Posted on 12/01/2004 7:48:32 AM PST by sionnsar
[Please read the comment following, to get the context of this posting, before starting into this article. --sionnsar]
The Catholic church has been fighting a running battle with narcissism in worship ever since apostolic times. There has never been a shortage of people who want to take over public worship for their own purposes. In this battle–really a tug-of-war–two powerful forces struggle for supremacy. On the one side there is “me”: the personal dimension of religion. The faith of Christianity must involve the personal, private relationship of the individual ("me") to the personal Jesus, who will always listen to every prayer. On the other side of this tug-of-war is the job of faith. Christians come together to worship as a community. The Mass is a public, communal effort, in which individuals act and pray as a group. Tension between the private and public sectors is inevitable.
We can see this tension in two thousand years of Christian art for a liturgical setting. The painters of the Byzantine icon, for example, were ready to burst with emotional religious fervor and yet at every stage of artistic creation they pulled this zeal back; they held the reins tightly, as it were. They would not permit themselves the luxury of painting their own version of what they felt. Instead, they submitted to a canon of taste that belonged to something larger than themselves: the highest expectations of the community, the culture, or, if you wish, the tribe. The painters of the icon put their private, inner faith into the painted image but they did so according to strict conventions and traditional formulas; in this way they communicated to the beholder the message that the image went beyond the mere feelings of the artist and beyond the commonplace.
The church insisted on obedience to a great Unwritten Law which went something like this: “As a creative artist you may follow your own instincts but your art or music for the church must not clash with the liturgical function; it must take its place in the objective liturgical setting and not seem like an intrusion. Your creation must display a degree of quality and craftsmanship which will be agreeable to prince and peasant, male and female, young and old. Everyone who sees the artwork or hears the music must sense a group endeavor, a group prayer: maybe something performed by the assembly or by a choir acting in the name of the assembly, maybe a painting that seems to sum up the highest religious aspirations of a whole people. In the past the icon painters prayed and fasted as they struggled to put the holy images into the exacting forms prescribed by tradition. You must try to do something similar.”
The composers of … reformed folk music have created a large repertory of songs with mild harmonies, comforting words, and a sort of “easy listening” sound; it is all so very undisturbed and appealing, the musical equivalent of the warm bubblebath. The whole enterprise has been resoundingly successful and some publications sell in the millions…. For the time being, the reformed-folk repertory (also known as “contemporary” church music) occupies the high ground; it has the advantage of appearing to possess a musical and a moral superiority. It enjoys the reputation for being “new” and “what the people want.”
The victory of the folk style, reformed or otherwise, is so great and so blinding that many people cannot see beyond the apparent success to what could mildly be called the problem with this music: simply put, nearly all of it–no matter how sincere, no matter how many scriptural texts it contains–oozes with an indecent narcissism. The folk style, as it has developed since the 1960s, is Ego Renewal put to music.
“I” and “me” songs or sung versions of intense personal “conversations” with God can be found in the psalms and in almost two millennia of Christian worship, but great care was taken to make sure that the music would not sound like a presentation of individual “I-me” emotions. The words of the psalm might say “I” and “me,” but the music, intended for public worship, said “we.” A good example of this can be seen in the various settings of Psalm 90/91, a song of comfort and a reminder of God’s abiding protection. In the Middle Ages, the words of this psalm were lifted out of the common place and uttered in the Latin language (Qui habitat in adjutorio Altissimi …); the sentiments in the text were then twisted in the unusually shaped melodies of chant, the musical equivalent of the icon. These two “artificial” steps (the Latin language and the odd melodies) reminded everyone that this particular text, as sun, was not the personal property of the singer but an integral part of a public act of worship.
The early Protestant reformers translated the same psalm into the vernacular so that the congregation could sing it, but they too kept this important element of distance and “artificiality”; that is, they preserved the ideal of the “icon in music.” The words of the psalm were jammed into the pattern of a strict poetic meter with rhyme. ("O God, our help in ages past,/Our hope for years to come …") Melodies were foursquare and totally without a sense of private intimacy. Sometimes the melodies were so “neutral” and generic that a tune could be used for any kind of psalm: one with a joyous text or one with more mournful words.
Now, with the above versions of Psalm 90/91 in mind, analyze the same text as found in the song On Eagle’s Wings by Michael Joncas. Note the enormous difference. The Joncas work, an example of the reformed-folk style at its most gushing, does not proclaim the psalm publicly; it embraces the text–lovingly, warmly, and even romantically. That moaning and self-caressing quality of the music, so common in the reformed-folk style, indicates that the real topic of the words is not the comforting Lord but “me” and the comforts of my personal faith.
One composer of “contemporary” church music described perfectly what is going on in this type of music. He said that in his own compositions he tried to bring out the “felt meanings” of the sung words. There is indeed something quite tactile about the way this music manipulates the words; the meaning of the text has to be molded, shaped–felt. As a result, the performance of reformed-folk music depends heavily on a dramatic realism, on the ability of soloists to communicate personal feelings, felt meanings, to a congregation.
The music of the St. Louis Jesuits, the Dameans, the Weston Monks, Michael Joncas, and all the others is, without any doubt, a revolutionary addition to the Roman Rite. These composers have, as it were, smashed the icon, an exceedingly revolutionary act.
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Interesting article. Thanks for posting it.
As for the article, I agree in part and disagree in part. Certainly I think the modern-pop "praise music" or contemporary Christian music is by and large just trash. From a musical point of view, the melodies are trite, repetitive, unimaginative, and banal. The words even more so - just advertising jingles with Our Lord as the product.
I think the author gives too much credit to the music as having an actual theme or goal, or an effect rather than simply that of being forced to listen to bad music. Perhaps the words have some sort of osmosis effect of leading the listener/singer to dwell on narcissism, but most of the self indulgence that's going on is that of the composer and writer. The analogy that comes to my mind is not a warm bubble bath but stagnant ditch water.
But then I REALLY hate bad music. It's an insult to the Lord to offer Him any less than the very best we have.
I've been to a number of churches that utilize this music. It is the musical equivalent of tepid oatmeal.
I guess there's nothing left for me to say about that....
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with newer music, of course -- so long as it's good music. Our choirs frequently sing newer stuff (as anthems), and it can be excellent.
Perhaps the difference is that "praise stuff" is typically written for a small group/lead singer, which can easily lead to the narcissism mentioned in the article. The small group ends up performing for the congregation, and there's always that tendency to "make the song mine," even if the congregation gets to sing the refrain. It turns into show biz.
Music written for choirs, or for the congregation is obviously different -- it would be ridiculous if everybody in the large group tried to "make the song mine." The motivation is rather to "be a helpful part of the group," which is the point of music in public worship.
Not to mention lame, wimpy and geared toward freeze-dried hippies.
How's everything going with the family, BTW?
or, Why I Avoid the Five-Thirty Youth Mass.
They pass out the words, but not the music, and the tunes are that vague wandering stuff with no beginning and no end so that they cannot be learned by ear before you get to the last verse. So the "song leader" cum guitar winds up singing all by himself, and yeah, it does sound a bit self-indulgent. The fact that he has a voice like a lounge singer doesn't help. "Feelings . . . wo wo wo . . . nothing more than Feelings . . . . " My kids HATE it, don't know who the organizers think they're reaching. As Alfred E. Neuman (NOT Neumann) used to say, "Yecccch!"
My daughter prefers to go to either the 10 or 11:30 Mass anyhow. For one thing, she gets to hear a decent choir (which is getting better all the time! Hooray!), and for another since she's an altar server she likes to watch the routine when she's not in the middle of it. She says it's very hard because the Catholic altar server routine is similar but subtly different from the Episcopalian version - so that it's tough to catch the variations.
Last weekend she served the 8:30 a.m. Sunday Mass, and none of the other altar servers showed up except for the leader (they are long-term servers drawn from the high school boys) and the two of them had to work the whole deal. They were as busy as . . . (fill in your favorite paperhanger or yellowjacket joke here), but she was thrilled because she got to assist at the altar for the first time since we changed churches. She had just been promoted to the altar when we moved, that was a major disappointment for her.
I'm really thrilled with how well our new music director is doing. At the rate we're going, we should be issuing a CD soon < g >.
Haven't heard from Mom today - she won't have the second surgery til Thursday week. When I spoke to her last she was upbeat and optimistic.
We visited my husband's mother over Thanksgiving. She had breast cancer last year and has beaten it hands down. She had chemo, but no side effects and didn't even lose any hair. We are hoping for a similar outcome for my mom.
Absolutely. I think it will happen. She sounds strong-willed and faithful. She will be OK.
"...modern-pop "praise music"...is by and large just trash."
No kidding. How many times have I had my ears assailed by "My God, He's a great God, He's great, He's God, yada, yada, yada... Repeat, re-repeat, ad nauseum.
And what is this "He's a great god" stuff? Either He's God or he isn't. If you really are a Christian, there's only one.
Not sure if the author's talking about the Regulative Principle hymns of the Reformation, or the latest Word Records "Zoe Girl" release here.
"Reformed folk music" is an incredibly poor phrase to use. What music is being referred to here? Is it the current playlist on K-LOVE? The content of contemporary Christian (rock) music in the last four decades is more Arminian in theology and practice than Reformed. And I'm not aware of any church that uses "folk music" in worship, unless the writer meant music performed on guitars instead of organs? The term "folk music" conjures up memories of acoustic guitars strumming out Joan Baez protest songs, not the electrified Fender Stratocasters performing the latest John Tesh worship song on stage during Sunday Mass.
Sadly, there are great swaths of Catholic parishes here in the West that haven't seen an organ. Ever. Acoustic guitars, on the other hand ....
It's what "everybody wants". Or so the "experts" say.
Glad to hear. Will continue praying for her.
Will remember Ann in my prayers as well, N_O_B_V.
I will temper my comments in the future, then. I don't know of many Protestant congregations that are using acoustic guitars in worship. Electric guitars, on the other hand....:/
Musical buffoonery in Protestant circles seems to tend towards the hyper-amplified rock-n-roll style ... There's no Catholic equivalent to Stryper etc.
Thanks, TT.
AB, I busted out laughing at your post. Thanks! But c'mon, Stryper??? You know how much that reference dates you, don't you?
I hope she is doing well and keeping a positive outlook (and that you are too!)
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