Good News From the UK

This is something that rings true:

The music in most Roman Catholic parishes is so bad that it's turning practising Catholics into lapsed ones.

Of course, horribly sung Chant also caused the Lutheran Revolution, IMHO.

Anyway,

According to James MacMillan, arguably Britain's finest composer, "our liturgy has been hijacked, in some places, by opportunists who used the vacuum created by the Council to push home a radical agenda of de-sacralisation". But he also reckons that there is a growing movement against "enforced banalities".

And here's the action plan:

Today I spoke to a leading Catholic cathedral musician, who said he was fed up with SSG composers "pushing their own rubbish at dioceses in their endless workshops". His suggestion: commission simple, chant-based settings of the liturgy from composers and publish them free of charge on the internet.

Imagine the fury of certain well-off composer-publishers if settings of the Mass and antiphons that were better than their own tripe – and more in line with Pope Benedict's teachings – could be downloaded for nothing. Or perhaps this music could be given away free with copies of a leading Catholic newspaper. Now there's a thought...

Simple, eh? Break the back of OCP by publishing actual music free.