Richard Morris Quotes

The Catholic theatrics are pretty high quality, but the Protestants have better hymns.

But nowadays hymns are the norm, because people don't have much else to sing.

Once the Mass is restored to its rightful place, we will again see choirs being developed.

Music had always been the handmaid of the Roman liturgy.

Thus the slogan should be reversed: Catholics taught the world what music is supposed to sound like, and, more importantly, what it is supposed to mean.

The idea of music coming from the Church is not new.

I had experiences or exposure to music in church. I went to a church, it was very unique. It was a predominantly African American Catholic church. So they would have - one mass would be traditional church music, and then the other mass would be gospel music.

What I learned about singing in the church has gone into what I do now.

By all means write new songs. Each generation must do that. But to neglect the church's original hymnbook is, to put it bluntly, crazy

Some of the stuff I'm writing is almost like hymns, some of my first singing and choral experiences were in church, the Church of Christ in Hicksville.

One of the things that is wonderful about hymns is that they are a sort of universally shared poetry, at least among certain populations. There isn't much of that anymore either. There are very few poems people can recite, but there are quite a few hymns that, if you hum a few bars, people can at least come up with two verses. Many of the older hymns are very beautiful.

Catholic liturgical music, it would seem, is everywhere but in the Catholic Church itself.

When the truth is that there would be no great Western music, and certainly no decent choral repertoire, without the Catholic faith.

The most consistent musical experience I had growing up was church music.

I find most 'sacred music' pretty dismal.

I come from the performance world, but the idea of a worship song is different. It's useful music.

The democratic and pedestrian character of the new Mass itself seems to invite the ditties that pass for hymns these days.

I was born in Alabama and my first live music experiences were in church. Every Sunday we watched regional gospel groups on television singing their hearts out.

I grew up going to a real small missionary baptist church. We would sing a lot of the old standards... the hymns and everything. Those songs are still my favorite and are pretty timeless.

I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music.

For two thousand years, the Church has guided the development of music, carefully legislating to fuse artistic talent and aesthetic beauty with the demands of the Faith.

As soon as I could write with a little pencil, I was writing these little hymns and illustrating them, and I thought they should be sung in church, but they never were.

When I was little I was into gospel music.

My parents were in the local church choir, and I used to go along and sing and play the organ at all the weddings and christenings.

I grew up around a lot of church musicians.