The Issue of Quality in Western Church Music

Abstract

Fol’s paper discusses how on the large scale, today’s Western Church music is of particularly bad quality because of the rise of narrowly specialized training in music, the rarity of the complete musician who can compose, conduct and play well, the misunderstood democracy as a ‘free-for-all’ reign that leads to the gradual disappearance of the job Kapellmeister and its replacement by a “worship team”, and the demise of steady employment and the rise of per-service honorariums, among others.

For the current proliferation of low-level music, Fol blames the lack of institutionalized support on behalf of many Western churches for the development of church music, the lack of appropriate learning resources, the lack of full-time jobs that can attract qualified musicians, the lack of a properly designated music budged forcing music ministers to become beggars before their own community, anti-intellectualism, repertoire stagnation, disappearance of quality criteria for new repertoire selection, usage of illegally reproduced materials, and the acceptance of rampant mediocrity of music ministers on behalf of clerical staff in the name of misunderstood ‘niceness’. Fol provides theological and historical research in support of her thesis that church music must be of high quality in order to be appropriate for usage in church services and accuses informed and educated persons in leadership positions of adopting a nonchalant attitude despite knowing very well they should take action to improve the situation.