3.5 Timeouts Tuesday

Anglican edition.

1.

 I went to the Anglican Cathedral this weekend for their carols and lessons service.  As far as music and readings went, they were magnificent.  My only complaint, and it is a weak one, is that they tended to sing what I would call art house carols, rather than some more popular ones.  Here's a few of the carols they sang, picked up from YouTube (not the choir I heard.)  The sound is not working on my computer, so I can't vouch for the quality of these recordings.




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Here's one I didn't hear, and, boy, was I disappointed.  How can the Anglicans have a carols ceremony and not sing this?





3.5


I suppose at heart I am something of an Anglican.  The way they do their services, when they do it in the high style, is second to none.  The English they use is of a far different calibre than ours. I love listening to a reader trained in the high Anglican style, even if it's Monty Python parodying the High Anglican Style. Their choir was magnificent, possibly the best liturgical choir in Toronto.  If beauty of music and language and ceremony were sufficient to convert me, I would have converted long ago. 

But it isn't.  At the end of the day, I prefer our so-so to lousy choirs, our stuttering and heavily accented readers, our unmusical English, and our truth.  Keats was only partly right when he said Beauty is truth, and truth beauty.   Truth has a beauty all its own, one that rises above mere form.