"Meanwhile, at the website of those music men the Saint Louis Jesuits, I’ve read a short piece in which once-priest Bob Dufford describes how much he loved Hollywood musicals when he was a boy, naming Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Lerner and Lowe, as his most significant influences.
I thought as much. The 'folk' music common at Mass has little or nothing to do, in melody or lyrics, with any folk tradition anywhere in the world. Such songs as Dufford’s 'Like a Shepherd' or Dan Schutte’s 'Here I Am' are show tunes. They are not like medieval plainsong, or the Scottish Psalter, or the Lutheran hymns that Bach arranged, or American revival hymns, or English carols.
Folk melodies are often hauntingly beautiful: Picardy ('Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence'), Slane ('Be Thou My Vision'), St. Elisabeth ('Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee'). They can be sung by people of all ages and both sexes, together. They are not for soloists. They do not sport bizarre tempos and oddball intervals. Their lyrics come in stanzas with recognizable structure. They are thus easy to remember.
Show tunes! It’s as if we’re all supposed to sing, for Mass, some adaptation of 'I Feel Pretty' from West Side Story, or of the overblown and narcissistic 'Climb Every Mountain' from The Sound of Music. "
Just last Saturday vigil mass, we were treated to the spectacle of the pianist and the choir conferring in whispers, shuffling papers, the entire time our faithful priest was giving his homily after the Gospel reading.
The musicians had apparently misplaced the music for their next piece, for the delivery of their next lines in the Broadway musical that is our highly participatory mass. And rather than have a quiet "plan B" for the third hymn of the four-hymn sandwich, they conferred.
It was more important to them to get ready for their next number than to listen to monologue delivered by another actor. Except the pianist and choir were not backstage behind a curtain.
"Meanwhile, at the website of those music men the Saint Louis Jesuits, I’ve read a short piece in which once-priest Bob Dufford describes how much he loved Hollywood musicals when he was a boy, naming Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Lerner and Lowe, as his most significant influences.
I thought as much. The 'folk' music common at Mass has little or nothing to do, in melody or lyrics, with any folk tradition anywhere in the world. Such songs as Dufford’s 'Like a Shepherd' or Dan Schutte’s 'Here I Am' are show tunes. They are not like medieval plainsong, or the Scottish Psalter, or the Lutheran hymns that Bach arranged, or American revival hymns, or English carols.
Folk melodies are often hauntingly beautiful: Picardy ('Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence'), Slane ('Be Thou My Vision'), St. Elisabeth ('Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee'). They can be sung by people of all ages and both sexes, together. They are not for soloists. They do not sport bizarre tempos and oddball intervals. Their lyrics come in stanzas with recognizable structure. They are thus easy to remember.
Show tunes! It’s as if we’re all supposed to sing, for Mass, some adaptation of 'I Feel Pretty' from West Side Story, or of the overblown and narcissistic 'Climb Every Mountain' from The Sound of Music. "
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2025/06/06/bring-it-on-let-all-that-is-hidden-come-to-light/
Just last Saturday vigil mass, we were treated to the spectacle of the pianist and the choir conferring in whispers, shuffling papers, the entire time our faithful priest was giving his homily after the Gospel reading.
The musicians had apparently misplaced the music for their next piece, for the delivery of their next lines in the Broadway musical that is our highly participatory mass. And rather than have a quiet "plan B" for the third hymn of the four-hymn sandwich, they conferred.
It was more important to them to get ready for their next number than to listen to monologue delivered by another actor. Except the pianist and choir were not backstage behind a curtain.