Liturgical Music Grudge Match

The Chanted Litany of the Saints
vs.
The Becker Litany of the Saints
Have at thee in the comments below!

26 comments

  1. *sigh* An anti-pope (Hippolytus), a semi-heretic (Origen), etc., etc. I always wonder in this list of name-that-woman from the OT “Why not Rahab?” Doesn’t she rhyme with anyone? And why the hell is Wencelslaus in there? What a royal saint! Why not Louis of France? Or Elizabeth of Hungary? Or Edmund the Martyr? Is it just that it’s fun to sing “Wen-zel-slaws”? ARGH.
    By the way, I not only suffered through this litany, but there were TAMBOURINES in the responses between each of the readings. “Listen up, Israelites” or some such was the tag line.
    It’s enough to make you want to be a Methodist.

  3. It definitely should move along–not a dirge. The pitfall of singing it in Latin is that the verb changes when the invocation in plural. Sancte Raphael, ora pro nobis. Omnes sancti Angeli et Archangeli, orate pro nobis.

  4. I prefer the Becker. I always replace Origen with a real saint, anyway.
    Mr. Tinkler has not, apparently looked very carefully at the text since Louis is immediately before Wenceslaus! Anyway, I usually replace Louis and Wenceslaus with “Therese the Little Flower”.
    It’s a good melody that people find moving; we do it with cantor, choir and piano accompaniment. As for the text, one can and should insert saints that are of particular relevance anyway.

  5. Chanted.
    At my parish, I do the Becker, under duress. (pastor loves it.)
    Liturgista handed me the list of the names of those to be baptized, so I could add them in in the cantors copy, with a very snippy, “for your information, we NEVER use non-saints names.” I bit my tongue and didn’t ask her what she knew about St. Origen.

  6. Chant. Simple, majestic; the ancient music connects us with the great mystery of the Unity of the Mystical Body. Plus it’s easy for people to get the knack of singing it. A friend of mine who teaches in a Catholic school told me that after hearing it, even her most cynical eighth graders were, of their own volition, singing it in class the next day
    Is the Becker that one that does three invocations and then a sort of chorus “All you holy men and women pray for us”? Our parish choir, which gets praised to the sky by the parish-musician in-crowd around here, sings the one I’m thinking of and even after presumably rehearsing it, consistently and thoroughly screws it up. It is even more depressing hearing the congregation trying to sing along and then, voice by voice, dropping out. The setting I’m thinking of lacks the musical clues possessed by the chant setting. And it sounds like pop music, not sacred music.

  7. Grudge match is right – I have a grudge against anyone who puts the Becker litany on the program. It is a piece of garbage. That’s not my opinion – Our Lady appeared to me and said,
    My son, tell the world the Becker litany of the saints is a piece of garbage! All the saints hate it!

  10. Peony, PLEASE don’t blame the musicians.
    We do the Becker at our parish. I am a newishly installed music director, and would much prefer to do the chant (oh, so while I’m at it, voting in the “grudge match,” — chant all the way!!!!!!) but that’s not the subject on which I choose to dig in my heels.
    But if your parish uses GIA, let me tell you, the most user-unfriendly garbage I’ve ever had to play from. Loopy page turns , often in mid-MEASURE (I’m not making that up,) and a vocal line that is often five or so inches away from the accompaniment line making it impossible for an acompanist to bail out a floundering cantor on those idiotic metric psalms and hymns and “litanies” where the rhythms and sometimes the melody changes every verse and is hardly ever doubled in the accompaniment.
    So don’t blame them for rendering the Becker clumsily.
    But you can blame them for preferring it to chant.

  12. I prefer chant, but don’t find Becker to be as bad as most modern adaptations. The biggest problems are the weird inclusions of Origen and Wenceslaus and the constant omission of the simple word “Saint”. Even the musicians at my parish can make it sound musical, and that’s saying something.
    BTW I thought Elizabeth of Hungary was in the Becker just a little after “Clare, Francis and Dominic”.

  13. My pastor always makes me include Eugene de Mazenod, since he is an OMI. I always stick in Cyril, Methodius, Cecilia, Philo of Alexandria, and the names of the patrons of those who are being confirmed.
    BTW, I have never heard of this Becker thingy, but I would never use it. Father likes contemporary music, but fortunately he prefers chant for the Exsultet, Litany and some other stuff.

  14. The Becker “Johnny-one-note” version doesn’t bother me that much. You can fiddle with the saints’ (or non-saints’) names. I’d prefer chant at an up-tempo, and — since it’s a once-a-year event for most parishioners, I’d do it in English, not Latin. (Acclamations like Sanctus and Gloria, being repeated through the year, ought to be done in Latin at least occasionally, in my view.)

  15. I want to second RP Burke’s comment. Chant is my preference, but anything that’s done rarely should be done in English. I love latin, love the responses in latin, etc. This year on Good Friday we had the ‘behold the wood of the cross’ in latin, and it was destracting instead of moving.

  16. Peace, all.
    Becker for sure, but the chant isn’t bad. Just because the names are in print, doesn’t mean you have to use them, either. When I’ve used Becker, I always include groupings and sets by apostles, martyrs, doctors, American, parish and diocesan patrons, RCIA patrons. If it’s gotten to five or six verses of saints, all the better.
    My main objection to given lists, even Becker’s, is that the male saints woefully outnumber females. Unless you’re in a male religious community, bad sign.

  17. We did the chant in English, substituting in the names of our RCIA folks’ patrons, and it was beautiful. (How often do you get to sing “St. Agostina Pietrantoni, pray for us … St. Waltheof of Melrose, pray for us …”?
    My problem with the Becker (if it’s the one I think it is) is that it goes up in pitch on each line — and pretty quickly goes out of my range.
    Mio

  18. We did the chant in English, substituting in the names of our RCIA folks’ patrons, and it was beautiful. (How often do you get to sing “St. Agostina Pietrantoni, pray for us … St. Waltheof of Melrose, pray for us …”?
    My problem with the Becker (if it’s the one I think it is) is that it goes up in pitch on each line — and pretty quickly goes out of my range.
    Mio

  19. Becker or Chant

    There is a neat littleLiturgical Music Grudge Match going on over at Catholic Light. I have been in many liturgical settings where the Becker Litany was used. It has always been very confusing and artificial sounding to get in extra…

  20. Litany is a form, response by community after each invocation, and the Becker “Litany” does not follow the form!
    and the tempo is completely wrong–it is a dirge.
    I concur that it is hard for all involved to adapt it, as the Church encourages, if not requires us,to do, to sing it, or to make it intelligible to the folks who listen (the assembly versions don’t have the names).
    comprehensibility implies English, IMO.
    for those looking for alternatives to the traditional chant, there’s an African American rooted litany that is great, and it may be in Lead Me, Guide Me (I’m not sure).

  22. Geri — I’m not blaming the choir for choosing it (someone else surely did that), or for making mistakes in the singing (mainly in singing the names in tempo, though they also had problems with the same tone slide that Mio noticed. Interesting point about the sloppy notation in the GIA materials, btw)
    My point is that if the Becker is difficult for a choir that’s sung together for a long time and has rehearsed the piece, how is a congregation that hasn’t rehearsed it and doesn’t have the sheet music supposed to sing along?
    Chant has it all over the Becker not only for timelessness and sheer beauty, but for its practical virtues: It’s easy to add new saints and easy to make the names “sound right.” It is easy to sing. And it’s easy for people who can’t sing well to sing it: you don’t have to worry about when you’re supposed to waft in with “pray for us” — the chant line itself provides the clue. It invites the congregation to sing. The Becker just baffles.

  23. The chant, but in English (I don’t mind Latin, but as noted above, the English is less complicated, and its rhythm is better).
    I’ve sung and heard the Becker ad nauseam. I usually fall asleep now that I am back in the pews. The choice of names is somewhat bizarre, and if I were forced to use it I would choose more thoughtfully than Becker did, as Todd rightly notes.

  24. Chant, without a doubt.
    The Becker is positively dripping with treacle.
    And I’m amazed that any musician could recommend the Becker, for this reason:
    One of the problems with the Becker is that, the way it is written, the congregation’s response “All you holy men and women pray for us” is always stepping on the saints’ invocations, and vice versa. So you end up not actually hearing ahbout half of the invocations.
    Maybe Origen ended up in there because the composer figured no one would actually hear it.

  25. Personally, I like both. I can’t say I hate the Becker setting. It’s probably the only piece of his I like (his Beatitudes setting, “Lead Me Lord” would be a far better qualifying candidate for a “garbage award”).
    I like the standard chant setting as well, and, like Aristotle, would have have no problem with the desire to do it in Latin (yes, the verbs do change with the plural, but that just makes for the choir and congregation to accomodate to being a little more “attentive”, shall we say).
    Becker’s setting, OTOH, can be done well with a soft organ – no piano, no guitars, but a softly registered organ (celestes/strings/soft flutes). It does invoke a lot of Old Testament saints that I’ll bet some have never even heard of. Drawback, of course, is that it’s quite lengthy, about six minutes or so, when done right. It was a hit at my last parish. I first heard it at our auxiliary bishop’s ordination and liked it. I think the only extra instrument was harp. (Incidentally, our auxiliary is being installed as the Ordinary of Worcester MA next month).
    I have to say – the decision’s tough in my mind, but by a nose, I’m going with the chant setting, for the sake of authenticity.

  26. Rest assured the chant will still be sung when the Becker will be long forgetten and sound as dated as “Mother Dearest O pray for me” . . .
    I never did do the stats on the male to female ratio, but frankly it doesn’t bother me that there are more male saints just like it wouldn’t bother me if there were more female saints. This whole battle of the sexes thing in the liturgy is getting a bit tiresome. And anyway, who cares, the greatest saint who ever lived is a woman.

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