with the reader who left the comment about "doing your best to sing the horrendous music until the notes get too high for male accompaniment or the music gets too operatic for any normal congregation to follow".Sing Like a Catholic
While the article has touched a chord (heh) with the more traditional element (those who likely read the column anyway), I think there has been some serious degeneration in liturgical music in the past few decades. That doesn't mean, as the commentors would have us think, that all the music is bad. Like most people of the traditional stripe, they likely believe anything that occured in the Church after 1964 is bad, and I don't think that's true. I do think that Catholic liturgical music really could make some changes, though. (The first one would be to write music that one doesn't have to be a soprano or tenor to sing!)
4 comments:
I complained to a friend of mine (a church organist with a music degree) that many of the hymns were too high. She said, "yes, they are high, but if we make them any lower, they become too low for the men." The men, of course, are singing at a lower pitch already and, according to this person and others I have talked to, to lower the songs further would make them unsingable for most men. I was interested to hear this since for years I have been reading claims that the high pitch of so much church music is a sign of the "feminization" of religion. In fact, it's for the sake of the men! Most women - if they considered only themselves - would prefer the music to be lower!
I'm not sure I agree with your friend. We (and I'm a bass-baritone) sing lower because we can't possible reach the range we're required to reach. When songs are written in a lower key we can sing in a more natural range and not have to force ourselves to go so low. When something is too high we have no option but to sing an octave or so lower just to be able to stay on key. I think that your friend is just making excuses for the music (no offense intended). Some people can, and do, write music in a more natural key that everyone can sing in, and I enjoy singing that music. Otherwise I just have to drop an octave or try to sing a harmony if I can figure one out before the hymn ends.
I think that what it is is that most people who write the music are tenors or sopranos, and music often sounds best in their natural ranges, so that's the range they write for. Alas, most men are certainly not tenors...
I don't know enough about it. I do know that most women (including sopranos) find the music too high. And so do most men. I don't know why it is. Maybe they just don't care if we can sing the stuff comfortably or not. (I am a soprano and can actually sing quite high. But I'd like a lot of the stuff lowered. It's uncomfortable. I'd sing an octave lower if I could learn how to do it!)
The person I was talking to has a superb, effortless voice. Perhaps she was making excuses :-)
I think it has a lot to do with the key signature. Certain keys seem to be the most popular. I know that poor SWMBO struggles to get through some verses of the Psalm during the readings because the thing reaches up in to the stratosphere and only an operaticly trained coloratura soprano could reach it easily. I'm not sure either why it is, but I do know that some music is written just fine for everyone, and some isn't...
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