St Mary's

2 Comments on "HOW ARE WE TRAVELLING?"

1. 

   Tim Roberts
   14/07/2011 at 9:31 am Permalink

   “Quality and wealth of repertoire of music could improve considering renumeration paid.” (survey reponse) director issue is actually a hang-over from old church where i’m based and one of the sad stories of the SME/St Mary’s split. st mary’s is a concert venue for music. it’s that good. TLC.. is not. peter kennedy’s pastoral care and homilies, the beauty and inclusiveness of the old church building, and cantor Dean Hamilton were the 3 factors to me that i could see that attracted the likes of karen walsh to st mary’s in the 1980s and grew the community. to get someone the calibre of of Dean (well maybe not with the theological training, but certainly the music ability) now in Brisbane is easy – music in SEQLD has grown exponentially over the last decade. it’s really about having career options though as a musician – in regards to musicians at st mary’s, the whole doctrinal / media fraccas of 2008-09 is a bit of a smokescreen.. it’s a complete restructing where st mary’s doesn’t stand alone, but is part of a deanery led by a musician with a PhD and paid a university chair’s wage, altho that musical structure is yet to be filled in – churches in the deanery don’t yet work together regularly, altho they do work together. within this structure there’s a future potential for music directors to be moved around from church to church, and role to role, whilst still retaining a wage. that’s the issue for SME music – how’s that going to happen at TLC other than simply replacing the current director with some cantor/director(pianist/guitarist) who will refresh your music yes.. but, it’s hardly fair to just replace a director unless the current director has alternatives they are happy with.

2. 

   Tim Roberts
   14/07/2011 at 7:28 pm Permalink

   More specific eg.’s on SME repetoire.. the music selection process is indeed difficult.. much of modern Catholic and Christian music is.. well… average. even those held as important modern Catholic hymn writers such as Marty Haugen, out of 15 songs left on the Marty Haugen Anthology 1985-1989 CD in the old church in April 2009 that I’ve recently been thru, sure, I use a few of these, but their arrangements are in the main belonging to another era and banal, however much I might get a sense of 80s nostalgia for their arrangements, the tone (feeling) of the arrangements is one of banal innocence. One from this CD jumped out at me as a must sing at Christmas, Haugen’s ‘Carol at The Manger”.. it’s a song about social justice that fits perfectly into SME or the old church. But it saddens me (not new St Mary’s members who hardly know SME exists) because I am truly scratching my head at the creation of 2 St Mary’s after listening to music like this song:

   http://www.amazon.com/Carol-at-the-Manger/dp/B001C519PC

   We do lack sometimes with music selection at the old church, but not to the extent SME is currently: the irony is, the current SME music selection and music arrangement has more to do with your average Australian suburban Catholic parish than the old church does!!! Gospel acclamations such as “Halle, Halle, Halle”, are a perfect example of that suburban Catholic music I’m talking about. Even songs that are so significant to St Mary’s over quite a few years, like Marty Haugen’s “All Are Welcome”.. honestly, do you really want to sing that melody? It’s dreary and drags. You need melodies you can get your teeth into.. that inspire… the words of this song do – the melody / chord progression doesn’t. In 2011 it’s a no brainer for a good church musician.

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