7 ms·

I am not a Christian, but I feel like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ffg4mU7FNE&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ffg4mU7FNE&t=2s is far more divine soun

by wbl 8y ago

I am not a Christian, but I feel like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ffg4mU7FNE&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ffg4mU7FNE&t=2s is far more divine sounding then someone with a guitar as in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io2WOQ-3aVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io2WOQ-3aVs . Sadly my faith tradition is stuck with Debbie Freedman.

explorigin 8y ago
It's all about culture. If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns. People that converted without a high-church context gravitate toward a more modern style of worship. The downside of so much hillsong influence is that it dominates a culture and drowns out other modern styles. I feel like all hillsong songs sound the same.
- bartread 8y ago
  Tend to agree. Most Christian music sounds very samey to me and simply doesn't stir my soul. I realise this is a very personal perspective, but I find a lot of "secular" music better for worship: Hendrix, Led Zep, Guns 'N' Roses, Soundgarden, Hybrid, She, Pendulum, and of course plenty of orchestral and ensemble music from earlier eras. This stuff stirs my soul. I'm honestly not trying to be edgy here, and I'm well aware that this isn't going to be everyone's (or even the majority's) bag, and I'm definitely not suggesting that Christian music needs to change for my benefit (it really doesn't). That's all totally OK: it's just me saying that after 22 years of being a Christian I know who I am.
  - redbeard0x0a 8y ago
    > I'm honestly not trying to be edgy here, and I'm well aware that this isn't going to be everyone's (or even the majority's) bag We forget that people are extremely varied, there is room for everybody. An infinite God probably doesn't create only ~3 "right" ways of worshipping, living, serving, teaching, etc.
  - taborj 8y ago
    As the Grateful Dead once sang - "Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right."
  - dagw 8y ago
    This is one of those ancient church debates that goes back centuries. Should 'church' music be something that you listen to in silence and revel in its beauty or something that your participate and by doing so praise God with your voice. If you want everybody to play/sing along with gusto you better make the music easy to sing and play.
  - dreix 8y ago
    you're right and it tends to become more and more like that. On the other hand they are so simple you can pretty much pick up any song after the first couple of lines.
  - kybernetikos 8y ago
    There may be a distinction between music that is intended to stir you as you listen to it and music that is intended to stir you as you sing it.
- camelNotation 8y ago
  That's a very modern perspective, not necessarily consistent with Christian theology at all. The notion that people in the ancient world or simply older people today enjoy church music out of preference seems to ignore the fact that street music and folk music were NEVER comparable to church music. The idea behind unique liturgical music was that the structure of the music itself revealed something about the nature of creation that was worth LEARNING to like, even though it was alien. The notion that people can and should just gravitate to whatever suits their personal tastes implies that their tastes do not need redemption.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    How is that inconsistent with Christian theology? Theology is diverse and different schools hold different, often contradictory views on any given topic. Usually what is called “Christian theology” is that for which there is a general consensus among theologians, and I’m unaware of any such consensus on this particular subject.
    - camelNotation 8y ago
      In the year 2018, Christian theology is almost infinitely diverse, but it wasn't always so. That diversity is very modern. For the vast majority of Christian history, the sacramental role of music in Christianity was essentially a universal given. It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that anyone even considered divorcing music from sacramental theology and it wasn't until the mid-20th century that the idea of church music as a matter of preference even arose. To speak authoritatively of "Christian theology" in the context of music in any meaningful sense, a "vote" needs to be given to every generation of Christians, not just the current one. And in that sense, there really is a consensus.
      - weberc2 8y ago
        > To speak authoritatively of "Christian theology" in the context of music in any meaningful sense, a "vote" needs to be given to every generation of Christians, not just the current one. Definitely, but we also need to consider that before the industrial revolution, Christians were limited in their options (most folks were very poor by modern standards, there isn't much diversity in music in general, and there is a comparatively narrow [and at various times, more corrupt] group of people making decisions on theology and music). So we need to consider history, but we don't weight all history evenly--there is such a thing as 'progress', after all.
- KarenSatantsby 8y ago
  High-Church sounds fun. I would go if Angie from Sweden went to that church. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdGgljB_hYvI7ZXTfebLymw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdGgljB_hYvI7ZXTfebLymw She writes really cat-chy schlock that I love and sing along to "I get high, eat pussy every day, and every day is kind of the same" Encapsulates the world in which I would want to live. I think that by saying that a church service is not a concert for entertainment is disingenuous or at least profoundly lacking in introspection. Music and lies go together but also music and entertainment.. Never ever do you have music and fear and jealousy - that has to be communicated with the sermon.
- bmj 8y ago
  Stanley Hauerwas (theologian) had this to say about music in worship: One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    Sounds like he hangs out with a bunch of psychopaths who missed the core message of what they're congregating for.
    - richgroot 8y ago
      I knew Stanley several years ago when we attended the same church. I'm not a psychopath and neither were the other folks in our congregation. Stanley was a good teacher but a bit of a monotone during the songs. I hope he is still doing well. Good man.
      - bmj 8y ago
        Well, Stanley is known for overstatement, and there's a good chance this is hagiographic. But, I take the point to be that we need to be on guard about what we call worship because it does form us.
- rjmunro 8y ago
  I think that to people who haven't spent serious time listening to it, all organ/choral music "sounds the same".
  - explorigin 8y ago
    Let me add some texture to my comment. When I flip through radio stations in the car, I can always identify the contemporary christian station by the music style regardless of if I've heard the song before. It's not about not hearing enough of the music to differentiate songs. It's that they all have the same elements...like Taco Bell, it's only 7 ingredients.
  - wbl 8y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MwDDK3jodw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MwDDK3jodw is Eric Whitacre. It's recent. Now contrast to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY4DCG-nFBI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY4DCG-nFBI by Martin Luther. I doubt those two can ever be confused. And that's not even Xenakis! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jESS3gP1GGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jESS3gP1GGE
- reaperducer 8y ago
  If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns. For those interested in this sort of thing, Minnesota Public Radio's app has an entire streaming channel of choral music.
- cvwright 8y ago
  > If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns. Counterpoint: Lots of people, especially those who had not-great experiences growing up in the church, tend to go hard in a different direction when they grow up. In "Blue Like Jazz", Donald Miller talks about how he thinks it would be super cool to belong to a relatively obscure (in the US) denomination like the Greek Orthodox --- that is, unless he had grown up Greek Orthodox. Then he thinks it would be totally lame and predictable.
deweller 8y ago
I would suggest that this is a better comparison with the Bach Cantata: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBJJJkiRukY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBJJJkiRukY I expect that history will look back and see Hillsong as an example of sacred music from this time period.
- soundwave106 8y ago
  While you are right that this is indeed some of the "sacred music from this time period", there are some significant style differences. The Hillsong song still is very pop chord-cyclic. Much of the song is dominated by a variation of a C minor - E flat major - B flat major - A flat style cycle -- essentially, I would call it vi I IV V (to my ears at first listen the song's "home base" is E flat at least). The chord pattern shifts a little bit from time to time and there is some occasional variation in chord choice -- for instance, later in the song the A flat gets substituted with a F minor (ii) -- and some chord order variation. But Hillsong (like a lot of modern pop music) more relies on texture and instrument density (or lack thereof) for their expression . (Here the repetitive nature itself also can be thought of as an element of expression I'm sure, repetitive chant is a well known element of various religious cultures.) Bach's tunes were written in the counterpoint style, which is an entirely different way of composing (very much a voice leading dominated style, with a clearly defined function for various chords -- tonics, dominants, etc.). The Bach cantatas honestly are not comparable to Hillsong in some ways as I think they were more meant to be performed, not sung along with by the entire church. But the older unison singalong hymns also did not tend to lean on chord loops like modern pop. Take Adolphe Adam's "O Holy Night" aka Cantique de Noel (link to a French choral-orchestral version found on Youtube -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNCFvg5M-yA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNCFvg5M-yA). It "loops", but like most older hymns the loop is more verse-chorus oriented. You can have simple tunes with this structure ("Silent Night" is just three chords), but "O Holy Night" IMHO has a fair bit more complex chord progressions while still retaining enough simplicity to be a sing-along. Just to give one example, instead of repeating the chords at the end of the first part of the verse (I-V-I), the second part ends with a iii-VII7-iii so it can transition to the next section (in the Youtube version which appears to be in Eb major, that would be G minor - D7 major - G minor). The chorus goes through another set of chords entirely. Personally, too often I find the Hillsong style of composing (which actually is very typical of modern secular pop as well) too repetitive for my personal taste, and lean more toward the older style. But this obviously is just my opinion. Hillsong is obviously popular, as is the modern pop style that they are written in.
gtycomb 8y ago
The Bach Cantata here is marvelously moving, so let me put in my $0.02. When Bach wrote his music, he was also at the cutting edge of the technology of his age. The pipe organs were great accomplishments of that mechanical age. The churches then embraced the technology and music as new wave churches of our age (and with similar resistance). Bach was an ultimate nerd, adept in technology of his generation. He knew about organ construction like few did and he earned an income as consultant from pipe organ construction projects that required much risk taking and investment. One has to be technical enough to know a lot about the physics of sound producing, metallurgy (look into the tin/copper content of the pipes to make sure the builder hasn't taken shortcuts etc. ), inspect bellows, air controllers, and suggest design changes, etc. To the ordinary towns people this might have looked like Moog synthesizer or Hillsong innovations of today. Lets not forget that Bach faced significant career threatening opposition on the musical structure of these very Cantatas that were composed when he was Cantor at St. Thomas in Leipzig where he taught music. His music was too new for most of them too...
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  Organs were widely used in chapels and then churches from the 9th Century onwards. Bach was working in a musical and technological context that was already centuries old. Meanwhile Hillsong is repackaged millennial pop/country/hints-of-EDM with all rough edges sanded down to a glossy frictionless finish. It's slick and corporate and essentially parasitic on popular music stylings, visual imagery, and performance tropes. There's nothing nerdy or edgy about it (unless you include some of the criminal allegations that surround Hillsong - which everyone probably should). So I think comparing it to the output of a technical genius like Bach is pushing the truth envelope a little too far to be completely convincing.
  - gtycomb 8y ago
    About Bach's involvement and contributions in organ building technology of his age, the point of view comes from here discussed at length: "Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven" by John Eliot Gardiner. He is a reliable source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eliot_Gardiner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eliot_Gardiner A detailed comparison with modern music comes from a recent author whose name slips my mind. He taught at Columbia University, a journalist, his entire book is on the relationship of Bach with all kinds of recorded music in digital age.
seem_2211 8y ago
I think both can be good?

by wbl 8y ago

explorigin 8y ago

It's all about culture. If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns. People that converted without a high-church context gravitate toward a more modern style of worship. The downside of so much hillsong influence is that it dominates a culture and drowns out other modern styles. I feel like all hillsong songs sound the same.

bartread 8y ago
Tend to agree. Most Christian music sounds very samey to me and simply doesn't stir my soul. I realise this is a very personal perspective, but I find a lot of "secular" music better for worship: Hendrix, Led Zep, Guns 'N' Roses, Soundgarden, Hybrid, She, Pendulum, and of course plenty of orchestral and ensemble music from earlier eras. This stuff stirs my soul. I'm honestly not trying to be edgy here, and I'm well aware that this isn't going to be everyone's (or even the majority's) bag, and I'm definitely not suggesting that Christian music needs to change for my benefit (it really doesn't). That's all totally OK: it's just me saying that after 22 years of being a Christian I know who I am.
- redbeard0x0a 8y ago
  > I'm honestly not trying to be edgy here, and I'm well aware that this isn't going to be everyone's (or even the majority's) bag We forget that people are extremely varied, there is room for everybody. An infinite God probably doesn't create only ~3 "right" ways of worshipping, living, serving, teaching, etc.
- taborj 8y ago
  As the Grateful Dead once sang - "Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right."
- dagw 8y ago
  This is one of those ancient church debates that goes back centuries. Should 'church' music be something that you listen to in silence and revel in its beauty or something that your participate and by doing so praise God with your voice. If you want everybody to play/sing along with gusto you better make the music easy to sing and play.
- dreix 8y ago
  you're right and it tends to become more and more like that. On the other hand they are so simple you can pretty much pick up any song after the first couple of lines.
- kybernetikos 8y ago
  There may be a distinction between music that is intended to stir you as you listen to it and music that is intended to stir you as you sing it.
camelNotation 8y ago
That's a very modern perspective, not necessarily consistent with Christian theology at all. The notion that people in the ancient world or simply older people today enjoy church music out of preference seems to ignore the fact that street music and folk music were NEVER comparable to church music. The idea behind unique liturgical music was that the structure of the music itself revealed something about the nature of creation that was worth LEARNING to like, even though it was alien. The notion that people can and should just gravitate to whatever suits their personal tastes implies that their tastes do not need redemption.
- weberc2 8y ago
  How is that inconsistent with Christian theology? Theology is diverse and different schools hold different, often contradictory views on any given topic. Usually what is called “Christian theology” is that for which there is a general consensus among theologians, and I’m unaware of any such consensus on this particular subject.
  - camelNotation 8y ago
    In the year 2018, Christian theology is almost infinitely diverse, but it wasn't always so. That diversity is very modern. For the vast majority of Christian history, the sacramental role of music in Christianity was essentially a universal given. It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that anyone even considered divorcing music from sacramental theology and it wasn't until the mid-20th century that the idea of church music as a matter of preference even arose. To speak authoritatively of "Christian theology" in the context of music in any meaningful sense, a "vote" needs to be given to every generation of Christians, not just the current one. And in that sense, there really is a consensus.
    - weberc2 8y ago
      > To speak authoritatively of "Christian theology" in the context of music in any meaningful sense, a "vote" needs to be given to every generation of Christians, not just the current one. Definitely, but we also need to consider that before the industrial revolution, Christians were limited in their options (most folks were very poor by modern standards, there isn't much diversity in music in general, and there is a comparatively narrow [and at various times, more corrupt] group of people making decisions on theology and music). So we need to consider history, but we don't weight all history evenly--there is such a thing as 'progress', after all.
KarenSatantsby 8y ago
High-Church sounds fun. I would go if Angie from Sweden went to that church. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdGgljB_hYvI7ZXTfebLymw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdGgljB_hYvI7ZXTfebLymw She writes really cat-chy schlock that I love and sing along to "I get high, eat pussy every day, and every day is kind of the same" Encapsulates the world in which I would want to live. I think that by saying that a church service is not a concert for entertainment is disingenuous or at least profoundly lacking in introspection. Music and lies go together but also music and entertainment.. Never ever do you have music and fear and jealousy - that has to be communicated with the sermon.
bmj 8y ago
Stanley Hauerwas (theologian) had this to say about music in worship: One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  Sounds like he hangs out with a bunch of psychopaths who missed the core message of what they're congregating for.
  - richgroot 8y ago
    I knew Stanley several years ago when we attended the same church. I'm not a psychopath and neither were the other folks in our congregation. Stanley was a good teacher but a bit of a monotone during the songs. I hope he is still doing well. Good man.
    - bmj 8y ago
      Well, Stanley is known for overstatement, and there's a good chance this is hagiographic. But, I take the point to be that we need to be on guard about what we call worship because it does form us.
rjmunro 8y ago
I think that to people who haven't spent serious time listening to it, all organ/choral music "sounds the same".
- explorigin 8y ago
  Let me add some texture to my comment. When I flip through radio stations in the car, I can always identify the contemporary christian station by the music style regardless of if I've heard the song before. It's not about not hearing enough of the music to differentiate songs. It's that they all have the same elements...like Taco Bell, it's only 7 ingredients.
- wbl 8y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MwDDK3jodw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MwDDK3jodw is Eric Whitacre. It's recent. Now contrast to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY4DCG-nFBI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY4DCG-nFBI by Martin Luther. I doubt those two can ever be confused. And that's not even Xenakis! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jESS3gP1GGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jESS3gP1GGE
reaperducer 8y ago
If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns. For those interested in this sort of thing, Minnesota Public Radio's app has an entire streaming channel of choral music.
cvwright 8y ago
> If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns. Counterpoint: Lots of people, especially those who had not-great experiences growing up in the church, tend to go hard in a different direction when they grow up. In "Blue Like Jazz", Donald Miller talks about how he thinks it would be super cool to belong to a relatively obscure (in the US) denomination like the Greek Orthodox --- that is, unless he had grown up Greek Orthodox. Then he thinks it would be totally lame and predictable.

deweller 8y ago

I would suggest that this is a better comparison with the Bach Cantata: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBJJJkiRukY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBJJJkiRukY I expect that history will look back and see Hillsong as an example of sacred music from this time period.

soundwave106 8y ago
While you are right that this is indeed some of the "sacred music from this time period", there are some significant style differences. The Hillsong song still is very pop chord-cyclic. Much of the song is dominated by a variation of a C minor - E flat major - B flat major - A flat style cycle -- essentially, I would call it vi I IV V (to my ears at first listen the song's "home base" is E flat at least). The chord pattern shifts a little bit from time to time and there is some occasional variation in chord choice -- for instance, later in the song the A flat gets substituted with a F minor (ii) -- and some chord order variation. But Hillsong (like a lot of modern pop music) more relies on texture and instrument density (or lack thereof) for their expression . (Here the repetitive nature itself also can be thought of as an element of expression I'm sure, repetitive chant is a well known element of various religious cultures.) Bach's tunes were written in the counterpoint style, which is an entirely different way of composing (very much a voice leading dominated style, with a clearly defined function for various chords -- tonics, dominants, etc.). The Bach cantatas honestly are not comparable to Hillsong in some ways as I think they were more meant to be performed, not sung along with by the entire church. But the older unison singalong hymns also did not tend to lean on chord loops like modern pop. Take Adolphe Adam's "O Holy Night" aka Cantique de Noel (link to a French choral-orchestral version found on Youtube -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNCFvg5M-yA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNCFvg5M-yA). It "loops", but like most older hymns the loop is more verse-chorus oriented. You can have simple tunes with this structure ("Silent Night" is just three chords), but "O Holy Night" IMHO has a fair bit more complex chord progressions while still retaining enough simplicity to be a sing-along. Just to give one example, instead of repeating the chords at the end of the first part of the verse (I-V-I), the second part ends with a iii-VII7-iii so it can transition to the next section (in the Youtube version which appears to be in Eb major, that would be G minor - D7 major - G minor). The chorus goes through another set of chords entirely. Personally, too often I find the Hillsong style of composing (which actually is very typical of modern secular pop as well) too repetitive for my personal taste, and lean more toward the older style. But this obviously is just my opinion. Hillsong is obviously popular, as is the modern pop style that they are written in.

gtycomb 8y ago

The Bach Cantata here is marvelously moving, so let me put in my $0.02. When Bach wrote his music, he was also at the cutting edge of the technology of his age. The pipe organs were great accomplishments of that mechanical age. The churches then embraced the technology and music as new wave churches of our age (and with similar resistance). Bach was an ultimate nerd, adept in technology of his generation. He knew about organ construction like few did and he earned an income as consultant from pipe organ construction projects that required much risk taking and investment. One has to be technical enough to know a lot about the physics of sound producing, metallurgy (look into the tin/copper content of the pipes to make sure the builder hasn't taken shortcuts etc. ), inspect bellows, air controllers, and suggest design changes, etc. To the ordinary towns people this might have looked like Moog synthesizer or Hillsong innovations of today. Lets not forget that Bach faced significant career threatening opposition on the musical structure of these very Cantatas that were composed when he was Cantor at St. Thomas in Leipzig where he taught music. His music was too new for most of them too...

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
Organs were widely used in chapels and then churches from the 9th Century onwards. Bach was working in a musical and technological context that was already centuries old. Meanwhile Hillsong is repackaged millennial pop/country/hints-of-EDM with all rough edges sanded down to a glossy frictionless finish. It's slick and corporate and essentially parasitic on popular music stylings, visual imagery, and performance tropes. There's nothing nerdy or edgy about it (unless you include some of the criminal allegations that surround Hillsong - which everyone probably should). So I think comparing it to the output of a technical genius like Bach is pushing the truth envelope a little too far to be completely convincing.
- gtycomb 8y ago
  About Bach's involvement and contributions in organ building technology of his age, the point of view comes from here discussed at length: "Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven" by John Eliot Gardiner. He is a reliable source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eliot_Gardiner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eliot_Gardiner A detailed comparison with modern music comes from a recent author whose name slips my mind. He taught at Columbia University, a journalist, his entire book is on the relationship of Bach with all kinds of recorded music in digital age.

seem_2211 8y ago

I think both can be good?