More on the 4 of Option 4

So, wouncha know, right after my apologia, no, more apology for having done my Fearsome Foursome, in googling various items, ideas and people that came to my attention at Mundelein, (in this case, my favourite Croc-ed Benedictine,) I came across this, on the excellent blog of one Dr. Phillip Blosser, a pertinacious Papist (as a royal whose official silly title includes the word "pertinacious," I was delighted to find this blog.)

http://pblosser.blogspot.com/2006/10/were-strophed-hymns-historically.html

Some excellent and thought-provoking words from a book I'd wanted to read.
And okie-dokie, if you were TRYING to make me feel guilty about not being more persistent, or tenacious, or.... pertinacious in hewing to what I know is right, you succeeded.
And in all honesty, what I would have worked toward was a PRE-Mass, the three Proper processional chants, and then the strophic closing song which is loved and harmless.
That's what I thought....
And now I need to do a little soul-searching about that.

Luther's Reformation was a singing movement and the hymn expressed the beliefs of the Reformers. Vernacular hymns replaced the liturgy, as they were designed to do; they were filled with the combative spirit of those dismal times and were meant to fortify the partisans. People singing a catchy melody together at the top of their voices created a sense of community, as all soldiers, clubs, and politicians know. The Catholic Counter-Reformation felt the demagogic power of these hymns. People so enjoyed singing; it was so easy to influence their emotions using pleasing tunes with verse repetition. In the liturgy of the Mass, however, there was no place for hymns. The liturgy has no gaps; it is one single great canticle; where it prescribes silence or the whisper, that is, where the mystery is covered with an acoustic veil, as it were, any hymn would be out of the question. The hymn has a beginning and an end; it is embedded in a speech. But the leiturgos of Holy Mass does not actually speak at all; his speaking is a singing, because he has put on the "new man," because, in the sacred space of the liturgy, he is a companion of angels. In the liturgy, singing is an elevation and transfiguration of speech, and, as such, it is a sign of the transfiguration of the body that awaits those who are risen. The hymn's numerical aesthetics -- hymn 1, hymn 2, hymn 3 -- is totally alien and irreconcilable in the world of the liturgy. In services that are governed by vernacular hymns, the believer is constantly being transported into new aesthetic worlds. He changes from one style to another and has to deal with highly subjective poetry of the most varied levels. He is moved and stirred -- but not by the thing itself, liturgy: he is moved and stirred by the expressed sentiments of the commentary upon it. By contrast, the bond that Gregorian chant weaves between liturgical action and song is so close that it is impossible to separate form and content. (Martin Mosenbach, The Heresy of Formlessness, pp. 40-41)

And then, from an article in Adoremus, that I'd merely skimmed at the time --

With one exception, “the four” [hymns] continue to act as placeholders for the texts prescribed in the Roman missal for particular feasts, that is, for the Proper texts of ancient tradition: the Introit or entrance antiphon, the Offertory antiphon, and the Communion antiphon. (They are all “antiphons” because it is thought that in ancient times these were not sung by themselves but in response to the verses of entire Psalms.) The exception is the modern recessional or closing hymn, which stands in for nothing at all, but merely satisfies our modern aesthetic need for the big finale as in an opera or Hollywood movie.

Color me abashed....