by Fred Moleck
Upbeat, Downbeat
Last week the talk around the table suggested that the term upbeat means more than just a musical practice in which repetition is taken to an extreme form, limiting one to a few words to give praise.
I am still pondering what the distinction is between the repetitive forms of the Taize repertory and the repetitive forms of praise music.
Upbeat can also be seen as a characteristic of a worship style whose ecclesiology relies strongly on charismatic abandonment. Music with a strong rhythm is essential to this type of religious experience. It is quickly accessed.
Once the access is opened, the printed page is discarded and ecstasy becomes easy.
The whole experience of worship with "upbeat" music becomes so stylized that any deviation from its repertory is tantamount to heresy. Scary.
Let's move out of the upbeat milieu and move into what can be seen as the norm in public Sunday worship. Let's investigate the music and its performance and try to discover why "upbeat" musical styles would be an improvement.
Included in this category of "non-upbeat" music is everything that doesn't use amplification for each singer, a breadth of style choices that spans two millennia, a respect of the liturgical schema of the church's worship, and an honest appraisal of performance skills and performance practices.
One example: Playing the hymn. Too many times I've heard an organist misconstrue a hymn's musical integrity by playing a tempo familiar only to folks whose pulse hovers around 40/45. The tempo is death like. The tempo is neither upbeat or vivid. It is "non-beat."
Without the forward drive of a hymn tune and the strong spinning out of the hymn text, one falls into a deep morass of whimpering singers who are landlocked. They are not energized by the musical leadership. They are slowly suffocated.
In this malpractice the phrasing and the attacks of the phrases are so fuzzy that the rhythm has no chance to empower the music and text. The beat is never sensed by a judicious use of detached attacks and releases.
The outcome of all of these characteristics is a performance (performance is not really a dirty word!) that never really has a clear downbeat-that is, a clear time of entrance and a clear time of exiting.
It is either that first beat right on the first count or the upbeat on the last beat of the1-2-3 pattern or the 1-2-3-4 pattern and all of their cousins.
To paraphrase American jazz: "It don't mean a thing if it don't have a swing."
For our purposes, the "swing" is a strong rhythmical organization with right notes and an understanding of the text.
Without these elements, upbeat music doesn't seem to be so undesirable.
GASP.
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@earthlink.net