I would expect the kind of fussy A-C with an interest in the minutiae of tat to also be likely to enjoy renaissance polyphony. I'm not sure you can generalize to the wider population, though.
Honestly, I don't think your average churchgoer who attends an AC church would be able to tell you who composed the music or even that it's not just some kind of default music that gets sent to churches with the service booklets. In my experience only cathedrals actually mention who the composers are.
though - every hymn book in use at my TEC shack prints the name of the composer, and we always print the names of the composers of the anthems and other sacred music in the service sheet. In my experience, that's pretty normal. Are you talking about a context where you have the music printed, but don't have a composer identified, or a context where the organist just plays something and the people sing the responses along to it?
Hymn books will state the composer and/or lyricist (since they are often separate) for each hymn but I've never seen any composer listed for the actual service settings, in any regular parish church. In my experience most churches use the same mass setting every week anyway, except for Advent/Christmas and Lent/Holy Week/Easter (and will usually use the same seasonal variations each year). Most AC churches here are backstreet or rural places without a big enough choir for anything else. Regularly changing sacred music is very much a cathedral thing, along with some college choirs.
Latin anthems are pretty unusual in English AC churches in my experience, I've only encountered them at large cathedral services - and even then only once or twice.
When I happened to be in Edinburgh at the time of the annual Gaelic Eucharist the choir sang in Latin. I'm not sure whether this was due to a lack of Gaelic choral mass settings or limited time for the choir to learn them without massacring the pronunciation.
Interesting - I would be surprised if there aren't any Gaelic choral mass settings since there are ones for other UK languages. However I know that there is a much smaller Gaelic speaking population compared to Welsh or Irish so perhaps it was the latter issue.
I've heard Latin sung at choral evensong in a parish church. At the same church we used to publish the settings, usually composer and key, on the poster for said Evensong, plus the hymns, psalms and a list voluntaries and other incidental music, which used to go on the notice boards outside the church and onto an A5 sheet with any extra words for the service. The same sort of information was given for Nine Lessons and Carols, which in that church has/d choir anthems based on the Advent O antiphons, often in Latin. The same for any other big service with a separate booklet.
For the main service, where there were seasonal booklets (rather than Common Worship) available both in large and standard print, the hymn numbers for the week were usually handed out on a sheet with the notices. Any extra words not in the hymn book, plus any settings, choir anthems during communion, which might be in Latin, and organ voluntary at the end were listed in those notices. I used to type them up and make sure I made a handful of large print versions with all the words for those ladies whose sight was going.
But that isn't the only church I've seen that. Until it's all projectors most churches have something like that - and I tend to turn on my heel and leave if there's a projector.
In England most congregational books are words-only. No music is printed, nor composers. Only the choir, and one or two musical people are likely to use a music hymn book, and trebles/sopranos may have melody-only copies.
I would expect the kind of fussy A-C with an interest in the minutiae of tat to also be likely to enjoy renaissance polyphony. I'm not sure you can generalize to the wider population, though.
Honestly, I don't think your average churchgoer who attends an AC church would be able to tell you who composed the music or even that it's not just some kind of default music that gets sent to churches with the service booklets. In my experience only cathedrals actually mention who the composers are.
though - every hymn book in use at my TEC shack prints the name of the composer, and we always print the names of the composers of the anthems and other sacred music in the service sheet. In my experience, that's pretty normal. Are you talking about a context where you have the music printed, but don't have a composer identified, or a context where the organist just plays something and the people sing the responses along to it?
Hymn books will state the composer and/or lyricist (since they are often separate) for each hymn but I've never seen any composer listed for the actual service settings, in any regular parish church. In my experience most churches use the same mass setting every week anyway, except for Advent/Christmas and Lent/Holy Week/Easter (and will usually use the same seasonal variations each year). Most AC churches here are backstreet or rural places without a big enough choir for anything else. Regularly changing sacred music is very much a cathedral thing, along with some college choirs.
As @Leorning Cniht says, it is very much the norm in the US, and across denominations, that the bulletin or service sheet will list all music other than hymns and maybe service music* by name and composer, as well as author, in the case of anthems, if different from the composer.
*The number, title and tune is normally listed for hymns, since the author/composer info is in the hymnal. If the service music is in the hymnal (which it often is), then composer information isn’t usually listed, just where to find it in the hymnal. If the service music isn’t in the hymnal, then the music is usually printed in the bulletin/service sheet, along with composer info, or it’s perhaps printed on a separate sheet or card (again with composer info) and put in the pew racks for repeated use.
Because the stress pattern of Latin intonation really isn't very similar to English, I'm also not that convinced that trying to sing Latin chant in English works that well either. It's why, if one must chant, I much prefer Anglican chant to faux-medieval ones.
Much work has been done over many years by many people to "English" the chant, with varying degrees of success. But some efforts have been quite successful indeed. You have to be OK with the chant becoming quite different, as preference goes to clear and sensible rendering of the text. Shoehorning English words on rigidly unaltered chant originally used with Latin is often disastrous. Altering the chant to work with English can produce excellent results. Monasteries all over the world are using vernacular antiphonaries, some quite well done (especially German ones).
Because the stress pattern of Latin intonation really isn't very similar to English, I'm also not that convinced that trying to sing Latin chant in English works that well either. It's why, if one must chant, I much prefer Anglican chant to faux-medieval ones.
Much work has been done over many years by many people to "English" the chant, with varying degrees of success. But some efforts have been quite successful indeed. You have to be OK with the chant becoming quite different, as preference goes to clear and sensible rendering of the text. Shoehorning English words on rigidly unaltered chant originally used with Latin is often disastrous. Altering the chant to work with English can produce excellent results. Monasteries all over the world are using vernacular antiphonaries, some quite well done (especially German ones).
I’d be interested to know how Willan’s Canadian psalter compares to other such efforts. I sang from it a great deal in undergrad, but much less so recently. The music he wrote for St Mary Magdalene is heavily focused on the (English-language) texts, and he clearly had a strong feeling for the importance of the texts and the place of his music as an integral part of the liturgy, and I would guess this also would have translated into his work on the psalter. But as I say, it’s been a while since I’ve been singing from this book and I don’t have a lot of basis for comparison.
Getting back to the OP, IMO Palestrina’s music often has a similar directness, combined with considerable musical effectiveness, which is probably one of those factors that makes people consider it more suitable for liturgical use than (say) some early English Renaissance works (Sheppard, Taverner) which can be quite baroque as it were (not to mention devilishly difficult for non-professionals to sing).
Because the stress pattern of Latin intonation really isn't very similar to English, I'm also not that convinced that trying to sing Latin chant in English works that well either. It's why, if one must chant, I much prefer Anglican chant to faux-medieval ones.
Much work has been done over many years by many people to "English" the chant, with varying degrees of success. But some efforts have been quite successful indeed. You have to be OK with the chant becoming quite different, as preference goes to clear and sensible rendering of the text. Shoehorning English words on rigidly unaltered chant originally used with Latin is often disastrous. Altering the chant to work with English can produce excellent results. Monasteries all over the world are using vernacular antiphonaries, some quite well done (especially German ones).
Whereas the trend in RC monasteries has been to develop new chants for English rather than attempying to bend existing chants around English sentence structure and stress patterns. However these new chants never reach the complexity of the old plainsong propers. https://youtu.be/d27lYFzpEcI
In my experience, English A-C churches have the same range of approaches to music as any other, though I haven't found many with bands. In prinicple it's by no means impossible, because of the tendency of English A-Cs to follow Rome in all things.
For a particular tendency, Palestrina is preferable to Vittoria because he is more transparent and less emotional. It fits, to my mind aat least, with the preference for readings to be done without emotion - there is a belief (I find it bizarre but there we are) that the readings speak for themselves. The necessity of a human being to read makes total nonsense of that, to my mind, but there we are. It's the same idea - emotion reduces transparency, and transparency is the ultimate virtue.
With respect, both the Tenebrae Responsories and the Requiem for 6 voices by Victoria (sic) are utterly transparent and could hardly be described as “emotional” even by the most phlegmatic of ( English) Anglo-Catholic
With respect, both the Tenebrae Responsories and the Requiem for 6 voices by Victoria (sic) are utterly transparent and could hardly be described as “emotional” even by the most phlegmatic of ( English) Anglo-Catholic
I’m not sure “emotional” is the right word, but I think Victoria often has a sharper-edged intensity that Palestrina isn’t aiming for (and not just in the works you mention). Perhaps like El Greco versus Titian. Both work very well liturgically though I think.
Latin anthems are pretty unusual in English AC churches in my experience, I've only encountered them at large cathedral services - and even then only once or twice.
When I happened to be in Edinburgh at the time of the annual Gaelic Eucharist the choir sang in Latin. I'm not sure whether this was due to a lack of Gaelic choral mass settings or limited time for the choir to learn them without massacring the pronunciation.
Interesting - I would be surprised if there aren't any Gaelic choral mass settings since there are ones for other UK languages. However I know that there is a much smaller Gaelic speaking population compared to Welsh or Irish so perhaps it was the latter issue.
A smaller number of Gaelic speakers and a larger proportion for whom "mass" is an invitation to gather pitchforks and kindling (I don't think there are any Gaelic-use SEC congregations and no more than a handful of RC ones).
Michelangelo rather than Titian I think ( even if the former predeceased Palestrina by 30 years). Titian was Venetian through and through; Gabrieli uncle and nephew more like.
Also worth considering that Giovanni Pierluigi and Tomas Luis were contemporaneous in Rome and no doubt knew one another well.
On a tangent: I find it extraordinary that Byrd is so favoured by Anglo-Catholics when you think that he wrote his most powerful works to be sung clandestinely in the later years of Elizabeth’s reign and later in the time of the resolutely Protestant James 1.
Latin anthems are pretty unusual in English AC churches in my experience, I've only encountered them at large cathedral services - and even then only once or twice.
When I happened to be in Edinburgh at the time of the annual Gaelic Eucharist the choir sang in Latin. I'm not sure whether this was due to a lack of Gaelic choral mass settings or limited time for the choir to learn them without massacring the pronunciation.
Interesting - I would be surprised if there aren't any Gaelic choral mass settings since there are ones for other UK languages. However I know that there is a much smaller Gaelic speaking population compared to Welsh or Irish so perhaps it was the latter issue.
A smaller number of Gaelic speakers and a larger proportion for whom "mass" is an invitation to gather pitchforks and kindling (I don't think there are any Gaelic-use SEC congregations and no more than a handful of RC ones).
There are RC Gaelic speaking parishes in the Outer Hebrides that presumably also sing.
Interestingly their liturgical texts were translated in Nova Scotia.
Just found this .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1As6DteoK4
Michelangelo rather than Titian I think ( even if the former predeceased Palestrina by 30 years). Titian was Venetian through and through; Gabrieli uncle and nephew more like.
Also worth considering that Giovanni Pierluigi and Tomas Luis were contemporaneous in Rome and no doubt knew one another well.
On a tangent: I find it extraordinary that Byrd is so favoured by Anglo-Catholics when you think that he wrote his most powerful works to be sung clandestinely in the later years of Elizabeth’s reign and later in the time of the resolutely Protestant James 1.
To my mind Victoria smoulders while Palestrina shines.
Michelangelo rather than Titian I think ( even if the former predeceased Palestrina by 30 years). Titian was Venetian through and through; Gabrieli uncle and nephew more like.
Also worth considering that Giovanni Pierluigi and Tomas Luis were contemporaneous in Rome and no doubt knew one another well.
On a tangent: I find it extraordinary that Byrd is so favoured by Anglo-Catholics when you think that he wrote his most powerful works to be sung clandestinely in the later years of Elizabeth’s reign and later in the time of the resolutely Protestant James 1.
To my mind Victoria smoulders while Palestrina shines.
And Byrd? Interested Antipodean would like to know..
John Cage's 4'33" is a really a rip-off of Byrd's unpublished Mass for zero voices.
That's a heinous lie. It's actually a rip-off from Thomas Tallis' unpublished forty-part motet for silent choirs - something to do with the Reformation I believe.
Michelangelo rather than Titian I think ( even if the former predeceased Palestrina by 30 years). Titian was Venetian through and through; Gabrieli uncle and nephew more like.
Also worth considering that Giovanni Pierluigi and Tomas Luis were contemporaneous in Rome and no doubt knew one another well.
On a tangent: I find it extraordinary that Byrd is so favoured by Anglo-Catholics when you think that he wrote his most powerful works to be sung clandestinely in the later years of Elizabeth’s reign and later in the time of the resolutely Protestant James 1.
To my mind Victoria smoulders while Palestrina shines.
And Byrd? Interested Antipodean would like to know..
Byrd for the aching beauty of something like this - sung one voice to a part as it would have been in the secret RC chapels it was written for. Lamenting the desolation of RCs at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pySTHOJKIlA
I’d be interested to know how Willan’s Canadian psalter compares to other such efforts.
This psalter, and Willan's instructions on how to use it, form a very effective system for choirs and congregations to chant the psalms, and it (with some alterations) is very much in use at St Thomas', Huron Street, Toronto.
Michelangelo rather than Titian I think ( even if the former predeceased Palestrina by 30 years). Titian was Venetian through and through; Gabrieli uncle and nephew more like.
Also worth considering that Giovanni Pierluigi and Tomas Luis were contemporaneous in Rome and no doubt knew one another well.
On a tangent: I find it extraordinary that Byrd is so favoured by Anglo-Catholics when you think that he wrote his most powerful works to be sung clandestinely in the later years of Elizabeth’s reign and later in the time of the resolutely Protestant James 1.
To my mind Victoria smoulders while Palestrina shines.
And Byrd? Interested Antipodean would like to know..
Byrd for the aching beauty of something like this - sung one voice to a part as it would have been in the secret RC chapels it was written for. Lamenting the desolation of RCs at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pySTHOJKIlA
A beautiful piece. I think there’s also an English version, in the nature of a paraphrase rather than a translation as I recall. Bizarrely, I once heard it sung at a wedding (or maybe rehearsed for a wedding - I was in the building for some reason unconnected to the wedding itself).
why is Palestrina considered the defacto music for Anglocatholic churches?
Is it? not in any AC church I've attended. Personally I prefer Victoria or Byrd.
I am not an attender at AC churches so I have never heard of it.
Now there's a surprise ...
Why do you find it a surprise. I have never previously mentioned AC Services ?
I was being sarcastic.
One of my least attractive traits.
On a serious note, though, it'd be rather like someone unfamiliar with rap music saying that they hadn't heard of some rap artist well known in that particular genre.
Or someone unfamiliar with contemporary yoof oriented evangelical music saying that they hadn't heard of The Rend Collective or whoever the latest evo beat combo happens to be.
Or someone who isn't Orthodox and unfamiliar with their rites saying that they hadn't heard of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.
I don't think I've ever heard any of Palestrina's music sung in church - more's the pity - but I do have some on CD. Yes, I'm that old-fashioned.
Also Byrd, Tallis, Taverner, Allegri, Victoria and various medieval composers like Dunstable and Hildegard of Bingen. My late wife was keen on Early Music - an enthusiasm I share as well as a penchant for jazz, punk, folk, blues, Handel, Bach and Baroque and roll.
I love all that Renaissance stuff, and Orlando Gibbons and much else besides.
I have no idea how far I'd have to go to hear any of it in a church service though. I have heard that there is an RC parish in our nearest city that still does things properly.
I can understand it not being everyone's cup of tea but choral music of any kind 'gets' to me, whether it's Byrd or Tallis or the Treorchy Male Voice Choir singing 'Myfanwy.'
The OP reminds me of the most gob smacking post I have seen on SoF, many years back: when discussing the feast of the Assumption on 15 August someone said not many Anglo Catholics would keep the Assumption as the choir would be on holiday. I don't thing whoever said that know what Catholic meant. And as I said above the majority of AC churches that I know don't have choirs.
There are Anglo-Catholic parish churches (eg St Mary Magdalene in Toronto) that have based the solemn mass liturgies around Gregorian chant and Palestrina works very well in the context of this basic liturgical sensibility.
Is that the inspiration of the church in Robertson Davies' novel The Cunning Man
which I read recently?
I don't think I've ever heard any of Palestrina's music sung in church - more's the pity - but I do have some on CD. Yes, I'm that old-fashioned.
Also Byrd, Tallis, Taverner, Allegri, Victoria and various medieval composers like Dunstable and Hildegard of Bingen. My late wife was keen on Early Music - an enthusiasm I share as well as a penchant for jazz, punk, folk, blues, Handel, Bach and Baroque and roll.
I love all that Renaissance stuff, and Orlando Gibbons and much else besides.
I have no idea how far I'd have to go to hear any of it in a church service though. I have heard that there is an RC parish in our nearest city that still does things properly.
I can understand it not being everyone's cup of tea but choral music of any kind 'gets' to me, whether it's Byrd or Tallis or the Treorchy Male Voice Choir singing 'Myfanwy.'
why is Palestrina considered the defacto music for Anglocatholic churches?
Is it? not in any AC church I've attended. Personally I prefer Victoria or Byrd.
I am not an attender at AC churches so I have never heard of it.
Now there's a surprise ...
Why do you find it a surprise. I have never previously mentioned AC Services ?
I was being sarcastic.
You should have said.
One of my least attractive traits.
On a serious note, though, it'd be rather like someone unfamiliar with rap music saying that they hadn't heard of some rap artist well known in that particular genre.
I loath rap music
Or someone unfamiliar with contemporary yoof oriented evangelical music saying that they hadn't heard of The Rend Collective or whoever the latest evo beat combo happens to be.
Or someone who isn't Orthodox and unfamiliar with their rites saying that they hadn't heard of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.
There are Anglo-Catholic parish churches (eg St Mary Magdalene in Toronto) that have based the solemn mass liturgies around Gregorian chant and Palestrina works very well in the context of this basic liturgical sensibility.
Is that the inspiration of the church in Robertson Davies' novel The Cunning Man
which I read recently?
It is. Needless to say, much fictionalized. Incidentally I think St Simon Zealotes referred to in Davies’ Deptford trilogy in places is probably modelled after St Thomas’s, another downtown Toronto parish with strong Anglo-Catholic leanings (and which @Oblatus referred to upthread).
Comments
Hymn books will state the composer and/or lyricist (since they are often separate) for each hymn but I've never seen any composer listed for the actual service settings, in any regular parish church. In my experience most churches use the same mass setting every week anyway, except for Advent/Christmas and Lent/Holy Week/Easter (and will usually use the same seasonal variations each year). Most AC churches here are backstreet or rural places without a big enough choir for anything else. Regularly changing sacred music is very much a cathedral thing, along with some college choirs.
Interesting - I would be surprised if there aren't any Gaelic choral mass settings since there are ones for other UK languages. However I know that there is a much smaller Gaelic speaking population compared to Welsh or Irish so perhaps it was the latter issue.
For the main service, where there were seasonal booklets (rather than Common Worship) available both in large and standard print, the hymn numbers for the week were usually handed out on a sheet with the notices. Any extra words not in the hymn book, plus any settings, choir anthems during communion, which might be in Latin, and organ voluntary at the end were listed in those notices. I used to type them up and make sure I made a handful of large print versions with all the words for those ladies whose sight was going.
But that isn't the only church I've seen that. Until it's all projectors most churches have something like that - and I tend to turn on my heel and leave if there's a projector.
Now there's a surprise ...
Is outrage.
*The number, title and tune is normally listed for hymns, since the author/composer info is in the hymnal. If the service music is in the hymnal (which it often is), then composer information isn’t usually listed, just where to find it in the hymnal. If the service music isn’t in the hymnal, then the music is usually printed in the bulletin/service sheet, along with composer info, or it’s perhaps printed on a separate sheet or card (again with composer info) and put in the pew racks for repeated use.
Much work has been done over many years by many people to "English" the chant, with varying degrees of success. But some efforts have been quite successful indeed. You have to be OK with the chant becoming quite different, as preference goes to clear and sensible rendering of the text. Shoehorning English words on rigidly unaltered chant originally used with Latin is often disastrous. Altering the chant to work with English can produce excellent results. Monasteries all over the world are using vernacular antiphonaries, some quite well done (especially German ones).
I’d be interested to know how Willan’s Canadian psalter compares to other such efforts. I sang from it a great deal in undergrad, but much less so recently. The music he wrote for St Mary Magdalene is heavily focused on the (English-language) texts, and he clearly had a strong feeling for the importance of the texts and the place of his music as an integral part of the liturgy, and I would guess this also would have translated into his work on the psalter. But as I say, it’s been a while since I’ve been singing from this book and I don’t have a lot of basis for comparison.
Getting back to the OP, IMO Palestrina’s music often has a similar directness, combined with considerable musical effectiveness, which is probably one of those factors that makes people consider it more suitable for liturgical use than (say) some early English Renaissance works (Sheppard, Taverner) which can be quite baroque as it were (not to mention devilishly difficult for non-professionals to sing).
Why do you find it a surprise. I have never previously mentioned AC Services ?
Whereas the trend in RC monasteries has been to develop new chants for English rather than attempying to bend existing chants around English sentence structure and stress patterns. However these new chants never reach the complexity of the old plainsong propers. https://youtu.be/d27lYFzpEcI
For a particular tendency, Palestrina is preferable to Vittoria because he is more transparent and less emotional. It fits, to my mind aat least, with the preference for readings to be done without emotion - there is a belief (I find it bizarre but there we are) that the readings speak for themselves. The necessity of a human being to read makes total nonsense of that, to my mind, but there we are. It's the same idea - emotion reduces transparency, and transparency is the ultimate virtue.
I’m not sure “emotional” is the right word, but I think Victoria often has a sharper-edged intensity that Palestrina isn’t aiming for (and not just in the works you mention). Perhaps like El Greco versus Titian. Both work very well liturgically though I think.
A smaller number of Gaelic speakers and a larger proportion for whom "mass" is an invitation to gather pitchforks and kindling (I don't think there are any Gaelic-use SEC congregations and no more than a handful of RC ones).
Also worth considering that Giovanni Pierluigi and Tomas Luis were contemporaneous in Rome and no doubt knew one another well.
On a tangent: I find it extraordinary that Byrd is so favoured by Anglo-Catholics when you think that he wrote his most powerful works to be sung clandestinely in the later years of Elizabeth’s reign and later in the time of the resolutely Protestant James 1.
There are RC Gaelic speaking parishes in the Outer Hebrides that presumably also sing.
Interestingly their liturgical texts were translated in Nova Scotia.
Just found this .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1As6DteoK4
To my mind Victoria smoulders while Palestrina shines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Pierluigi_da_Palestrina
And Byrd? Interested Antipodean would like to know..
I hear that his songs are very popular with cats. Also that John Cage's 4'33" is a really a rip-off of Byrd's unpublished Mass for zero voices.
Seriously, not sure how I would describe Byrd. I'm especially fond of his Latin works, but there is some great stuff among his English works as well.
well there you are then, it's an Anglo Catholic revival. Not one of those Cacophonous Evangelical Revivals.
My dear the noise, the people.
Also - one presumes - in the OTHER NATIONS which make up our country.
Byrd for the aching beauty of something like this - sung one voice to a part as it would have been in the secret RC chapels it was written for. Lamenting the desolation of RCs at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pySTHOJKIlA
Why do I not feel edified ?
Because it's not your thing?
Correct.
Whether his music is your *thing* or not is another matter.
A beautiful piece. I think there’s also an English version, in the nature of a paraphrase rather than a translation as I recall. Bizarrely, I once heard it sung at a wedding (or maybe rehearsed for a wedding - I was in the building for some reason unconnected to the wedding itself).
Oops - I omitted the word *instruction* after *moral and/or intellectual*.
I was being sarcastic.
One of my least attractive traits.
On a serious note, though, it'd be rather like someone unfamiliar with rap music saying that they hadn't heard of some rap artist well known in that particular genre.
Or someone unfamiliar with contemporary yoof oriented evangelical music saying that they hadn't heard of The Rend Collective or whoever the latest evo beat combo happens to be.
Or someone who isn't Orthodox and unfamiliar with their rites saying that they hadn't heard of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.
Or ...
And?
I don't think I've ever heard any of Palestrina's music sung in church - more's the pity - but I do have some on CD. Yes, I'm that old-fashioned.
Also Byrd, Tallis, Taverner, Allegri, Victoria and various medieval composers like Dunstable and Hildegard of Bingen. My late wife was keen on Early Music - an enthusiasm I share as well as a penchant for jazz, punk, folk, blues, Handel, Bach and Baroque and roll.
I love all that Renaissance stuff, and Orlando Gibbons and much else besides.
I have no idea how far I'd have to go to hear any of it in a church service though. I have heard that there is an RC parish in our nearest city that still does things properly.
I can understand it not being everyone's cup of tea but choral music of any kind 'gets' to me, whether it's Byrd or Tallis or the Treorchy Male Voice Choir singing 'Myfanwy.'
But then I'm Welsh and probably wired that way.
'I'm totally wired ... I'm totally wired ...'
Is that the inspiration of the church in Robertson Davies' novel The Cunning Man
which I read recently?
But are you wired for sound ? You should have said. I loath rap music Sorry. All new to me
It is. Needless to say, much fictionalized. Incidentally I think St Simon Zealotes referred to in Davies’ Deptford trilogy in places is probably modelled after St Thomas’s, another downtown Toronto parish with strong Anglo-Catholic leanings (and which @Oblatus referred to upthread).