Liturgical Music Quotes

Orthodox chanting is non-emotional; it's very monotone.

Participation is easily obtained with Latin chant.

I find most 'sacred music' pretty dismal.

I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one.

If you go to church, and like the singing better than the preaching, that's not orthodox.

The whole musical institution of the church involves a lot of different styles of communication at the same time. Things like call and response. Sometimes they use the music to pray and work things out. And there's so much repetition in gospel, it's like churning butter.

I love Evensong. There's something sad and essentially English about it.

[Our] plan is to follow the example of the prophets and the ancient fathers of the church, and to compose psalms...so that the Word of God may be among the people also in the form of music.

My parents were both opera singers, and they also were both heavily into religious and church music.

I've taught Sunday school, I've sung in the choir, I directed a choir.

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

My means of entry to 'Christianity was singing in a choir. As a boy chorister, I grew up with Ancient and Modern, the evening canticles, versicles and responses, and carols.

There is no dogma that the organ or harmonium can be used in church, but not the drum.

Even Catholic parishes today are not wanting for talent. But no serious singer or organist will get anywhere near the typical music program, at least if he wants to retain his self-respect.

I was a choir boy my whole life.

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 Catholic, so I have these defenses about listening to anything with too much religiosity; some of the lyrics didn't sit well in my mouth. One of my beefs is the patriarchal setup. Having the 'he, he, he, God, God, God, king, king, king' stuff was hard for me.

I know at my church a lot of the times we sung from hymn books and as we got older we started to change with time. I can honestly say that I was never influenced to write for the church.

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

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.

I sang in church choir all my life, through elementary school, junior high and high school.

As for sacred polyphony, there is no reason to be afraid of it.

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.

I am enormously susceptible to religious environments - the music, the liturgy and the prayers.

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