The Power of Google
 

 

Note

Starting with nothing but the title of a song, with fifteen minutes or so of Googling I was able to come up with the name of the composer, the school of liturgical music to which he belonged, some writings by the religious and musical adversaries of that music school, and the history of the religious adversaries. I do not believe that there is any pre-Google research method which could have done anywhere near as well anywhere near as quickly. The only alternative that I can think of would be a phone call to the research librarian of a Christian music school. (The topic I was researching was one in which I had had no prior interest).

We hear a lot about the deficiencies of internet research, but let's not ignore its strengths. Someone with reasonable internet skills, sitting at home, has research resources available which only libraries had twenty years ago..

This is not at all to minimize the value of archives and libraries. That's where the primary and fundamental research still has to be done. But at the level of general information, everyone's much, much better off now than they were even very recently.

There are still enormous gaps in what you can find, but the more information is put online, the more powerful this research tool will become. And Google, specifically, is what really makes possible the fruitful search of the enormous mass of available information.

 

"On Eagle's Wings"
 

Recently at a family funeral in darkest suburbia I heard a song whose refrain I found catchy but  a bit unsettling:
And He will raise you up on eagle's wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun,
And hold you in the palm of His Hand.

There's always been an element of wish-fulfillment in Christianity, but somehow this seemed too easy, with a vague fantasy-comic flavor. As an unbeliever I really shouldn't care about the specifics  -- maybe I'm imposing the stricter standards of the religion of my youth to the present day -- but the comfort here seemed a bit infantilizing.

So I Googled "On Eagle's Wings" and found the author, Michael Joncas. Joncas is often grouped with David Haas and Marty Haugen in a Catholic / Lutheran "Minnesota school" of relatively liberal mainline Christian liturgical music. (The funeral was in Minnesota). And lo, the Minnesota school has some pretty determined enemies in the Catholic community:

But other songs from the 1980s and 1990s--by composers like David Haas, Michael Joncas, and Marty Haugen--are more frightening. Not only is the music poorly crafted; not only are the words trite; not only are the melodies shamelessly dramatic and emotional; but many of these contemporary composers proudly identify themselves as theological liberals, and the teachings that they subtly espouse through their music can be dangerous.

As it happens, the Catholic conservatives have an publication, The Wanderer (also in Minnesota)  which has been fighting against the Americanization of Catholicism for 139 years. It was published in German during its first several decades, and it is hard not to suspect that its Catholicism was specifically German, and that the newspaper's name owed something either to Caspar David Friedrich's painting "The Wanderer" (above) or to Schubert's song of the same name, or both.

The conservative lay Catholics of The Wanderer are not always on good terms with the actual Catholic Church.  The Wanderer did accept Vatican II, but some of The Wanderer's staff did not, and these formed a new, even-more-conservative newspaper, The Remnant. (The Wanderer is essentially a family business, and is now run by the third generation of the Matt family. The Remnant is edited by a different branch of the Matt family).

I was highly disappointed when the Lutheran Church of my birth switched from the old Bach chorales and Gregorian liturgy to something more contemporary, and I was also disappointed  when I found out awhile back that a fair-sized Catholic bookstore carried nothing at all on Gregorian chant. But I doubt that the traditionalists in either church would would take much comfort in the support of an unbeliever whose motives are entirely musical.

(Disambiguation: Let the Eagle Soar; Fly Like an Eagle.)

|

I am emersonj at gmail dot com.

Original materials copyright John J Emerson

Return to Idiocentrism

jjmrsnx