Kirchenmusik

You may have noticed that there are awfully many different kinds of "church" "music", nowadays. That is to say, there are awfully many kinds of noise produced and listened to in churches. (I could've written "sacred music", but that's not quite a broad enough term to cover it all.) I'm almost certain that you could find all of the following within a fifty-mile radius in the lower 48:

1. The "average" Protestant, if there is such a thing, is accustomed to a hymnal, and to singing hymns out of it. There is, doubtless, a particularly American corpus of hymns that just about every Protestant knows, irredisregardless of denomination. Many Roman Catholics know some of these, too.
2. Taizé services, which tend to be ecumenical in nature, are characterized by simple, repetitive songs designed for a sort of meditative effect.
3. Post-Vatican II Catholics have their own body of hymns: some of these are borrowed from Protestants, but a good many were written in the last forty years. Marty Haugen and David Haas are the primary movers and shakers, here. Recently, Protestants have begun to use some of this stuff as well.
4. A few R.C.s have opted to stick to pre-conciliar music, namely, Gregorian chant. I suspect this has been gaining in popularity.
   
5. Then there are Eastern Orthodox forms of chant, which are something else entirely.
6. On the other end of the spectrum is happy-clappy Christian rock, which is a staple of evangelicals. It has also found some use among mainstream Protestants, and even some R.C.s. Its symptoms include guitars and drum sets.
7. Like unto this are Christian country, Christian rap, what have you.
8. A Methodist church in South Bend has weekly Celtic music services. Any hymn can be made "Celtic" if you put it in Mixolydian mode and add recorders...
   

Often, all of these forms can be found in the same church, with the exception of the Orthodox. But people tend not to enjoy all sorts, so churches will have different services featuring different genres. We're thus free, as largely passive consumers, to choose whichever kind most appeals to us. Of course, when I put it that way, it's clear that this isn't a particularly good thing.

In the great American marketplace of religions, music has become another commodity, along with theology and social values. As a sacred-musician-in-training, this concerns me (in both senses of the word). We can't dictate by fiat What Sort of Music Will Be Played in Church, now can we? If non-musicians can't appreciate what is genuinely good music, if they have no emotional or theological attachment to it, then we're not really serving the congregation. But at the same time, life's too short for bad music.

If congregations were real communities, each would have an established body of music that everyone learned from their grandparents; we'd at least have some sort of attachment to it, then. (This would also rule out, conveniently, the happy-clappy stuff.) In this increasingly-fallen world this is largely not an option. What, then, are we to do? Give people what they want? I'd be especially interested to hear what ordinary parishioners think.