Colm Fitzpatrick
Andrea Bocelli 
With news that Ireland’s favourite funeral song is Andrea Bocelli’s classic hit ‘Time To Say Goodbye’, composers and musicians are insisting that liturgical music is still relevant today.
In response to the research about the song, composer of Catholic liturgical music and a contemporary Christian songwriter Ian Callanan, said that he wasn’t surprised about the popularity of the 1995 song, pointing out that secular music is common during religious ceremonies such as funerals.
“It’s a song that resonates with people, it says something to the people. It kind of gives a comforting message,” he said, stressing that it can be hard to find a balance between religious and liturgical music.
“You get a lot of singers that have connections with the funeral home and they’re wedding and funeral singers, and they’re not necessarily liturgically trained if that makes sense,” Mr Callanan told The Irish Catholic.
“They tend to often use an awful lot of secular music but now more and more priests are insisting that during a Christian burial, you have Christian music.”
He added that the pastoral dimensions of religious services need to be discerned, especially when a family might want to use a song during a funeral that was a favourite of the deceased.
Experience
In his experience, Mr Callanan said that he’ll include a secular song somewhere in the service, but “the rest of the content needs to be of a religious nature because it is a Christian burial”.
Echoing these sentiments, liturgical composer Sr Marie Dunne explained that unless the song mentions reuniting with one another it doesn’t “bear” much.
“It’s Good Friday more than Resurrection – you know what I mean. It doesn’t surprise me but it’s not liturgical. It doesn’t reflect Resurrection, it just reflects goodbye.
Sr Marie added that there is “lovely” liturgical music which can provide hope to people, but that because many people are no longer practicing Catholics, they may not be aware of it.
