A Plea to My Non-Musically Inclined Catholic Friends

This is a plea to all my Catholic-Christian friends.  If you aren’t Catholic, this very well could apply to you.

I do not care if you lean traditionalist or contemporary.  I do not care if your church employs regular use of the introits and Communion antiphons, or if it uses Glory & Praise.  I do not care if your church’s pastor leans left or right on political matters.  I don’t care if you have a church organ, a cantor, or your parish uses guitars with a full drum set.

Please.  Please.  I beg of you:

Learn how to read music.

This skill set is something I had thought all children of a certain age are required to undergo.  This skill set is something that used to be mandatory.

Note: this is not about knowing how to play a musical instrument, although that is great if you can do that as well.  For the purposes of this post, I’m only concerned with singing; in particular, your singing voice.

Right now, there is a movement afoot to dumb down the melodies of some of the greatest hymns ever written.  A lot of contemporary praise music—even those songs which I greatly admire—these songs take a melodic pop hook, and overplay its theme over and again.  In fact, many churches are starting to forgo hymnals altogether and put the lyrics on an overhead projector, without music notation.  Because of the limitations of the medium, they only choose those songs that employ minimal melodic hooks, leaving slightly more ornate music expressions—from throughout our entire Christian heritage—leaving them aside.

This post is not to bash those songs.  They have a time and place.  My concern is of the slightly more complicated songs and hymns, if these get pushed aside for the pop-oriented hook-laden songs that have dominated our musical landscape for the last two decades.  Do this exclusively, and you rob your congregation.

Sometimes, a complicated melody simply works better.  Sometimes, the musical phrasing of the lyric somehow makes sense with the melody that’s provided.  But sometimes a parish musician feels obligated to go for the simpler melody, not because it makes the lyrics come to life, but because he knows that the congregation will grasp it easier.

This sort of compromise should not have to happen any longer.

Sometimes a parishioner would be frustrated that the song is written in a key that is hard to sing.  But most hymnals are written with four-parts.  It used to be that an entire congregation that encompasses both altos and sopranos, both tenors and basses, and everybody in between, can find the melody that’s best within their range, and sing along.  As songs have gotten simplified, so have people’s ability to adapt and sing different parts within the same song, concluding with a perfect harmony.

Sadly, in the vast majority of today’s churches, the only time we hear “perfect harmony” is when we sing the words “perfect” and “harmony” in the song Let There Be Peace On Earth.  And it’s sung in a single melody.

This sort of struggle does not have to happen any longer.

Truth is, if parishioners have a rudimentary ability to read music, they can pick up most any song that the music minister introduces.  And that will open the doors for a parish to discover the hundreds of songs available to them.

And these songs have all the theology and poetry and melody and history that accompany them.  No more will Gregorian Chant be intimidating.  No more will ancient hymns be hard to follow.  No more will songs with four different melody lines become unsingable.

A typical hymnal or missallette has about 400 songs contained therein.  About what percentage of these songs would a typical parish know?  Think of the freedom of a music minister to pick exactly the right song for the readings and the part of the liturgy for which it is required.  Think of these very words coming to life, straight from your lips and into your heart.

Please… I’m begging you.  Learn how to read music.

And nowadays it is easier than ever to master this skill.  I ran a google search for “How To Read Music.”  It came up with over four billion entries.  You have websites, to YouTube videos, encompassing all types of learning levels and teaching styles, all thoroughly convinced that there is not a single person who cannot master this skill.  Find one that suits you, and take about twenty minutes to learn the basics.

And then tell your parish musician the good news. Then you can tell them they can start playing the entire hymnal, not just the dozen-or-so songs they’ve been doing all this time.

Well, what are you waiting for?