Exploitation of Churches by Music Publishers

[Joy]

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[Jipsah]

Could have been worse...

That's ghastly.

 

[tz620q]

Now, to be clear, while I have no evidence that the UMC or SBC have been influenced by their proximity to it, I have encountered numerous complaints from Roman Catholics about how the superficially inexpensive Missalettes published each year by various Christian music publishers lock Catholic parishes into using and replacing, at great cost, the annual missalettes and corresponding hymnals published by these entities, which, combined with complaints about the poor quality of those hymnals and misalettes, and the lack of traditional Gregorian chant and traditional Western hymns which remain a fixture in Anglican and many Lutheran churches, such as Te Deum Laudamus, the Bishop of Marquette, Michigan in 2016 banned the Misalettes and set to implementing a diocesan hymnal, requiring all his parishes become competent in singing or chanting certain basic parts of the liturgy. This is also in keeping with the inspired directive of Pope Pius X mandating the restoration of Gregorian chant and establishing an official preference for it and the related polyphonic music composers like Byrd, Tallis, Palestrina, Vittoria, de Morales, Josquin, and the Flemish Masters. The non-traditional nature of the Misalettes, aside from the exploitative pricing, has been another criticism of the Music Industry I have heard from Catholics (and not just on New Liturgical Movement; I cite their articles as they are the most scholarly and well researched reflections of the views of a large number of proponents of traditional Roman Catholic liturgy across the internet, such as “Fr. Z” with his excellent blog “What does the Prayer really say?”, Fr. Hunwicke in the UK, and the very “trad” blog Rorate Caeli, among others.

I read somewhere that after Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press that the most printed books were missalettes. So it seems that printers and I would assume music publishers flow where the money is.

I sing in the Catholic choir at my church and luckily we have a music director who reads the Vatican II documents and takes what they say seriously. It took him over 20 years but he has moved the congregation from expecting the 4 hymn sandwich to using the ordinaries of the mass for that Sunday. So we do chant more than most Catholic parishes. The General Instruction for the Roman Missal says that chant, because of it history in Christian worship, should have pride of place when someone is choosing liturgical music. Yet I am usually met with an upturned nose when I bring this up to other music directors in our diocese. They just don't believe their congregations will go for that. But here's the rub. The congregation should be following the music and the music should be chosen to be part of a cohesive liturgy. Hymns, especially modern worship music, while they promote congregational singing, are rarely centered around biblical text enough to work into a liturgy with any cohesion with the rest of the service.

 

[The Liturgist]

I read somewhere that after Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press that the most printed books were missalettes. So it seems that printers and I would assume music publishers flow where the money is.

I sing in the Catholic choir at my church and luckily we have a music director who reads the Vatican II documents and takes what they say seriously. It took him over 20 years but he has moved the congregation from expecting the 4 hymn sandwich to using the ordinaries of the mass for that Sunday. So we do chant more than most Catholic parishes. The General Instruction for the Roman Missal says that chant, because of it history in Christian worship, should have pride of place when someone is choosing liturgical music. Yet I am usually met with an upturned nose when I bring this up to other music directors in our diocese. They just don't believe their congregations will go for that. But here's the rub. The congregation should be following the music and the music should be chosen to be part of a cohesive liturgy. Hymns, especially modern worship music, while they promote congregational singing, are rarely centered around biblical text enough to work into a liturgy with any cohesion with the rest of the service.

I literally could not agree more, to the extent where sparing your blushes, I would quote the final sentence of your post in my signature.