Horrors

[organist]

I was thinking about music organists should NOT play at Mass.
Some horrors I have heard all at communion:
To a wild rose Macdowell
Humming chorus from "Madam Butterfly" (this was a tape at a funeral)
"Feed the birds" (well my late friend Roger claimed he played it - it would not have surprised me)
"Nearer my God to thee" (shades of Titanic sinking there)
Meaningless meanderings (in search of the lost chord perhaps?)
The old rugged cross
Ave Maria (OKish at preparation of gifts or beforehand but NOT at communion please)
Enough to make one throw up?

[JW]

Edelweiss - there was a Communion hymn set to this in the 60's or 70's - cringe-making words.
I avoid any Funeral march at Communion.
Danny Boy - sorry!

[docmattc]

I was present (but not playing) at a wedding where the bride walked in to the theme from Disney's "beauty and the beast". I'm still not sure which she was!

The dambusters Gloria!

[organist]

Didn't some idiot set the Sanctus to the Eastenders tune?
I like the Dambusters theme itself but as a Gloria????

[Sonoqui]

Didn't some idiot set the Sanctus to the Eastenders tune?

Don't know about the Sanctus but I once heard the Gloria set to Eastenders on Songs of Praise. I've heard worse - but not very often!

[contrabordun]

I haven't. You have my sympathy. The fact that that woman off Eastenders also released a single with that tune and different words didn't help, either.

[asb]

Didn't some idiot set the Sanctus to the Eastenders tune?
I like the Dambusters theme itself but as a Gloria????

It was the Gloria - and I have a feeling that Barry Rose was involved somewhere along the line......

I've never come across the Dambusters Gloria, but it does go rather well to "God is our strength and refuge."

[Ros Wood]

Don't know about the Sanctus but I once heard the Gloria set to Eastenders on Songs of Praise. I've heard worse - but not very often!

Time to own up. I was there. Songs of Praise from Rathbone Market in Newham. And because we were eastenders someone thought ...

[nazard]

There are gloria paraphrases set to Llwyn Onn (The Ash Grove) and Country Gardens, if you really want to reduce your congregation to manageable levels...

[Southern Comfort]

Holy, holy sung to "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall"
Christ had died sung to the Jesus Christ Superstar theme

[docmattc]

Have I read something from Rome that says playing one song to the tune of another is OK, unless that tune calls to mind its secular origins and distracts from the sacred words?
Seems very sensible to me, but 'composers' in the 80s clearly thought otherwise in the name of accessibility and participation. Sadly, many pplaces haven't realised that its no longer the 80s.

[presbyter]

...... unless that tune calls to mind its secular origins and distracts from the sacred words?

Rome - well Avignon - has been saying that since the early fourteenth century.

[musicus]

Some of these posts send shivers down the spine

[nazard]

Wasn't the renaissance trick to use the pop song as the alto or tenor part? Then the choir knew what was going on and had a good laugh, while the clergy were blissfully ignorant. I think some of the masses called "L'homme arme" use this trick.

[organist]

Oh dear I have given Mr Bear the shivers! If you go down to the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise.....