Damian Thompson is my friend

[johnquinn39]

Damian has supplied a link to a video clip of a piece of sacred music (The sound of Futurechurch!)

Apparently, this piece is 'being circulated as an example of "best liturgical practise"' by the Bishops' conference, and by the SSG.

However, I have thoroughly searched both sites, and can find no reference to it at all.

Can anyone help me out on this?

(For further details go to Damian's 'Holy Smoke' blog.)

[Southern Comfort]

It's Damian being his usual fatuous self. When he can't find something to dig at, he invents something. Just ignore him and he'll soon go away. <lack of charity off>

[musicus]

Good advice, SC.
If anyone can help John, perhaps they could PM him?
Thank you.

[contrabordun]

It's a total spoof. Watch (if you must) the video from his blog. DT was being sarcastic when he suggested it was anything to do with SSG, though a few of his own supportive readers appear to have watched it through without realising he wasn't being serious and then decided to tell the whole world how wicked the SSG was and what a good thing it was that they had DT to keep everybody aware of the dangers of it all. Which must have been a bit embarrassing for the man himself - (doesn't say much for you if the people sticking up for you don't appear to be quite all there, does it?).

Our own Nick B joined in rather enthusiastically, though I think he's on to a loser trying to fight emotion with reason.

[Nick Baty]

To be honest, Contradbordun, I’ve wasted my time. Also feel I should apologise to the Society because, by trying to support it I have effectively held it aloft so others can throw bricks at it.

Some of the criticisms are quite ludicrous. One Australian guy told me we were a group of professional liturgical musicians and another said the SSG was ““a laughing stock the world over”.

Damian's cohort also keep going on about “SSG composers” as we were some sort of conservatoire with a few crusty old musicians hidden in the attic. Damian himself asked if SSG composers could write a fugue – suspect most members with music degrees could. But what he means by SSG composers is beyond me. I did think that perhaps he could be referring to The Thomas More Group, most of whom have been members at some time, but even then there is no single style to unite Bill Tamblyn and James Walsh with Peter Jones.

In trying to defend, I’ve been accused of promoting music which is “ugly and not in any way conducive to worship of God.” I asked which items, out of the many I’ve promoted in workshops around the archdiocese over the last few years this person was referring to but there was no reply so I’m not sure what was being cited.

I was accused by “Bernadette” of having “a twisted laugh every Sunday morning. And we go home crying.” And she summed up the University of Liverpool where I’ve been studying for the last couple of years as “a secular academic institution, which also churns out secular academic musicians of not much notable esteem”. Not sure of her evidence but suspect there are a few profs who’ll be miffed by this ignorant comment.

Keeping to the Liverpool theme, “Onthesideoftheangels” told my that my music “couldn't sound worse than Paul McCartney's choral works - which sounded like an air raid siren with dysentery.” I have to add that I hadn’t realised my work was so widely known outside our own deanery.

It reminded me of the night 2,000 of us gave a standing ovation to Karl Jenkins’s “Stabat Mater” at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral. A couple of days later the Times and the Telegraph completely slagged-off the same work and one couldn’t help feeling if they’d been at the same concert. But I digress.

One comment did make me smile: One of the posters claims his senior school was “closed down and sold off to help pay for [Inwood’s] reprehensible Gathering Mass.” Now, if the sale of a secondary school only partly funds a piece by Paul, may I suggest that at the next summer school, all the drinks are on him? More to the point, does Catherine know where he hides all the dosh?

Just tonight, one of the posters most vehemently opposed to the SSG suggested a hymn sandwich, and a Sanctus sung to the tune of “Sex and the City”. The same person had earlier accused me of breaking every rule in the book “as well you'd know it if you'd actually read the documents you'd quoted.”

Not worth crying with frustration. I’ll treat myself to a smile and a glass of vino. As Hilaire Belloc said:
“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I have always found it so.
Benedicamus Domini”.

[contrabordun]

Hard to know what to say. I read the thread through and thought you trying hard to have a reasoned argument with a group of people who simply weren't interested in one. The highlight was the person who dismissed the guide for composers on the grounds that it had been written for the bishops by the very individuals responsible for all that awful music. (The agents of Snowball had clearly been hard at work). Presumably that means we can all choose which documents 'count' according to whether we like what's in them?

[quaeritor]

Can anyone supply a link to this obviously fascinating blog (please)?

BTW, what's the difference between a blog and a forum?

Always seeking . . .

[Copernicus]

Also feel I should apologise to the Society because, by trying to support it I have effectively held it aloft so others can throw bricks at it.

Not a bit of it, Nick. You've done a great job. DT may be contemptible for his lack of concern either for understanding the liturgy or for telling the truth, and lots of his hangers on are frankly insane, but I expect there are plenty of passers-by who read his stuff and would be revolted by (the parody of) Catholic Christianity depicted there, if it weren't for people like you talking patient sense, and turning the other cheek while you do.

To anyone not actually frothing at the mouth, I think the Society comes out of DT's pathetic taunts fairly well. I hope he doesn't lose interest in the SSG.

[contrabordun]

Agreed. And while I'm here, an hon mention to Copernicus for shooting down in flames DT's assertion that "we believe" is a modern touchy-feely perversion of the credo...

[dmu3tem]

Damian himself asked if SSG composers could write a fugue

Yes, I have written at least 6 - four for organ, one for Clarinet, Horn and Bassoon, and one as extension from an incomplete movement of Mozart's requiem while I was at university about 9 years ago.

Can anyone give me advice on how to inform the luckless Damian of this inconvenient fact, perhaps adding that I am the current SSG composers secretary?

For those wanting to see any of these fugues by me, come along to the next SSG composers meeting at St Mary's Priory Church, Brownedge, Bamber Bridge, Nr Preston. Details should come up shortly on the composers section of this website.

Thomas Muir

[musicus]

I can (and do) write fugues too. Does that make me a "real composer"?

This is pointless stuff...

[JW]

The ignorance of many posters to blogs, including DT's does worry me. As far as criticisms of music in the liturgy are concerned, do these people have any liturgical or musical training? Do they attend their parishes' liturgy meetings / raise these issues with their priests? Attendance at church is about the whole community, not just about one person's opinion as to what is right, or one person's spiritual high - sometimes we just have to accept what we don't like. I was sorry to see the pre council Holy Week Celebrations go but hey - I got over it!

[musicus]

I'm locking this thread now because, frankly, I am tired of seeing it descend into well deserved oblivion, only to be bumped to the head of the topics list again.