I read with interest of the publication of a revised edition of the English Hymnal towards the end of this year. I shall certainly add it to my collection (of English Hymnals) with the 1906 & 1933 editions, the New English Hymnal of 1986 together with New English Praise 2006. But it is certainly a brave venture.

Brave because in many ways it is swimming against the tide in the Church of England. It may be bought by a handful of Catholic Cathedrals and churches, but not many I imagine. Yet from the beginning of the 20th century right through to the 1980’s its bright green cover was a sure sign that in this parish music and liturgy was taken seriously. Percy Dearmer as General Editor and Ralph Vaughan Williams as Musical Editor set high standards in both music and poetry. Many today would call them ‘élitist’ for their strong opinions. Popular Victorian hymns which they judged ‘poor quality’ or ‘sentimental’ or even ‘vulgar’ were banished to a section which Vaughan Williams apparently called the ‘Chamber of Horrors’.

The English Hymnal familiarised several generations of Anglicans with plainchant, fine tunes and words from the 17th and 18th century, and those delightful (and singable) little tunes from the French breviaries of so called Gallican period. My generation will remember these ‘modern’ tunes often sung to the Office Hymn at Evensong. It’s hard to remember that right through into the 1970’s most English Parish Churches had a choir of boys and men and an organist or two. Many people could sing a part. Indeed in my four years at Kelham I only remember one student who had to be coached because he found it difficult to sing in tune. Evensong was sung daily to Plainchant, together with the Sunday Mass and hymns harmonised (with the tune an octave lower!)

I suppose I became suddenly conscious of the rapid change that had taken place when I went to stay overnight at St John’s College, Nottingham in the mid 80’s. I joined the students for Evening Prayer which, I was told, was to be according to the Prayer Book. If my memory servies me right, modern songs were substituted for the Canticles and we sang a couple of worship songs for the time of free prayer at the end. Nothing of the service was chanted and the songs were accompanied on the guitar.

But what of the Catholics at this time? We have to remember that there had been no tradition of congregational singing up until the Second Vatican Council. Magnificent chant and polyphony was always sung at Westminster Cathedral and the Oratory, but outside London, very little. Sunday worship was Low Mass, with a handful of hymns like ‘Sweet Sacrament Divine’ and ‘O Sacred Heart’ sung at Benediction in the evening. The revisions proposed by the Council to the Liturgy envisaged the congregation participating by singing together. One might have imagined that the Catholics would have turned to the Anglicans with their tradition of liturgical singing but this did not happen. Music was provided by a new generation of composers much influenced by current trends in ‘popular’ music. Little of any lasting quality was written at this time, though it is interesting to note that Dom Gregory Murray’s New People’s Mass is in the Revised English Hymnal. The state of Catholic Church music remains pretty dire – a few singers, accompaniment on an electric keyboard …

In the Church of England, the Evangelical party were turning away from traditional music. They were propounding the theory that young people were ‘bored’ by ‘old-fashioned’ music. A new generation of composers (many of them American) were attempting to write in the popular idiom, and from time to time the press would run stories of ‘walk-outs’ (or ‘sackings’) of choirs and organists and their replacement with a ‘band’ or ‘music group’. Thousands of songs were produced – and still are – by a veritable music industry. A handful are memorable and some are beautiful. I am glad to see that ‘Be still for the presence of the Lord’ is in the new collection, and sorry to see that ‘The Servant King’ by Graham Kendrick isn’t. (A problem of copy-right surely, for its words are profound and majestic.) But after forty years of novelty the evangelistic hope of such music has not been fulfilled. American accents, the monotonous four-square rhythms and noisy accompaniments soon pall, I’m afraid, which is why there seems to be a constant need to sing something ‘new’ and ‘different’.

The publishers of the Revised English Hymnal are taking a great gamble, as the title of this post would suggest. The older generation of Catholics have been brought up on the music written soon after the Council. It lacks the strength of say, the chorale tunes of Bach or the lively ones of Handel. And the words too often are sentimental and repetitive. Yet the experience at Precious Blood, London Bridge, on the arrival of the Ordinariate, is worth reflecting on. A competent organist and a body of people (former Anglicans) who enjoyed singing, quickly inspired the existing congregation to participate in the Sunday Mass afresh.

And finally, the clergy. I recall a Deanery Chapter (Anglican) in the 1980’s where one of the more provocative young Anglo-Catholic clergy remarked that no man who could not sing should be ordained! It caused a stir at the time. But if we are to follow Pope Francis in his call for liturgical formation which goes way beyond learning the rubrics, then maybe doing something to encourage the clergy to sing, to sing well, and to enjoy worshipping in music and song, might help to renew Catholic worship.