Darwin at Darwin Catholic writes:
Folks, it’s time for me to come out against torture. Some would say that my sins mean that I deserve what I’m getting, but as sure as there is a God in heaven, this retribution is too much.
Here I was spending a few idle moments at work reading over the Gather Us In parodies at the Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas and now I cannot get the tune of Gather Us In out of my head. For two days now.
Do I need an exorcism? A vacation? A drink? What will make it stop?
I suggested that an exorcism should do the trick. Simply repeat:
"The Power of Chant compels you."
"The Power of Chant compels you."
"The Power of Chant compels you."
We were warned about such things by Jesus. "where their earworm does not die, and the fire is not quenched." Gather Us In is definitely a case that requires prayer and fasting from insipid lyrics. If only it was as simple as driving a stake through a Gather hymnal or liberally dousing an OCP hymnal with Holy Water. Though such things are better left to the professional exorcists. I have seen too many layman lulled to sleep by modern hymns which are part of the lethargical year.
34 comments
Hi,
I sang in my local church choir for 4 years and I’ve sung songs that sound insipid for my taste but why is “Gather Us In” so horrible? Does it sound too light and not sublime? Maybe I sung too many insipid ones that I can’t tell.
Sometimes, it could also sound corny depending on the choir. Some songs are not bad if they’re sung with the seriousness it deserves. I take every song serious (even ones I don’t like), and I give my 100% percent to sing it right.
By the way, what do you think of Michael Talbot?
Norma
…gather us in, the rich and the haughty. Gather us in…
Oh great!! Now you’ve given ME the earworm!!
Quick — someone hum a few bars of “Hail Holy Queen Enthroned Above.”
Our youngish music director and his assistant insist on playing the “Twenty Greatest Insipid Hymns of Haugen and Haas” at almost every mass. Try listening to “Gather Us In” with a full band (piano, several guitars, drum set–with a thirteen year-old drummer, flutes, and a cantor trying to imitate Peggy Lee). All up on a side altar during mass. And we just upgraded our sound system!!
I sent him the material from Moratorium on H & H and got a letter back from him stating that I was sending hate mail and he only responded because I signed my name. One of our associate pastors–the one with only working five cylinders in a six-cylinder engine–also sent a note about “hate” websites.
I had to respond with an three-page letter (complimentary of talent and well as critical of the music but not their characters) along with several scholarly articles on sacred music.
I was the lector last Sunday and both were there: Father was the celebrant, and the music director only had his piano this time and a normal female cantor. But we got nothing but Haugen and Haas with some Joncas for good measure.
Now, we know why indulgences are genuine!
our parish uses the beloved Gather books.
we have wonderful selections besides your favorite tune, “Gather us in”. we have the Halle, Halle, Halle (which should be ‘Hallel’ meaning God), “Jerusalem our Destiny”, and other wonderful songs from the 60s. These songs are just so wonderful, they take one’s attention away from the Mass to focus in on how to strangle the choir to get them to shut up.
p.s. I checked most of the copyright dates in the Gather book. They are mostly from the late 50s and 60s.
My main objections to “Gather Us In” are that the melody is horribly boring, we’re singing mostly about us rather than in praise of God (something my soul longs to do), and it’s inflicted on us at least once a month. Do our music directors think we’re so musically or mentally challenged that a repertoire of 20 hymns is all we can handle? It’s almost as insulting as when the “song leader” does the “touchdown” sign to tell us when it’s our turn to come in. Surely we know the routine by now.
I try (and usually fail) to be patient with awful songs like “Gather Us In”, “Here I Am, Lord”, “Taste and See”, and others, on the theory that bad music at Mass is just about the only persecution American Catholics in general are ever called on to endure. My rule of thumb is that most hymns which are expressed in the first person, either singular or plural, are best avoided. There are exceptions, but too much about me or us is a bad idea.
It’s not so much like an earworm as Dr. Strangelove’s nazi hand, which suddenly tries to throttle you at unexpected moments.
Our parish these days is unexciting, but not too bad. But a youth spent in typical American suburban parishes has left dull yet horribly unforgettable tunes like “Gather Us In”, “Let Us Build the City of God” and “I Will Raise You Up” permanently etched on my tormented mind.
Thanks for the link. I’m not entirely sure how I’ve managed to go so long with blogrolling the Curt Jester, but I have remedied the matter.
I am happy to say I am unfamiliar with “Gather Us In,” although unfortunately I can not say that about other Haugen/Haas songs.
I already have a secular earworm infestation (I heard the moronic 70’s song “Signs” on the way home from work and, although I changed the channel as fast as I could, the damage was done. I will have to start hitting myself over the head with a hammer soon to get rid of “Hey, there,mister, can’t you read? You got to have a shirt and tie to get a seat/You can’t even wash, so you can’t eat/ You ain’t supposed to be here!” ) Haugen/Haas intermingled “Signs” would cause suffering too great for mortal woman to bear.
I must confess I led a number of those songs on my guitar in college. Lord have mercy.
I sympathize and will pray for you, Darwin. Possession is perhaps too strong a word, but I myself spent several days under the oppression of “Lord of the Dance,” a loathsome hymn which I had not heard since the darkling time I spent at a parochial school in Manhattan (in the West Village) in the mid-80’s. I pray for the day when the iron grip of the St. Louis Jesuits will finally be broken, but I fear that they will not go without a fight…
The frustrating bit about Haugen, Haas, et al, is that they usually stop writing lyrics at about the point where I start saying to myself about my own songs, “Well… that’s fine, except for this one lame line. And this bit where the scansion limps. And…ah. Well, that either makes no sense or means something very wrong…gotta fix that!”
Yes, and at the point where I either solicit friends for suggestions, start brainstorming, or simply lay the song aside for a month or a year to coagulate — they publish.
They don’t do this so much with their musical arrangements and choir harmony parts, or at least not that I can detect. That makes it particularly frustrating.
Ugh. I actually played bass guitar for a Life Teen “music ministry” group when I was in college. The canon of awful songs we “performed” is represented way too much in the comments above.
I’ve been doing penance for this ever since. What was I thinking?
By the way, does anybody know who the heck wrote “Strength for the Journey”? That has to be the most convoluted contemporary “worship” song ever written.
The most puzzling Haugen-Haas line I have encountered is “…to enter the song.” So I ask you solemnly, “Do you have the courage to enter the song?”
Ugh. I actually played bass guitar for a Life Teen “music ministry” group when I was in college. The canon of awful songs we “performed” is represented way too much in the comments above.
What a coincidence. I have been asked to play bass for a Lifeteen retreat. To be accomodating without compromising, I made it clear that I would be happy to play in any context, but not the mass. Does this sound acceptable?
Scott
My fellow-(student-parish)-choir memebers think I’m just overly anal for objecting to such silly (at best) songs. When I say that the Mass is to worship God they reply, “but this song is spiritual.” Typically, I stare at them, slack-jawed, in response. HOw do you tell someone that singing some of these songs isn’t any more spiritual than complimenting your own reflection.
there’s a song called “I am for you” or something like that.
my mom, whenever she hears this, thinks of Star Trek (“I am for you, James T. Kirk!”)
I thought it couldn’t get worse than haugen/haas till I went to a childrens mass the other day, and we sang a song about how God loves me no matter what I do, he wants me to be good but I blow it some times, but that’s OK because he loves me anyway….. lalala, licenced to sin…clap clap clap…
Nothing, and I repeat that, Nothing, is as bad as the Carey Landry stuff we forced the kids to sing when I was in college.
Friends are like flowers in the Garden of Life Are you a daisy are you a Rose
are you a Dandylion
You can be what you are I’ll be what I am
a beatiful flower in the garden of life.
I used to cringe (and pray no one grew up to be a terrorist) at those Masses.
I have a pretty effective cure for songs stuck in one’s head. Sing, loudly, the first line of every song you can think of, right along one after another. Repeat as necessary. My sons hate it when I do this.
A few weeks ago I had Papageno’s big aria stuck, and it took a long time to get it out. My own view is that the worst offenders in this respect are – for people my age, at least – “Downtown”, “Georgy Girl”, and that thing about being in the desert on a horse with no name. “King of the Road” is also extremely sticky.
All together now…
Pange lingua gloriosi
Corporis mysterium,
Sanguinisque pretiosi,
Quem in mundi pretium
Fructus ventris generosi,
Rex effudit gentium.
Nobis datus, nobis natus
Ex intacta Virgine
Et in mundo conversatus,
Sparso verbi semine,
Sui moras incolatus
Miro clausit ordine.
In supremae nocte coenae
Recumbens cum fratribus,
Observata lege plene
Cibis in legalibus,
Cibum turbae duodenae
Se dat suis manibus.
Verbum caro, panem verum
Verbo carnem efficit:
Fitque sanguis Christi merum,
Et si sensus deficit,
Ad firmandum cor sincerum
Sola fides sufficit.
Tantum ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui:
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui:
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui.
Genitori, Genitoque
Laus et iubilatio,
Salus, honor, virtus quoque
Sit et benedictio:
Procedenti ab utroque
Compar sit laudatio.
Amen.
You know what’s sad?
I’ve never had the pleasure of hearing Gregorian Chant/songs in Latin my whole life while in Church because the choir (comprised of old people who are dead-set against it) loves the Gather books.
Mia, it looks like you and I go to the same parish. I’m the one who makes the responses in Latin and has the glassy expression in the eyes when the choir sings. Which one are you?
Ahh! Now it’s stuck in my head…no!!!!
Another priceless gem is “Voices that Challenge” and it eventually says “we are the voices that challenge.” challenge what? Church doctrine?
Here’s a line from a different Haugen piece that I loathe – from “All are welcome” – A BANQUET HALL ON HOLY GROUND. (I had the displeasure of hearing this during COMMUNION at a church I went to during my vacation break)
A banquet hall – just another party joint, a reception place. How bleeding generic can one get???
BMP
“All Are Welcome”? We sing that piece almost every Mass at its opening! I feel like gagging!
you know, most of these songs, if you listen to them, sound somewhat like sea-chanties or campfire songs, or even drinking songs.
Oh, I’ve got to stop now, I’m getting “Voices that Challenge” in my head.
The power of chant compels you…
Another reason not to use the Haugen anthem: “Gather Us In” is a homophone of “Gather a Sin”.
Not like we need that exhortation, mind you. We do quite well gathering them on our own.
I know I’ll always remember that whenever I hear “Gather Us In” now. AARRRGGG! My parish sings it constantly; it was even the entrance hymn for a wedding.
I can’t believe it! I am a principal at an elementary school and I find myself choosing a Carey Landry song for our upcoming Christmas program… Great things happen. Please help me!
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Please, can you tell me who wrote the song, “Great Things Happen when God mixes with Us”? Is it Michael Talbot or someone else. I need to acknowledge the composer.
thanks
Part of what the mass is about is accepting all walks of life and all types of people. If you don’t like something, complaning about it is not going to help but approaching those in charege with an open mind is the best route. Human beings are different, it is one of the many blessings that God bestowed upon us. If you have different prefrences you learn to meat in between. Coming at a situation from a closeminded, cynical view is not going to get anything accomplished. I am ashamed to consider myself a Catholic when I see site such as these bashing the church from the inside out. Come to a peaceful, God lead resolve. If you act as God would want you, you may find new mwaning in everything. If you think of it as ok, it will grow on you, just like myself and country music. I used to despise it but now I can live with it. Approach the scinario with an oppen mind. May God Bless you.
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