Welcome, and remember the purpose of this space. I hope that you have stories to share. I’m not so much interested in discussion of theories, but more simply – stories: stories related to that first decade and a half after the Council.
Here are two background posts at my regular blog: here and here. Oh, and here.
Here’s the link to Ken Canedo’s website and podcasts.
Here’s a Youtube channel featuring loads of recordings of this music.
I really wish I could embed this video - but I can’t. I’ve linked to it before on my regular blog, and it fits here. It’s Irish, from 1968, and captures a fascinating moment - a folk choir singing a hymn to the tune of Blowin’ in the Wind and Sing from the Highest Mountain - with the priest celebrating ad orientem. Go take a look.
What are your memories of liturgical music in that period after the Second Vatican Council? Here are mine.
First, understand this about my background: I was born in 1960, but was not taken to Mass until I was five years old. My mother was a faithful Catholic, my father was, as he would put it, a “lapsed Methodist.” I evidently didn’t behave well in Mass, so early on, my mother decided, why bother, when she can stay with David? - so I did.
That said, I don’t remember a thing – a thing – about liturgical music during my childhood when she did start allowing me to accompany her. Those first couple of years we went to a university Newman Center – I remember the look of the building and even the interior space, I remember being dropped off for CCD one morning when it wasn’t in session - but nothing about actually going to Mass. For much of my childhood, we were in your basic midwestern parish – I looked it up today, an it’s still there – and again, I remember nothing about Mass.
But then – high school. A Catholic diocesan high school in the south, from 1974-78. That I remember.
It was all of the music that Canedo features, and boy did it stick. As I mentioned, I’m really surprised how much I can sing, still. Challenge me to a sing-off? I may not win, but I’ll finish strong. However, I don’t recall specific Mass song moments from high school Masses, except for cringy feelings related to certain songs that we resoundly mocked before and after – what I do remember though, is this:
First, the use of secular music, not so much during Mass (although that might have occurred), but in reconciliation and prayer services and retreat days, and as prayer prompts and mood-setters in religion class. All the time, and nothing but. Except for Hosea at reconciliation services, natch. I think it was in canon law, the use of Hosea. Most popular? Bridge over Troubled Waters, You’ve Got a Friend (James Taylor), Blowin’ in the Wind (of course), for some reason, If and Diary (Bread), and Lonely People by America.
Also: (I’m adding these after a reader mentioned them on Facebook - headsmacking moment: how could I forget?!) Turn, Turn, Turn (that was very popular in school services), Morning Has Broken (not surprisingly) and yes, Let it Be.
Now, of course, this was the era of Jesus Christ, Superstar and Godspell. JCS was waay too daring for consideration for any use in my school, but even though the lack-of-resurrection was problematic, Godspell was approved. We sang Day by Day a lot at Mass, and, of course, Prepare Ye went Advent rolled around.
Waiting for that descant to kick in…Day by Day - Day-by-Daaaaay-
Also: wow, is Godspell awful. Fun music but, yikes.
My other memory of this era has centers on the parish. A city parish, with a sweet, dedicated, talented organist, but struggling, as were many parishes at the time, to figure out what to sing and how to sing it. It was mostly the standards – Praise to the Lord, Holy, Holy, Holy, etc, but one moment does stand out for me, with all due respect to those involved:
One of the cantors, a big man in his 50’s with a pseudo-Irish tenor type voice, standing at the lectern in his plaid sports jacket and tie, warbling his way plaintively through Kris Kristofferson’s Why me Lord? - organ accompaniment and everything.
Yes, that was…. unforgettable.
So that’s high school. Catholic music in our experience in that place and time? Routine, a little lame at times, absolutely mock-worthy at others, because of course, teenagers, and occasionally appreciated. Occasionally.
Then came college.
This is one of those moments I actually remember. August 1978, my first Mass at the college Catholic center. Several guitars, tambourine, maybe a flute, definitely a bass fiddle (played by the head of the campus Women’s Center) – opening song? Lord of Glory. Closing song? Blest be the Lord.
What a jolt. I loved it. We all did. I mean, that measure or two between verse and refrain of Lord of Glory where the rhythm is building and the punch to Leaping the mountains! Bounding the hills! The descant in Blest Be the Lord? Yes, it had an impact on 18-year old me, definitely.
So that was college: From 1978-82 - no secular music in Mass, unless you want to count Hosanna from Jesus Christ Superstar as “secular.” But it was, by that point, St. Louis Jesuits, for the most part, with a big heap of charismatic-rooted music as well.
There was a large charismatic contingent at my university student center, centered on several faculty members and their families with students drifting in and out. At least one of them ended up joining one of the big covenant communities in the Midwest not long after. It was also, in fact, through one guy who was very active in the charismatic group that I first heard of Mother Angelica. A lot of people today aren’t aware that this was her first audience – Catholic charismatics who passed around the small pamphlets she wrote and published.
Anyway, that was not my thing, although even then as now, I was interested in it just because I’m always interest in groups and subgroups. I went to one charismatic prayer meeting – and that was it. However, many of the same older adult charismatic leaders were key to the music ministry there, so besides the increasingly canonical St. Louis Jesuits, we sang a lot of music that came from the charismatic movement, and looky here at what I still have:
Leafing through it, again, I was surprised at the number of songs I can still sing from memory. I was also surprised at how many songs were absolute standards, and we sang all the time, but have, it seemed, just disappeared. Or not? You tell me.
Aw, look at Amy’s noting the Scripture reference and the date it’d be used. I don’t know for what purpose, though – I learned to play guitar the summer after my freshman year (while doing a summer mission thing in Harlan, Kentucky), but I don’t think I ever played at Mass during college – there were far more competent musicians. I did sing, though, so perhaps it’s related to that.
Anyway, all through this, I never thought that things could or should be any different. This was a given, and while it was sometimes cringey, it was just..the Mass. This was how it was done and this - along with the traditional hymns - was the music. No thought at all of any other way that was about, say, singing the Mass rather than singing at Mass.
My least favorite hymns/songs? Even then, I had strong opinions. I tend to hate whiny – anything – so the music I disdained, I’d probably characterize as..having that quality. I Will Never Forget You (Isaiah 49) – Carey Landry, of course, Hosea, Turn to Me, Of my Hands, Be Not Afraid, oh, and this one.
I have vivid memories of us mocking that refrain – it’s such a strange, pseudo-martial, dirdgy thing, which then pops up into that high register, kind of a reverse On Eagle’s Wings.
I’ll end this post with my choice for Song-That-Should-Be-Banned-Forever – one that I’ve hated probably since I first started hearing and singing it in the late 60’s. Followed by my Not-So-Guilty-Pleasure-Favorite.
The syrupy, sentimental lyrics, the clichéd buildup and painfully soaring end. I really can’t stand it, even knowing the origin story, which is powerful.
But.
And here we get to my point.
Long ago, in young adulthood, past the folk era, even past the St. Louis Jesuits, well into the Haugen-Haas era about which I was increasingly doubtful, I was borderline seething, nourishing my contemptuous side as I saw that this was coming up as the recessional during a Mass. I had to put a pause on my disdain, though, as the music progressed. I listened.
People were singing. Boy were they singing. I mean, belting this one out like I’d not heard them sing all during Mass, like I’d not heard a congregation sing in a while. They were all in.
Oh, I didn’t stop having my views. Obviously, if you read my blog. And it’s not only my views, it’s a commitment to support, in whatever way I can, sacred music. But I can never forget how that congregation raised the roof with to take each moment and live each moment in peace etern-a-leeee! and just one more time…..
And who am I to talk?
Because this is my fave from the era. It was the specialty of our charismatic-heavy college music group, led by a woman with a soaring, gorgeous, clear voice. They did this so well - much better than this group here, especially the guy, but perhaps you can still get the idea. This is the only recording I could find. Sorry, not sorry that I’ve always liked “A Voice Cries Out in the Wilderness” by James Berlucchi and Charles Christmas and will gladly rock out to it at any time.
In the desert of Judea, lived a prophet of God. Camel's hair was his clothes, locust and honey were his food. From his mouth came the news, "God's kingdom is at hand."
O Jerusalem, you must prepare for Him. If, then, you would learn, repent, yes, and turn. Wash your sins away. Be cleansed on this day.
Jordan waters flow. People come and go. "What's the meaning of all this? Who will bring us righteousness? Fulfill our hearts' desire? COULD IT BE THE MESSIAH?"
Now you’re ready for Advent. You’re welcome.
I was born not-quite-a-decade after you, near your college town, so our experiences with the Mass are probably very similar. Growing up and going to a Catholic school, I didn't think very much about pre or post Vatican II music because that was just it. But even as a child, I had an aversion to hippies, and things like the album cover of Godspell terrified me (as did the Mamas and the Papas in the swimming pool drinking out of a hat). Jesus Christ Superstar was one extended nightmare, and I still cringe when I hear it sung. As I am a parishioner at a Paulist parish, that happens more often than not, although only a cappella during a homily (and I'm okay with that! The Paulist predilection for singing in the pulpit is endearing). But I digress. As a child, standing in the hot sun for the May Crowing, and looking down at the purple type of the mimeographed lyrics, we sang a collection of Marian hymns that I still love. Immaculate Mary, Salve Regina, inter alia. Those songs, for some reason, are excluded for my general antipathy toward the liturgical music of my youth.
In our Church we had an organist who was an ex-nun. She was also the music teacher at the school. She was, as I would realize later in life, a wonderful woman. But she had a temper and did not suffer fools gladly, and I was a fool. I believe there was a minor dust-up concerning some well-deserved violence against my fellow students, and that put an end to her musical instruction, though not to her work as organist. When she wasn't there in the choir-loft at that organ, there was instead an excellent guitarist, with long blonde hair, who was one of a large family that was well regarded in the parish. It is only now, in reminiscence, that I realize that I never considered him a hippie, and I will have to explore the meaning behind this inconsistency. In any case, guitar-Mass was the order of the day, and although I am also a guitarist, I have never felt that it was an appropriate instrument for reverence. It is tied up, along with the hippies, with sitting in various basements or a corner of the cafeteria, where rolling panels segregated a corner of the room, each with obligatory rainbow colors and post-modern artistic renderings of doves, Johnathan Livingston Seagull style, and "Morning Has Broken" playing from a tinny tape recorder while a slide projector displayed those ubiquitous birds silhouetted against a red sky, or images of smiling happy teenagers in tight T-shirts with sweat rings darkening their armpits and acne lighting up their faces.
By the time I emerged from this Purgatorio and into the high-school CYO of the early 80's, there was an infusion of Amy Grant and Tom Franzak and the non-liturgical music that served as the soundtrack to our own version of Breakfast Club. SEARCH introduced this, and again, like the Marian songs of my youth, the sappy ditties, like Friends are Friends Forever, and Live On In My Love, get a pass and bring back fond memories of my fellow students. But, again, this was not in the liturgy. No... in the liturgy there was Eagle's Wings and Gather Us In and the execrable Lord of the Dance.
On a side note, in the wake of cancer, I began to discuss with my wife the details of my funeral mass. As an effort to give me will to live (and it has worked brilliantly!), she swore that she would have Lord of the Dance prominently featured, rather than my request for Zbigniew Priesner's Lacrimosa. I in turn have promised to haunt her if she does so, my particular ghostly manifestation being a poltergeist who destroys her collection of expensive shoes.
I associate all of the Haugen & Haas music with silliness, with clay goblets and bits of whole-wheat leavened bread, dispensed by well-meaning Eucharistic ministers. It all represents a "horizontal" church that emerged from Vatican II had had its brief Age of Aquarius flare.
Carrying a sincere but shallow faith to the Marianist University of Dayton, I found more of the same in the sad theater-in-the-round wreckovation of UD's once beautiful chapel, in the semicircle of metal chairs facing a plain table, with the baroque glory of the old chapel still visible and unused, and the tabernacle of that marble altar crouching to the side like a visible representation of the Tridentine Mass, there in shadow but not yet exorcised. It was not long before I stopped attending Mass and liturgical music meant nothing any more.
As might be expected, my later reversion, prompted by St. Augustine and the efforts of my wife and brother, burst into a pharisaical disdain for the music of my youth, and a turn toward Palestrina and chant, and I spent an other-than-healthy effort on the internet engaging in polemic. Somewhere there was a Society for the Banning of Haugen & Haas, or something like that, which had some nice parodies of Gather Us In... I can only remember "Here in this place, a bad song is starting, now will the altar turn into a stage, all we hold dear is slowly departing, making its way for the coming new age."
Well, my reminiscence has carried me into the 1990's, which is well beyond the "post-Vatican II" years you referenced above. I apologize and will try to keep any future stories more focused. Thank you for encouraging this discussion!
I don’t recall anything liturgically prior to the “reforms” (born 1963) but a few things stand out from grade school. One was a nun who, previously a missionary to China and then missionary to barbarians (us), said that any sermon or song that doesn’t appeal to us may be because it was for another person. That was thinking outside my selfish box.
I recall the same ‘set list’ as you, i.e. Godspell, Morning Has Broken, ... Another star attraction song was “Good Morning Starshine” (“the earth says ‘hello!’, you twinkle above us, we twinkle below”)... Yeah I’ll never get that ear worm out. Our 7th grade teacher had a thing for Donovan and played us “Jennifer, Juniper” which left a lasting impression, ha.
High school was led by a sensitive and popular priest who turned out to be an abuser. Another priest at our Catholic high school had a thing for boa constrictor snakes and he’d have one in the class room a lot. He turned out to be gay too. We didn’t win the lottery as far as priests in our school but it was ground zero in some respects under the poor leadership of the Cincy diocese in the ‘70s.
A lot of the Haagen-Dass songs, deservedly pilloried, but I really liked the one (don’t know tune’s author) that went, “Take our bread / we ask you take our hearts / we love you take our lives..” I have said it off and on for years as a prayer and then it occurred to me - after decades! - that it could be said the other way around, Christ saying it to me, “Take My bread / I ask you take My heart / I love you take My life...” So that was cool.
Big focus book-wise was on the works of Fr. John Powell, like “Why Am I Afraid to Love?”. He was just huge but then he fell off the map, or at least I haven’t heard of him for a billion years and I used to read a ton of Catholic blogs. I probably should read him again just to see what I was ingesting and how well he stands up to time. Or get your opinion. Nouwen-like? I'll never forget him using the term that he felt like a "public utility" as priest and it turned me off. Who wants to be a public utility? (But then Jesus saying "carry your cross" isn't the most attractive image to most of us.)
I’ll never forget one cringeworthy moment. Our high school religion teacher (married man) was telling us that as red-blooded boys (co-ed school btw) we can’t expect to just go right up to the line of intercourse and be able to stop. I took it upon myself to counsel him afterward, concerned that he’d sent the wrong message in that it would encourage us to go all the way if we find ourselves in that circumstance. He was very kind and thought my idea had merit but now I look back and find it hilarious that a virgin who had never made it past second base was opining on that subject.