Yet another reason why I love the Canuck
Kasia July 6th, 2008
Warning: after reading this post, you may have a couple of frequently-played hymns ruined for you. Proceed at your own risk.
With a bit of help, I’m noticing that some of the liturgical music of the last fifty years or so bears a striking resemblance to some of its contemporaneous secular music. I don’t suppose that should be especially surprising, but it did surprise me. There you have it.
I was talking to a friend a few months ago and we got onto the subject of Haugen/Haas. (Neither of us is a fan.) He was explaining how H/H in some ways get a bad rap because what they replaced was actually worse, and gave me a chronology: the St. Louis Jesuits were better than what preceded them because they actually incorporated Scripture into their lyrics. H/H were better than the St. Louis Jesuits because some of their music actually could be played with conventional church instruments like organs. Et cetera.
I commented that while I don’t like most of H/H, there are a few songs that I don’t mind and even sort of like - not love, but like in small doses. Unfortunately, they get played so much that I still want to rip out my eyeballs and stuff them into my ears.
He asked which, and I named “Here I Am, Lord” as an example. He laughed, said “Do you want me to ruin it for you?” and when I agreed, began to sing, to the tune of the chorus:
“It’s THE sto-ry…of a love-ly LA-dy…”
And thus was “Here I Am, Lord” forever ruined for me, as once it was pointed out to me I could never un-hear how similar it was to the theme from The Brady Bunch. Kind of like once you’ve seen the guy hanging himself in the background of The Wizard of Oz - someone had to literally go point at the television screen to make me notice it - but almost twenty years later I still can’t see the scene without noticing it.
Well. The last two weeks of Mass were in different dioceses (Detroit and then London), and yet two different music ministers saw fit, two consecutive weeks, to play “Sing of the Lord’s Goodness”, which if I’d heard before I didn’t remember. It’s a bouncy, jazzy tune, a little tricky to sing both melodically and rhythmically, and it makes me want to shake my tushie right there in front of the Blessed Sacrament, which just can’t be a good thing. ;-) I know that David leapt for joy when the Ark was returned, but Scripture doesn’t say that he got down and boogied in front of the Holy of Holies…time and place, guys…
Anyway. If you are prepared to have another hymn ruined for you, start by going here and listening to the music (no lyrics) of “Sing of the Lord’s Goodness”. Then go here and listen to Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”.
They’re not the same, but they’re similar enough that I now have an inkling of why I find myself wanting to bop and boogie in church…
