Church Music in Ireland and the House of Brigid

Interesting blog post about 3 (American? presumably) Notre Dame grads whow have set themselves a missionary task:"to contribute to the renewal of the Church in Wexford through liturgical music and the celebration of the sacraments."
I don't think they should be surprised at the musical illiteracy they have found, (and the post is a little patronizing in that regard, though it is surely not intentional.)

After all, our nation is musically illiterate as well -- it's just that those of us involved in music forget, and start to think the circles in which we travel are somehow normal or normative. They are not. (How could Nixon have won? No one I know voted for him!)

The House of Brigid was established this summer by three fellow '09 Domers to contribute to the renewal of the Church in Wexford through liturgical music and the celebration of the sacraments. While the sacraments are readily available in Ireland, their celebration has lost its vitality and joy. The historical authoritarianism of the Irish clergy has sabotaged itself, so that in the wake of the horrific sexual abuse scandals here the Irish laity feel betrayed by the hierarchy but do not feel empowered themselves to take greater responsibility for the life of the Church. Mass is poorly attended, and young adults in particular do not see the relevance of structured religion to their lives. Some do still observe "the Sunday obligation," and young parents spend significant sums on First Communion suits, but all too often their is no sense of active participation on the part of the congregation, and a child's First Communion is also his Last.

The sad state of liturgical music in Ireland has long puzzled me. A country with such a lively folk tradition, renowned the world over for its lively trad music, ought to also have some of the most moving liturgies, I assumed. Voices that make the roof of the pub tremble on Saturday night should equally raise the rafters of the church on a Sunday morning. Yet quite the opposite is true: laypeople mumble the responses to the prayers and most Masses have no music at all, or music provided by a choir without programmes for the congregation to use to add their voices to the hymns.

Teach Bhride is trying to help the Church of the Annunciation in Clonard, Wexford to unlock its potential in Sunday liturgies and other parish celebrations, and through their music ministry they also contribute to the catachesis of the parish, since liturgical music is an expression, not an entertainment.

I was eager to visit Chris, Martha, and Carolyn in Clonard to see how the first year of the new endeavor is going. I was struck by the way they work alongside the parishioners of Annunciation, augmenting the efforts of long-laboring church musicians there. They say that they have learned a great deal from the parishioners, since they came to Clonard knowing very little about the existing choirs' repertoire and the traditions of the parish. They have moved through their first liturgical year in Ireland as keen observers and eager students, slowly introducing new music and new ways of approaching the liturgy to complement what Clonard already has. They approach their ministry with humility.

I know that coming from two years of singing in Notre Dame's Folk Choir, the trio feel their foreignness in working with Clonard's church choirs. Ireland is still enough of a folk culture that the notion of approaching music scientifically, with written scores and technical terms is strange- except for music students, most people learn music purely by ear here. If the churches have hymnals at all--which is uncommon--they usually contain only the text of the hymns. It reminds me of my summer in Ukraine in that respect, where my students would sing folk songs in four part harmony with 10 or 15 verses from memory. Ireland, as much as it likes to pretend, isn't wholly modern yet.

I believe many British hymnals are still printed that way, available text only, or with music an text separate, on facing pages.
And your average Catholic church choir in this country is not made up of readers.
I think it is probably hard to make music ministry truly catachetical, to convince people that liturgical music is "an expression not an entertainment" if you start from any place other than the actual texts of the Mass, sung in the manner that the Church has mandated is her own, with the music most especially suited to the rites.

Otherwise its just taste and personal piety.