Gather: Catholic Hymnal... aka: "Marty Haugen's Modest Hits"

[Doom]

Ours was set to "Joyful, Joyful we Adore Thee." Accompanied by a peppy guitar. Worse than awful.

That's the melody! It is the same melody that is used in at least 2/3 of the songs copyrighted by OCP. Most of the other 1/3 is Ode to Joy. The rest are from pop songs, including The Brady Bunch Theme and the theme song to the 2011 animated series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I'm not exaggerating here; the tunes are almost 100% identical, and it is plagiarism of the highest order.

[Doom]

OCP isn't really much better. Somewhat, but not much.

It is the only Catholic music publisher in existence, and is the source of the most commonly used missalettes

GIA.

Yes, but except for the stuff that is in the Public Domain, all the songs are copyrighted by Oregon Catholic Press. It is not impossible, but very difficult, to find a Catholic hymnal that is completely free of the dreck from OCP. My parish in Orlando had a hymnal, I forget what it was called, it may have been pre-Vatican II, it was all traditional music with no contemporary and nothing from OCP.

[zeno]

We went to a "reform of the reform" parish for Pentecost Sunday and they had the sequence (Veni Sancte Spiritus but in English of course) set to this melody. Just awful.

Ours was set to "Joyful, Joyful we Adore Thee." Accompanied by a peppy guitar. Worse than awful.

Ah that's the same melody that Doom is talking about.

At least you didn't have piano!

[zeno]

The absolute worst in my opinion is Lord of the Dance. It makes me have Safety Dance start running through my brain incessantly. Not conducive to well focused prayers at all! Fortunately it seems to have had it's day and we rarely hear it now. Maybe someone figured out it's actually pretty heretical if you pay attention to what is being sung.

[Doom]

The absolute worst in my opinion is Lord of the Dance. It makes me have Safety Dance start running through my brain incessantly. Not conducive to well focused prayers at all! Fortunately it seems to have had it's day and we rarely hear it now. Maybe someone figured out it's actually pretty heretical if you pay attention to what is being sung.

The reason that horrible song has gone away is copyright violation. It is a recent song written in 1963, but the old Gather hymnals claimed it was "A Shaker hymn" and was therefore in the public domain. It is not. The melody is the old Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts," which is in the public domain (Aaron Copland famously did a theme and variations on it in "Appalachian Spring"), but the lyrics are protected by copyright. So the old Gather hymnals included it without giving credit to the author or paying royalties, when this was discovered, it was removed from later editions.

By the way, the writer is not a Christian, and the hymn was not inspired by Christ; it was inspired by a statue of the Hindu God Shiva,who is often portrayed in a dancing pose.

The author has said that he thinks the song is "dubiously Christian and probably heretical" and is surprised that it was accepted by so many churches.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

"Ode to Joy" and "Joyful Joyful" are the same music.

[zeno]

I thought that might be the case but something else came into my head when I tried to remember ode to joy.

It doesn't help that the music was used as the celebration song for the video game Pengo. I see a dancing penguin in my mind when I hear it. Better than Safety Dance, marginally.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

The song of Kelly's people

[Highlander]

Being a late convert, I have zip insight into Catholic music and the discussion above. The one thing, however, that I really miss from my previous ECUSA and, on my mother's side, old-timey Southern, mountain, fundamentalist, bluegrass, church in the country is the hymns. I have yet to attend a mass or any other event in a parish church where the music was, at best, agonizingly bad. Bad hymns, choirs, soloists, pianists, organists. Not marginal, bad.

The best I have heard is a mariachi mass.

[Riverboat]

The absolute worst in my opinion is Lord of the Dance.

Thanks-no thanks for reminding me of this. Now that you've put this song in my head on repeat mode, I may have to play my Brady Bunch Greatest Hits album to rinse it out.

[zeno]

Sorry-not sorry

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

The best I have heard is a mariachi mass.

The only time I was at a mariachi Mass, I wanted to head out for a margarita afterwards.

[anawim]

The best I have heard is a mariachi mass.

The only time I was at a mariachi Mass, I wanted to head out for a margarita afterwards.

Same.
I was on pilgrimage to Mexico, and the town that Juan Diego's uncle lived has a church that we attended a Mass that was public, so it was in in Spanish, and the music was a full Mariachi band. It was the epitome of disconnect.

[Highlander]

Pero soy de Nuevo México, así que no me suena extraño.

I guess that where you live has a lot to do with how you experience the Mass. Mariachi sounds a lot better to me than a discordant choir paired with a struggling organist. From time to time, a hymn I recognize from the Anglican tradition appears in the Mass and it makes my day.