Isn't it Embarrassing

[Doom]

Isn't it embarrassing that it seems that half the hymns in the most popular missalette are set to the same tune? Isn't using the same tune for 50,000 different songs really lazy songwriting? I mean, when Chuck Berry did (with the songs "School Days" in 1957 and "No Particular Place to Go" in 1964) he was, and still is, widely ridiculed for it. And yet there are approximately 50 different songs in the Missalette set to the exact same melody.

[BobCatholic]

I think it is embarrassing that many hymns are self-centered instead of God-centered.

"Gather US in" (about "us" not Him)
"We are the light of the world" (no, God is the light of the world, at best we reflect that light)

[Doom]

Those are in the Gather hymnal, which I fortunately haven't encountered since college and which may very well be extinct now. I'm talking about the missalette "Breaking Bread" which is used in the vast majority of parishes in the US

[Kage_ar]

The reason for that is to make singing songs easier when folks don't read music.

[Riverboat]

Could be worse. Is "Take Our Bread" in there?

[gherkin]

The reason for that is to make singing songs easier when folks don't read music.

Maybe we can adopt the shape notes that they used to use in the country churches--you know, the stuff that led to bluegrass.

[Doom]

The reason for that is to make singing songs easier when folks don't read music.

If someone cannot read music why are they trying to play the organ?

[peregrinator]

The reason for that is to make singing songs easier when folks don't read music.

I think the average person can probably learn to sing many dozens of hymns by ear.

[Doom]

Precisely, just like people sing along with songs on the radio during long car trips, you immediately recognize the tune and you know the words so you go along.

The only people constantly recycling the same tunes could possibly help are musicians who don't know what they are doing. I don't think it is a good practice, just as I don't like hymns that are bastardized versions of secular songs, even though "What Child Is This?" is a standard, it's reputation has long been vitiated by the fact that it is a reworked version of the secular love song "Greensleeves"

[anawim]

I often go to the 7:30 Mass. No hymns. Occasionally, it's prerecorded music. Some of its good, other times, lousy. Luckily it doesn't last long. Chorus, one Verse, and Chorus again.

[Kage_ar]

The reason for that is to make singing songs easier when folks don't read music.

I think the average person can probably learn to sing many dozens of hymns by ear.

I don't disagree.

Re-using familiar tunes has been a way to make things easier is a debate that goes on and on:

https://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/dis ... o-often/p1