Another favorite, the World War III song…

Pollution…

Lobachevsky (especially fun if you’ve done graduate work)…

…I honestly can’t think offhand of a Lehrer song that I dislike. Some are better than others, as one would rather expect, and some have held up better over the last 40-45 years than others. But on the whole, really he’s a brilliant satirist. Brilliant guy all around, actually; I think he graduated from Harvard at about 17.

Enjoy!

Let’s see if that works or if I have to link instead…I’ve never learned how to embed Link it is…
If nothing else, it may give you an idea of why, prior to meeting The Canuck, I used to say that I would gladly marry Tom Lehrer if I had the opportunity. Even though he’s pushing 80 by now…

Canuck and I will process in to Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus from K.618.

The hymn for the Presentation of the Gifts will be Holy, Holy, Holy!

The Communion hymn will be Joyful, Joyful.

The recessional will be the Promenade from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

I will try to find links to recordings of all of these later today so y’all can enjoy and envision…

After an initial rocky start, it was quite a good and productive meeting. It was rocky because…well, Canuck and I had decided we wanted to do what the GIRM suggests, and walk up the aisle together instead of him waiting at the altar for me while my dad or parents walk me up. I saw a post quite a while ago at Fr. Martin Fox’s blog that talked about how that’s what’s actually recommended; and I mentioned it to the Canuck, who thought it was a nice idea.

We both wanted to get away from the “bride as princess” idea, as the Sacrament really involves both of us, and the groom tends to end up a bit like an accessory at a lot of weddings. (And frankly, I was quite glad at the prospect of having someone else share the spotlight during that nervewracking walk up the aisle! With your dad, it’s not quite the same…) And my dad is very glad that we’re not having him walk me up the aisle; I’m sure he would do it if I asked, but he’s more or less of the opinion that it’s an outdated custom. Funny aside: I mentioned that to the priest who’s the main celebrant of our wedding. He said, in his Slovak accent “I think your family thinks, perhaps, too much about politics.” ROFL! Talk about your understatements…

Anyway. So we tell the music minister what we’re planning to do, and it turns out she’s never heard of this. So at first she says, “This is how we do it here…” and lays out the traditional bride-comes-last-with-Dad. When I explain that I was pretty sure it was what the GIRM recommends (blinking back tears because, well, I overreact to things sometimes), she says I’ll have to take it up with the pastor of the parish. And guess who walked into the music room not a minute later? Yup, Father himself, who says “Oh yeah, that’s allowed. In fact, we’re going to be having a meeting in August sometime with all the people who work on weddings – I’d like to bring the liturgy completely in line with what’s correct – so we’ll be working on moving to that as the norm.” Her response? “Oh! Okay, then!”

So – we got down to talking music. I confessed my dislike of Haugen/Haas, so apart from the Mass setting (there’s not much to be done to avoid them for actual Mass settings, I’m afraid, but I think it’s one of the better ones from what I’ve seen) and the Psalm (same thing with respect to not being able to avoid H/H, but it’s really not an overly Haugen-esque melody) , we are Haugen/Haas-free! Hooray!!!

I will post on the actual selections tomorrow, as the list is in the living room and my next stop is B-E-D. But I was just so excited that we’ve got this settled!

Well, almost settled. We still need to pick a piece for the “Flowers for Mary” portion. Ave Maria is so overplayed, especially the Schubert version; and my idea of some sort of solo or response of the Canticle of Mary elicited only the Gather hymnal’s option, which was…um, very Haugen/Haas. You know: the lyrics are changed to neatly fit rhyme and meter, and the tune is bouncy and a little trite. It reminded me of what a professor had said to me in a creative writing course in college, about a short story I wrote: “It wraps up too neatly – you can see too much of the ‘hand of the author’ in it.”

So – we’ll see. How many of you have been to a wedding where the recessional was the Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition?

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…