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August 18, 2004
Worship, liturgy, and music ....
These three things could almost be mutually exclusive in some circumstances. Worship is about showing our love for God in the most appropriate way we can manage, liturgy is about making that worship structured - and then there is music to enhance it or to wreck it.
Someone called Mark, whose blog is interestingly named "Vomit the Lukewarm" - from Revelations, I think, and the references to spitting out the lukewarm - has written a most interesting piece on the difficulty of using "Folk" style music in worship. While I think he is certainly correct in identifying the difficulties inherent in using music not written for use in the Catholic Mass, there are one or two examples which have worked very well. One now forgotten setting of the Anglican Mass, used the Dam Busters March as the setting for the Paternoster immediately following the Great Eucharistic Prayer. Others which I have experienced include African settings for the Mass, but these are purpose written - not something adapted to a use for which they were not originally intended.
At the heart of the Liturgy lies the mystery; the music must draw out and enhance that mystery or it will have the effect of obscuring it and at worst destroying it. Liturgy is the vehicle within which the act of worship is performed, the music must be appropriate to both the solemnity and to the awe in which we should hold God. As Mark has stressed, the Christian Faith focuses on the fact that the God whom we worship has a Tripartite existence - The Father, the Son (the Word made flesh to dwell among us and show us the way to salvation), and the Holy Spirit who works among us and through us in all things. It is a faith that may be expressed at some levels in such folksy ballads as "Here I am, Lord," - actually one of the better "modern" liturgical ballads - but these soon either lose the mystery or become just too "folksy" to be worship. The mystery gets swamped in an all too childish (note that Christ did not say his followers should be childish - but have the faith of a child, which accepts a mystery and doesn't worry about it) that we reduce God to a rather fun figure dressed in a nightshirt and parked on some convenient cloud. No mystery, no awe, no wonderment at his grace and bounty to us, his wilful and rather stupid creation. Without mystery, without awe, all is mundane and not worshipful - so why are we gathering to call this "worship"?
I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience a very wide range of forms of worship and to explore their impact on the worshipper. In some congregations "chorus" style hymns are the only ones they will use - anything else to them is anathema, old fashioned, or simply boring. In other congregations you find that if the setting isn't performed to concert standards there are those who will consider the entire act of worship has been invalid as worship.
The real trick is to find a balance, where the music enhances the spiritual and this combines within the liturgy to give an act of worship which is appropriate, is understandable, or at least comprehensible to any stranger wandering in for the first time. They should feel that this is worth exploring again, not leave thinking, "what the heck was that about?"
Perhaps the Orthodox Churches have something to offer on this - they permit no musical instruments of any kind in the worship. The only music permitted in worship is that which is produced by the human voice, and the complex harmonies they produce to enhance their worship reaches into the very soul and compels you to worship the one true and living God. Much the same effect can be achieved by much of the purpose written music for the Mass, but this can easily be destroyed in the Western Traditions by interspersing "jolly choruses" for the children or the congregation. Nope, Mark's right. The Music must be right - or should not be there at all!
Posted by The Gray Monk at August 18, 2004 09:25 AM