I the Lord of sea and sky,
I have heard my people cry.
All who dwell in dark and sin
My hand shall save.
I who made the stars of night,
I will make their darkness bright.
Who will bear my light to them?
Whom shall I send?
Here is the question: Why "Whom" in that last line? Why isn't it "Who"? It's the subject of the sentence, it should be "who", yes?
In fact, the previous line, another sentence with the word in question as the subject, uses "Who".
From a singing perspective, "who" is a more musically pleasing sound than "whom", which - to my ear, anyway - sort of swallows the vowel sound when it's closed off with the "m".
I can't think of a reason it should be "whom". It has bugged me for years.
What was Dan Schutte, or his editor, thinking?
It actually isn't the subject of the sentence. If one were to diagram it, it would show "I" as the subject, with "shall send" as the predicate, and "whom" as the object
ReplyDeleteI do remember that rule being presented in a textbook sometime around 5th or 6th grade. Didn't get it then, either!
DeleteIf you change the word order, it becomes clear: "I shall send whom?" The subject of the sentence—the doer—is I. The object is whom.
ReplyDeleteDavid, I'm sure you're right (in fact, Jean already confirmed it), but nobody would say "I shall send whom?" Whereas plenty of people (or at least one!) would say, "Who shall I send?"
DeleteWould you say, "I shall send he?" Cuz that's what you're arguing with your example.
DeleteYou seem to want to dismantle standard English because it "sounds funny when you sing it." My guess is that you "put a comma where a pause is," too.
As a good conservative, I should think you would want to preserve Our Mother Tongue instead of arguing with people who know better.
Oh, bosh.
DeleteSurely the rules of grammar are founded on usage, and as usage changes, the grammatical rules should (and do), too. Yes, there is an interplay between usage and rules and yes, it is the nature of rules to resist willy-nilly changes and exceptions. But ultimately, usage wins out.
I concede that everyone else here knows how to diagram a sentence better than me (or is it "better than I"?) (who doesn't know how to diagram a sentence at all, at least if it's in the question form). But by no means does that concession mean that I'm conceding that "Who shall I send" is unacceptable. On the contrary, I'm making the self-evident point that it's *how people actually talk in real life*. Even educated, polished people who care about the language, and for whom the rules of grammar exist, talk that way.
I guess our roles are flip-flopped here; you're the conservative rules-arian, whereas I'm espousing the "living grammar" philosophy.
It's already been suggested, by you, (included that comma because it's a pause) I think, that "whom" may be on its way to obsolescence - may already be obsolete. There's your rules-arian lifeline; I suggest you grab it.
Bosh back atcha, Jimbo.
DeleteIt all sounds so egalitarian to just say the standard should be *how people actually talk.* But Which people? Where? In my town "we seen" and "he don't" are prevalent.
Rules DO change. The rub is who gets to reset the standards? Someone like you? Or someone who actually understands grammar and can make a cogent case for a rule change that reflects common-but-educated usage and social attitudinal shifts?
I defer to your greater understanding of Church doctrine and diaconal training. I wouldn't accuse you of being a hair-splitting prissy pants on theological matters. I suggest you accept that you might defer to us rules-arians and grammar Nazis on matters of correctness. Your original question (Where was Schuette's editor?) arose out of ignorance. Own it.
"Rules DO change. The rub is who gets to reset the standards? Someone like you? Or someone who actually understands grammar and can make a cogent case for a rule change that reflects common-but-educated usage and social attitudinal shifts?"
DeleteFinally - a question here to which I know the answer. It's simple: someone like me. The stylebook editors and who(m?)ever else comprise the Academe Anglais listen carefully to people like me and eventually, accompanied by kicking, screaming and an ocean of vituperation, bend to the reality of the language as it's actually used.
Heaven forfend!
DeleteWithout conventions, language becomes more unintelligible over time and space. Hence Dr. Johnson's attempt to preserve understanding among the educated by standardizing orthography and usage.
A really interesting little book could be written about changes to the AP Stylebook, which tends to be more nimble in adopting common usage with an eye toward language neutrality.
I believe that the AP and MLA have both caved on the use of "they" as a first-person pronoun where gender is unknown, e.g., If a person wants to get good grades, they should study hard. My guess is that who/whom is not far behind.
Fwiw, I bowed to Rank Ignorance and never docked students for confusing who/whom. Other writing sins were so much more egregious.
Who can change the rules?
DeleteGender Pronouns Can Be Tricky on Campus. Harvard Is Making Them Stick.
The push for personal pronouns like “they/them” and “ze/hir” can ignite a power struggle in college classrooms. The Kennedy School of Government’s solution? Stickers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/gender-pronouns-college.html
And my personal favorite:
DeleteYOUSE....plural for you which English does not otherwise have.
I love "youse" and "yez." Them's my people!
DeleteTrue confession: I revise my posts multiple times after initially posting - and would do the same to comments, if I could - because I have this image of Jean watching me with a gimlet eye, lest I let stand this split infinitive or that subject/verb disagreement.
DeleteOh, I don't care about split infinitives. It's an artificial rule derived from Latin, in which you can't split an infinitive. Cuz it's one word.
DeleteI do have a gimlet eye, but I tried to be an encouraging and engaging English teacher. Students and faculty gave me an award for it, anyway.
Eh? So what (who?) is the subject of the previous line, "Who shall bear my light to them"?
ReplyDeleteWho actually is the subject in this one. "Who" is the one to carry out the action, to "bear my light" .
DeleteDavid and Katherine are correct.
DeleteIt is also true that all languages move toward a levelling of inflection. We are losing dwarves, hooves, and staves to "dwarfs," "hoofs," and "staffs." You also hear "shined" for "shone" and "kneeled" for "knelt."
We have not (yet) lost the genetive of "who" (whose), but live another century or two and you'll hear:
Who goes there?
Who shall I send?
Who book is this?
Jean, awhile back I stormed in from a walk, very mad, and said, "I walked under a tree and a bird shat on my arm!" After my husband finished laughing, he said, " I don't think that word has a past participle! "
DeleteCorrectly conjugating a vulgarity is something I have only heard Southerners do.
DeleteThis is from the Grammarist Website https://grammarist.com/usage/shat/ :
DeleteShat is the widely accepted past-tense inflection of shit. It was formed by analogy with the verb sit, which becomes sat in the past tense. It was originally a humorous and slightly sanitized version of the curse word, but it has become the standard form.
Huh. So it's not shit, shat, shut?
DeleteSentence diagramming!! What fun we used to have.
ReplyDeleteWe learned that in the second grade. Yes, it was fun, though the teacher was a John Bircher (I learned later) and would give us propaganda sentences like: "The Soviet leaders have spies in schools and reward children for reporting their parents." But she knew her grammar!
DeleteJim is young compared to most here. Maybe he didn't learn to diagram sentences, even though he went to a Catholic school. Did you learn to diagram sentences, Jim? It has helped me with the "who" or "whom" kinds of questions throughout my life! I was pleased that our sons did learn to diagram sentences in their Catholic school - and they are much younger than Jim. I wonder if the school still teaches sentence diagramming. Probably not. Too bad if not.
ReplyDeleteI didn't learn to diagram sentences. (Well, obviously!).
DeleteI'll need to ask my kids if they learned it. Some of our kids went to Catholic school for part of their education. Our youngest was a "public" all the way through. All of them attended part or all of public middle school, and public high school. In general, the public schools were more "progressive" in their education approaches. For example, the kids who went to public elementary school learned to multiply using diagrams that I can't make heads nor tails of.
Our religious instruction probably sucked, too. Certainly, there was no Baltimore Catechism. It was the '70's. What can I say?
I don't mourn my sentence diagramming gap (although I'm feeling it acutely at the moment!). But what really frosts me is that the public schools around here don't teach cursive anymore.
DeleteOne of my kids is a Catholic school teacher, and they still teach cursive there. Good on 'em! She thinks it's helpful for their motor skill development. I think it's usually easier to read.
I don't see how one would take notes in class with block printing. Longhand is much faster. Of course now you could just record a lecture with your phone and not have to take notes. But I always found that I retained things better if I took notes.
DeleteThe hand-wringing over cursive is idiotic. Handwriting should be legible. Period. Huge amounts of class time is wasted teaching children to print for two or three years and then to forcing them to switch to cursive.
DeleteThere are plenty of more useful activities that can teach them fine motor skills (how about we reinstitute art, home ec, and shop classes) besides cursive. Keyboarding also requires dexterity.
Students take notes on their laptops, which is much faster. They take photos of the notes I put on he smart board via the computer at the teacher's station.
The nuns who have put penmanship prizes are gone, your great-grandchildren will not be able to read anything you have handwritten, and the world has moved on while you were sharpening your quills and filling up your inkwells.
Agree that legibility is the main thing, whether cursive or printing. However the cursive that most of us learned is quite legible, its just connecting the letters. Our grandchildren might have trouble reading our grandparents' longhand though. But they haven't taught Spencerian or Palmer method script for eons.
DeleteP.S. Hearing people sing " WHO shall I send" would sound like fingernails on a blackboard to me.
ReplyDeleteThat is so funny, because "WHOM shall I send?" sounds fussy to me - even fussy to the point of being incorrect. It sounds like those people who pronounce "often" as "AWF-ten" rather than "AWF-fen".
DeleteI also believe that sometimes the right thing to do is to let a preposition end the sentence, because the alternative is too stilted.
I say "where are you?"
Delete"Where are you at?" adds another word for no good reason. I refuse to say even though everybody and their grandmother says it.
You have Winston Churchill on your side on the issue of ending a sentence with a preposition. Told he had done so in something he he had written, he (allegedly) replied: "This is the kind of intellectual snobbery up with which I shall not put."
DeleteThen there was Leopold or Loeb (I don't remember which) of Chicago crime lore, who was killed in prison after making a pass at a fellow inmate. One clever reporter is supposed to have written that he "ended his sentence with a proposition."
DeleteStanley, I’m with you. I would never add “at” to that question. Never.
DeleteI have read that some consider "whom" to be an archaicism, and that "who" will be used for both nominative and objective case in the future. Personally I would miss "whom". If I am feeling in a frosty mood I enjoy saying, "Whom shall I say is calling?" to anonymous phone calls.
ReplyDeleteI use "whom" as an indirect object. But in "Whom shall I send?" isn't it the direct object? Or is my diagramming ignorance showing again?
DeleteObjective case applies to both a direct object and an indirect one. At least we don't speak Latin and have to worry about the accusative, ablative, and dative cases!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteEnglish has not had separate accusative and dative cases for nearly 1,000 years.
Delete"Objective case applies to both a direct object and an indirect one."
DeleteI am taking your word for it! I don't think we ever got down to cases in my schooling.
Jean, How common was the dative 1,000 years ago, and what did it look like?
DeleteOld English nouns and pronouns changed by case, number, and gender. Example:
DeleteSingular third person masculine pronouns (he, his, him):
Se (nominative)
Thone (accusative)
Thaes (genetive)
Thaem (dative and instrumental)
Anglo-Saxons used the letters thorn and aesch for the th and ae, as in Icelandic. There was no cursive and no punctuation except for a proto-period.
After 1066, English became a creolized language.
Very interesting. Where were you when I was trying to plow through Piers Ploughman?
DeleteI probably wasn't born yet. Piers Ploughman is Middle English. Way easier than Old English.
DeleteNot for me. "Piers" and "easy" do not belong in the same sentence. I can't say I got cozy with Chaucer, either, and he was later, ainna?
DeleteAbout the same time. Piers is kinda boring. If memory serves, the dialects were quite different.
DeleteMy high school English teacher saw me in detention one time and handed me Chaucer. She told me there were some awfully raunchy stories in there if I could make them out. Well! I didn't need much more incentive than that.
Then it was on to Old English and linguistics, Latin and hagiography, and finally I became a Catholic and then lapsed into disbelief and retired after 30 years as an adjunct full of info nobody wants and that Jim scorns outright because he talks like most people and can write cursive.
Ain't life a kick in the head?
I finally (with a pony) figured out some of the dirty parts. They are on the Fox network every night. Yes. A kick in the head. Let's writ snail mail to Jim in our own cursive? Do you have an address?
DeleteJean - sorry if I am too scornful. Honestly, I'm a little bit in awe (of you).
DeleteNo doubt. I am a pretty awful person.
DeleteJim: But in "Whom shall I send?" isn't it the direct object?
ReplyDeleteYes, it is the direct object - that is why it is "whom" and not "who" - as Katherine and David explained earlier. "Who" is a subject pronoun. "Whom" is an object pronoun.
Jim: ...everyone else here knows how to diagram a sentence better than me (or is it "better than I"?)
It is "better than I." A trick that I use to recall the correct usage is to mentally continue the sentence - " they know how to diagram a sentence better than I know how to diagram one." It would not be correct to say "better than me know how to diagram a sentence."
Some modern grammar experts are now saying that using "who" in place of "whom" is acceptable. A popular website called "The Grammar Girl" is in this camp. But she is also among the modern grammar queens who no longer adds uses "ly" adverbs - for example, she would approve "I feel bad" instead of "I feel badly ..." Perhaps it will be the preferred form someday in the future. But, while tolerated, it is not really preferred now.
Language does change, but, as Jean points out. some usages are wrong even if everyone in town uses them.
I am pretty good with grammar, but not an expert as is Jane. She is right- it is good to 'own" our mistakes.
I have several grammar/usage reference books in my office, as my career involved a lot of writing and editing. I also have several Style manuals, such as AP Style, because different clients used different Style books for their written products. In addition, some clients had their own Style manuals. So I have an entire bookshelf of grammar and style reference books. One of the most useful of these was the English grammar book my sons used in their Catholic boys' elementary school.
My favorite is still the classic by Strunk and White - Elements of Style.
https://thebestschools.org/magazine/william-strunk-elements-of-style-review/
In high school we used Campbell's Thesis, which was a style guide. In college it was the MLA Style Sheet. Can't even find a reference to either of those now. Apparently they were an anomaly, no one has heard of them.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteMLA or APA are now the gold standards in colleges. Not sure why you can't find it. Google MLA Style Guide and you'll find more than you want.
Delete"who no longer uses ly" for adverbs. Correcting typos on sites that don't enable editing is another topic......
ReplyDeleteThe cursive debate. I come from a long line of people with horrible handwriting. I was a good student during my four years in Catholic elementary school. My report cards were straight As - until we were expected to master the Palmer method. I received only one "D" in my school career. It was for "penmanship." The nun who taught our class was horrified by my ugly (and hard to read), cramped handwriting. One of our sons was actually pulled out of regular class time to go to a handwriting specialist in his public school. It didn't help. He was also an "A" student. He printed throughout high school because his teachers could not read his cursive handwriting. He became very fast at printing! Happily for him, computers had arrived by the time he was in college. They probably saved his college career. His professors could actually read what he wrote.
ReplyDeleteAnne - even as recently as the 90s, when I was in MBA school, we were hand-writing essay answers in blue books during exams. By that time, I was an adult who was gainfully employed, and used email and word processing for all written communication throughout the day, so by the time I was done with one of those night-school blue book exams, which could easily involve writing longhand for 90 minutes, my hand was exhausted - it really ached. Those muscles weren't being used that way anymore. Keyboarding doesn't use the same set of muscles in the same way.
DeleteOne of my kids in college still takes long-hand notes in a notebook, for lectures and reading. I think part of the reason is that she is taking science courses and needs to diagram.
These days, if young kids (say, ages K-3) struggle with handwriting, the local public school will call in a therapist to observe the kid and, if warranted, work with him 1:1 to develop motor skills.
My handwriting always was terrible, but we didn't have occupational therapists to intervene. Truth to tell, I never even learned the right way to hold a pen. I may have mentioned this before: one time, as a parent, I attended a meeting at the local elementary school to discuss the physical therapy progress of one of my kids (who was having verbal pronunciation issues). I brought along a spiral-bound notebook and a pen, and took a few notes. At one point, I looked up from my notebook and became aware that everyone else around the table, all of whom were physical/occupational therapists, were watching, and judging, the way I held my pen. I made some joke about how I wish I had their services when I was in school. They all averted their eyes awkwardly. It was a bit humorous, if that kind of thing strikes you that way.
Yeah, it's great when you have a kid who is "off," and you know the professionals are checking you out to see if he got it from you, and then you become hyper aware of everything you say and do. I am sorry anyone has to deal with the Watchers and Judgers.
DeleteMy oldest boy was sidelined to "developmental kindergarten" because they said he had hand-eye coordination issues. And yes, he did get it from me. My mom tried to start me in piano lessons at age five. It didn't work out too well. The teacher told her to just wait until third grade and it would be better.It was. My son got better at the things they wanted him to do by third grade, too. I don't think he really needed intervention. Just more time. More time is what no one seems to want to give kids.
DeleteI found in the family archives a polish legal document from the first decade of the 20th Century. It was written in cursive Russian as they were subjects of the Tsar at that time. I took it to a Russian Jewish immigrant that worked in the building. The handwriting looked perfect but he couldn't read it. I still like cursive. If we get rid of it, I hope we don't get hit by the giant electromagnetic pulse from outer space.
ReplyDeleteWe recently had the feast day of Sts. Cyril and Methodius (Feb. 14th). They get credit for the Cyrillic alphabet. And Old Church Slavonic. Accomplished guys!
DeleteI can puzzle out some Russky words by comparing the Cyrillic letters to the Greek, which I learned via math and science. By the way, I am enjoying this conversation. Lots of fun. "Thone"? Thuffering thuccotash!
DeleteI just took a gander at Cyrillic cursive. Looks pretty hard to decipher!
DeleteI have always been fascinated with paleography.
There's an anonymous monk known as The Tremulous Hand, who produced several important manuscripts that helped English scholars re-learn Old English. Here's an interesting story about him (or her): https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2016/8-april/news/uk/medieval-monk-with-tremulous-hand-finally-diagnosed
Yes. I can puzzle out the printed stuff somewhat. G looks like gamma. R looks like rho. But the cursive is crazy, looking at it now.
DeleteYes, this is interesting stuff.
Paleographers also study marginalia and palimpsests, sort of the graffiti of the Middle Ages. Sometimes the doodles in the margins or the text scraped off the parchment to make room for another one reveals interesting things about what people were thinking.
DeleteThe Old Irish poem, Pangur Ban, might have originally been someone's marginalia composition. Paleographers noted that Irish manuscripts have a high incidence of highlights, comments, and doodles.
Pangur Ban is a lovely little conceit in which a scribe muses on the similarities between his own late-night work and his cat's hunting:
I and Pangur Bán my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.
Thanks for this. I'll have to share this poem with a cat lady friend. Her present cat is named "Zeiss" after the German optics company. I'll see if she names her next one "Pangur Ban". From something Gaellic?
DeleteIt is so cool that there are people pursuing such an arcane science like paleography.
Optical science has proved to be a friend to the study of palimpsests. Hyperspectral imaging allows the discrimination of the original faint bleached out letters hidden under the newer script. An over two thousand year old palimpsest revealed a text showing the beginnings of calculus millennia before Newton and Leibniz. They ascribe it to Archimedes but who knows?
There was a huge library of scrolls found carbonized during the eruption that destroyed Pompeii. They are working on ways to nondestructively probe them and recover the writing. How wonderful it would be if they were successful.
Pangur Ban, I think, means "white cat" in Old Irish. I always wondered if Pang was deaf like so most white cats now.
DeletePaleography pulls together so many sciences--the grammar can help you identify date and place, and some idiosyncrasies can help identify scribes or scriptural styles. And then there's carbon dating, tests you can run on the parchment, vellum, and ink to identify plant and animal species. And the imaging gizmos.
How cool about the Pompeii documents!
There's an interesting novel, People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, for manuscript wonks.
Possibly we could end this discussion by asking why that awful "hymn" is allowed at all? That solves the who/whom quandary and would mean one less dirge-like thing to have to sing. Win-win!
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's widely understood, but it's actually a Trinitarian text. The verse I printed in the original post is the God the Father verse. The other two verses are about Son and Holy Spirit. I guess being Trinitarian doesn't mean it's not also awful (although I do rather like it), but it least it has a sort of organizing principle to it.
DeleteWe never sing more than a couple of verses, but you're right.
Delete[Verse 1]
I, the Lord of sea and sky
I have heard my people cry
All who dwell in dark and sin
My hand will save
[Verse 2]
I, who made the stars of night
I will make their darkness bright
Who will bear my light to them?
Whom shall I send?
[Verse 3]
I, the Lord of snow and rain
I have borne my people's pain
I have wept for love of them
They turn away
[Verse 4]
I will break their hearts of stone
Give them hearts for love alone
I will speak my words to them
Whom shall I send?
[Verse 5]
I, the Lord of wind and flame
I will tend the poor and lame
I will set a feast for them
My hand will save
[Verse 6]
Finest bread I will provide
'Til their hearts be satisfied
I will give my life to them
Whom shall I send?
I guess I am among the great uncultured when it comes to hymns. I have always liked this one - as well as many of the other St. Louis Jesuit hymns. This one, like most of them I believe, is inspired by scripture, often by the psalms. But in a modern translation, in English, and singable by most untrained-in-music folk in the pews. Simple melodies that don't demand a big vocal range.
DeleteSimple to sing melodies may be one reason many of these Catholic hymns were adopted by Protestants. As most who have experience with Protestant worship know, protestants in the pews, do sing, unlike those in catholic pews.
https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-here-i-am-lord
Anne, thanks for that UMC link - very nice. Schutte also composed "City of God", which our parish still sings frequently.
DeleteI am with you in liking the St. Louis Jesuits. They really opened up the texts of the psalms and other scripture for me when I was a teen. When I first started dabbling in liturgical music, during college in the early '80's, the St. Louis Jesuits' compositions were still among the newest and freshest. They published their compositions in collections - paperback volumes with lyrics, melody lines, guitar chords and performance notes. Very few of them were notated for keyboard instrument. So I had to learn to play them on piano by reading the melody lines and "filling in" the rest of the arrangement by reading the guitar chords and playing them on the piano. It's not too hard once you get the hang of it, but at that point, pianistically speaking I was a slave to whatever was notated on the page, because that is how piano typically was taught to children and teens: you play and interpret all, but only, the notes that the composer notated. So it sort of opened up a whole new approach for me. It made me a better and more versatile player.
Today, these songs are found in mainstream hymnals, in which they're published with arrangements for four vocal parts, organ and other keyboards, strings, woodwinds, brass, etc. The arrangements typically are solid. But the spirit of those songs, at least to my mind, is simple accompaniment with a handful of voices singing those strong melodies and beautiful scriptural lyrics.
Jim, and the St. Louis Jesuits were a professional level up from the late 60s and early 70s church music, think Sebastian Temple and Ray Repp. And some other stuff brought over from pop culture. My hometown parish had green plastic binders in the pews full of pirated mimeographed purple ink copies of that music (we don't need no stinkin' copyrights!) We used the Beatles' song "Let It Be" for a Marian hymn. Those were the days.
DeleteFast forward a generation. My son and daughter-in-law were planning their wedding. They said they wanted "traditional" music. You know, like Eagle's Wings, and You Are Near. 25 years is about how long it takes for something to become traditional.
Jim, after I finished my earlier comment, I remembered something a friend of mine once told me. He was a Colonel in the Air Force at the time, and he told me that he loved that hymn. He told me that there is a painting in the Pentagon on one of the wide staircases with the quote from Isiah and that the hymn always ran through his head when he went up or down that particular staircase and saw the painting. This was about 20 years ago. He retired and moved away from the DC area long ago and we lost touch, so I decided to google it to see if the painting is still there. It is
Deletehttp://prayatlunch.us/who-will-go/
So now I will embarrass myself further as being among the great uncultured when it comes to hymns. While still Catholic I was very bothered by the liturgy wars, especially by what I thought of as the "liturgy snobs" - those who freaked out at any departure from the GIRM, and especially those who constantly put down the "banal" post-VII music.
While still in those Catholic pews, as someone who grew up with a whole lot of "banal" hymns in the 1950s-60s church, I loved the post-VII hymns. I was never moved to tears by Oh, Mary we Crown thee with Blaaaaahsoms Today, or Immaculate Mary,Our Hearts are on Fire, or any of the few other hymns in English that we sang (very rarely). There was little music at the masses I grew up with - choirs only for holidays like Christmas, otherwise just an organ blasting away. But with the new, modern, easy to sing hymns based on scripture, I literally had tears roll down my face at times when singing some of the them, especially those adapted from the psalms. That never happens with traditional hymns, or even with beautiful classical liturgical music, like Mozart. I love the music, but those make me feel that I am attending a concert at the Kennedy Center - they provide great enjoyment, but don't move me the way the simple words of the post-VII hymns have done on occasion.
Anne, when it comes to music, de gustibus non est disputandum (not completely sure I have those in the right order; my Latin is worse than my grammar!). Or as Duke Ellington might have said once, "If it sounds good, it is good."
DeleteI've also seen people moved to tears at funerals when singing "Be Not Afraid", another fine St. Louis Jesuit contribution.
I am among those who have experienced tears when singing "Be Not Afraid". During normal masses - not at funerals!
DeleteThat "awful" hymn passed muster with our MAGA hat-wearing sacristan, so we sing it every Tuesday morning. Speaking of dirges, Monday we were surprised by "Love Divine, All Love whatevering," which left the congregation gobsmacked. I have not discovered where that came from.
ReplyDeleteIt's possible that the "awful hymn" is overused, but I kind of like it. Trust me, there is way worse. I do like "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling". Did they sing it to the same tune as Alleluia, Sing to Jesus (Hyfrydol), or Blaenwern? I like Blaenwern better.
DeleteI'd like Blaenwern better. I don't know it, but I just know I would.
DeleteOur music on Sunday is curated by a swinging musician (I can't say liturgical musician) and Mercedes, who is now under management by Kelly Clarkson's husband. I prefer their Spanish playbook to the praise songs in English, but they usually mix and match, more or less.
But on weekdays, the music is up to the sacristan and a lady who leads us when she is there. The playlist is usually the same each week, which leaves us with How Great Thou Art one day. I like the song, but it is NOT an entrance hymn. Whatever. Most sing, some don't. Attendance daily between 40 and 60.
Diagramming was one of my favorite school exercises (Catholic run by the Sinsinawa Dominicans).
ReplyDeleteI have a poster that diagrams this: Marcel Proust, “Remembrance of Things Past.” 958 words.
The parish I attended many years back now was in San Francisco's Castro District and, hence, was heavily frequented by the LGBT communities. The recessional each and every Gay Pride Sunday (last one in June) was "Somewhere Over The Rainbow." It resonated with most in attendance and was lustily sung through a lot of tears.
ReplyDeleteHymns that speak to you are good no matter what others think about them.
Anne: I am surprised that my diabetes was not further exacerbated by the treacley Marian nonsense with which I was raised, pre-V2. That's about all we sang in English (except for "Holy God We Praise Thy Name" at benediction). Some of those hymns were truly trash-like. If you don't thing that there is a plethora of them, check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymns_to_Mary
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