New directions?

[musicus]

I hesitated to call this topic New Year's Resolutions, but that is the general idea. What with a new translation demanding new music, do you feel tempted to take your music planning in any new directions this year? New genres, perhaps, or fresh approaches to the opening and closing rites? Perhaps your approach to music at communion is in need of a re-think?

[Eastern Promise]

No, just the usual rubbish...

[Hare]

No, just the usual rubbish...

Er, are you saying the "Usual rubbish" that

1) You feel is available
2) That you feel you use
3) That you feel everyone uses?

[Dom Perignon]

Can we please stick to 'New directions' and not drift off into side alleys that do not contribute towards taking the thread forward.

[Nick Baty]

Perhaps your approach to music at communion is in need of a re-think?

This is the one area where we seem to be making great strides at the moment. For some reason, Communion Antiphons have taken off in our community recently – perhaps inspired by The Processional, (see threads here and here). Throughout Advent we sang an antiphon recommended for Advent 3 (Be strong and do not fear for the Lord will come to save us) with verses from Isaiah 35. On Christmas Day we changed the text to Rejoice and do not fear; the Lord is here among us with verses from Isaiah 9, segueing into Silent Night and with the antiphon repeated several times afterwards, Taizé-style, with additional instrumental parts and vocal descant (Gloria in excelsis Deo).

This approach has been well-received. The Communion procession has become quieter and there is a real sense of silence afterwards.

Coming back to Musicus's question, planning for the new translation has had to take priority. But with Communion processionals finally taking off – I've been trying for eight years – I'm plundering existing repertoire for suitable items: Like as the deer from Tamié and Farrell's My soul is thirsting come to mind. And we have a homespun setting, Come to the altar of God, which has been well-received. I'm looking for items which have refrains long enough to be worth singing but with few enough words to be singable in procession. For example, one of our homespun settings has a refrain of: In the house of the Lord I will dwell for ever. I will dwell for ever in the house of the Lord. Few words yet eight bars long and can be used with several psalm texts including 22 and 83.

[Hare]

Can we please stick to 'New directions' and not drift off into side alleys that do not contribute towards taking the thread forward.

Apologies - Knee-jerk reaction to the previous post which offended me just a little.

I will keep quiet in future!

[Eastern Promise]

No, just the usual rubbish...

Er, are you saying the "Usual rubbish" that

1) You feel is available
2) That you feel you use
3) That you feel everyone uses?

Yes

[musicus]

I'm glad we cleared that up. Back to the topic now...

[Peter Jones]

Do you feel tempted to take your music planning in any new directions this year?

Personally, I don't want new directions. I'd be happy to see/hear people understanding and implementing the directions we already have in the liturgy documents.

[Nick Baty]

For many that is a new direction!

[Eastern Promise]

Do you feel tempted to take your music planning in any new directions this year?

Personally, I don't want new directions. I'd be happy to see/hear people understanding and implementing the directions we already have in the liturgy documents.

Hear! Hear! It's the 'new directions' lobby with their gimlet eyes and nu-church extremism that have caused all the problems in the first place.

[musicus]

That's a fair point - but not quite what I was getting at. Perhaps 'fresh' would have been a better word. I did not mean to imply 'novel' or 'unorthodox', nor to rule out a return to former practices or doing things by the book (which, as Nick rightly says, would be a new direction for many).

[dmu3tem]

Restricting my response to purely musical issues I think now really is a good opportunity to explore new (and perhaps revive older) ways of composing and arranging church music. The introduction of new translations ought, in theory, to encourage us to do this, as happened when the last batch of new translations came through in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I am not sure though whether this is actually happening. Are we as composers being unduely cramped by the vetting regime that has been established by the Bishops Conference, despite the fact that its remit primarily concerns text as opposed to musical technique and style? In my case I cannot complain; as they let through my Mass settings with their off-beat approaches to instrumentation; but I wonder whether the mere presence of such a body may seem inhibiting for others.

The counter to this, of course, is the fear that 'rubbish' might slip through the net, as some alleged happened in the 1960s and 1970s. A reply to this fear is that new approaches does imply risk; but to have no change of approach at all is a recipie for stultifying conservatism and the anodyne. In short there needs to be some sort of balance between the two extremes, though what exactly that is may depend on one's personal taste and particular circumstances.

Personally, I think the case for new approaches is quite compelling. Many of the new Mass settings I have seen are technically a reversion to a model that was fairly standard 30-40 years ago: A congregational part supported by an Organ/Keyboard with block (or at any rate fairly conventional) four part harmony that could, if necessary, be sung by an SATB choir. Another very common model is that developed by the St Thomas More school of composers: A basic melody with keyboard accompaniment with 'bolt-on' optional all purpose instrumental parts. This design has been in place since the early to mid 1980s and struck me as already being rather 'tired' in terms of creativity of approach by the mid 1990s, despite the interesting further developments undertaken in the Psallitte Psalm traditions. If anyone can draw my attention to settings that prove me wrong on these counts and show that composers really are developing new technical approaches, I would be delighted to hear of them.

Finally, it would be nice to see a revival of SSG composers group activity next year. In the past it served as a useful laboratory for testing and disseminating new approaches.