October 31, 2006
And I Will Lift You Up...
Last week Melanie and I had a nice dinner at the Awahnee. At least once in your life, you should have a romantic, candlelit dinner in the Awahnee's breathtaking dining room. The food is quite good (not so good that the restaurant would last a year in San Francisco, but very good for resort standards), the architecture fantastic, and the setting beyond belief. Really. I have been going to Yosemite since, well, forever, and it still blows me away.
The only fault with the dining room is the music. In a high-ceiling, American Indian meets Craftsman dining room, they decided to have a piano player. And we are not talking Chopin and late Liszt, both of which would actually work. Instead we are talking about boring renditions of jazz standards (you know the head, repeat and we don't need no stinkin' solos arrangement), show tunes (with way too much Andrew Lloyd Webber, although one song is too much of that guy), Beatles songs, and so forth.
Right after one of the silly songs from Pocahontas came a familiar and very syrupy song, one that lacked rhythmic direction, and made up for its boring harmonies by a sort of false-build-up-to-an-utterly-lame-climax. Yet is was a song that sounded familiar.
And then it hit me.
On the chorus:
"And I will lift you up
On Eagle's Wings!"
I about choked on my venison osso buco.
"That's that horrible song, 'On Eagle's Wings,'" I sputtered to Melanie. She listened and replied, "Gack! You are right."
As our laughter died down, Mr. Piano Man launched into The Phantom of the Opera.
While the whole piano thing seemed out of place in the Awahnee, "On Eagles Wings" seemed perfectly at home among fruity arrangements of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elton John.
One thing I know for sure: I love my parish. I would guess that "On Eagles Wings" has never sullied the air at St. Margaret Mary's.
Posted by erik at October 31, 2006 9:37 PMJohn, your eloquence is astounding. Perhaps you might try a little pomposity yourself: imagine that there is a world where obvious crap is not cherished and revered. Now, listen to Marty Haugen and try to imagine anyone in their right mind not laughing out loud at the sheer awfulness of it all! Good luck!
Posted by: Erik at January 4, 2009 9:53 PMyou guys sound like two bloated pompous asses
definitely full of sh*t
"On Beagle's Wings" would work nice as an orchestral instrumental background for say, a Lexus or United Airlines advertisement.
Musically, it's tripe lifted from cheesy jingle formulas. Furthermore, all but one of the Jesuit
liturgical terrorists responsible for the musical/liturgical castration of an entire generation of once fertile Catholics, have left the priesthood. (The one remaining is alledgedly a practicing poofter).
A genre's merit regarding its appropiateness for the liturgy is not determined by aesthetics, but by its status as a liturgical music. Like the Chasuble and Monstrance, it must have no other place of purpose but the Mass or liturgical devotion. ( This would, by the way, exclude ALL
of those truly dusty, dreary and bloated pomposities known as Protestant "hymns").