And sort of unfortunately, last night we kind of got into a rather arcane discussion on English Renaissance and French organ masters, along with a few Italians and a Spaniard. If you’re not really into this stuff.... It doesn’t change that as a church we’ve forgotten how to chant and even for those of us who are classically trained singers it takes a while to get it to sound like chant and not a Wagnerian opera.
But once you get into really singing liturgical music with the idea of being as good as you can possibly be, for God's honor and glory, then all this stuff becomes fascinating (well, o.k., at least to me it does).
The deeper you go into it, the richer and more entrancing it becomes. After all, the style has survived for hundreds and hundreds of years and will survive long after Haugen/Haas and the St. Looey Jebbies are nothing but a bad dream.