*print*

I started to say 'yes, and we did it in high school' -
but, that was not rigaudon, but 'Brigadoon'.
A rigaudon is/was a lively hopping French court dance of the late XVIIth century.

Mme. -
About 'pretty', you are spot on! Pretty is to genuine beauty as Kinkaid is to da Vinci, or a bottle of Gallo to a three-hundred-year-old vintage. It's what Vladimir Ashkenazy calls 'ornamental' music. That which is to be decided by each of us is 'is this beautiful, or is it just pretty'. Beauty always gets a pass, pretty, never. Beauty has both an intellectual and an emotional dimension. Pretty has only an emotional one, and, at that, one yielded cheaply. About the tune in question here, it is decent, not exceptional in any way. The baroque era gave us many such 'ceremonial' tunes that may or may not be appropriate as processionals, postludes, or preludes. The quality of the 'tune' determines its eligibility. The theme of the day determines its appropriateness at a given liturgy. As for those praying after mass, I don't let them determine my gracing the end of ritual with a musical flourish that is in keeping with the day's festal or meditative nature. It is fitting that God be given a final accolade, by which some departing souls are further inspired. I've noticed that those who linger to pray are rather stalwart and strongly focused pray-ers, who don't seem particularly bothered by post-ritual fanfare.

As far as this particular Rigaudon goes, if you played this for me and told me it was from a Voluntary by Stanley, or Purcell, or Greene, I would have believed you, had it not been for seeing the title and composer printed on the music. It's a good tune, but of a generically ceremonial nature, as MJO saith above, any peripheral dance qualities aside.

(I won't mention the number of minuets or quasi-minuets that show up in Baroque or Gallant church music, Catholic and Protestant.)