FrGareth wrote:At what point does legitimate emotional communication become illegitimate emotional manipulation
Gareth, this is precisely the question that has been exercising composers' minds for the past 40 years. And not just composers.
If I programme a particular piece during, say, Communion, I know from experience that there won't be a dry eye in the house because of the emotional impact that this music has on the assembly. So do I have the right to use this piece at all? Am I manipulating the assembly? [Of course, this applies to quite a number of pieces, and not just at Communion. Some of the powerful texts of Maule/Bell/Iona music come to mind.]
The answer to this question is a difficult one, and it relates to the balance that we are searching for between heart and head in liturgy. Those who plan liturgies and those who write music for them walk a tightrope.
My own answer runs something like this: if the music stems from the readings of the day and fits in with the overall mood of the celebration, then it is probably legitimate. If I am programming a piece in order to give the assembly a 'cheap thrill', then it isn't. Context is important as well: a healing service is a different animal from an average Sunday Mass.
As far as the Iona texts are concerned, I think there is another dimension. Those texts enable us to put into words things that we would not otherwise have found a way of saying for ourselves. They enable us to integrate some of our emotions into a ritual context. I think this is valuable. Often, liturgy tries to paper over the cracks in people's lives. We need to acknowledge that we are all broken people, and bring that to our worship. I feel that if we can begin to articulate in liturgy some of the more difficult things that form part of our lives, then there is a greater chance of people talking to each other afterwards about what they experienced during the liturgy. And when people start to talk about what they felt as they were singing such-and-such, then they will start to support each other in their pain/grief/doubt/fear/ but equally exaltation/relief/sense of movement/ecstasy/realism, or whatever emotion is unleashed. And people who talk to each other and support each other lead to a stronger, more closely-bonded community, which cannot be but a good thing.
That's why some of the 'tougher', more realistic texts in the Wedding section of
Laudate, to give just one more example, seem to me to be a move in the right direction.
My original point was that the evangelicals, whose services tend to be more biased towards the heart than the head, deliberately provide a mounting series of 'cheap thrills' in order to give the congregation a heady experience. I was, I have to admit, shocked when I first encountered this many years ago. It gave me a new insight into the way that songs by Kendrick, Fellingham and others are constructed. They try to do the same thing in miniature. I have to confess, as I said in the bit that you quoted, that I find this exploitation of people's emotions rather cynical. It seems to me to be a substitute for real substance in the liturgy, as well as a way of exerting power over people. That's not the function of a liturgist in my book.
And when you remember that this normally happens at the point where where, at Mass, there would be a Eucharistic Prayer, then I feel even more uncomfortable. It feels like a perversion of the rite. And yet this part of the evangelical service, this sequence of songs, is known as "The Worship".....
It can also lead towards tedium. When every service has the same progression, the same overall shape — one of a staged crescendo — that can become very wearing over time. Once in a while, OK. We all do that. But every time?
