Talk:Contemporary Catholic liturgical music

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Contents 1 Should this page be expanded? deleted? renamed? 2 A concrete proposal 3 References 4 Celtic Alleluia

[edit] Should this page be expanded? deleted? renamed?

I expanded this page a bit. I also added some material to the St. Louis Jesuits regarding the controversies about this music.

The fact that this music has become so widespread in American Catholic churches is certainly encyclopedic. (I have lived in suburbs of Los Angeles, Seattle, and the Bay Area, and I'd say that over the past decade more than half the music I have heard at Mass has been from this crowd). And the controversy over this kind of music seems important enough to be in the encyclopedia as well.

But where should this information go? The danger of Wikipedia is that someone will write a paragraph about this controversy on the Dan Schutte page, and someone else will write a paragraph about it in the St. Louis Jesuits article, and someone else will write a very different thing on the Marty Haugen page. I suggest that the major issues should be consolidated on one page.

To me, the major issues are:

• the fact that this music has partially replaced the older music (and is this just in the suburbs? or is rural America also singing these songs?)
• the fact that liturgical 'liberals' and 'conservatives' have strong opinions on whether this is good
• the connections (if any) to the Liturgical Movement, Vatican II, and the Novus Ordo Mass
• and maybe some generational issues (the composers are all baby boomers, many of them born around 1950)

But where should this page be? Should it be on the St. Louis Jesuits page where it is now? That seems wrong, since that page is not about this music in general but only about certain composers. Should it be on this page? Probably, but I think this page is misnamed, because I don't believe that the term hymnody includes anything but hymns, and these songs are not hymns.

Suggestions? - Lawrence King 07:23, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A concrete proposal

So far, no one has replied to my original comments above. So I will make a specific proposal. If no one objects, I will make edits based on the following three principles:

1. This page should have its title changed from "Contemporary Catholic hymnody" to "Contemporary Catholic liturgical music".

2. This page should contain information about the contemporary disputes regarding this music -- whether it is appropriate to the liturgy, whether it is singable, etc. Obviously this isn't a forum for individual opinions, but the fact that the "music wars" or "liturgical wars" often involve debate about this music is itself encyclopedic.

3. Everything about the "music wars" that currently appears on the Dan Schutte, Marty Haugen, and St. Louis Jesuits pages will be moved to this article, because all of the comments on those pages actually apply to this whole genre, not just to one composer.

4. In the future, if someone adds material about the "music wars" to an individual page, it will be moved to this page (unless it clearly refers to a single composer's work).

Objections? Agreements? Comments? - Lawrence King 02:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreement, since this issue is not specific to either the group St. Louis Jesuits nor the individual composers. And you are completely right, the liturgical controversy inspired by these songs is completely encyclopedic; it just needs to be discussed in a centralized location. -Fsotrain₀₉ 03:20, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

This is very well done. Clear and fair to the competing views. Time to scour up some sources. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.109.46.238 (talk • contribs).

[edit] References

Now that this material has been centralized in this article, we need to find references. Without those, many of the statements, especially about the "music war", sound either NPOV or downright ORish. -Fsotrain₀₉ 15:39, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. However, I'm unsure of the practical limits of no-original-research. One of the points in this article is that the blogosphere has a lot of debate about this; does the blogosphere count as an encylopedic source, or as raw data? If it's just raw data, then an attempt to "summarize" this data is arguably original research! So I think the NPOV criteria is the more important of the two, although both are important.

FWIW, I don't have enough spare time to round up all the citations needed.... - Lawrence King 22:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Celtic Alleluia

... was written by the late Fintan O'Carroll. There's an edition published by GIA just in his name, under the title "the Irish Alleluia". Christopher Walker's contribution was the verses adapted from the Te Deum. So I've suggested Laudate Dominum as Walker's best known piece. Is that right? There's a case for Because the Lord is my Shepherd or Veni Sancte Spiritus, I guess.C0pernicus 23:17, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I suspect that we will never know for sure unless we can find a giant survey of the most commonly sung songs in parishes in the English-speaking world. But probably "Veni Sancte Spiritus" would be a confusing choice, because I've heard the chanted version of that far more often than I've heard the modern version. - Lawrence King 23:27, 28 September 2006 (UTC)