Just a couple of liturgical thoughts after last night, intended more as observations than criticisms, because the service was, as I expected, excellent:
(1) Romantic (meaning of the Romantic period) music doesn’t work as part of the liturgy. The Tenebrae service last night incorporated the Stations of the Cross, and for two of the stations the music was from Schubert’s Stabat Mater. It was too agitated and drew too much attention to itself. One section in particular involved a soprano in full operatic shriek mode, far more appropriate for a love-crazed murderous (or suicidal) heroine than for worship. The Baroque or earlier music, including a section from Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, worked much better, especially the unaccompanied choral sections, maintaining an atmosphere of somber contemplation.
(2) I’ve tried for years now, but I just can’t stop being uncomfortable with the commonly used text for the Stations of the Cross. I’m not sure where it comes from or if it has a name or author, but it’s the one in which each station ends with “Grant that I may love you always, and then do with me as you will.” It’s too effusive and florid and emotional, with kisses and embraces and addresses to Jesus as “my love.” It just doesn’t work for me. It makes me wish again for a more deeply-rooted liturgical English.
On the second point, I sometimes wonder if some of my reaction is in my genes. I may live in the semi-tropics, but I have a northern soul—as in northern Europe, not northern America. We tend to be somewhat more sparing of words, and diffident about our ability to get our deepest feelings into them, preferring implication, suggestion, and symbolism. That’s a broad generalization, of course, but there may be something to it.
Pre-TypePad
Light On Dark Water 
Leave a comment