I don’t think I’d trust any neuro clinic that thinks this makes sense.
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If it sounds good, it is good.
I see the homogenization of contemporary Christian music as a manifestation of the radical egalitarianism that is increasingly common. The truly great literature of Christian music is a literature of privilege. Without privilege, its composers, authors and arrangers could not have set it down. Without privilege, the musicians cannot acquire the technical skill to perform it. Without privilege, the congregation cannot learn how to appreciate it or to participate in its use in worship.
And yet, much of it - including the foursquare hymns that so many who rebel against modern music would return to - was itself born from a Protestant wish to include more than the clergy and schola cantorum in worship - and in fact was adopting the popular songs of the time. Then the Protestant composers started to experiment with what could be achieved by lifting music from the strictures of plainchant.
When the resulting music, Protestant to the core, was raised to its highest level of exaltation, it transcends this earth. Yes, this music requires highly sophisticated musicians to perform, and a highly educated ear to appreciate, but, for all its foundation in privilege, it represents to me a pinnacle of human achievement.
Too much contemporary Christian performance attempts to resolve our social inequality by levelling that pinnacle. I agree that daily worship requires music in which the assembly can participate, but let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water.
There’s a place for bland camp songs. (A camp meeting is such a place). There’s a place for rip-roarin’ gospel music. And, please God, let there be a place for Bach! (Polyrhythm and all!)
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No
All that is good and holy does not come from on high. it’s more a product of the massification and commodification of protestant Christianity that came from the rise of mass media in the 20s. It doesn’t have to be bland and boring, it’s made bland and boring to appeal to the widest audience and bring in new members to a church. That is often driven from the top down, as a means of social control. Much like the 18th and 19th century musical movements were working to put the fear of god into the common man seeking more democratic cultural expressions unleashed by the enlightenment and reformation.
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This remind me of the album Opera by Tosca. The next to last track is a short recording of an older musician explaining how to play a rhythm. If you then go back to the start of the album and listen through you will hear variations of that rhythm weave in and out of most every song (I don’t recall if it is in every single song). It is played as samples from the original recording as well as played live as part of the the Opera recordings.
I think I got it cued to the Listen to me track.
It’s a similar technique used on K&D Sessions which is really just a mix album of wildly different music but they replaced much of the little percussion elements with consistent beats and it just unifies all the songs.
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“This is how we pray”
(starts at 1:17)
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Your posts on Sacred Harp has me going to youtube and watching half a dozen or so of these, and I find them quite inspiring. I dropped out of the church in the 70s and nothing I have seen so far has convinced me to return. I guess I’m agnostic / leaning atheist. This music tho, strikes a chord with me and I appreciate your posts. Thanks.
It’s gorgeous music, whether you’re a believer or not. I do like a lot of religious music for that reason. It does what it’s meant to do, which is uplift the soul and help people connect with something outside themselves. I think we can argue, though, that the best music (religious or not) does that.
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Love Sacred Harp! (Although, sister, I’ve something to confess. I learnt seven-shape notes first, and I’m still not really confident with fasola as opposed to doremi!)
Shape-note singing is musically sophisticated, too. Billings was the first American composer actually to be taken seriously in Europe.
You know, that tends to fit with my experience. I’ve been in one church musical group that had a solid membership, considerable musicianship, and great support from the folks in the pews. (Its repertoire tended more to the classical than to the contemporary, but once in a while we’d mix in a rousing gospel number or something from Southern Harmony to keep the congregation on its toes.)
The clerics rather came down on it, claiming that the musical choices were ‘intimidating’ and ‘driving away the younger members.’ They seemed to be opposed to too much in the way of musical competence as well as to the repertoire. Even simple and bland material, performed too well, was labeled, ‘intimidating.’
I don’t think that the outcome served the musicians, the assembly, or the Lord particularly well. But you could be right that it was all about the clergy maintaining control.
Hmm, I’m having a hard time making sense of that statement, because there was so much variety in those times (as now). Maybe if you were confining yourself to a single denomination or a single place, I could address the point (or even, possibly agree with it). The year in which Billings published Chester was the same year in which Mozart published the Parisian Symphony (No 31 in D) - and it’s hard for me to fit, say, both the Mozart Requiem and the New-England Psalm Singer into your narrative of a unified ‘18th century musical movement.’
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