Church musician places accent on text first

Coming of age in folk music's heyday in the 1960s, Bob Hurd learned the piano and played the guitar with a high school folk group. Entranced by the Beatles and Bob Dylan, he auditioned at Los Angeles folk clubs and coffeehouses.

And then he changed his tune. Today, he is a noted Catholic composer and liturgist who will be in the Albany Diocese this weekend to present a workshop on "Restoring the Liturgical Assembly" at St. Henry's Church in Averill Park.

Mr. Hurd's journey into liturgical music began when he was briefly in the seminary. "They were doing this very rinky-dink music that they thought was folk," he recalls. "Since I didn't like the music that was available, I started writing my own."

Words are key

While secular music often relies on evocative or catchy tunes to hook audiences, it's the lyrics that are primary in liturgical music, said Mr. Hurd.

Musicians and composers should understand that liturgical music exists to "serve the word, the phrase, the line of the text," he noted. "I understand that what I am doing is to help proclaim the Word -- not overpower the Word, but serve the Word."

According to Mr. Hurd, a teacher of liturgy and theology at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California, adding liturgical music to the Mass helps the congregation internalize the Gospel.

"We remember what we sing," he said. "It's repetitive, and you remember it. Whether it's specific texts or a composer's paraphrase, it can be a very strong instrument to promote spiritual life because it gets into our psyche."

All involved

Before the Second Vatican Council, Mr. Hurd said, Catholics saw themselves as "patients" of Church experts, who were supposed to have a greater grasp of liturgical and spiritual matters.

Today's Catholics, encouraged by the Council's reforms, need to see themselves as "doing liturgy as a single body, led by the priest and helped by the ministers," he said. "People need to understand that the liturgy is a communal activity. It's not a few people doing it for an audience."

He added that parishes must always guard against the tendency to treat the congregation as if it were an audience. "Lots of things conspire to put people in an audience mode," he explained, including church architecture that emulates a stage-like, theatrical atmosphere. "Modern churches are in the round to emphasize the idea that everyone's a do-er of the liturgy."

Likewise distorting of the true purpose of the liturgy, Mr. Hurd said, is a music ministry that "acts like a performance group, instead of leading and contributing to the assembly's singing."

Long life

Mr. Hurd said that liturgical music has a longevity that secular music often can't claim.

"When I create something that gets into one of those hymnals, it lasts for a long time," he said. "It's something that people make their own and use over time. It's a heartwarming thing that something that starts out inside of you becomes something special to the people out there."

(Bob Hurd will appear with Christian composer and musician Ken Canedo at St. Henry's Church in Averill Park for a free concert on Feb. 7 at 7:30 p.m., and for a liturgical workshop on Feb. 8 at 10 a.m. Registration is $15 advance and $20 at the door. Call 674-3818 for more information.)

(02-06-03) [[In-content Ad]]