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Common meter
So I just got back from church. Our choirmaster is from Alabama, so even though we're Catholic, about a third of our repertoire sounds suspiciously schlocky-Baptist. The song we ended on today was a vapidly bouncy thing that was 24 beats long, over and over again. The sort of thing parents get their kids in on while music-types groan.
And in my head I was scanning it to Amazing Grace, House of the Rising Sun, What Child is This?, The Song That Never Ends, and Banned From Argo.
Comments
Really, the Catholic choral repertoire is ridiculously vast, and encompasses composers from Des Prez to Haydn to Messiaen. You'd think that choirmasters would have better taste...
That aside, I always get a massive kick out of imagining Emily Dickinson's famous poem about death's carriage sung to the tune of Gilligan's Island.
Amazing Grace is one of the best songs ever written, in any genre. You will respect Amazing Grace.
The rest I could give less than a shit about. I like Church music though, one of the few things I ever enjoyed about going.
I didn't knock "Amazing Grace"; I'd never knock "Amazing Grace". I knocked the fact that the guy chose a song in the same rhythm as "Amazing Grace" that was infinitely inferior to it when he could have chosen that or any number of other songs in that rhythm, all of which probably would have been better.
As for me, I love church music, especially old Christmas carols. "Adeste Fidelis", "O Holy Night", "Silent Night", that one that begins, "God rest ye, merry gentlemen..."—I love all of those songs unconditionally.
I was talking to Bee, silly.
Ah. OK.
The Catholic hymn repertoire is hugely vast mostly because they've been around for forever, and they take up music from other sources. "Our Mighty Fortress Is Our God", from archrival denomination Lutheranism, is now easily found in Music Issues.
That said, they have a ton of contemporary hymns. I know the local Catholic Church that serves the student body at my university has contemporary tunes in its students mass, rather than more traditional tunes (which it uses for the mass that serves locals). Not quite my taste, despite the fact that I'm a student in my twenties.
I want to hear more of this from church choirs.
Gothic chants are where it's at.
Orthodox chants are pretty nice.
Nah, I prefer Baroque-era and later stuff.
I went on a Youtube Walk from that first video. Started with that Messiaen piece, then went to Crucifixus (for eight voices) by Antonio Lotti, then Verily, verily I say unto you by Thomas Tallis, Then Henry Purcell's Hear My Prayer, O Lord, then Haydn's The Heavens Are Telling.
That last one is really awesome.
Sadly our choir is...lacking these days. We have two little girls who are unnervingly good for their age but only sing for one of the masses, one really old guy who sounds like Barry White but only sings for one of the masses, and a whole bunch of tone-deaf people who butcher Latin. So that basically rules out most of our really good stuff. Most of what we have that isn't Southern Twang is contemporary hymns that try to be original by having huge, clumsy intervals that backfire when most of the choir can't jump up an octave out of nowhere. The most interesting stuff we have these days is usually the Spanish mass stuff.