Thursday, May 26, 2005
St Louis Jesuits, part 6
(Words and Music)
In contemporary English-language liturgical music the direction toward Scripture was begun by the Jesuits. They never let up, and their standard has been adopted in whole or in part by just about everyone that came after them.
"For me," says Schutte, "it was the most natural place in the world to go. All our Jesuit prayer was built around Scripture. Take a couple of words, or take a line, imagine yourself in a passage-that’s where our own prayer was coming from."
Virgil Funk said of them, "They were the first to effectively link English liturgical texts based on the Bible with cultural music that worked in the American liturgical worshipping community."
(They) understood and capitalized on the musical traditions of the church. "Their work used chord progressions that resembled those in the commonly-used St. Gregory hymnal," notes Elaine Rendler, associate professor of music theory at George Mason University. "Consequently, their product sounded familiar to many Catholics."
Their music became popular without the workshop/concert/publicity machine of the 90's. It remains popular across all age groups. The best of their music adapts extremely well for many performance styles.
Put simply, they sounded Catholic, and did so in ways that remained compositionally interesting. Though originally only Foley had extensive training as a musician, all five resisted the banality of previous postconciliar work.
They were also concerned their music would be done well in parishes. They were the first to provide ample performance notes for amateur musicians. Their guitar charts were most helpful to guitarists trying to duplicate the musicianship of the recordings. As a learning guitarist in the early 80's, I applied everything I read in their notes to other songs.
This commentary also bears out the fact that good, if not great musicians, can also arise from non-schooled sources. The Beatles combined natural talent, hard work, and inquisitive and creative minds to be the primary pop music influence of a century. There's no reason to think that a parish can't also produce talented, hard-working, and creative musicians given the right environment of prayer and encouragement.
My fear is that we've lost some of that environment in today's Church.
