Light On Dark Water

I’m not, in general, a fan of the poppy Christian-themed music known sometimes as contemporary christian music (CCM) or praise-and-worship music. I do tend to like it better than the Catholic Glory and Praise or Gather sort of thing, which falls into some queasy-making place between The Kingston Trio and Broadway. CCM/P&W tends to be closer to rock—to be rock, quite often—and I prefer that; if we’re going to have Christian music that appropriates the emotive power of popular music, why try to be all dainty about it?

There are only two songs here, but I have multiple performances of each because I wasn’t entirely pleased with any of them. I don’t much like (in fact I mostly dislike) the actual video part of the videos below: Bible verses and the kind of sentimental Christian art that makes me simultaneously cringe and feel slightly guilty about cringing—after all, it’s done with the best possible intentions. Anyway, consider moving another window over the videos after you start them, and just listening to the music.

This is the kind of music we have at the Sunday evening Mass which my wife and I attend at our local parish. (We stopped driving over to Mobile to the cathedral when gas prices went through the roof last year, and, since we are definitely not morning people, we like having Mass at the end of the day.) Some months ago the choir sang a song which had the flavor of the old Protestant hymns I grew up with in the Methodist Church. But there were touches in the words here and there that made me think it was contemporary. With the aid of the Internet I soon found that it was the work of a contemporary British Christian artist, Stuart Townend.

Here is the song as performed by the American Christian rock group Skillet. The video consists only of Bible verses (these are Evangelicals, you know) (4:12):

Here it is performed by the composer, in a more elaborate arrangement (3:14):

The next song is one that just knocked me out some years ago when the choir sang it at Mass. I thought the opening phrases might be some sort of folk tune, but as far as I know the song is completely the work of one writer, Annie Herring. Here it is, performed by the composer in a very elaborate arrangement, with excellent sound, but with maybe the most sentimental video (5:23):

Here it is in a live performance by what I take to be a semi-professional group: a bit rough around the edges, but effective (5:25):

Lastly, here’s a nice acappella arrangement, marred by the overly loud spoken intro and outro added, apparently, by the guy who posted the video (2:45):

That “Is he calling me?” part really gets me.

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