Ummm.

No, my dear friend, it is not sad, it is purposed. Choose, for your convenience, whether hence it comes from decay or dedication. Neither of those gives credence to that which we deplore, but we cannot envision another dimension, another opportunity missed and supplanted by something which, on various grounds, we reject as authentic.
OEW was not sung under my direction today, Rice was. The choice was mine. We decide.
But, though we can pontificate righteously, we cannot decide for those not under our charge.
As is debated in the other thread about sanction, the more sanctions we infer or actually apply, the more they will somewhere be ignored.

They seem to be very nice people.

I don't think the CMAA is about individual actions but about the musical integrity of the entire Latin Church. As long as this music dominates, our goals will never be realized. It's a desperately sad situation because most people are completely deprived--and some stay away. These is a widespread, perhaps global tragedy here.

However, let's compare the genre in question with "serialism (12 tone)" compositions.

Please, let's not attempt that comparison: not all serialist music is 12-tone music and not all 12-tone music is serialist music. The development in the finale of Mozart's 40th Symphony contains a tone row that is explored in depth, but this music is hardly serialist. Bach's chromaticism in certain melodies does not make his music serialist, either.

On the other hand, some serialist techniques, although not all (since the advent of modern serialism as a formal but diverse compositional theory and practice), have been widely applied in tonal music, for at least a few hundred years. The standard techniques of fugal and other contrapuntal writing, especially canon, are themselves well known and appreciated. Indeed, they have engendered some beautiful music, including sacred choral music.

Whatever ones take on 12-tone or serialist music is (or, for that matter, pentatonic, octatonic or whole tone scale music) it is a long way from the genre espoused in the video.

Melo's aging a bit and obviously he misunderstood and thought he was talking about 12 String Music.

Who's "Melo?"
And for the record, Chuck, I still like Wozzeck and still hate Webern, niener x3.

I don't think the CMAA is about individual actions but about the musical integrity of the entire Latin Church.

I reflected overnight on this, Kathy, and I think we're both correct, as the latter purpose cannot be effected without the initiative of the former notion of individual actions.

I have been thinking much about this discussion, and how the mention of 12-tone techniques pertains to the subject. It seems to me that part of the problem comes from the fact this this music is regarded as being in a "folk style," or perhaps even a style of its own. The logic goes - style is irrelevant; all styles are permitted, so why not use a style with which people can identify? But that is an illogical argument. They are correct that style is irrelevant according to the documents, but that's not germane to the issue. That "musical judgment" we are asked to make is based on the principles of aesthetics - balance, proportion, organization. We don't use the same rules to judge all types of music. It would be ridiculous, for instance, to criticize organum because it contains parallel fifths. Hindemith, Messiaen, Webern et al even made up their own organizational systems, but they were organized and logical. This so-called "folk" music is not folk music at all, at least in terms of genre; it is firmly planted in the tradition of Western tonal music, regardless of what instruments they use. And much of this music (not all) clearly fails that musical judgment, with awkward melodies and illogical harmonic progressions. It's not just a matter of how appealing it is to people, as a product of the "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" philosophy that has no basis in Christian theology- it's just bad music, period, as judged by the most competent musicians. I think we all ought to eliminate "style" from our vocabulary and get to the real heart of the matter.

I played Jefferson and Rutledge, what fun!

Yikes. According to the title, I figured this would be full of great Lutheran hymnody and organ playing. Color me disappointed.

...a product of the "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" philosophy that has no basis in Christian theology.

Amen, brother.