trends in liturgical music for the new century?

I’ve been thinking lately, if we were to outline what the progress these days in American liturgical music is, how would it look?

What I would say is status quo in most American parishes today is:

• Entrance/Offertory/Communion/Recessional all drawn from the same pool of songs/hymns


• Responsorial psalms and Alleluias sung either “song style” (i.e. Haugen “Shepherd Me, O God”) or with text fidelity (Gelineau, Guimont, Schiavone, etc.)


• Ordinary settings generally stick to the text, perhaps with minor alterations


• The only (short) acclamations sung are the Mystery of Faith and the Great Amen


• Very little singing outside what is listed above

If you think this is inaccurate, please do comment.

Movements that signal a shift in the way many of us are thinking about all this:

• A move toward Lectionary texts for the responsorial Psalm and Alleluia/VbtG, which usually takes the form of psalm tone chanting of verses with metered responses


• Tietze’s “Introit Hymns for the Church Year” and Biery’s settings of Communion antiphons for Advent and Lent (as well as Proper settings and paraphrases from CanticaNova and other publishers) testify to a renewed interest in the idea of texts that are matched specifically to a particular Mass.


• I believe very few (in terms of percentage)young adults who are regular churchgoers have much problem with Latin. The antagonism to it seems to be concentrated in the people who were young adults 40 years ago.

If you’ve spent much time reading this blog, you know that I, at least, am fully in favor of all of the above changes. :)

I would also like to believe we are moving on past the “Spirit & Song” mentality that publishes so much music that is darn near impossible for a congregation to sing well. (A bassoonist friend of mine - a very fine musician - used to attend Mass with his Catholic girlfriend, and he commented to me one time how strangely difficult the “congregational” music was.) But, this I haven’t seen; parishes still sing Haugen “Now In This Banquet”, “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever”, and other such tunes. And of course, the one that baffles everyone in “On Eagle’s Wings” - how people sing this one, no one knows, but they do sing it.

I think we will not see Renaissance polyphony and the Gregorian repertory assuming its vaunted position as given in the Church documents. Instead, the “spirit” of these styles - faithful adherence to the liturgical text - will again become the accepted practice among musicians. In short, the change will not be toward universal acceptance of a historical musical style, but it will re-embrace the textual fidelity that characterizes great historical liturgical music. Musicians will be just that, and “liturgists’” roles in music will be confined to text.

Yes/no? Where do you see church music going?