Yorkie wrote:I'm sure there are many reasons why the UK is full of heathens! Centuries of religious turmoil and the appalling things done in the name of religion...
Compared to the Continent, British religious history--apart from the moderate chaos of the English Reformation (1534-ca 1580s)--has been relatively calm and unbecoming, marked primarily by shifts in where power was to lie vis-a-vis monarch or bishop. Plenty of appalling things done, though, in the name of religion--no doubt about that.
Yorkie wrote:...+ the fact that the CofE is rather easy going (you are not blackmailed from childhood in to a fear of being cast in to Hell if you don't do as you are told).
Religion as a whole in the C of E is marked by a more rational, less supernatural approach to belief/faith/practice--High, Low, and Broad distinctions aside...without being
too presumptuous, you could lay that off on 1. the geography of the country, which has bred a spirit of independence and self-determination missing in a wild political soup like, say, Germany for most of history; and thus 2. the pragmatism and utilitarianism of the people: religion must be, for most, a practical, useful tool in their daily existence.
The Church of England is the only ecclesiastical institution out of the Reformation to be called into existence as a
national church--not out of purely theological motives. From the outset, it was accepted that, for some, adherence would be only superficial--and don't forget that Britain gave rise to Charles Darwin (a former cleric), Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill: British culture has, through and through, been deeply shaped by the need for religion and free thought to coexist...this undoubtedly dampens the C of E's propensity for anything along the "hell, fire, and brimstone" lines.
Yorkie wrote:We'll have to discuss the distinction about British choirs and RC choirs though because I'm not sure I'm seeing the difference.
The first boy sopranos were most likely in Roman churches--however, the treble choir as a unique institution (vs a regular SATB choir, or a men's chorus) is usually attributed to the English churches--Catholic and Anglican alike. Most Anglican cathedrals, for example, support a chorus of men and boy sopranos--many Episcopal churches in the United States do, as well. This is because the C of E has a history of promoting the so-called "English choral tradition," which is centred in large part on the English treble choir.
The Church of Rome, on the other hand, has no such tradition, and has very few strictly-male choirs. The Choir of the Sistine Chapel, for example, is mixed (SATB). Many of the Continent's major treble choirs
began in Roman churches (ie the St Thomas Choir in Leipzig--Bach's; the Dresdner Kreuzchor), but have long since ceased to remain Catholic...in the meantime, the tradition of a Catholic treble choir was not sustained by Vatican practice--in other words, it was never a "tradition" at all.
The huge number of English treble choirs relative to the Continent demonstrates that the English Church placed a much higher emphasis on the treble choir both as an instrument of worship
and as a means of educating young people, than was immediately recognised on the Continent--especially in regions aligned with Rome. King's College, for example, was founded at the direction of the English King for use in his new chapel, on the grounds of a university. Finally: that many English treble choirs survived the English Reformation and the Dissolution with relative ease seems to indicate that, in the minds of the people, the treble choir concept had been adopted as "English", not exclusively (if it ever was) "Roman."
That's too long
the point is: Rome has a fine musical tradition that goes back a LONG ways, but the treble choir is really not part of it: Rome has never consciously chosen to sustain treble choruses
for their own sake, and does not today, either--whereas, the Church of England has consciously chosen, even in the 21st-century, to continue supporting this art with all the challenges in doing so (high member turnover, for one).
lol), but here goes...
). I recently had this comment handed to me via a group on Facebook from a young man in Durham:
...we all think and talk like Sir Humphrey.