Getting people on board (the Clapham omnibus)

[Gedackt flute]

Now that the new texts have arrived, we will now be using new and revised settings, and possibly new psalm settings in a few years time.

However, how do we get people to 'own' these texts and their music?

Funerals and weddings are, I think, a good barometer of what Joe & Mary Catholic actually know and love, and I have to say the acclamations of the mass and the psalms are rarely asked for. There are some wonderful exceptions, of course - 'Eagles wings' and 'Here I am, Lord' come to mind.

However, the really popular items are songs like 'As I kneel before you', 'I watch the sunrise' and 'Hail, Queen of heaven'.

How do we get the music of the church (particularly the psalms) known and loved? - Would 'Youtube' be the answer? - Would it be possible to teach the music of the Church to the young?

[alan29]

In my experience there is a marked difference between the music chosen at the funerals of practising and non-practising people. I have played at plenty of church-goers funerals where items are generally picked from the current repertoire. It has been with those who's practise stopped decades ago that older items get dredged up. Of course all this supposes that the deceased has had an input.
Teaching stuff to kids in school won't help with a funeral several decades later, but might help with wedding planning, I suppose.

[VML]

There is surely no comparison between 'Hail Queen of Heaven' ('....Pray for the mourner, pray for me', only part of a text that I understand is pretty ancient, a version of 'Ave, Maris Stella') and 'As I kneel before you.'

[Calum Cille]

It really would help to cut down the number of hymns at mass if psalms were actually set as metrical, or fairly metrical, songs (rather than paraphrases) and used instead of hymns. I don't think psalm tones are the way to popularise psalms. I also think that the modern responsorial psalm approach is not the most appropriate (on account of the non-metrical nature of the Grail text) although in certain cases they can work quite well to this end. You can, anyway, build a psalm-song (of the kind I propose) so that responses can be inserted, allowing them to function responsorially.

Metres arising out of the translation of each psalm can offer a lot to the musical composer. I have set a number of psalms by making my own translation. This allows me to bring out the structure of the Hebrew original in the new musical structure. I find it customarily necessary to accommodate changes to the original structure brought about by the act of translating. The new musical structure is therefore built out of a combination of the Hebrew structure and the structure created by translating.

Not everyone can do this but, in my opinion, it is far superior to taking a foursquare melody and destroying all trace of the original poetic structure of the psalm by reducing it to a foursquare paraphrase as happened at the Reformation. I do think it time that translators start work on producing metrical translations which are neither out-and-out, laissez-faire paraphrases nor attempts to squeeze given psalms into pre-conceived metres. Such a project would greatly facilitate the popularisation of the psalms.

[alan29]

I rather like the Gelineau method with its regular stresses. Its what I generally do when I am setting psalms week by week. It works so well with the Grail and enables people to concentrate on the words as they listen.

[Calum Cille]

For general information, Gelineau's technique is no great musical innovation in Gaelic Scotland as it is essentially the same as one method of chanting the stanzas of the ancient Fenian lay - a very tried and tested method indeed! Fenian lay melodies have also always been used for the singing of Gaelic hymns and can be used for chanting responsorial psalm verses.