On Hymns and Pretenders

Doctor Esolen, professor at Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts, New Hampshire, conducts an autopsy on the lifeless corpse of a bad lyric.

https://www.crisismagazine.com/2019/the-bad-poetry-of-modern-hymnody

Thanks be to God, we in the Personal Ordinariates, like our brethren in tradition-minded groups such as the FSSP and ICKSP, are blessed with the rightly ordered sensibility that music by composers of the highest order is required to be offered in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Even if a choir be of modest skill, the presentation of works of acknowledged greatness by such a group is far preferable to polished presentations of pop schlock. Of course, brilliance is not ignored in the Ordinariate. Au contraire! A loss of attention to beauty would permit banality and thus betray an important aspect of the English Patrimony, which is not to deprive people of the opportunity to worship God in the beauty of holiness (Ps. 96:9).

De-Formed

In the years prior to leaving diocesan Egypt for the Ordinariate promised land, I, a choir director and cantor for various Ordinary Form communities for some 17 years, struggled to reconcile parish tastes competing for dominance in the liturgy culture wars. The attempt to serve the Liturgy per the Church's received wisdom - e.g., Tra le sollecitudini; Musicam Sacram; Chirograph of the Supreme Pontiff John Pal II for the Centenary of the Motu Proprio 'Tra Le Sollecitudini' On Sacred Music; etc. - was typically met with open contempt. There was little taste among parish liturgical police for anything resembling music of quality properly belonging to the Church's vast artistic treasure trove.

Re-Formed

In Ordinariate communities, in my limited experience, there exists no such antipathy toward great music. The Ordinariate worships to the accompaniment of seraphic compositions. The Ordinariate preserves the best of the Church's living legacy of sublime music. As for most diocesan communities, no doubt most of those who organize music groups are well intended. However, those music coordinators are frequently woefully ignorant of where the Liturgy should be, blithely accepting norms that are abnormal with respect to the Mass. That anyone should be ignorant of the musical orientation of the Mass is astonishing in this day and age of instant online access to legitimate resources by which parishes can orient themselves to beautiful music. Many avenues exist by which choirs can access training videos to help them achieve both artistic beauty and heartfelt worship.

http://www.ccwatershed.org/liturgy/

Dr. Esolen adds his voice to the call for order. The battle for ordered music in the Mass is a battle for souls. That so many of the compositions presented at Mass would not qualify for a passing grade in a college harmony or counterpoint course, because they are dis-ordered, the battle is for order - represented by authentic counterpoint - to triumph over the chaos of shabby compositions.

To conclude, a gift-reminder by Blessed (soon-to-be-Saint) John Henry Newman, to invite you, Dear Reader, to consider a permanent move to beauty, truth and goodness.

Praise to the Holiest in the Height

(from the Dream of Genrontius)

Praise to the Holiest in the height,

And in the depth be praise;

In all His words most wonderful;

Most sure in all His ways!

O loving wisdom of our God!

When all was sin and shame,

A second Adam to the fight

And to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood

Which did in Adam fail,

Should strive afresh against their foe,

Should strive and should prevail.

And that a higher gift than grace

Should flesh and blood refine,

God’s presence and His very Self,

And Essence all-divine.

O generous love! that He who smote

In man for man the foe,

The double agony in man

For man should undergo;

And in the garden secretly,

And on the cross on high,

Should teach His brethren and inspire

To suffer and to die.

1865