The Writer was listening to quite a while in the category of 'Early Music', which included the hymns and songs of the early Christian churches. This is a realm of such beautiful, even awe-inspiring music they still aspire to create, despite the teachings and the worlds constructed by Christendom to have been distasteful for longer than they followed. But despite the time of then, there is still an affinity for sheet music, with a rudimentary education taught by one of the elderly church ladies. For the time she was in my world, it was one that enriched it to a deeper level than most people currently known even now.
This spree of listening had renewed a motivation to dig up the songbooks they had grown with. Looking for the previous iteration of the songbook of the church/religious organization they had grown as a family with, for they had a notable revulsion to the revisions made of 2009 and later.
Online, the organization openly displays the dozens of iterations. Sixteen multiple iterations of songs. Blood is now running colder. This is intensely upsetting to realize.
They abandoned four-part harmony in the 1980s. The excuse then during that time was done for the explicitly expressed purpose of "simplicity" or "simplifying" to make "easier to understand". The latest iteration of the collection is only 5 years ago as of now. That five years ago was the exact moment they had installed a Five Year Plan. This is why. The Soul was that unsettled by the changes made during that period of time, for this stretch was the last straw for them. Changes and overhauls were made that transformed the environment into a tacky caricature of contemporary aesthetics of the time. For as the previous stage of the organization had a few hangups for them (no piano performers, MIDI playback), it was merely a handful of steps that would have made it a nearly-graceful stability against the world's changes.
It is the research of facts like these that make the writer more a reactionary at heart. Why was there change, from dropping of instrumental accompaniment, to MIDI playback, to prerecorded orchestrations of MP3 files, to warped cribbings from other cultures and pop music. Change almost never happens for the better. To understand that even the fleeting, minuscule kernels of enjoyment of the past were designed by committee this deeply. Words that only deserve the most frugal of respects, and to writers and creators uncredited.
You quite literally cannot go back. The quietly modest design of pale white walls, clean wooden trim, understated green benches and carpeting is gone. Everything is a flavorless muddle of brown. They managed to ruin Brown. The notes of the manychurch project need to begin writing down as soon as possible.
