Some thoughts on the debate of "new" music on Byzcath.org

Why is the music from the current Pittsburgh Metropolia IEMC constantly being reffered to as "new" music? The only "new" part of the music is in fact the translation. The music is primarily taken from a 100 year old text published in Uzhorod, Ukraine.

Is there some [i]older[/i] music that we should be using instead?

I think of "new" music as the 1964/65 music commission's work which had an episcopal directive of 'keep it(the music) simple'. For more than a complete generation now we have been singing this "new" music, that came at the same time as a translation coincidentally.

The real issue has not been the music but the revised translations and the underlying revisions to the rubrics. The "new" music from the IEMC is no more difficult to sing than the 'original' Slavonic of 100 years ago.

Perhaps it is my biased view that things were not as we necessarily imagined them to be 100 years ago in the 'glory' days of our musical tradition.
Each of us only knows a tiny fraction of the history. Each of us also has a bias of our own history to colour our perceptions of what the past was.

It was enlightening to see and hear what was realy happening in modern day Ukraine and compare what has transpired in the USA with the music and translation issues.