To Sing in a Manner That Reveals Heaven and Unites Us With the Heavenly Hosts"

As I contemplate my musical and parochial future, (starting in on a round of subbing madly, not very satisfyingly,) I am reading this, by "fatherstephen" (h/t to Mary Jane). Some excerpts:

...no part of Orthodox doctrine, worship, prayer or life stands in a category of its own. Everything refers and reveals the one thing in Christ – our salvation. Even the doctrine of the Trinity, as utterly sublime as it is, remains a matter revealed for our salvation. ...
In my limited reading I have never read any particular commentary that spoke of the music of the Church as an icon, but I feel confident in describing it in that manner. It is possible to say this, at the very least, because all of creation can properly be seen as icon – a window to heaven.

To say that music is an icon is not to have said all there is to say about music. But it does say something about the proper place of music in the Church. Music is not about us. Music in the Church does not exist for our enjoyment or entertainment, even though the joy associated with it may at times be exquisite.

Archimandrite Zacharias (of St. John’s Monastery in Essex) describes the heart of worship as “exchange.” It is not an exchange in the sense that we offer something in “trade” with God. Rather, it is an exchange that is also named “communion” and “participation.” God becomes what we are and in and through Him (by grace) we become what He is. This “exchange” is our salvation. ...

Music exists for exchange and union. It is the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in which we unite ourselves in offering our bodies (the voice) as a living sacrifice to God...

Not all paintings are icons. Not all music is iconic. Not every voice is raised in union with the heavenly hosts. ... To sing in a manner that reveals heaven and unites us with the heavenly hosts is a great thing indeed. We were created to sing in just such a manner....

Music that renders heaven opaque – particularly music presented as Christian – is tragic. We were meant to sing with angels – just as they delight in singing with us.

Beautiful.

Life is not long enough for me to be wasting energy on the opacity fatherstephen decries.

The first few weeks of the year encompassed a really extraordinary variety of liturgical experiences, considering they almost all consisted of assisting at ordinary parish Ordinary Form Masses from the pews, (one Mass of Christian burial, and two EFs thrown in for good measure.)

Musically, they were all disappointing, except, surprisingly, for a single EF Mass done with very limited resources.
Not that they didn't hold some beautiful and beautifully played and/or sung music.

But I am astonished at how many ways there are to do things badly, and distractingly -- and this is emphatically not because I think there is only one way to do the music at Mass well.

Yes, I have preferences, but though I like to play the nit-picking curmudgeon, I can be happy with an enormous range of liturgical practices.

But I am weary of the inauthentic, the ego-centric and the just plain incompetent.

Is it a betrayal of a pre-conciliar mindset, of latent clericalism that I blame, not the musicians, but the priests, the pastors? ;o)

And is that fair of me?