Most Catholic parishes are now in a position to begin to evaluate liturgical music to use with the new Missal. There’s not much point to the process if there is no agreement on the method. In the United States, the “three-fold test” is popular to cite (liturgical, musical, pastoral) but I’ve never really seen evidence that this test is much of a test at all since there is no agreement on what each of the standards really mean.
I could say a piece fails all three and someone else could say that a piece passes all three, and then we would really find ourselves at a dead end, arguing again about what the three-fold test really means. It’s a bit like a test of food that it should taste good, look good, and be good for you. Well, yes, but I’m not sure that this helps much in deciding what to have for dinner. The test only passes the argument on to a different stage of argumentation.
In any case, it seems that many Catholic musicians are under the impression that only one test is actually necessary: people must be able pick up the melody quickly and sing it. Interestingly, that standard does not seem to enter into the discussion of a single letter or teaching from any serious authority in the history of the Catholic faith. And yet it is the one test that seems to survive.
The entire scene reminds me of the show American Bandstand that I watched when I was a young child. Every new song was evaluated on a scale of 1 to 10 and nearly everyone questioned would say the same thing: “It has a good beat and you can dance to it.” Even when I was 7 or 8 years old, I recall thinking: this is the most superficial standard I’ve ever heard. Of course, we are talking about dance music here so perhaps superficial isn’t such a bad thing. But when it comes to liturgical music, we are talking about music that reaches out of time into eternity in the act of prayer. Strangely, if anyone said anything about that test, the video makers didn’t put their words on the final cut.