Music, Mass, and Musicals

As a trained actor…

Let me rephrase.

As a guy who used to get paid to act and went to school for it, there was something that was always strange: musical theater.

If one is trying to recreate a realistic experience on the stage, why are people suddenly breaking out into song and dance at random moments? Why are they singing about these things? Oklahoma? Seriously?

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed watching musicals. I enjoyed performing in musicals. I just couldn’t explain how they could be realistic in any sense of the word and it really bugged me when directors that I worked with tried to get a “realistic” take on the silliness of things like “Hello Dolly”, “Oklahoma”, or even “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

I mean, are you really saying that I have to do a deep character analysis so that I can accurately portray a pharaoh who is an imitation of a rock star who would live 3200 years later?

Then a teacher explained that in musicals, the characters sing and dance because the spoken expression of the emotion would be inadequate at the time. Perhaps at the moment the song is in their head. Perhaps at the time it is the collective shared emotion of the group.

That is when it started to make a little sense to me.

I remember one of the original leads in “Oklahoma” on Broadway explaining that troops going off to fight overseas loved the show because it reminded them of the deep emotional attachment they had to the country they were literally about to give their lives for. For them, the songs made perfect sense as the instruments and music brought to life something that resided deep within.

Since I am slow, it hit me that Mass and singing at Mass is a lot like the reasoning for singing in musicals. It expresses a deep emotion and prayer that cannot be expressed through the spoken word.

It expresses a shared moment for the entire congregation when only the sung phrase can be used to show our adoration, petition, thanksgiving, or repentance to God.

This is probably also why most Masses are filled with people who do not sing and why many “music ministries” are solo acts when it comes to the Mass. We simply don’t realize what is going on in the “show”. We don’t understand our part in it.

The Catholic Church used to hire the best and brightest artists to paint our parishes, sculpt our saints, color our casements, adorn our altars, and provoke our passions in music.

Now it seems that we hire music ministers to simply fill gaps because we have always had music there. No one really wants to sing at those points, and so they sit back and watch the show without realizing they are part of the play. The chorus that points to the lead in the center of the stage: Jesus Christ.

As the Mass begins, the excitement and anticipation of being together as a people of God, joined with the Saints is expressed in an opening song. Go to a musical and listen to the opening number. It sets the stage with excitement, anticipation. If it sets the mood, then there is no other way to express ourselves other than to sing.

At the Gloria, the words evoke a deep gratitude for our forgiven sin, that may have been sung in a minor key in the Kyrie. I have never understood the spoken Gloria, nor understood some of the un-glorious music that gets attached to this part of the Mass.

How can we not sing or chant the Psalms? Was there ever more beautiful words written to express perfect prayer towards God at any point in human history? They run the gamut of emotions, and most times we gloss them over, bygone emotions written for people who knew nothing of the reality of internet dating, email, or the drive-thru window.

We are about to read the Gospel, literally the Good News! How can we contain ourselves as we thank God for this gift and adore Him for allowing us to hear it! The Saints around us, the millions of martyrs, have passed this down for thousands of years!

Our humility and gratitude is expressed in a particular way during the offertory. We do not offer merely bread and wine, but we offer ourselves. Crushed and broken in our own humanity and sinfulness to be made new.

In more and more Churches the Eucharistic Prayer and all of its parts are being sung. If this is an expression of the inexpressible, is there even a debate that this is the one part of the Mass that should be sung? If there is any part of the Mass that we cannot express in the mere speaking of the words, should it not be the part where the Creator of the known Universe replaces the substance of the bread with Himself so that we can consume Him, as a lover desires to become one with the beloved? How can we not sing after that event of consummation with the divine? Do we not know what has just happened?

That would be like Romeo simply shrugging after meeting Juliet.

That would be like Curly giving a “so-so” to Laurie.

How can we not end the Mass with a big closing number that sends us into the streets humming the tunes of our redemption and sharing with everyone what we have just experienced?

I think there is an argument to be made that if we are not expressing what is deepest in our souls, and we cannot express it in a way that draws attention to Christ rather than ourselves, then we shouldn’t sing.

We might actually be doing a disservice to the congregation and to the Mass itself if we as music ministers force a song, and even a song that is not well done, onto them. It doesn’t matter if the song is with the lyre, the pipe organ, the orchestra, or a cappella.

Let’s make it well done.

Let’s sing it with a purpose.

Let’s express our souls, the praise being ripped from them through music.

If we cannot do that, it might be best to not sing at all, for the musical to simply be a play, for we are simply play-acting, and not engaged in the rich, ripe reality presented on the banquet table before us.

There is nothing sillier than a musical that has meaningless songs that express no emotion whatsoever.

There is nothing sadder than a Mass that borders on the boring, making meaningless music that distracts us from the source of all music.