The former member of the St. Louis Jesuits shares his thoughts on the spiritual life, music, and the never-ending debate on liturgical music.We had a chance to catch up with Dan and talk about his spiritual life and the many fruitful years of music ministry which include the recent release of his latest album, God’s Holy Gifts.
GV: Talk about your faith journey, where it began, where you're at now, and how are you continuing to enrich your faith.
DS: Oh my! How does one begin to tell the story of one’s journey of faith. My early faith memories are so tied to my family, especially my mother, and to the Catholic parish we belonged to in Milwaukee where I grew up. The core of my faith, I suppose, is that God is real for me and that I’ve always been, as far back as I can remember, in relationship with him. My mother taught me as a very young child to talk to God. Every night as she tucked me in bed we prayed together. This simple little ritual had, I think, a profound effect on my faith. For me faith has never been so much about doctrine or creed, as it is about a relationship with God and Jesus Christ.
This early seed of a living faith was nurtured by the nuns who taught me in elementary school, and even more so by the Jesuits later in life. My association with these men and with the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius have had a profound effect on me. My faith, as well as my music, has been influenced by how I learned to contemplate the Scripture as a young Jesuit. I learned how these stories and words of Scripture are alive in my life, and not just stories of history. For example, St. Ignatius invites a person to not just read the story of the birth of Christ, but to experience it, to listen and see and smell and feel. It’s very different from just meditating on the meaning of the incarnation. Again, it’s about God being real.
There’s a sense in which the act of composing is like a contemplation. I will often turn to Scripture for inspiration and for a focus to a piece of music. When I sit down to write, I find that I need to pray the piece myself first. If it can be prayer for me, then it has a greater chance of being prayer for someone else. I suppose you could say that writing music for prayer challenges me to be authentic in my own prayer.
GV: When did your love for singing and performing start and what were your early musical inspirations?
DS: I’m laughing to myself here because, at least early on, I didn’t like to sing publicly. I was shy and afraid, self-conscious and unsure. My real love was for writing music, not for performing it. Writing music took me, however, into situations where I was called upon to perform it, to teach it to others and to lead their singing. Over time I grew in confidence and even began to enjoy public singing. But singing at liturgy, which has always been the primary focus for me, is not quite the same as performing on stage or in a club. While there are elements of performance in both, at liturgy the focus of the music is directed toward giving praise to God rather than directed toward the performer. The musician at worship is just a vehicle. During the years that I collaborated with the St. Louis Jesuits, we worked hard to keep the focus on God rather than on us.
My early musical inspiration came from my grandparents. My father’s mother and my mother’s father were both accomplished musicians. At a very young age, I remember being enthralled when they would sit down at the piano to play. We didn’t have a piano at our house, so I would look forward to visiting the grandparents, I’d sit for hours at the piano trying to learn to read the music in the books I found in their piano bench. Sometimes they would sit down next to me to show me how to do it.
GV: What instruments do you play? - Self taught, or where did you take instruction?
DS: I play both piano and guitar. I wish I’d had piano lessons as a young child, but we didn’t have a piano. So my parents had me learn the clarinet, which I played in the band all through grade school and high school. I didn’t study piano till I was in college, and even then, it was simply for the sake of writing music, not for performing. Guitar, on the other hand, I picked up during high school and on my own. I’d sit for hours with chord books and the music of Simon & Garfunkel, or Peter, Paul & Mary, and try to figure out how to play it. After high school, when I entered the Jesuit seminary, there were others in my class who knew how to play and from whom I learned. There were many opportunities in those days to play at Mass, or just to jam together, and I know it really helped me become a better player.
GV: What do you feel your mission is as Catholic musician? Who do you hope to reach with the music?
DS: The mission is very simple: to compose music that will help people pray and will draw them into the presence of a God who embraces us with a steadfast, unconditional love. Much of my music is directed first toward those who gather as community to give thanks and praise to God at Eucharist. So I’m always aware of the liturgical and communal effect of a hymn that I write. But I also think of those who are not church-goers but are still hungry for God in their lives. Music is a powerful way of expressing things of the heart that cannot be adequately put into spoken words. Music has the power to move the human heart toward God. My hope is that the music I write helps these people as well, people who might listen to the recordings as they go about their work, run errands or relax at the end of a long day. I know people who wake to my music, do their morning exercise with my music and put their infants to sleep with my music. It is such an honor and privilege to be welcomed into people’s lives like that through the songs I’ve written.
GV: How did your new album, God’s Holy Gifts, come together, and how did it differ from your previous projects? What is your songwriting process?
DS: I had a Jesuit retreat director once who often told us, “Beauty never hurries.” I find I work best when I give my music ideas time to grow and mature. It often takes me three or four years to create a new collection of music. This is true of my most recent collection, God’s Holy Gifts. Unlike my previous to projects, this one does not have an overriding theme or focus. It is simply a collection of songs for prayer and worship. There’s a setting of the Pentecost Sequence, a Litany of Peace, a setting of Psalm 116, a piece based on the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and a song of hope.
My songwriting process can be different for different pieces. Sometimes it begins with a melody. Often it will begin with a single line of text that I use to begin to create a melody. As the music will often run beyond the snippet of text that I have, I then have to fill in the rest of the lyrics. As a piece comes together I will play and sing it many times over looking for places that don’t feel quite right. This is where, I suspect, the creative intuition enters the process in discerning when something is just right or not. I will often have to work at certain places in the music or lyrics until I discover what feels right.
For liturgical music there are other musical judgments that enter the process as well. I have to ask myself whether people without much vocal training can sing it. I ask myself if the melody is memorable and will wear well over time. I will often struggle with the text, to find the right word or the right image. It’s not just the meaning of the words, but also the sound of the words that contribute to the overall impact of the song.
GV: Why did you select to re-record two older hymns, "Come with Me into the Fields" and "Valleys of Green?"
DS: Re-recording older pieces is something I’ve done on each of my last five recordings. Like the others before, the two songs you mention were originally recorded on the first St. Louis Jesuit recording, Neither Silver Nor Gold. This collection of fifty-seven songs was recorded largely on a two track recorder in a basement “studio” in our house of study in St. Louis. While people loved the music, the recordings left much to be desired, especially in terms of the quality possible today. So as I’ve done my more recent recordings, I’ve taken one or other of these older pieces and re-recorded them. In some cases I’ve updated the language and even added verses to make them more usable for liturgical purposes. You have to understand, I wrote these pieces somewhere between 1970 and 1973. Luckily I’ve learned a few things since then, sometimes from my mistakes. So my hope is that people will enjoy these older pieces again now that there is a better recording of them.
GV: "Handmaid of Heaven" seems to be an ecumenical take on "Immaculate Mary." Was this your intention, and do you strive to reach non-Catholic Christians with your music?
DS: While my intent in writing “Handmaid of Heaven” was not to make “Immaculate Mary” more ecumenical, I think that’s one of the results of my adaptation. The “regal” images of Mary in the original text are ones that do not resonate with people as well as they probably once did. Most of us, unless we live in England, have no living experience of such images. And, as you imply by the question, many non-Catholics have difficulty with images that seem to make Mary god-like. For example, the line from the original text “You reign now in heaven with Jesus our king.” would make this hymn unusable in many non-Catholic communities.
I’ve always loved this hymn tune, which is based on an old French, Pyrenean melody. It became the basis for the traditional piece that is sometimes called the “Lourdes Hymn” because it is sung, with many verses in many languages, at Lourdes. So I decided to take this lovely melody and give it words that might connect with our personal journey of faith. Mary is such a perfect model for us of how a person of faith responds to God. I took the story of the Annunciation, where Mary is visited by God’s angel, and wrote lyrics that express what I felt is the heart of that story for all of us. I tried to be true to the Scripture text and authentic in the way I wrote about this holy woman.
GV: Please share some memories of your time with the St. Louis Jesuits.
DS: The years of collaboration with the St. Louis Jesuits are a great treasure to me. I think the others would say the same. There is no doubt that it was the work of God’s Spirit in us. We didn’t plan it out, but rather, I think, did our best to respond to the urging of the Spirit to write music. The fact that people found the music helpful for prayer and worship was what encouraged us and an indication that God wanted us to continue.
One of the wonderful aspects of our collaboration was the loving critique was were able to give each other for the music. It was our common practice to bring a new piece to the group, to sing and play it through, and then sit around and talk about it. Sometimes a composer is just too close to his creation to see and hear certain things. When I first brought “Here I Am, Lord” to the group, they loved the piece, but felt that something was not quite right with the lyrics. They gently told me that the original version, “Here I am, Lord. Here I stand, Lord. I have heard you calling in the night.” sounded just a bit too confident and sure a response to God’s calling. In the Scripture stories of the call of Samuel and the call of Isaiah, both Samuel and Isaiah express uncertainty in their response to God. Though I resisted at first, I knew the others were right. So, after much wrestling, came up with the solution “Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?” This nuance to the text was something that I didn’t see on my own, but the others helped me to be truer to the Scripture, and to our human experience before God.
GV: What was your experience with the St. Louis Jesuits reunion on the occasion of your thirtieth anniversary? What do you think the music legacy is of the group?
DS: When our publisher, OCP, came to use several years ago and asked whether we might consider doing a new recording in honor of this anniversary, we really weren’t sure it was such a good idea. The Church is at a very different place than it was in those years following the Second Vatican Council. Today there are those who would rather see our music disappear, or better, be banned from use at Catholic liturgy. Our music for many represents the renewal of the Council. And if we were to do a new recording, what would be the message? And, given the great abundance of new music being written for the liturgy, would it simply add more to the pile?
In the end we decided to record the collection of twelve new pieces called Morning Light. It was important to us that this new music speak words of hope to people’s hearts. So each of the songs, in one way or another, offers a different message of hope. OCP also published a beautiful anniversary coffee table book with many photos of us over the years, the story of our years of working together, letters from friends, teachers, bishops and other composers, as well as some reflections by each one of us. It is a wonderful tribute.
The reunion was an amazing event, very powerful and very humbling. I don’t think any of us truly understood the grace our music has been in so many people’s lives. We heard so many stories and received so much gratitude. The reunion concert events that we did were such a treasure for the five of us. We hadn’t sang or played together in over twenty years, and here we were on stage performing these pieces, many that we’d playing together hundreds of times before. Along with that come a flood of memories and a gentle sense of gratitude.
GV: What is your opinion of the whole "traditional vs. contemporary" worship music debate? How do you answer those who feel your music is not appropriate in a Mass setting?
DS: Because some of my early pieces of music have been around for nearly forty years (“Sing a New Song,” “You Are Near,” “All My Days”), there are people who call my music “traditional.” A friend of mine, a parish music director, tells the story of a lady who came to hear wanted to plan the music for her own funeral liturgy. The lady began by saying that she wanted the music to be traditional, not contemporary. My friend assumed she, therefore, wanted pieces like “How Great Thou Art” and “Amazing Grace.” “Oh my no!” the lady responded. “I want music like “Here I Am, Lord” and “On Eagle’s Wings” for my funeral. So what is “traditional” and what is “contemporary” is understood quite differently by people.
I suspect your question has more to do with what one might call the “style wars” that many communities are experiencing. It is a judgment about what kind of music is appropriate for use at worship. It would be important for someone to articulate why exactly they don’t think my music, or music in the style I write, is not appropriate. Many times, when you try to get them explain, the answer comes down to a matter of personal taste. They don’t like my music. They like what I’ll call the more classical “church” music, like plainchant, or Palestrina, or Proulx.
But worship, and vehicles we use to express our praise and thanks to God, is not about perfection or performance. That doesn’t mean that we don’t do all we can to create beauty in the visual, musical and ritual elements we use for worship, but it means that these art forms are never an end in themselves. All these elements are at the service of the prayer of the community and are judged by how well, or how poorly, they help people to pray. In every age, the new music that’s created must be judged by how well it can do this. The music must stand the test of time. How many years? It would seem that forty years is a rather significant amount of time. And over the centuries, both people of faith have used a variety of styles to express their faith and Church leadership has never “christened” just one kind of music. People are different and find different styles of music help them to pray. I myself find I can pray with many different styles and my music over the years reflects that. I suspect the people who are so critical of my music judge it by how they heard it sung in church. There are many elements of “classical” music in my compositions and I’ve used plainchant melodies in my music. It is simply not appropriate to say that the only kind of music should be used for worship, or even more, to impose the style that I prefer for prayer on everyone.
GV: Your concert events often involve a workshop on liturgy and music. What is the purpose of these workshops and what message are you trying to get across?
DS: The workshops that I present are directed at people who are involved in the planning, preparation and leadership of worship. This would, of course, include musicians, but not just musicians. The choices one makes in preparing worship or the manner in which one performs a role during liturgy makes a difference in how well it can support the prayer of a community. To make good choices, and to perform a role of leadership well, one must understand the structure of and dynamic of the ritual. In the Roman Catholic world, and many mainline Protestant denominations, that mostly means understanding the rites of the Eucharist. In my presentations I certainly draw on my forty years of experience as a composer and parish music director, but I base much of what I teach on the liturgical documents of the Church. For instance, the Roman Catholics bishops of the United States recently published a document titled Sing to the Lord that is directed to musicians. The document contains so much wisdom and understanding of what the Eucharist is about and how music plays a role in it. The bishops reaffirm the guiding principle first presented by the Second Vatican Council that the primary goal of worship is the full, conscious, active participation of those gathered. So at my workshops we discuss how musicians can best work toward this end.
GV: What is your next project?
DS: You know, I’m not exactly sure. Just last fall I completed God’s Holy Gifts. Sometimes inspiration takes time and I’m in the mode of waiting to discover the project that will spark my interest and passion. People will often suggest that I should write a piece about this or that, or compose a hymn for such and such occasion. But part of the artistry of the composer is to find the thing that inspires his or her soul. I’m trying to find out what that might be as I move forward with a new project. I read, I pray, I listen to various kinds of music, looking for the thing that will be the focus of a new music project. Sometimes I ask others who work in the area of liturgical music for ideas.
Questions supplied by Paul Schultz.
Listen to the GrapeVine News Minute, Episode #81 (March 9, 2008) on the podcast player to hear an interview with Dan Schutte. Read the review of God's Holy Gifts here.
© Copyright 2008 GrapeVine. Permission to copy or reprint this story must be obtained by writing to susan@gvonline.net. Used by permission.
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6 comments:
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I read this out of curiosity to see what Mr Schutte had to say about his music. I'm afraid that I cannot agree with him that the Church never "Christened" a style of music for the liturgy. It most certainly did. Unfortunately, tastes have prevailed and the Church's music, Gregorian chant, has been sidelined in most parishes. The style of music created by Mr Schutte and others was faithfully offered, no doubt, but has failed in its goal of encouraging congregational singing. Next time you are at Mass, ask yourself which is sung more heartily, "Here I am, Lord" or the chanted Lord's Prayer.
Michael,
Thank you for your comment on this story. I don't know what your involvement with music in the church is (I assume you are directly involved, perhaps as a cantor or as an organist, or as a director) - I have cantored for several years in our parish and I do find that certain contemporary hymns do foster a lot of participation. "Here I Am, Lord," "Be Not Afraid" and "On Eagle's Wings" come to mind. I can hear the 'roar,' as I call it, of voices wash over me when I lead those songs. I think that many of the contemporary hymns encourage listening over singing, not primarily because they are hard to sing, but perhaps because people like to meditate on them. I know we're all supposed to sing out loud but when people come up to me afterwards and thank me for choosing to do "On Eagle's Wings" because it is their 'favorite song" (I interpret that to mean that it touches their hearts), I still feel like the job has been done. Maybe they didn't sing that song out as strongly as a familiar old hymn like "Now Thank We All Our God," but if it has touched the heart and caused the person to come closer to God as a result, then I think the song has done the job it was supposed to do.
Music should complement the liturgy - it is meant to serve the liturgy. Songs that touch the heart will draw the person closer to God during the liturgy. That can't be a bad thing.
I know that the liturgy is not meant to be mainly an emotional experience - worship is on a higher plane. But emotions help to engage us in worship. It's a good tool for encouraging worship.
Just my humble opinion. BTW, I love chant and the old hymns - they really encourage worship too.
Susan
Songs that touch the heart will draw the person closer to God during the liturgy. That can't be a bad thing.
Susan, you could not have summed up my problem with Mr. Schutte and the whole GIA-OCP cabal any better. Liturgical music has nothing to do with touching OUR heart, but worshiping the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I'm so done with this "it's all about us" mentality in the post-Vatican II liturgy.
And I submit that parishioners don't request "Here I Am, Lord" or "On Eagles' Wings" because they're "popular." They've simply never heard anything else. Just listen to commercial FM radio and you'll see what I mean.
I'm a former parish worship leader who has put down his guitar for good. I used to play both GIA-OCP pabulum and "praise and worship" tunes, but I have come to believe that neither is appropriate for Mass.
Cygnus,
I hope you're subscribed to this blog because I'd love to continue this discussion. I so appreciate the civil tone of the comments here. It is really hard to discuss this subject and frankly, I want to learn. And that can only happen with a civil, measured, and informed discussion.
I have played contemporary music at mass for, goodness, 36 years! And lately, I have felt a lot more drawn to the older hymns. It could be because occasionally I attend Divine Liturgy in the Eastern Church (My husband is a deacon candidate in the Melkite Church) and see total vertical worship of the Lord, and a community based on that vertical worship. I've always really disliked hymns that TELL us to be a community. If you have to tell a community to be a community, you haven't got one!
I am wondering what part emotion plays in worship. Since the greatest commandment states that we love God with our whole HEART, mind and soul, emotion must play a role. Let's face it, most Catholics don't have a clue what is going on at Mass. There is very little engagement of heart, soul or mind. You have to start somewhere.
I don't want to see the Mass dumbed down but music does have the capacity to move the heart like no other. Mozart and Beethoven composed beautiful music which greatly moves the heart and induces worship. I don't believe that people should be told to worship, but should be led to worship. Is that thinking in line with church teaching on liturgy?
Great comments!
"You have to start somewhere"... Thus the arrogance of pride's putrid fruit is born. "You" do absolutely nothing in the Mass. It is all about GOD, all about worship and is as moving and profound silent, that is sans music, as it is accompanied. All the garbage of Schutte, Haugen and other lapsed and non-Catholic composers needs to stop and thank God is stopping. Mass does not need either you or music to be what it is. Shameful comment.
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