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Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
The only reason folks can sing "Sing of the Lord's Goodness" in 5/4 time is because it's a complete and utter rip-off of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" -- the next time your "music minister" subjects you to this ditty, do what I do and sing Paul Desmond's sax melody from "Take Five" along to it instead: it works, bridge and all.
Put it this way: George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" got tagged with plagiarism for a whole lot less.
(It's interesting to note that jazz great Brubeck is a composer of sacred music, which was performed in concert at the cathedral in San Jose this past Easter.)
Bad liturgical music has been inspiring some awfully good – and evil – writing at St. Blog's of late. From another post by Victor Lams:
I usually am forced by the sheer banality of the music make up my own lyrics to the tunes. For example, for the insipid "Rain Down" which our music minister loves to play whenever it's raining outside (get it? Because it's raining and the song has "rain" in the title?) or there are kids in the choir (because they can make little hand-gestures like the falling rain), I sing these alternate words: "Raaaaaain down, Raaaaaain down, Raaaain down your fire and brimmstone. Raaaaaain down, Raaaaaain down, Raaaain down your fury and purrrrge us."
He then goes on to compare and contrast the OCP hymn "Bread for the World" with the Mr. Clean jingle. Good. Very good.
Meantime, Dale Price explains what he calls his "Air Supply/America/Christopher Cross Test" for church music:
If I can imagine one of those artists doing a straight cover of the song, it doesn't belong at Mass. If I can't, then it's probably OK. Greg Krehbiel put it nicely when he said he was tired of the gooey "Good Morning, Yahweh" repertoire. It's music that suggests we aren't so much praising God as being willing to shake His hand.
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