Pastoral liturgy and pastoral music

[Tom_Neal]

Ah,
Blessed Tom
get ye to Summer School, free places still available. Meet real people and be argumentative. Ah, Blessed Tom.

Haha! Alas, oopsorganist, I can't; I'm at another conference that week. Maybe next year?

[mcb]

But you are right that the SLJ music was not originally for liturgical use but for concert use.

Jeffrey Tucker says otherwise here:

As Foley, who could play piano but learned guitar in seminary, says “Just at the time, the guitar started to be allowed in the new liturgy. I thought ‘well, they need music, so let’s go.’ ” Indeed, at every step they were encouraged by their superiors to bring the music that they thought of as popular song into Mass. Says Schutte: “I never would have continued these stumbling attempts at music had it not been for the encouragement of my Jesuit peers and superiors.” Hence, they were not seminary’s equivalent of campus rebels. They were cultivated and promoted and encouraged by their teachers and superiors.

To their credit, and despite their recent concertizing on the occasion of their reunion, they avoided giving concerts. They were concerned that their music be used in prayer sessions—not necessarily in liturgy, at least not initially—but not as a venue for popular acclaim, though even by that time folk music had become common in Mass.

[VML]

Somewhere along all these discussions, the widow's mite comes to mind: a seemingly unworthy offering given by someone who may not have reached the aesthetic standards of the hierarchy, but who gives of her best, with humility.
Tom, please tell us exactly how all this should be interpreted by small, say 180 or so at each Mass, parishes; parishes with musicians who are largely qualified by experience and study and prayer, but not necessarily formally qualified in choral, classical music, virtuoso organ or the intricacies of which chant is real and which is not.
It may be that some of us small people understand the difference between pop, rock, and numerous other genres, and recently composed music which, despite having a limited range of harmonies, and being suitable for accompaniment on guitars, is nevertheless a dignified contribution to the liturgy. We may be, dare I say, almost better qualified to understand this distinction than those who are further removed from popular culture.

[Southern Comfort]

But you are right that the SLJ music was not originally for liturgical use but for concert use.

Jeffrey Tucker says otherwise here:

As Foley, who could play piano but learned guitar in seminary, says “Just at the time, the guitar started to be allowed in the new liturgy. I thought ‘well, they need music, so let’s go.’ ” Indeed, at every step they were encouraged by their superiors to bring the music that they thought of as popular song into Mass. Says Schutte: “I never would have continued these stumbling attempts at music had it not been for the encouragement of my Jesuit peers and superiors.” Hence, they were not seminary’s equivalent of campus rebels. They were cultivated and promoted and encouraged by their teachers and superiors.

To their credit, and despite their recent concertizing on the occasion of their reunion, they avoided giving concerts. They were concerned that their music be used in prayer sessions—not necessarily in liturgy, at least not initially—but not as a venue for popular acclaim, though even by that time folk music had become common in Mass.

I know Jeffrey says that, and unfortunately he is wrong.

Jeffrey never had the advantage that I had of watching John Foley drink copious amounts of whisky in Berkeley, California, when he was on a sabbatical there and I was visiting, and he then disclosing many things to me in his cups which he now denies ever saying....

The SLJ music was originally performed, at excruciatingly slow tempi (listen to the recordings), with lush orchestrations (ditto) and lots of rubato (ditto), all of which makes it impossible for assemblies to do, at numerous concerts around the USA. This is what it was written for. It was when fans started to ask to use this music in liturgies that things changed. It's the same sort of story as in the UK, where a lot of the catechetical songs (think Hubert Richards and co, Mary Oswin, etc) began to be in demand for use in a liturgical context.

The SLJs want us to believe that their music was always liturgical. It was biblical, yes, but not liturgical until later.