Tuesday, May 24, 2005
St Louis Jesuits, part 1
A friend sent me the America two-part article (May 23rd and 30th editions of the magazine, 192:18-19) on the St Louis Jesuits. I'd consider it a great and informative read for anyone interested in liturgical music. Over the next several days, I will excerpt brief portions of the piece by Jim McDermott SJ, and overlay some of my own history in liturgical music.
"As a young man, John Foley once had the chance to ask Jackie Gleason’s arranger how to compose songs. The arranger replied: 'You want to learn how to write songs? Write 100 of them. Write 100 of them and don’t look back. When you find out what’s wrong with the one you just wrote, correct it in the next one.'"
This was my philosophy as a musician, songwriter, and composer, though I never spoke with Gleason's arranger or John Foley. I wrote about two hundred songs between 1982 and 1988. During that time I drifted from choices working for a university in development or alumni affairs (closed door) to church ministry. It was during these years I became a very good guitarist, took voice and piano lessons, and took very opportunity to immerse myself in music. In a way, I was making up for lost time: the lost childhood during which I very much wanted to learn the piano and write music. (I have about ten or fifteen things I wrote for the three-octave push-button chord organ my parents gave me for my birthday one year.)
When I spent a few summers at the Rensselaer Program for Church Music and Liturgy, my composition mentors wanted me to rewrite my songs. I demurred. I wasn't interested in covering old territory; I wanted to put to use what I'd learned in new songs. Many songs I wrote were born of my personal prayer life: the psalms and texts from the Liturgy of the Hours. I experimented a lot with other people's words, with putting my words to existing music I found in the Sacred Harp. I brought about a third of my songs to my friend Mike, who was my choir director. In turn, he rejected about three-quarters of what I brought to him. At times, I was a little miffed, but I knew that only my best songs were being taught and sung at the parish.
Since 1988, I can say I've written scarcely a hundred pieces of liturgical music. Rarely, I'll pull out a psalm for Sunday liturgy. People who come to Evening Prayer at my parish might hear a few more things. Looking back, I'm glad I took the Foley path: write tons of songs and don't look back. I miss having people to strain through my weaker pieces: as a music director I find my parish associates are both less critical and more fawning of what I write. Collaboration is an important factor, but that gets covered later in this series.
