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Dissent in Sydney

Peter Phillips

Wednesday, 13th February 2008

Peter Phillips on church music

It will be swept away anyway. If the (élitist) study of history tells us anything it is that the evangelical urge has always been there, but that its cultural specifics do not carry through from one generation to another. Only the deepest-rooted elements of tradition can do that: those things which alone convey beauty to every human being. It is no accident that the end is in sight for the folk Masses of the Catholics, despite having come into use with such fanfare in their early days, while the music of Palestrina, sometimes in the background and sometimes in the foreground, has simply carried on. To be told that Palestrina and his kind are old hat, representing the preferences of a passé élite, is merely to be told that we are in for another decade of self-serving ugliness, before it is replaced by something else, equally short-term. The long term, so inconvenient to the ardently motivated who may well think it is beneath them to study it, tells a quite different story.

But while that is my message of hope for the Anglican Church in Australia, the damage that is being done right now to its future should not be underestimated. Among the musicians I know in Sydney who wanted to dedicate their skills to the service of the Cathedral, there is unmitigated despair. The Archbishop appoints the priests in his diocese, and they are of his convictions. For my friends the medium term does not look much brighter than the short, which means that professional lives have been completely destroyed and valuable gifts gone to waste. However, if I read characters of the Jensen type correctly, outspoken criticism makes them in turn ever more shrill, at which point they may appear ridiculous even to their own supporters, let alone the Pentecostalists. I look forward to the day when that happens.

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