Hymns are essential to the Anglican patrimony

Are hymns and plainsong fully compatible? Should ordinariate parishes prefer one type of music over the other, or ought both to be done? Anglican sacred music has multiple components, including hymnody, choral polyphony, Anglican chant, and indeed Gregorian plainsong. But some of these are more representative of and unique to the patrimony than others and should be favoured for that reason.

The Church, in Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium, does indeed praise Gregorian chant. But it says this exclusively in the context of “the Roman liturgy”, saying in full that “The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.”

Sacrosanctum Concilium elsewhere speaks of the eastern liturgies and of “the Latin Church” more broadly. But its remarks about Gregorian chant are limited to “the Roman liturgy” and not even to “the Latin Church” as a whole. This does not mean that Gregorian plainsong doesn’t have a place in Anglican patrimony, but that place must be contextualized and it is not the same as in the Roman patrimony.

Our Eastern Catholic brethren have similar challenges. At times they too have adopted, or had imposed on them, Latin customs in place of their own. They have had to fight this and the Holy See has always backed them and upheld the importance of their distinctiveness. The Anglican patrimony, granted its own Catholic authorization and jurisdiction in Anglicanorum Coetibus, also requires vigilant protection on the part of its people. Is there a unique cultural tradition of Anglican sacred music? To ask this question is to answer it, for Anglicans are renowned for their strong, cultivated, refined, and living tradition of church music.

A huge part of the Anglican musical patrimony is the culture of congregational hymn singing. The uniquely Anglican musical form of Anglican chant and the high profile English Cathedral choral tradition are essential to the patrimony. But a strong tradition of hymnody is ubiquitous in the Anglican world. You can see it in high masses and in low, in everything from your local parish church to a major English cathedral to royal weddings and coronations, and in the low church, the broad church and the high church traditions. To avoid hymns would be deeply antithetical to the Anglican patrimony, and thus unpastoral and ill-advised for us Catholics in the ordinariate.

Sacrosanctum Concilium backs this up in noting that “…there are peoples who have their own musical traditions, and these play a great part in their religious and social life. For this reason due importance is to be attached to their music, and a suitable place is to be given to it, not only in forming their attitude toward religion, but also in adapting worship to their native genius…” Anglicanorum Coetibus applies this principle in spades, providing us a dedicated jurisdictional space within which our own distinctive liturgical and sacred music traditions can be maintained, treasured, and shared.

The supposed objection that hymns are of Protestant origin could be said for the entire Anglican patrimony. Yet the Church in Anglicanorum Coetibus and in Lumen Gentium recognizes that some things originally seen as being other than Catholic can in fact belong to her: “…many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside her visible confines. Since these are gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity.” This is the principle that makes the ordinariates themselves even possible. Far be it from us to throw out the patrimonial baby with the Protestant bathwater!

One ordinariate commenter online has remarked that “In the vast majority of parishes that use hymns (though not all), very few people in the pews actually sing (the "worship team" sings, but most others just stand there silent). In contrast, in the vast majority of parishes where Gregorian Chant is used, most of the people in the pews sing.” Yet this is clearly a description of the average novus ordo parish versus a rare counterpoint. This is why writers have been pondering “Why Catholics Can’t Sing” for years. On the other hand, anyone truly familiar with the Anglican world from whence the ordinariate community came knows that the Anglican example is wildly different. We all sing! And hymns are a pillar of our strong culture of congregational singing. The last thing we should do now that we are Catholic is to throw out those parts of our patrimonial culture that work so well, which Anglicanorum Coetibus graciously permits us to retain, in favour of non-patrimonial alternative practices.

So what then is the place of Gregorian chant in Anglican patrimonial liturgies? Well Anglicans developed a tradition of plainsong, based on the Gregorian tradition but sung in prayerbook English. This tradition can be found in simple psalm tone sources like the English Gradual, the St Peter Gradual, or the Anglican Use Gradual, or in polyphonic settings by William Byrd and others, or in patrimonial adaptations of the full Gregorian chants by the likes of Willan or Palmer & Burgess (The Plainchant Gradual). These all have a place in the Anglican patrimony, but in addition to hymns rather than supplanting hymns. Chant has been a relatively atypical phenomenon in Anglican settings, but hymns are universal. This is why hymnody is rightly so ubiquitous in the Anglican ordinariates as well.

Hymns at mass are a significant and representative part of our Anglican patrimony. We shouldn’t toss that tradition overboard in favour of a Roman custom that even the Roman church unfortunately doesn’t do very often. Catholics of the Roman tradition should recover and preserve their rite, tradition, culture and patrimony, which includes of course Gregorian chant and sacred music. In turn, for the sake of the whole Church, we in the ordinariates, Catholics of the Anglican tradition, must preserve our own distinctive Anglican patrimony. If we don’t, no one else will. Let us indeed do our English Gregorian plainsong where customary, but our Anglican chant and hymnody are a treasure to be shared and must come first.