“But we do sing at Mass,” someone says. Yes and no. There are songs, but most of the congregation is silent or is murmuring, because the songs are for Mass entertainment, having been conceived in form and content after the patterns of mass entertainment.What is forgotten is that great literature and art give great and last pleasure, pleasure that forms character.No one remembers the words, because the poetry is bad or nonexistent, and no one remembers the melodies, because they are bad or because they never were written to be sung by an entire congregation and its full range of human voices.
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Much in what he says …
… Recovering from Cultural Dementia - The Catholic Thing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Actually, Austrian and German congregations sing quite well, in my very limited experience. And there have been a few decent hymns written by Americans over the last 75 years or so.
ReplyDeleteI would also remark that the hymns I remember for the early 1960s, i.e. before a guitar had been seen in a Catholic church, were not always impressive. A friend who knows about music grumbles about the hymns contributed, or at least translated, by the St. Louis Jesuits.