With our metrosexual worship leaders, two-guitars-and-a-drum praise bands, and “Jesus is my boyfriend” songs , I assumed we evangelicals had a monopoly on messing up church music. But at the always intriguing Catholic literary journal Dappled Things , Jeffrey Tucker argues that music in the Mass is also broken—and offers a proposal on how to fix :
If I were to pick one word to describe the present state of music in the Catholic world, I would choose tedium . Nothing new ever happens. The repertoire is mostly from the 1970s, with some 1980s elaborations, but in a style that is dreadfully dated by popular standards. It is particularly pathetic that much of this music depends heavily on the sound and feel of people who want to be inspired by the “groove”—yet the music demonstrates a chilling lack of inspiration. Most of this material does not play itself; it sounds unusually boring in the hands of bored musicians.
The hymns are chosen before Mass from the usual standbys, as if there were nothing more to Catholic music than flipping pages and pointing. Why even bother to rehearse? It’s no wonder that pastors don’t want to spend any more time or resources on the music program than what they currently spend. What do they expect to get that they aren’t getting now? Is there anything to be excited about? Anything to learn?
Inspiration is precisely what the discovery of the Gregorian tradition provides. You only need to know one antiphon and feel the way the Latin works so beautifully for the singing voice in order to gain this inspiration. This music touches something deep within all Catholics and all the more so when we come to realize that this is the music that developed alongside the Catholic liturgical structure as an integral part of it.
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