Famed film composer lauds Gregorian chant, criticizes contemporary church music
I’m not a religious kind of guy, but I was interested in a recent statement by Ennio Morricone, the Academy Award-winning composer who has written scores for more than 500 films, including The Mission and The Untouchables, when he lauded Pope Benedict’s attempts to promote Gregorian chant in the sacred liturgy.
What do you think? Is music in church too ‘happy-clappy’ and does it need to be more serious?
Having studied church music, I’m obviously drawn to the wonderful polyphonic writing of many Renaissance church composers. On the other hand, as I’m not religious, maybe pop music is what people today need to entice them into church.
Should we need entertaining in church?
Do we need a film composer to point the way, anyway?
So many questions and I have no answers! Maybe you do – let me know.
Read more about Morricone’s thoughts at www.catholicculture.org
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 10:26 am and is filed under Religious Music. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 20th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
My perspective comes from exposure to a wide variety of music for worship. I’m a converted Catholic and professional choir director/singer. I have a Master of Music in choral conducting and my undergraduate major was violin. I was employed at the Old North Church, an active Episcopal/Anglican parish in Boston of Paul Revere lanterns fame, for three years as a soloist and choir member. My background is mainly classical, but I improvise weekly on trumpet and violin for the Hispanic service at St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Hispanic choir sings religious texts set to Latin pop and folk, including Afro-
Cuban complete with congas and bongos. I also direct the choir at Temple Israel here, which sings traditional Jewish music exclusively in Hebrew.
So as the son of a fundamentalist protestant minister and musician with a largely classical music background, I have been intimately exposed to every style imaginable, including Black gospel. I founded and directed for ten years an unaffiliated community choir in Iowa called the Cantus Angelicus Choral Society. We specialized in the great sacred music of the European tradition with a strong focus on the high renaissance, early and middle baroque.
There is something to be said, in my opinion, for both sides of this issue, as long as the music is of significant quality. Of course, that is a very subjective criterion, but I personally despise what I would call the “bad soft rock” that characterizes much of the music I’ve heard in many Catholic parishes as well as protestant churches. On the other hand, I love a lot of Black gospel and I enjoy the Afro-Cuban, Mexican, and other styles, including some of the better Latin pop.
My personal preference for worship music is more traditional, however. Gregorian chant is so conducive to the inner silence and meditative atmosphere that I find more appropriate to a truly, deeply worshipful state of heart and mind. Music from the high renaissance is so harmonious, profoundly beautiful, and similarly conducive to a truly deep worshipful attitude.
On the other hand, there is a place for the ebullient expression of joy in Black gospel and Latin music. Just as there a parts of Handel’s Messiah that are slow, quiet, and contemplative and contrasting with those parts exemplified by the expression of joy in the Hallelujah Chorus, I feel we need both elements in modern worship. We just happen to have a much wider range to chose from in terms of styles and their cultural origins.
So my practical exposure to all of these styles has widened my perspective over the years. I just really dislike the maudlin sentimentality and musically mediocre quality that I hear in way too much contemporary church music. If I had to make a generalized judgment, I would say that as a whole, contemporary church music is more a curse than an asset simply because this kind of maudlin, wimpy, musical mediocrity is so apparent and universal in contemporary worship. The more traditional styles are much more consistently of high musical and expressive quality. This is what I believe creates the practical dilemma and brings this issue to the fore.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
I would like to add an addendum to my previous post:
I do NOT view music in general as entertainment, but as an art, and (please forgive my prejudice) as the highest art. Most contemporary non-musicians as well as many musicians view music strictly as entertainment, strictly as show business. I believe the entertainment industry has spawned this attitude among the general populace. Even artists in the visual and plastic arts tend to view music not as another art, but as entertainment, and their tastes in music often reflect this.
I believe what differentiates music as art from mere entertainment is the spiritual communication of the artist to his/her audience that defines true art in the first place. Of course, many pop artists claim to do this, but I don’t buy it in most cases. In my view, entertainment is like putting colored lights on that gorgeous, high, natural waterfall in Yosemite National Park. It is flashy but superficial. Rather than inspiring the soul, it distracts it from appreciating the natural beauty of the site. It inspires little if any insight, depth of perception, but instead covers it with tinsel. It attracts, excites, stimulates, but fails to inspire spiritual depth, insight, transcendence of everyday observation. It merely titillates. It metaphorically represents infatuation as contrasted with a deep, enduring love. The bottom line for me is this: if we have to attract people to houses of worship with cheap entertainment, we might as well just offer them free beer.