We
complain that choirs and organs take the music to themselves in our
churches, and that nothing is left to the people but to hear their
undistinguishable piping, which no one else can join or follow or
interpret. This must always be the complaint, till the congregations
themselves have exercise enough in singing to make the performance
theirs. As soon as they are able to throw in masses of sound that are
not barbarous, but Christian, and have a right enjoyment of their
feeling in it, they will have the tunes and the style of the exercise in
their own way,--not before.... The more sorrowful is it, that, in our
present defect of culture, there are so many voices which are more
incapable of the right distinctions of sound than things without life,
and which, when they attempt to sing, contribute more to the feeling of
woe than of praise."
These words are as true to-day as when they were uttered twelve years
ago. Congregations which do not desire, or cannot afford, to resign the
musical portion of their service to professional singers, have something
more to do than to complain that the music is bad, or that they do not
like paid vocalists to troll out psalmody for them. They must go to work
and make their own music,--real music; for in these days unharmonious
sounds are almost as much out of place in the worship of God as an
uncatholic spirit and an heretical doctrine.
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