Posted on 12/01/2004 7:48:32 AM PST by sionnsar
If a choir performs while everybody else listens, it is just as bad as if there is a praise band up there.
All singing should be corporate.
I wrote an editorial in the college newspaper ripping the praise songs at the college chapels last year. I learned my lesson and won't go there again.
There are some good praise songs, but unfortunately, the ones that become popular usually aren't those...
A local group did that one here for years. It was always a sellout, and sung entirely in Latin. They projected English subtitles up on a movie screen at the side of the stage.
The leader and organizer, who also played Herod (a star turn, he played him as a paranoid schizophrenic correct in every detail, or so a psychologist friend of mine told me, he was scary as he could be even 60 feet away on the stage), just finally burned out after 15 years.
I love the Indelible Grace stuff.
But if the choir is where it should be (in the rear gallery or behind the roodscreen) and in a church with good acoustics, it is not a performance per se. You can't see the singers, and the sound seems to come from around and above you. No single voice stands out (except in the incipit to some anthems), and the ideal "English" sound is clear, pure, blended, and as far from individual emotionalism or exhibitionism as you can get.
Now, I happen to believe that any congregation can sing chant if you concentrate on a couple of the most popular tones to begin with and teach by repetition. We are proving that in our church since our new music director came in -- you can actually HEAR the congregation singing now, and it's sort of a domino effect, they're singing the hymns now too!
God of Wonders is good stuff.
Bless the Lord by Jeff Deyo rocks!
And the Caedmon's Call praise CD is really good.
I play "I Boast No More" a lot from Caedmon's.
I do like Here I am to Worship
Church just isn't church w/o a pipe organ! The bigger the better! :)
On another note, that Eagle's Wings song is one of my pet peeves. Corny and sophomoric.
I knew I could count on you guys :)
AHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh! Get out of my mind! Oh, wait .... you posted first. AHHHHHHhhhhhhhh! I must get out of your mind!
Comfort is good as far as it goes, but I personally don't want "comfort" in church music -- I want something that takes me out of myself. A Talis canon, properly done, is truly awe-inspiring. Our choirs have done some anthems that have brought me to tears.
One of the Godliest moments of my life was when our kids' choir performed selections from Mendelsohn's Elijah. And on that note: having seen a group of 2nd-6th graders put those very difficult pieces together from scratch in a week of choir camp, and still be singing it from memory months later, makes me want to injure those kid choir directors who waste the kids' talents on insipid crap. Our choir director has found that the higher he raises the bar, the better the kids like it. (He's exceptional, obviously....)
Some guitar band repeating the same phrase over and over cannot compare. Then again, the composers can't compare to the masters, either....
I simply mean that the musician believes in what he has been taught - just as the Polish lancers charged the German tanks because they believed in the weapons they had been trained with. (Even if some say that story's apocryphal, it still makes a point.)
I am trained in the old English high church tradition, with all that implies - clear tone, no vibrato, crisp attacks and cutoffs on the vocal production side, and Renaissance polyphonic music with its distinctive harmonies and moving tones. So that music sounds most "correct" to me for a high Mass.
Kids can sing much better than they're given credit for. (Small brag - my mom's a music professor at a local college, and she made a tape recording of my THREE year old daughter singing part of the Queen of the Night's aria "O zittre nicht . .. " which she played for her class just to prove that kids could sing. Daughter is 16 and a mezzo now.)
Great minds and all that . . . < g >
I.G. is awesome!
It's good to hear of your experiences in Christian music. I have a very wide scope of taste when in comes to music, and I do not expect everyone to be that way. Perhaps if I get wiser with age, my tastes will change in kind.
Just for my own information, could folks here state examples of music or bands that they consider to be to repetitive or annoying. I'd like to avoid choosing those songs!
Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Haugen and Haas
They are only partly kidding.
Is that an eyeopener. Thanks for making me better informed. I thought the parodies were a laugh.
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