"Child Friendliness"

[contrabordun]

What Alan said. Especially the last sentence.

It's not even surprising: to give somebody a challenge is to pay them a compliment: you're crediting them with the ability to learn to do it. Give them something easy and the message is they aren't up to anything more ambitious. And children are as aware of that as anybody.

I've got 8 year olds who came to the first practice after the summer hols wanting to know when they could sing Hosianna* again. (Not until Palm Sunday, I'm afraid.) It's in German for heaven's sake. And Telemann died nearly 250 years ago. How untrendy can you get?

And I'm sure most of us could tell of similar.

*http://www.kantoreiarchiv.de/archiv/choir_orchestra/cantata/telemann/hosianna_dem_sohne_david/vocal_score.pdf . Strongly recommended - great fun. SAMen. Was also recommended in M&L.

[Peter]

Those who ask for child-friendly music are invariably really asking for the music that they remember from their childhood.

FWIW, the music I remember from my school Masses or other services and my views on it at the time included:
• plainchant (mainly Missae de Angelis and Orbis Factor) - initially tedious but they grew on me;
• People's Mass (Gregory Murray) - pretty trite compared with the above;
• Soul of my Saviour - dirge-like (with hindsight it made me aware of other parts, especially bass lines, and taught me what suspensions sounded like even before I knew what they were, but I still loathe it);
• Lord for Tomorrow - loathed even more than the above: I resented its classification under "General" in the Westminster Hymnal when I thought it should "for the young" and as a teenager in particular resented having to sing such patronising stuff.

At school we did have some teaching of liturgy in RE classes (still Tridentine in those days) but I had already had my interest awoken by some books I had been sent in my primary school days by an uncle who was a priest specialising in religious education. I don't know whether I would have taken such an interest as a teenager without that grounding.

On a lighter note:

As for children being unable to do Latin - rubbish. Our whole school cohort can sing their way through the weekday Mass ordinary. And my daughter's been able to recite the Pater Noster since she was 3...does she understand it? About as well as she understands what 'fruit of thy womb, Jesus', or 'hallowed be thy name' mean in English. Latin's a language like any other, if we're teaching primary age children French and Spanish, what harm is there in a little Latin?

Since we had Benediction once a week as well as Mass we needed to know the words of the Tantum ergo and one music master made sure we knew them by getting us in music class to sing them to the tune of Clementine - an inspired choice as getting us to sing sacred words to a secular tune seemed naughty and therefore fun, so we sang them with gusto in class and were able to sing them more sedately in church to St Thomas (pretty staid) or Regent Square (which I enjoyed much more) even if I didn't understand what they meant despite doing O-level Latin!

... but among a small handful of regular items were ... As I kneel before you (post-communion) ...

Yes, I came across this (to my horror) at a Confirmation Mass last year. When I pointed out that as a Marian hymn it was quite unsuitable for the (post-) communion slot I was given the answer "The children chose it"! Clearly we are not teaching them about liturgy these days in the way I was taught - but then with things like the Butterfly Song, SJS and Colours of Day (which I loathe even more than Lord for tomorrow) in the standard repertoire, singing anything to Clementine doesn't have the frisson it had in my day. Even more distressing, their teachers seem never to have had that training either and so cannot be expected to teach them anything better.

In my experience, children and young people respect and respond to informed and inspiring leadership; they relish being challenged and they despise being patronised.

My experience outlined above supports this.

[oopsorganist]

Eek eek eek help
off topic a little but probably alongside......

today we had a visitor to Mass - of civic significance. I know that he should not have been named and welcomed at the start of Mass - but he was. Before this -

On arriving at church I was told off handedly that "the school are coming down". Which used to mean that they came with a tape player etc etc and chose the music... but after a while the HT was consulted and said we could sing what was planned and published in the bulletin. Well ta!

At the start of Mass father came out and said a bit, then two tots came out and said a bit more, read out some prayers, then welcomed the visitor - then the tots said/led the Kyrei. Ah? I've got my mouth open by now.

Then they did all the reading but luckily the HT did not get up and read the Gospel as happened last year sometime.
The tots did the bidding prayers. There was another odd moment but I have forgotten just now.

So there you go. Our primary deigned to visit. Praise the Lord.
This might be why we need a Liturgy planning group. Sigh sigh sigh
Why does the school have to be so difficult? There is a church full when they come. So that is money in the plate. We cow tow to them because of this I guess. But no real communcation or joined up thinking about who is doing what and why.

[Reginald]

In my experience, children and young people respect and respond to informed and inspiring leadership; they relish being challenged and they despise being patronised.

Absolutely!

I'm not sure that this is the forum for raising this - but, isn't it likely that the majority of those responsible for worship in our schools (Heads, music and RE teachers) have little or no formation in liturgy? Perhaps no idea that a new translation is, perhaps, as little as 12 months away?

There's a recession on and most schools have cut back their training budgets. Is there a case for offering INSET directly to schools - at a low price (one price per school to try to encourage them to send more than one delegate as one convert risks being a voice crying in the wilderness - send the chaplain too?), perhaps with the cooperation of Diocesan Schools'/Music Offices? Might we persuade a Cathedral or two to donate facilities? Decani might be present so that delegates could buy what they've heard. My school might be able to sort out a bit of admin support for bookings if we got to the stage of a serious proposal, and there are enough big names lurking around the site that have the experience and skills to be able to both present new music and a rationale for the choosing of music.

If we're to effect real change, schools would seem to be the place to make that change.