobody lost a million dollars, so it's all good."
There's plenty of opportunity for new songs in the psalm settings, the offertory and the communion anthem - although our GIRM (General Instructions for the Roman Missal) sets some limits.
My personal opinion is that we Catholics have a treasury of over 800 years of particularly fine music written for the Mass that has passed the test of time, and it should be used more often rather than focusing exclusively on music from the last 10-15 years. There is GREAT stuff to be sung and it reminds us of our continuity.
And dancing is right out for us - although it's fine if you're evangelical or pentecostal because it's part of that tradition. One thing I've found is that the "liturgical dancers" who impose themselves on Episcopal and (heaven forfend) Catholic churches are the ladies who couldn't possibly get a gig anywhere else.
I find it lamentable that the music of anti-Catholic religious traditions have wormed their way into the Church. Liberals and progressives have long held tradition in any form in disdain and it comes as no surprise to me that the liberals within the Church are stripping away her sense of traditional music to the point where most Catholics have little understanding or regard for the Church’s historical heritage and yet go chasing after the often theologically challenged traditions of non-Catholic worshipping communities.
You're probably right. I'm not a music expert, but Peter Kreeft has said that, in his experience, the most influential of his proofs for the existence of God is simply, "The music of Bach. You either get this one or you don't."
He said many people have told him that this simple line resulted in their ultimate conversion.
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