What would you be pleased to never sing again?

off the top of my head:
gifts of finest wheat
seed scattered and sown
gather us in
we remember
let there be peace on earth
any of the saccharine lyrics set to Finlandia

What would you PAY to sing?

Having paid for a memorial mass I asked for "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" and got it. Think of offering an extra $10 for choice of music with Mass intention!!!!

Hum along y'all:

Verse 1:
Here I am Lord, Is it I Lord?
I have heard You calling in the night.
I will go Lord, if You lead me.
I will hold Your people in my heart.

Verse 2:
Here's the story of a lovely lady
Who was bringing up three very lovely girls.
All of them had hair of gold, like their mother,
The youngest one in curls.

Second verse, same as the first,
a little bit louder, a little bit worse.
=)

PS Look around the net, there's a whole list of these soundalikes out there......

Ditto to everything Alicia posted. I'm not sure which settings to "Finlandia" she's referring to but I trust her taste.
Shepherd Me, O God
Anthem
Be Not Afraid
On Eagle's Wings (I'm okay with hearing a cantor sing that as a meditation piece)
Hail Mary, Gentle Woman

Traditional hymns that need a sabbatical:
Immaculate Mary
Praise to the Lord

I would pay money to sing
Anything in Latin
"Lift up your heads, Ye Mighty Gates"
Holy God, We Praise Thy Name
Holy, Holy, Holy (especially the second verse)
Jesus Christ is Risen Today
Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Oh! Oh! I would also pay money to sing O Sacred Head Surrounded, particularly if we can sing it in parts.

Isn't Finlandia a vodka? What kinda singin' you doin' up there, Alicia?!?

Ah: it's been so long since I heard "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence". I'll pay for that one too.

Sing a New Church

"Sing a new church into being, one in faith and love and praise" Ugh!

"Sing a New Church" really offends me because we Catholics aren't part of a "new" church -- instead we're part of the most ancient church.

This argument went nowhere with our choir director in the planning for our parish's 100th anniversary Mass. (You can be sure when I took charge of the closing evening prayer a year later it was NOT part of the program.

Gee, Peony? RC? I guess I coulda cleaned up at my parish over the past few months.

(And Holy, Holy, Holy will be coming up again soon, Trinity Sunday, you know....)

I have to shame-facedly admit, however, that I am ineligible to join that laudable Society for the Moratorium, etc.
I have [shudder!] of my own volition programmed the odd bit of Haugen.
I am fairly new at my post, and trying to wean the parishioners (and even some of the musicians,) gradually. I think it is understandable that some of them would be jonesing for the junk food on which they have gorged themselves for the past ten or more years.
And although I have often heard and read (most recently in that interesting article in Pastoral and Homiletic Review by Oost-Zimmer (Zinner?) and Tucker, that chant is ill-served by appearing alongside non-chant music, I don't agree that there are not contemporary pieces that are "chant compatible," (I think that was the phrase that was being bandied about on Recovering Choir Director.)
There are even compositions by the dread Minnesota Trinity that are not utterly deficient in solemnity and dignity (off topic -- does anyone else wonder if Haas's Faith Hope and Love was inadvertent plagiarism of the superior, but seemingly less frequently programmed Peloquin of the same name?)
I refuse to take the draconian measures of the liturgists, pastors and music directors who broke the hearts of our parents' generation of Catholic church musicians, with their "off with its head!" approach to Latin, classical music, Gregorian Chant, choir music...
I think we can be kinder and wiser than that.

so glad they're not popular here in Germany:
the Celtic Alleluia
Deep In Our Hearts
We Remember
ugh -
anything from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical

would pay to hear:
The King of Love my Shepherd Is
Amazing Grace - verse 4
How Can I Keep From Singing? (a great reminder not to complain and I can use it- see above)
We Three Kings of Orient Are - all the way to verse 5 (particularly verses 3-5)

Anything by Marty Haugen, especially his Mass of Creation

Anything by David Haas, especially his Mass of Light

Anything that is a collaboration of David Haas and Marty Haugen.

Anything By Bernadette Farrell

Anything by Daniel Schutte

Here, I am Lord (No, that's not a typo)

I am the bread of Life

Jesus, Wine of Peace

Now in this Banquet, by Marty Haugen

Lord of the Dance

Amazing Grace

Any sort or gospel song, because Catholics just can't pull it off.

Robert, you're wrong about gospel -- I've been to a Mass in a predominantly black parish, and they can pull off doing gospel hymns. I remember thinking that their music was holy and pleasing to God in a way that most non-black parish music is not.

I repent.

Oklahoma Catholics can't do black gospel songs.

Church music (RC and non-RC) I would pay to sing:

"Praise to the Lord, the Almigthy, the King of Creation..."

"Hail Holy Queen" (for the melody more than for the theology)

"Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel..."

"Holy God, We Praise Thy Name"

"God Of Our Fathers" (my absolute favorite)

"Battle Hymm of the Republic"

"Onward Christian Soldiers"

Church music I'd pay to flush down the toilet:

"More Love, More Power, More of You In My Life..."

"Kumbaya"

"Here We Are, All Together As We Sing Our Song, Joyfully" (I learned this rubbish when I was 10 years old in CCD and I still remember it. Ugh!!)

"I've Got A River Of Life Flowing Out Of Me" (a favorite of Campus Crusade for Christ meetings when I was a college freshman. UGH!!)

I can live with Farrell's "I am the Bread of Life" if it's sung as a solo piece and not for congregational singing (like at a funeral) and if it's sung with its original lyrics and not the silly "inclusive" lyrics ("unless the Father beckons," gag)

Two great English-language hymns by Vaughan Williams, the man who brought English church music into the 20th century as editor of "The English Hymnal" (1906) and "Songs of Praise", seem not to have migrated to Catholic usage:
1. At the Name of Jesus (King's Weston)
2. Hail Thee, Festival Day (Salve Festa Dies)
(HOW did "For All the Saints" (Sine Nomine) end up as funeral music??)

On the other hand, Omer Westendorf's texts, a first draft of sorts of new words to old tunes from the 60s and 70s, need to be expunged from our hymnals, missalettes and "Music Issues". None other than Fr. Mike Joncas (whose music gets a bad rap because On Eagle's Wings, a work for a solo voice, gets overused) scorns O.W.'s rewritten "We Gather Together" as a hymn about rubrics. Just put O.W.'s text side by side to the original text, and you're left to wonder why he did it. Another example is the O.W. text to "Let All Things Now Living." Poor guy is dead now, so I don't like beating up a corpse. Nonetheless, I couldn't hit a big-league fastball so I'm not a big-league ballplayer. O.W. couldn't write a good hymn text so his stuff doesn't belong in hymnals.

Sine Nomine is almost impossible for the average congregation to sing! By verse 2 there is general embarassed silence even among the willing. I love it, but it's got to be an anthem performed by choir...

I do love King's Weston, though.

I want For all the saints (to Sine Nomine) sung at my funeral - all the verses. I don't care if the congregation has problems.
I also would like more RV Williams hymn settings in Catholic parishes - we are at least getting "I heard the voice of Jesus say" - but have you noticed that OCP does not credit RVW on this one? (I guess, since what he did was adapt 'folk and country' songs, they can get away with not crediting him)
As an ex-ANglican, I never noticed that there were problems with congregational singing of Sine Nomine - of course the parish I spent the most time in was All Saint's in San Diego......

I want For all the saints (to Sine Nomine) sung at my funeral - all the verses. I don't care if the congregation has problems.
I also would like more RV Williams hymn settings in Catholic parishes - we are at least getting "I heard the voice of Jesus say" - but have you noticed that OCP does not credit RVW on this one? (I guess, since what he did was adapt 'folk and country' songs, they can get away with not crediting him)
As an ex-ANglican, I never noticed that there were problems with congregational singing of Sine Nomine - of course the parish I spent the most time in was All Saint's in San Diego......

Re: the post by RP Burke: Two great English-language hymns by Vaughan Williams, the man who brought English church music into the 20th century as editor of "The English Hymnal" (1906) and "Songs of Praise", seem not to have migrated to Catholic usage:
1. At the Name of Jesus (King's Weston)
2. Hail Thee, Festival Day (Salve Festa Dies)
______________________________________________

I think that "Hail Thee, Festival Day" is interminable, unsingable, trite, adopted by Anglicans because no one else would sing it, and Williams' worst effort!! Pray that it does not migrate to Catholic usage, and if it does, fire the music director who dares force it upon you.

I've just realized yet again how blessed I am- we sing "At the Name of Jesus" here fairly often.
As for 'songs you never want to hear again', I'd add to the Haugen-Haas-Schutte-etc. stuff the hymn "Turn Back, O Man". Decent music, but the lyrics are very ambiguous- they could be understood in an orthodox sense, but also in a heretical one. I have similar qualms over "Amazing Grace". Also, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" is far too associated with a heresiarch for me to be comfortable singing it. Fortunately, none of these are particularly favored here.
My friend Eric would probably put "The Church's One Foundation" here- not because of the hymn per se, but because he feel we sing it too often. (He claims that if you drop our hymnals they automatically open to it ! )

I've been singing my youngest to sleep with Let All Mortal Flesh and The Angel Gabriel and other good stuff since birth. She's now two-and-a-half, and actually sings along a bit. Nice tunes, and a subtle form of teaching religion. When she's a wee bit older, a small lightbulb will go on over her head when she hears lines like "He will give to all the faithful his own self for heavenly food". The meaning will fill itself in at some point.

I can't believe how many people don't like "We Remember" and "Hail Mary, Gentle Woman"!! I am a convert (along time ago) and have just bought cds with those songs for my protestant sisters (my real sisters) to show them that you can sing beautiful songs of praise and be Catholic.

My family and I attend a church where "Shepherd Me O God," "Be Not Afraid," and "On Eagle's Wings" are played at every funeral Mass. I feel that the church did my grandmother, great aunt, and great uncle a great disservice by sending them to their eternal rest with that depthless, almost cliché music.

One more thing: Those PAPERBACK hymnals springing up in Catholic churches should be banned and burned. Hymnals should be leatherbound, gilded and used for many years. One would never put a paperback Bible in a pew, would they?