Monica O’Brien sent out a newsletter from Willow Publishing recently about the songs we use in worship in Australian parishes.
I reproduce here the main points she makes:
Recently, I read shocking statistics from ONE LICENSE reports that clearly indicate that we are caught in a time warp here in Australia.
Would you believe that no hymns or songs in the Top 100 titles (other than mass settings) were written by Australians later than 1992? That’s over 30 years ago!
This reflects poorly on our ability to introduce new material to our congregations. And please do not say there is no quality music being written… there are many well-crafted songs being written for liturgy that have yet to see the light of day despite efforts to broaden the repertoire.
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It’s crucial that we support Australian composers who are called to write music for the church. Consider this: if their music is consistently overlooked in favour of old favourites such as “Sing to the Mountains,” “Here I am Lord,” and “One Bread, One Body”, why would they continue to invest time and resources into writing new compositions? If we don’t nurture and promote our local talent, we risk losing their valuable contributions to our liturgical music landscape. By embracing new works, we not only enrich our worship but also encourage these gifted individuals to keep creating.
What will it take to introduce some new, fresh compositions?
Are music ministers afraid, lazy, disengaged, tired…?
It’s important to remember that all music was new at one point in time and in centuries past, the Catholic Church was a patron of new music.
She links to Timothy Hart’s article on the matter, which is well worth reading and commenting upon.
I would say that music ministers don’t even exist in many smaller parishes. Some of those remaining are just hanging on, getting tired and becoming disengaged, and it is easy to cling to what you know and what will not challenge an aging assembly that isn’t always singing anyway. The Catholic church is a poor patron from an institutional perspective, as it seems incapable of seeing beyond what happens in the cathedral and the parishes sink or swim on their own. That’s no reason not to look for recent Australian music to use in our Australian parishes, if for no other reason as to be symbol of commitment to renewal.
Willow has a lot of good music in its digital archive that was not collected in AOV 1,2 and Next Generation, but it is hard to know where to look sometimes. Their selections for liturgy link to appropriate songs that include the newer ones. If you search here for “AOVD” you will find those songs I’ve covered by artists such as Peter Grant, Patricia Smith and David MacGregor that were too late for AOV hymnals.
She mentions some fairly recent music by Australian composers, so I will have a look at those and some other recent Willow releases over the next week or so.