Harmony in Church Music

[Guest Rick777]

Can you elaborate?

[Guest Rick777]

What exactly is the symbolism of the whole thing?

[Aloysius]

o boy, well now i've really accomplished the hijack of the music thread

oh well, serves her right for hijacking my pipe thread!



I think when it comes down to it, some Native American way back when had to come up with the bright idea of burning this tobacco leaf and letting the fumes pass through his body. There was no peer pressure for this guy, he's the first guy to come up with the idea. Why did he do it? Likely saw a religious symbolism in smoke rising to heaven, then as he was burning one particular leaf he discovered the soothing nature of the aroma of the tobacco leaf. He did it because he was enamoured with the idea, with the symbols and with the effects.

So too when you reach the European meeting of Native Americans... why did they adopt this habit from the Native Americans? okay, so now you could just say "peer pressure"... but to the Europeans Native Americans were not their peers, they were barbarians and savages! The European settlers more likely noticed the symbolism of the smoke passing through the body and rising to heaven and its calming effect on their soul... they noticed the loosening of the tongue to great intellectual conversation; they adopted the pipe and held it up as a symbol of the highest intellectual classes because they recognized the symbolism.

no public school health class talking about why people smoke will take that direction. it's all peer pressure and evil tobacco companies, which okay those are various material causes, but what is the formal cause? there is a great symbolism attached to smoking in our culture that is very much ignored by the current medical rage against smoking.

what is the symbolism? in my estimation it is the spiritual symbolism of smoke passing through your body and rising to heaven, the emotional symbolism of the calming of nerves, the intellectual symbolism of the stimulation of great thoughts and conversations as you sit and pass the time with this symbol

[Guest Rick777]

That was very thought provoking. Good post.

[photosynthesis]

so speaking of pipes, organ pipes are really awesome... you know... the harmony they make is a wonderful blessing to the church

[Aloysius]

nice segway! good save!

I am actually currently taking an organ class at college. It's really cool, except I've always been a bum with my fingering and he's insisting on perfect fingering which is just adding confusion and difficulty for me onto the already new environment of an organ keyboard... oi but anyway, I love organ music and am learning how to play the pipe organ currently

{ps, if anyone wants to respond to my tobacco post I'm gonna go ahead and copy and paste it into the actual pipe tobacco thread so you can go there [url="http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showtopic=47258}"]http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showtopic=47258}[/url]

[photosynthesis]

I would love to play piano (or organ for that matter) but I never learned how. I did take guitar for about 8 years, and my last teacher insisted on a different style of fingering that drove me nuts

[Aloysius]

yeah, that's why I loved my piano teacher of ten years, she showed me the basics of fingering but then really let me develop a style of fingering that was natural for me... and I have really long fingers so I can really get away with a lot of stuff that isn't sticking strictly to the way the fingering is written to be best played and not interrupt the flow of the music or the ease at which I play it at all.

now I like Fr. Cyprian, he's a nice guy and everything, but it really drives me crazy that on top of all these differences in playing the organ I have to stay aware of, he insists I stick with the way the fingering is written

[photosynthesis]

that is annoying

[Guest Rick777]

I just got a guitar this past Christmas, I have no idea how to play it.

[photosynthesis]

bump

[avemaria40]

I think we should have more Gregorian chant at Mass that isn't harmonized and i think hymn singing should be taught in CCD so that kids can be encouraged to sing to God.

It's disheartening to hear of all the Protestant and Orthodox churches having amazing music and chants when the Catholic Church has a treasury of music but noone at your own particular parish has ever heard of it let alone knows how to sing it.

[photosynthesis]

very true...

I like the idea of teaching kids hymns in CCD....

[qfnol31]

Harmony is intrinsically opposed to "modern" music.

N.B. this does not mean all music written recently is bad!

[photosynthesis]

well... good harmony is opposed to modern music

but there's some atonal stuff out there that can be considered harmony but it sounds like crrrrrap

[qfnol31]

And then there's dissonance, which can be wonderful.

This is best mastered by the king of all liturgical instruments, the organ...and rightfully so because the organ is closest to the human singing voice, which too can sing some great dissonances.

Wonderful harmonies those!

[photosynthesis]

dissonance is nice, but too much of it is just awful. i'm in a choir right now and we're singing this piece that our conductor wrote....it's weird and atonal, and there's more dissonance than sweet sounding harmony

[qfnol31]

Yeah, it definitely has to be well placed.

Polyphony gets around this by having multiple parts...poly

[Cre8d4Youth]

[quote name='photosynthesis' date='Feb 7 2006, 12:45 AM']  Sometimes, during the Mass settings I'll sing along in harmony, instead of going with the melody.  [right][snapback]878212[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]
GAAAAHhh! You sound like my wife. She can find the harmony in every ever-loving song ever written, and even a few that haven't been! And me, who isn't all that musically astute (I'm like Bing Crosby, I can't read music, but if you sing it for me, I can hit it no prob.) I tend to be led off key (read: makes Karen wince) when she sings harmony next to me. Indeed, when we were in a music group at church before we had kids, I had to stand on opposite side of the group from her harmonizing. You know how uncomfortable it was for an avowed Methodist to stand away from his only Catholic shield? And on top of that, next the a guitar playing nun????














It's amazing that I ever agreed with God on my joining the Catholic church. :

[she_who_is_not]

When we sing we pray twice; when we sing well, we sing thrice; when we sing in parts we pray a bunch; when we sing well and in parts, we storm heaven.
I want to learn to play the organ.