Sacred Music Should Be Worthwhile Music-Part 9

Sacred Music Should Be Worthwhile Music-Part 9

        Next let us consider “trite” music.  A musical definition of “trite” is music that it has too frequent repetition which makes it boringly obvious.  This type of music goes well with a religious text which is repeated over and over and over again.  If the text is not going anywhere, then there is little or no need for the formal properties of the music to try to lead the text to a place that it is obviously not going!  So, in all fairness to arrangers who are given a seven-eleven text, there is little that a composer can do aesthetically with the formal properties of music that is too tied to an overly repetitive text.  The result is a trite text accompanied by a trite musical setting.  The ultimate end of such an endeavor is a stale musical composition that is boringly obvious. 

       Another word that was used to categorize some religious music is the word “banal”.  There are a number of words that may be used to identify banal music.  They are:  unoriginal, hackneyed, clichéd, trivial, trite, lackluster, and lacking originality.  This list is somewhat depressing when one considers that some of the religious music we perform and hear fits this definition quite well.  Again, I am not referring to simple praise choruses and gospel songs per se.  There is no doubt that the reason much of popular religious music disappears into obscurity rather quickly is that it fits the definition of trite or banal quite well.

        One of the reasons that some religious music fits the above definition is that the lyric poetry is also banal.  Some religious music doesn’t have anything theologically wrong with its text but the text is shallow and often trite.  I am often disappointed in some religious lyric poetry because of what it does not say.  It seems to me that religious poets are afraid to tell the complete truth about a changed life, a life sold out to Christ, or a life controlled by the Holy Spirit.  Another definite problem with religious music texts is that many of the things that have been written in this century only talk about God’s love.  Tomorrow we will discuss the thought of the “complete truth of the gospel”.