However, this is a said service; I wonder how a sung service would be done.

Poorly. Even the 'great churches' that we think of: St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and, especially, King's, Cambridge, were in a very poor musical state from the death of Handel until the Oxford Movement got into full swing. The service began with a metrical Psalm: Either from Tate & Brady or Sternhold & Hopkins, then the service proper (usually Mattins, Litany and Ante-Communion) was read. An anthem might have been attempted at some point during the service; and the service would have ended with another metrical Psalm. (King's was still on a diet of Tate & Brady until A.H. Mann came in.)

This is what it probably would have sounded like--but most likely not as good: these people rehearse, whereas many choirs then didn't. The major difference at some of the 'great churches' is that untrained, out of tune boys would be singing, or rather, screeching, instead of women, and in place of a band, an organ would be used, the more adventuresome playing a continuo part independent of the vocal bass.
https://youtu.be/_xnW69BeBJc?t=172

It is so interesting to me. The Oxford movement was a sea change level event. More interesting to me, as I read this and other posts, is the conflict that arises when reality challenges our romantic assumptions. There was awful and/or limited music before and after Oxford, just as there was and continues to be before and after Trent, and, more importantly for me, before and after the Second Vatican Council. Reality is, then and now, very few places of worship have solid, well rehearsed music, in any style, during worship. People make music as they are able in their given circumstances. As I have grown older, this is enough for me. It is the reality of their heart felt praise that matters most.

A very good book on the subject of Oxford Movement struggles is called Rivers of the Flood. I read this back in the early seventies or so. By Dom Anselm Hughes of Nashdom Abbey and now available from Abe's Books, it is a very good account of the hardships, hurdles, prejudices, enmity, and incremental progresses that were experienced by many priests as the Anglo-Catholic identity began to evolve. I remember one anecdote about a priest who was imprisoned by his bishop for teaching his children the Hail Mary, in Latin, yet. Those were not easy times. I do believe that the Anglo-Catholic movement was the work of God. While it became widespread, it's too bad it didn't come to flourish as the defining character of the C of E. If it had, we might well have come to see a rapprochement between Canterbury and Rome (I dreamed of this in my youth). But there were large numbers of powerful people, both C of E and Roman, who were apoplectic at the thought. Where Oxford Movement Anglo-Catholicism flourished its people and their faith was indistinguishable from that of the Romans - but for the question of the nature of the Petrine supremacy and a few reservations shared with the Orthodox - not to mention that distinctive Anglican touch of reverence and dignity. One would have thought that their Catholic neighbours would have egged them on as friends. Far from it! They scorned them and held them in contempt. Things could have been more positive, brotherly, and loving - and a far lovelier outcome might have flowered forth.
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Dom Anselm Hughes, Benedictine monk of Nashdom Abbey, who wrote Rivers of the Flood, was musicologist who left many books about mediaeval musical practice and theory. His works on the subjects of mediaeval music and liturgy, both Eastern and Western, are amongst the most important of the early to mid XXth century.

The BCP Sunday morning has a sequence of three services: Matins, Litany, and Ante-communion* , most of the congregation would leave after Matins. Any music (psalms and anthemn), was concentrated in Matins and Litany. Dearmer was a leading light in the "Parish communion movement", somewhere I have a pamphlet of his on how to persuade people to "stay on". In most places, up to 100 years ago the full communion service was only used perhaps four times a year.
* ≈Mass of the catechumens + Creed and Biddings.

One of the devices Dearmer used was to get the congregation to sing the Ordinary. The Parson's Handbook recommends no more than three settings for a typical congregation - Merbecke, folk song (ie English traditional) and 'a good modern setting'. Do NOT let the choir usurp the peoples' part. It does look as though Dearmer (who was not an Anglo-catholic) had read and taken on board Tra le sollecitudini and other liturgical movement ideas.

It depends a little on what you exactly mean by Anglo Catholic, which admits of shades of meaning.

I think from The Parsons Handbook we would say he was an original prayer-book Anglican: and during the prayer book controversy in 1928 he favoured the reformed one (which was rejected finally) because it was as if a restoration of the original Anglicanism of the 1500s. That got him called an Anglo-Catholic, to be sure: but he didn't believe in transubstantiation and he was certainly a man of the “doctrines and practices of the Reformation”.

He was also a socialist: but that doesn't bear on the Anglo Catholic question, since some who very much were Anglo Catholics were towards socialism, the labour movement, and social action, from the late 1800s through until the 1930s, or later.

Funny: I could almost sign his definition with both hands.

I've gone to a few Methodist services. When they get to the part of the creed that says One Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church, there is an asterisk after Catholic. Below, there is a footnote stating that 'Catholic' means universal.

True, but Dearmer is right in the sense that any baptized Christian is part of the Catholic Church because of his baptism. Now, of course, I don't think Dearmer would have the same understanding of the Catholic Church as we do.

If memory serves, that was the basis for the Inquisition to assert jurisdiction over any baptised person; the Inquisition had no jurisdiction over the unbaptized.

never heard of the branch theory... can you elaborate?

Branch theory is whatever you make of it, it seems.

Branch theory - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Branch_theory

People also ask
What are the 4 branches of Christianity?

What are the six branches of Christianity?

What are the three main branches of Christianity

Well, the Eastern Orthodox and the Anglicans are kind of like branches. They just took a tree saw to themselves a while back :).

(*) except when it means C

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

So then heretics and schismatics no longer exist? Where are the references to this odd thinking?

Francis,

Of course they still exist. If the words are out of favor, the reality they describe is, if anything, more prevalent now than in ages past. Apostasy, also not a word in common use, describes accurately far too many "Catholics" in public life.


Charles,

All joking aside, "misanthrope Modernist" is far more accurate than "misanthrope Trad" ever was or ever will be.

So then heretics and schismatics no longer exist? Where are the references to this odd thinking?

Yes, they do, for a baptized Christian can reject the Faith, either parts of it, or the whole thing. Because of this, there are degrees in schism.

there are degrees in schism.

There may be degrees, but it is all schism. Slapping your wife on the cheek is just as bad as stabbing her in the back. Kissing Jesus on the cheek can be just as bad (or worse) than crucifying him on a gibet. In the case of THE kiss, I think it was indeed the worst.

Branch theory could be likened to parallel universes, I suppose. "Let's just create an alternate reality and live there instead of here."

... heretics and schismatics ...
... the reality they describe is, if anything, more prevalent now than in ages past.

How do we know? Even in the generation of my grandparents, it was still socially inacceptable not to appear as a faithful catholic, I know people of my age who still experienced this as kids.
Unfortunately facebook&twitter deleted all pre-21st century posts.

Branch theory could be likened to parallel universes, I suppose.

As a physicist, I like this one especially - still maintaining that the 'multiverse theory' isn't even a theory properly speaking.

The one before the fall?

Returning to the present topic: the Anglican liturgy before the Oxford Movement then, did not nearly resemble what one can see in many Anglo-Catholic churches?

Correct, Jehan -
The Oxford movement (and there was also The Cambridge Movement) was centuries in the making. It was the final flower of Catholic leaning clerics and lay persons who had from the very beginning always been a thorn in the side of the arch-Protestant majority. Read the XVIIth century Caroline Divines (a 'divine' is a theologian, not an immortal person) for a fair look at more-Catholic-than-Protestant conviction in the C of E, which came to bud in the Oxford movement - though the Oxford Movement was more concerned about orthodox faith and theology than liturgical ritual, and remained, ritually, very simple. Still, no matter their orthodox beliefs, they, like all in the C of E (and the Orthodox themselves) could never have accepted the Petrine supremacy as held by Rome.

Further, there were, in the full flower of Anglo-Catholicism, two principle points of view, or 'parties', namely: those who stressed their native Catholic heritage and championed Sarum usage, and those who 'aped Rome' and tended more or less to emphasise a Roman praxis. This later led to the early XXth century English Missal, which was an almost verbatim translation of the Tridentine rite and its attendant Canon into Prayer Book English.

To this day Anglo-Catholic clergy and people use the Novus Ordo and shun the BCP.

In the early negotiations leading to the Ordinariates, we Americans, contrary to our English cousins, discovered that the English C of E 'Catholics' do not hold the BCP in the same treasured way that we Americans do. In their experience it is identified with the cruelties and persecutions of the early C of E. (It should be mentioned, in fairness, that Catholics perpetrated their share of cruelties and persecution when, under Mary Tudor, they were in power.) We Americans really don't identify the BCP in the same way. We love it and its beauteous and unsrpassed hieratic English, and treasure it as a very intrinsic part of our heritage and identity. Not so the English who have a different experience with it. All this took arduous negotiating to arrive at what is now the Ordinariate Use. Rome gave us pretty much a blank slate in the formation of the Ordinariate Use, concerned mainly about the doctrinal orthodoxy of its contents - and pointing out some peculiarly Anglican characteristics which we ourselves where quite unaware of as being distinctly Anglican..

One of our great liturgical scholars at Walsingham played a major part in these proceedings and has said that it was surprisingly difficult reaching unity with the English members of the various panels. Today, in the US and Australia the Ordinariate Use is the only one which we use. Not so our English friends, who quite often use the Novus Ordo in both English and Latin as much as they do the Ordinariate Use. I find this to be quite disappointing, liturgically schizophrenic, and lacking in a true Ordinariate identity.

Sorry, I have tried to answer your question, but have elaborated on more than you asked for. The typical C of E liturgy before the Oxford movement could be said to have been lower than the most low church that we of today could imagine. Indeed, today's low church compared to pre-Oxford Movement usage would seem positively high church.