The Value of Sacred Music: An Anthology of Essential Writings, 1801-1918

The Value of Sacred Music

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The Value of Sacred Music An Anthology of Essential Writings, 1801–1918 COMPILED BY JONATHAN L. FRIEDMANN

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY

OF

CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

The value of sacred music : an anthology of essential writings, 1801–1918 / compiled by Jonathan L. Friedmann. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-4201-0 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Music—Religious aspects—History. I. Friedmann, Jonathan L., 1980– ML3921.V36 2009 781.71—dc22

2. Churh music. 2008047024

British Library cataloguing data are available ©2009 Jonathan L. Friedmann. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover images ©2008 Shutterstock Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

Table of Contents Preface

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Introduction

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Part I. Origins of Sacred Music 1. Bible History of Music (1853) Nathaniel D. Gould

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2. Spirit of Jewish Music (1887) Louis S. Davis

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3. Ancient Jewish Hymns (1910) Louis C. Elson

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4. Primitive and Ancient Religious Music (1903) Edward Dickinson

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5. Religion and the Art of Music (1914) Waldo Selden Pratt

51

Part II. Music and Spirituality 6. Music in Relation to Public Worship (1881) John Bulmer

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7. The Mysticism of Music (1915) R. Heber Newton

73

8. The Emotions in Music (1874) E. Janes

91

9. Music, Emotions, and Morals (1893) Hugh Reginald Haweis

99

v

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Part III. Standards of Sacred Music 10. The Art of Gregorian Music (1896) Dom Andre Mocquereau

105

11. Sing to the Harp with a Psalm of Thanksgiving (1801) William Jones

122

12. Church Music: General Considerations (1904) A. Madeley Richardson

133

13. Secular Currents in Synagogal Chant in America (1918) Joseph Reider

138

14. Music as an Aid to Worship and Work (1884) W. H. Gladstone, W. Parratt, S. A. Barnett, and C. H. Hylton Stewart

Index

147 175

Preface Over the past several decades, sacred music has experienced growing popularity among both scholars and the general public. More and more, the intersection of song and religion has become a standard topic in music and religious studies departments, and interfaith groups worldwide have instituted annual concerts of sacred music. These developments reflect an increased recognition that not only are music and religion fundamental to the human experience, they are also inextricably linked in the context of religious worship. The close relationship of music and prayer does, of course, have ancient roots. In fact, it was the rabbinic sages, some fifteen hundred years ago, who best described this indelible partnership: “Where there is song, there shall be prayer” (Devarim Rabba 80:2). And among the Bible’s many references to the singing of divine praise is the stirring proclamation from Psalms: “Sing unto God with the voice of melody” (Ps. 47:1). Still, the age-old acknowledgment of music’s profound role in religious experience has yielded surprisingly few writings on the subject. This paucity of material is due largely to the fact that because the value of sacred music is self-evident to those who participate in religious services, it often fails to inspire serious reflection. Sacred music is, it seems, more apt for experience than discussion. As a result, there exists no common body of literature on sacred music, but rather scattered reflections, often on topics so specialized or denomination-specific that they appeal only to a handful of musicians and scholars. Especially lacking are writings of centuries past—scholarship that can serve as a historical foundation for the broader study of music and religion. After all, if the study of sacred music is to be a more organized, interdisciplinary field of research—rather than one primarily limited to church and synagogue musicians—there ought to be made available a collection of historical writings from which to derive theories, questions, insights, and debates. Most crucially, these writings should address topics both universal enough to have wide application, and rich enough to warrant serious contemplation. 1

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Fortunately, writings of this sort, though few and largely neglected, have been preserved on library shelves. This anthology presents the most accessible of such works, selected for their broad subject matter and keen insights into the essential union of music and worship. As a whole, they span the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period that witnessed the emergence of musicology, psychology, and religious studies—formative versions of which inform many arguments found in this volume. Written from varied perspectives and by scholars of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish music, these selections have in common a favorable view of music in religious ritual, and an understanding that music can communicate the spirituality of worship far better than words. Topics covered include the history of music’s use in religious ritual, the emotional impact of music on worshipers, and the need for standards of selecting sacred music for religious services—all issues with relevance for present-day readers. Moreover, these essays, among the first to view the subject of religion and music through a modern historical-scientific lens, advocate a humanistic evaluation of sacred music, focused less on the technical aspects of musical composition, and more on the effect of sound patterns on the listener—the expressive nature of music that makes it such a valuable part of the worship experience. Unlike much of musicological analysis, they are not concerned with the lives or compositional styles of composers of sacred music, such as Palestrina, Bach, or Mendelssohn, but rather address the larger and more universal questions: Why is music such a natural part of religious ritual, and what sort of music is conducive to worship? For this reason, in particular, these essays are worthy of inclusion in modern discussions of sacred song, engaging as they do the heart and spirit of music often lost in the details of musicological and even theological discussions of music and religion. It must be noted, however, that these essays, originally published between 1801 and 1918, reflect the intellectual period in which they were written. While this does not adversely affect the main thrust of the individual essays, some of the writings contain generalizations, historical omissions or misinformation, ethnocentric statements, and a reliance on the Bible as a completely reliable historical document—arguments that have since been expunged from academic discourse. As such, they embody both the good and the bad of nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship: they are bold, adventurous, and pioneering, but also tinged with a sense of social and cultural superiority. As distasteful as some of the claims made in this volume may be to present-day readers, the greater import of these writings should not be ignored. Rather, they should be understood in their social and intellectual context, and appreciated for the light they can still shed on the larger subject of sacred music. After all, if we were to dismiss these writings because they contain a few old-fashioned statements, then the invaluable ideas they present would forever go unnoticed.

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I am grateful to the libraries of Stanford University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, California State University, Long Beach, and the University of California, Los Angeles for preserving and making available these important writings. They have enabled modern readers to evaluate these old essays, and to find for themselves those ideas and viewpoints still vital for the deeper understanding of the value of sacred music. This anthology presents, for the first time, a collection of important historical essays dealing specifically with the purpose and function of sacred music. The selections in this volume are, I believe, both approachable and useful for present-day readers. It is my hope that this anthology, while more representative than comprehensive, will serve as a much-needed introduction to the historical thought on sacred music, and that the essays it contains will inspire readers to think more deeply about the role of music in religious ritual.

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Introduction Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “Music, like time, is measured but immeasurable, is composed but indivisible.”1 Though the elements of music can be distilled and analyzed, the impact of music upon the listener defies mechanical examination. Music is immediate, affecting directly the ineffable realm of human emotion. Through a combination of pitches, rhythms, timbres, durations, and dynamics, music can, in the words of musicologist Nicholas Cook, “unlock the most hidden contents of [one’s] spiritual and emotional being.”2 Consciously or unconsciously, we relate particular sound stimuli to nonmusical concepts, images, and qualities.3 Recognizing this human tendency, theorists of the Baroque period devised the Doctrine of the Affections, which identified specific emotions with standardized musical devices. The “lamento bass,” for instance, was considered an expression of sadness, while euphoria was represented by a rapidly ascending sequence of thirds. In the twentieth century, Leonard B. Meyer adopted the position that while emotions are not inherent in musical tones themselves, to a culturally knowledgeable listener they do provide certain expectations and tendencies. For any given culture, there exist distinct musical patterns that either inhibit or fulfill the psychological need for resolution. In this way, emotional responses to music are aroused primarily through the interplay of tension and release.4 Aaron Copland also described the indispensable role of the “gifted listener” in the performance of music. Noting the need for interpretation in the experience of all art forms, Copland wrote, “Because music provides the broadest possible vista for the imagination since it is the freest, most abstract, the least fettered of all the arts,” it is also the most dependent upon imaginative treatment.5 Without the free and total involvement of one’s heart and mind, the full meaning and significance of music is not conveyed.

Music and Prayer Our intuitive response to musical sounds justifies in particular music’s role in religious ritual. As an aid to worship, music communicates the mystery that 5

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lies beyond liturgical language, bringing intimate understanding to oftentimes distant or abstract religious concerns. Just as the subject of theology cannot be depicted fully in human vocabulary, music expresses the verbally inexpressible.6 As one scholar noted, “Only the elevated language of tones is fitted for speaking with God.”7 Truly effective sacred songs can both foster and enhance a meaningful religious experience, making the transcendent present among the worshiping congregation. Cantor Jacob Beimel described eloquently the centrality of song in Jewish and Christian worship: The human soul, which expresses itself in religious beliefs and customs, finds a medium for the utterances of its varied expressions in music. Moreover, that soul receives its very nourishment from these two attributes, religion and music. There has existed, from time immemorial, a strong and indispensable bond between divinity and the art of music. In the pagan world of polytheistic beliefs, the religious services were accompanied by music. Among the peoples confessing a monotheistic religion, music, of whatever variety and custom it may consist (vocal, instrumental, or both), has constituted an integral part of their divine services. This has been especially true for Judaism and Christianity, where there can be no approach to the Almighty without song.8

This account reveals, among other things, the programmatic nature of sacred song. The unity of music and text reflects the interpretation of the composer, as well as his or her agenda to stimulate—or at least approximate—a sense of the sacred. As opposed to so-called “absolute music,” which does not exist “to teach, to refer the listener to a certain event, or even to evoke particular emotions,”9 the music of worship is imbued with ritual function—it is “music with a purpose.” Such music is, most centrally, designed to intensify the sacred moment. A prayer presented through music may deepen the desired union between the finite (humanity) and the infinite (God)—a fellowship essential to religious life. And while liturgy may at times fail to capture the grandeur of the sacred— struggling as it does against the mechanical tendencies inherent in ritual routine—music provides sacred text with a vehicle for spiritual elevation. Words set to music achieve a greater emotive range and associational power than ordinary speech. Song can heighten one’s attentiveness during prayer, and imbue worship with a sense of “otherness” required of the sacred experience.

Music as Ceremonial Ritual Along with its theological import, sacred music has social functions. As Steven A. Marini wrote in his book Sacred Song in America, sacred music is presented in a social context, “consciously prepared to facilitate such a religious event,”10 and symbolically moves worshipers away from everyday concerns, and into a “shared mythic consciousness.”11 Sacred music is a conduit through which believers enter the religious dimension. Through a complex

Introduction

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drama of words and music, sacred song of the highest order—that which is sincere, inspired, and true to the liturgy—helps to inspire spiritual intention, and exemplifies music’s potential to enhance the experience of living. For this reason, music in worship is an especially potent form of ceremonial ritual. Sociologist Émile Durkheim noted that such ritual provides a cohesive function, bringing people together, reaffirming social bonds, and bolstering congregational solidarity. In the Jewish synagogue, for instance, this role of sacred music is expressed clearly in the congregational singing of Hinei Ma Tov, a liturgical text taken from Psalm 133: “How good and how pleasant that brothers dwell together.” Sung to a variety of melodies, the message of Hinei Ma Tov supports quite literally the social function of prayer-song. With it, the congregation affirms, at least implicitly, an underlining assumption of shared values and beliefs—what Durkheim understood as the basis of religious “brotherhood.”12 Likewise, Jewish sacred music serves what Durkheim called a revitalizing function, reminding the community of its shared history and common social heritage. This is evident, for example, in the use of Misinai tunes: melody-types traditionally believed to have been transmitted to Moses on Sinai. Of course, we have no record of music from the days of Moses; but Misinai melodies do have relatively ancient roots, developing in southern Germany and eastern France between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries C.E. These quintessential Ashkenazi themes and motifs have come to dominate the music of Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), leading to the reality that virtually all Ashkenazi Jews throughout the world hear these melodies during the High Holy Days. Such time-honored and ubiquitous musical themes connect Jews otherwise religiously and geographically dispersed. They are an audible ritual expression of a collective past. Jewish sacred music also achieves what Durkheim termed the euphoric function of ceremonial ritual. Synagogue music helps to establish both a sense of the sacred and a feeling of social well-being among worshiping Jews, particularly those faced with communal instability, disappointment, or calamity. To be sure, the need for such music varies depending on the condition of the community—a fact reflected in the remarkable persistence of prayer-song in Jewish ghettos and concentration camps during the Holocaust. There is, indeed, a long history of singing in the face of adversity. For centuries, the hardships of war, persecution, and varied forms of discrimination have inspired songs of witness and hope. This is illustrated by a firsthand account of Yom Kippur in the Nazi-occupied ghetto of Kovno, Lithuania, where a determined cantor brought heightened spirituality and a sense of normalcy—the dual aspects of Durkheim’s ritual euphoria—to his small congregation: In the same year in which the Germans had occupied Kovno, prayer groups were organized in the ghetto for the High Holy Days, and one such group met in the

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Introduction hospital. In the middle of Yom Kippur, in fact in the middle of the musaf [additional] service when the cantor and the participants poured out their hearts in prayer, a rumor suddenly spread that two German officials from the “Staatskommissariat” had entered the ghetto and were going in the direction of the hospital. The hospital was notified at once and just as in the time of the Spanish Inquisition, every trace of the “major crime” momentarily disappeared. The Holy Ark was hidden, the burning Yom Kippur candles were extinguished, the prayer books were hidden, and the participants were hidden in a separate room. The two Germans inspected the hospital for some time but they found nothing suspicious. After they left everything and everyone returned to their place and the musaf service continued until its conclusion.13

The Sacred in Music Any understanding of the sacred in music should begin with the assumption that, at least for the composers and presenters of sacred song, the sacred experience is a real phenomenon, removed totally from the domain of ordinary life. In this regard, it is worthwhile to explore the influential work of theologian Rudolph Otto, who believed the sacred to be a reality “whose special character we can feel without being able to give it clear conceptual expression.”14 Otto maintained that the numinous experience, which signals the presence of the sacred, is “more fundamental than and independent of any belief or conceptual understanding of the experience.”15 In his 1917 book The Idea of the Holy, Otto described the numinous experience as “perfectly sui generis and irreducible to any other; and therefore, like every absolutely primary and elementary datum, while it admits of being discussed, it cannot be strictly defined.”16 However, while acknowledging the unspeakable nature of this experience, Otto did attempt to describe its characteristics. Importantly, Otto posited that the sacred experience begins with a “feeling of personal nothingness and submergence before the awe-inspiring object directly experienced.”17 Otto described this feeling as “stupor,” which “signifies blank wonder, an astonishment that strikes us dumb, amazement absolute.”18 At the same time, he was careful to distinguish this reaction from the realm of ordinary emotions, believing it to be a unique response, analogous to the experience of being afraid, yet ultimately distinct. More specifically, Otto saw the sacred experience as an indescribable combination of fear and awe, or mysterium tremendum. This understanding of fear and awe in the presence of God has an important parallel in the medieval philosophical writings of Moses Maimonides. Maimonides believed both fear and awe to be natural emotional responses to the contemplation of the cosmos, intrinsically linked as “mirror image” emotions. He described awe as a primary response to the vastness of nature, which

Introduction

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is followed by an overwhelming sense of fear, as one realizes the insignificance of oneself in relation to the sacred: When a man contemplates [God’s] great and wondrous deeds and creations, and sees in them His unequaled and infinite wisdom, he immediately loves and praises and exults Him, and is overcome by a great desire to know His great Name... And when he considers these very matters, immediately he withdraws and is frightened and knows that he is but a small, lowly, dark creature who, with his inferior and puny mind, stands before Him who is perfect in His knowledge.19

It is unclear whether Otto was influenced directly by Maimonides, but, like Maimonides, Otto found sufficient basis for the numinous experience in the Hebrew Bible. In Genesis 28:17, for instance, Jacob, who ascends to heaven, remarks, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.” To Otto, this response contains at once “primal numinous awe,” “aweful veneration,” and “immediacy.”20 Jacob recognized the awesome and overwhelming presence of this sacred place; his proclamation suggests a mixed sense of fear and awe. Otto is not, however, without his critics. As mentioned, he believed that regardless of how the numinous experience is later interpreted, the experience itself occurs prior to and independent of belief. In this way, he understood the sacred as a reality existing apart from a conceptual, religious framework. In contrast, philosopher of religion Wayne Proudfoot and others have noted that in order to identify an experience as sacred, one must have prior reference to what constitutes the religious—that is, a theory or belief.21 To be sure, such critiques have importance in the academic study of religion, but do not necessarily hinder application of Otto’s theory to sacred music, which is—presumably—composed and presented by believers for clearly defined religious settings. Rather, Otto’s description is ideally suited for an analysis of sacred music, particularly as it views the sacred experience as a highly emotional, non-rational, and ineffable connection with the “Wholly Other”—an experience that lends itself to musical approximation. Significantly, Otto, a great lover of music, compared the sacred experience to “the beauty of a musical composition which no less eludes complete conceptual analysis.”22 Like a symphony, the enormity of the sacred experience occurs instantaneously, allowing little time for one to examine its complexities or decipher particular elements. As an interviewee in William James’ classic Varieties of Religious Experience noted, the numinous experience is “like the effect of some great orchestra, when all the separate notes have melted into the swelling harmony.”23 One’s emotions are overwhelmed by this spontaneous and all-encompassing experience; awe and tremor merge in an indescribable feeling. Sacred music, then, operates primarily on the level of analogy. Some musical moods are similar to those aroused by the encounter with the holy, and can, by association, inspire within the listener a sacred experience. With

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this, we come to an important issue in sacred music: some forms of music are intrinsically suited as modes of religious-spiritual expression, while others are not. And, despite the problems inherent in labeling certain musical styles or techniques most appropriate for religious service—especially as sacred music is a culturally diverse form of religious expression—it is clear that for music to be considered sacred, it must embody certain “holy” qualities: peace, contentment, joy, unity, harmony, awe, majesty, and so on. In Western Church music, for example, transcendence is frequently expressed in soft passages, analogous to the silent fear and awe inspired in the presence of the sacred. Thus, for Otto’s understanding of the numinous experience to find resonance in music, the music itself must possess a certain—if ultimately inexplicable— quality of sacredness. As Richard Viladesau, a Catholic priest and scholar, has written: Otto’s theory throws a great deal of light on the relation of music and spirituality. It accounts for the difference between what is called serious and what is called light music, and shows why there is some sense to the idea of a sacred “style”: those forms of music that have emotional and intellectual associations of sufficient “depth” to be appropriate carriers of sacred words or themes (while light or frivolous forms of music, although perhaps pleasant in themselves, may betray a sacred message by inappropriate associations that trivialize it). It also explains why music can be seen in religion as the height of spiritual expression or, alternatively, as the epitome of sensual depravity.24

Music that succeeds in capturing a religious mood can inspire devotion and spiritual contemplation. Even if one fails to resonate with the message of prayer, or is distracted from deep worship by worldly concerns, sacred music can stimulate an appropriate emotional state, disarming the rational mind, and inviting an embrace of the sacred moment. To be sure, music does not always alleviate this “problem of prayer”; but it nevertheless strives to guide the worshiper into the requisite prayerful state of mind. Music is thus a powerful—if imperfect—defense against the disengagement that may occur during prayer. And, as long as wholehearted worship remains a religious ideal, the partnership of music and prayer will endure.

The Value of Sacred Music Collected in this anthology are the thoughts and opinions of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish scholars, musicians, and clergymen, all of whom address the oft-neglected question: What is the value of sacred music? The partnership of prayer and song is a union so commonplace that it often fails to inspire deep reflection. Music is, after all, a natural and essential part of the worship experience, but few who engage in worship seek to understand the reasons for the unity of music and prayer, or the qualities of music that justify its religious

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role. Indeed, it is largely due to music’s direct emotional impact that the critical evaluation of sacred song rarely seems necessary. This volume is made up of historical reflections on sacred song, spanning from 1801 to 1918. Though revealing some prejudices and inaccuracies common to much of nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship—particularly in the assessment of non-western and so-called “primitive” cultures— these diverse and valuable explorations nevertheless contribute greatly to our understanding of the religious, social, and psychological significance of music in the context of worship. Indeed, these old writings, “dusted off ” for modern readers, are filled with precious insights still relevant for those interested in the place of music in religious ritual. Part I, “Origins of Sacred Music,” offers five essays on the development of music as a mode of religious expression. Tracing the centrality of music throughout the Bible—from Creation to the Last Supper—Nathaniel D. Gould gives special attention to the human voice as a divinely created instrument intended for the service of God. Louis S. Davis examines the beginnings of sacred music in Jewish worship, suggesting that a careful balance of cultural discrimination and assimilation enabled the Israelites, while slaves in Egypt, to simultaneously maintain a monotheistic system and adopt the Egyptian practice of musical worship. Louis C. Elson discusses in detail the growth of worship music in the Bible from the spontaneous song of Miriam to the institutionalized singing of the Temple, as well as the continued spiritual efficacy of Psalm-singing in modern Judeo-Christian worship. Edward Dickinson focuses on the dramatizing function of music and dance in ancient religions, and the echo of this musical drama in modern liturgical song. Waldo Selden Pratt, defining religion as mainly a social phenomenon, frames western music as a creation of the church, and stresses the necessity of music in promoting liturgical literacy among Christians. Part II, “Music and Spirituality,” presents unique reflections on the psycho-spiritual impact of sacred music. John Bulmer discusses music’s role in enhancing spiritual concentration and religious joy during worship, and cautions that music must remain an aid to—and not become the object of—worship. Writing on the mysticism of music, R. Heber Newton suggests that music is a pathway for gaining intimate understanding of the human soul and the divine. E. Janes sheds light on the expressiveness of music, arguing among other things that musical sounds produce virtually universal emotional responses among listeners. Concluding this section is an essay by Hugh Reginald Haweis, linking music, emotions, and morality. Part III, “Standards of Sacred Music,” opens with an essay by Dom Andre Mocquereau, who identifies Gregorian chant as the most sincere musical expression of the Christian faith, unhindered by the harmonic and rhythmic complexities of Palestrina, Bach, and other composers, and embodying Christian ideals of strength, purity, love, and truth. William Jones questions whether

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music should be used for anything other than divine service, and asserts that sacred music, as it is composed with the highest aspirations in mind, far exceeds the emotive and even artistic potential of secular music. Confronting the musical diversity of the Church of England, which he views as detrimental to the spirit of prayer, A. Madeley Richardson argues that many church composers write worship music that reflects the popular and “vulgar” tastes of the masses, rather than the twofold purpose of sacred song: offering and edification. Joseph Reider writes on a similar phenomenon within American Jewish worship, where sacred texts have been set to foreign and secular-inspired melodies, blurring the intended separation of sacred and profane time and space. Lastly, we encounter the perspectives of four men, W. H. Gladstone, W. Parratt, S. A. Barnett, and C. H. Hylton Stewart, who address the topic of music as an aid to worship and work. They discuss, among other issues, the need for worship music that reflects divine rather than “popular” aspirations, and the importance of maintaining a balance between choral and congregational song in the church service. Also stressed is the importance of worship music that strikes not only the ear, but also the heart.

Notes 1. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, Vol. 1, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 67. 2. Nicholas Cook, A Guide to Musical Analysis (London: Oxford University Press, 1987), 1. 3. Louis Ibsen al Faruqi, “What Makes ‘Religious Music’ Religious?” in Joyce Irwin, ed., Sacred Sound: Sacred Sound: Music in Religious Thought and Practice (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 26 –27. 4. Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 260. 5. Aaron Copland, Music and the Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), 7. 6. Don E. Saliers, Music and Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 9. 7. Oskar Sönhegen, “Music and Theology: A Systematic Approach,” in Joyce Irwin, ed., Sacred Sound: Music in Religious Thought and Practice (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 8. 8. Jacob Beimel, “Divinity and Music: A Jewish Conception,” Jewish Music Journal, vol. 1, no.1 (1934): 114 –15. 9. Marsha Bryan Edelman, Discovering Jewish Music (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003), 163. 10. Steven A. Marini, Sacred Song in America: Religion, Music, and Public Culture (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 7. 11. Ibid. 12. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Carol Crossman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 42 –43. 13. Fred S. Heuman, trans., “Prayer and the Sheliah Tzibbur During the Holocaust,” Journal of Jewish Music and Liturgy, vol. 3 (1985–86): 55. 14. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), 30.

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15. Ibid., 278. 16. Ibid., 7. 17. Ibid., 17. 18. Ibid., 26. 19. Moses Maimonides, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah, 2:2. 20. Otto, 126. 21. See Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 22. Otto, 59. 23. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 5th Printing (New York: Mentor, 1958), 66. 24. Richard Viladesau, Theology and the Arts: Encountering God through Music, Art and Rhetoric (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 30.

Bibliography al Faruqi, Louis Ibsen. “What Makes ‘Religious Music’ Religious?” In Sacred Sound: Music in Religious Thought and Practice, ed. Joyce Irwin, 21–34. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983. Beimel, Jacob. “Divinity and Music: A Jewish Conception.” Jewish Music Journal, vol. 1, no.1 (1934): 114 –15. Cook, Nicholas. A Guide to Musical Analysis. London: Oxford University Press, 1987. Copland, Aaron. Music and the Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. Durkheim, Émile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Trans. Carol Crossman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Edelman, Marsha Bryan. Discovering Jewish Music. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. 5th Printing. New York: Mentor, 1958. Heuman, Fred S., trans. “Prayer and the Sheliah Tzibbur During the Holocaust.” Journal of Jewish Music and Liturgy, vol. 3 (1985–86): 53–55. Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, Vol. 1. Trans. Walter Lowrie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. Marini, Steven A. Sacred Song in America: Religion, Music, and Public Culture. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Meyer, Leonard B. Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy: An inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational. London: Oxford University Press, 1923. Proudfoot, Wayne. Religious Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Saliers, Don E. Music and Theology. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007. Sönhegen, Oskar. “Music and Theology: A Systematic Approach.” In Sacred Sound: Music in Religious Thought and Practice, ed. Joyce Irwin, 1–20. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983. Viladesau, Richard. Theology and the Arts: Encountering God through Music, Art and Rhetoric. New York: Paulist Press, 2000.

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PART I

Origins of Sacred Music

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, 1 .

Bible History of Music (1853) Nathaniel D. Gould When we reflect on the subject of music or harmony, our minds are instantly carried back more than five thousand years, when all was harmony. God, in his infinite goodness, created man with music in his soul, and melody in his voice; so that, when he had finished the work of creation, man and angels might unite in one glorious song of praise. But alas! That song was short. A discordant note was soon heard. The introduction of music, at the commencement of time, is well portrayed in the following extract from a poem on music, by Miss H. F. Gould: “Music! a blessed angel she was born, Within the palace of the King of kings— A favorite near his throne. In that glad child Of love and joy, he made their spirits one, And he the heir of everlasting life. When his bright hosts would give him highest praise, They send her forward with her dulcet voice, To pour her holy rapture in their ear. When the young earth to being started forth, Music lay sleeping in a bower of heaven; When, suddenly, A shout of joy from all the songs of God Rang through his courts; and then the thrilling call: Wake! Sister music, wake! and hail with us A new-created sphere! She woke; she rose; She moved among the morning stars, and gave The birth-song of a world. Gould, Nathaniel D. “Bible History of Music.” In Church Music in America: Its History and Its Peculiarities at Different Periods, with Cursory Remarks on Its Legitimate Use and Its Abuses. Boston: A. N. Johnson, 1853.

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I. Origins of Sacred Music Since that blessed hour, Whilst heaven is still her home, Music is ne’er This darkened world forsaken. She delights, Though man may lose or keep the paths of Peace, To soothe, to cheer, to light and warm the heart, And lends her wings to waft him to the skies.”

Harmony Destroyed While for a moment we confine our thoughts to that first scene and song, we are filled with admiration; for, while our first parents were innocent, their every breath was praise. In the midst of this enraptured scene, subsequent history presses in upon our minds, and we are instantly hurried forward but a step or two in the history of man, when all is confusion and discord. Man deigned to take the instrument, which came from God’s own hand in perfect tune, seeming to doubt its perfection, and by one fatal act destroyed both melody and harmony throughout the new-created world.

Exertions to Restore It From that time to the present, good men of every age have been attempting to restore a faint resemblance of that harmony which was lost by man’s transgression, and to harmonize the discordant feelings of mankind. No expedient, save that of the gospel of Jesus Christ, has done so much to soften the ferocious propensities of human nature as the employment of sacred music; while the arch enemy of man, who tempted our first parents to that dreadful act, has ever since been busily engaged in frustrating the designs of good men of every age, and nowhere else so untiring as with the lovers and performers of sacred music. The music of the church ever has been, and ever will be, an invincible enemy.

Music and Prayer the Only Acts of Worship It would probably be interesting to some, and profitable to many, should we trace music, from its origin, all along through Bible history, and mark minutely its grand and solemn exhibitions as an act of worship. We should find, all along, equally prominent and equally solemn, prayer and praise; always coupled together as acts, and the only direct acts, by which God was worshiped, they always have gone, and always will go, hand in hand. If religion languishes, so will sacred music. The same sentiments and language are used for both; but singing seems to have been considered the higher order, and the very cli-

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max of expression and devotion; and, when the power of speech has failed to give utterance to the feelings of the heart, the addition of melodious sounds, both of voices and instruments, has been called in to give full vent to holy affections. Neither our object nor our limits will permit us to give but a mere sketch of music as alluded to in the Bible. Numerous lectures and sermons have been written to describe those grand and solemn performances, and bring them down through the history of after centuries to the present time; and, although the links may often seem defective and irregular, if not broken, still God’s praises have always been sung among his saints, and he has ordained that they always shall be—that it has been so from the beginning, and he will never suffer it to be otherwise.

The Voice of Melody the Gift of God Music, though a complex and difficult art, is, in truth, evidently the gift of the Author of nature to the whole human race. Its existence, in some form, is to be traced in the records of every people, from the earliest ages to the present time, in every quarter of the globe. The infinite variety of sounds we hear, produced by waters, birds, animals, and the human voice, affect us with more or less pleasure. The only exceptions are those that warn us of something to be feared, such as the hissing of serpents, or the howling of wild beasts; but the melodious sounds of the human voice affect us most when united with speech or words. It then delights the ear, touches the heart, as language alone cannot. This pleasure derived from music must have been implanted in our nature, capable, however, of great improvement.

When Music Commenced The history of music, as we have seen, begins with the history of man. Scanty, indeed, are the materials; and, after all, conjecture must do much in describing its pathway from age to age. Although volumes have been written to describe it, still there are few facts contained in them all which are satisfactory. In the Bible history of the art, as used for sacred purposes, we soon find man using his voice, and inventing instruments to assist it in sounding praise to God.

First Music and Instruments The first mention of music is, that Jubal, the sixth son of Cain, is said to be the father of all such as “handle the harp or organ.” The French translate

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it, “violin and organ.” Not knowing, however, anything of their form or sound, we can only infer that one was a stringed and the other a wind instrument. We may also infer that the voice of music had been cultivated long before the instruments of Jubal; for how could instruments be tuned, until the voice and ear dictated the tone? What progress was made in the art of music by the antediluvians is unknown, for their improvements are buried with them in oblivion. The next mention made of music is in Genesis, thirtieth chapter, when the language of Laban to Jacob was, “Wherefore didst thou flee away secretly, and steal away from me, and didst not tell me, that I might have sent thee away with mirth and with songs, with tabret and with harp?” Next, Exodus fifteenth chapter. Here we find that Moses and the children of Israel shouted forth these words: “Sing ye unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea”; closing with “The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.” Then comes the response from the women, when Miriam the prophetess took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her, with timbrels and with dances, repeating the same words—“Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously.” These words, sung by Miriam, contain the first specimen of lyric poetry on record. In after time, the harp, lyre, trumpet, organ, etc., had been contrived, and used by man for the purpose of assisting the voice.

The Human Voice God’s Instrument All unassisted instruments, however, sink into insignificance when compared with the instrument that God has given man to praise him, which is the human voice. The ingenuity of man may invent instruments to make pleasant noise; this noise can be modulated into soft and loud, pathetic and solemn tones, to please and astonish; but, after all, it is but an accompaniment—it is nothing but sound. They cannot be made to articulate these words: “Hear my prayer, O Lord!,” or “Praise the Lord, O my soul!” The human voice and tongue alone can do it. Hence the royal Psalmist, when he calls upon “everything that hath breath to praise the Lord,” understands the distinction when he says, “The singers went before, and the players on instruments went behind;” an important example, not always observed at the present day, in practice, if in location.

Changes The changes that have taken place, since the days of Jubal, in the manner of using the voice, the different tones produced, the extent and division of

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the scale, the combination of sounds, and the manner of applying singing in the worship of God, cannot be definitely described. It is sufficient for us to know that, with all nations of the earth where God has been worshiped, prayer and praise have constituted that worship; and that those who learn to sing with the spirit and understanding on earth will be permitted to sing the song of Moses and the Lamb forever in a better world. We can also learn that the power of uniting voices belongs only to man. The birds can sing, each its own tune; but thousands and millions of men, women and children, can unite their voices; and every additional well-trained voice adds to the effort.

Holy Men of Old Engaged in the Cause All holy men, like David and Hezekiah, are found rejoicing in the privilege and honor of leading the multitude of worshipers around them in sacred song. At one time, we find four thousand Levites in the Tabernacle, divided into twenty-four courses, with two hundred and eighty-eight teachers, or leaders; and, in all instances, they rose up and sung. Unlike this is the practice of the present day; when not many of the great, the rich, or the noble, are found among those who engage in singing in the sanctuary; and in many instances both singers and hearers treat the subject with so much indifference, that they cannot take the trouble to rise up in this grand act of devotion. Solomon says, “I gat me ten singers, and women singers, and instruments, the delight of men, of all sorts.” It is said his songs were one thousand and five. At the dedication of the Temple, it is supposed there were more than fifty thousand employed as singers. The eighth psalm is addressed to Benaiah, the chief of the band of young women who sang in the service of religion. Women were thus early associated in acts of worship, and were instructed in music; for at that joyous and glorious day for God’s children, women took a part.

Music of the New Testament Music in the first ages of the Christian church, at the time of the Savior’s birth, was used in all the religions of the nations about Judea; but what that music was, is a matter of uncertainty. The following are some of the examples of singing when our Savior was on earth: The first strain of the music of the church, “Glory to God in the highest,

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and on earth peace, good will towards men,” was sung by an angelic choir, telling of the birth of the Savior. Children sang, “Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.” “And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises,” etc.

Singing at the Last Supper When we trace this part of the worship of holy men, before we come to the close of God’s word, a scene is described more interesting than any one before it, not for its grandeur and display, but the occasion. It is when the Savior of the world and his disciples met for the last time, and closed the solemn exercises by singing a hymn. The words of that hymn are not recorded; and perhaps it is well that they were not; for, if they had been written, we have reason to suppose that in every age they would have been profaned by a wicked world, like all others in the Bible. We are obliged, however, to conclude that poetry, as well as music, was in some manner cultivated at that time; for what psalm would be appropriate for that solemn and momentous occasion? And when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives. This was sung by those whose hearts were pure. How many would be glad to sing those words! Although lost, it would be well if we could imitate the pure, meek, and loving spirit that breathed forth the song. But we must confine ourselves more strictly to narrative; for the subject of praising God, as recorded in his word, both on earth and in heaven, is too sublime for us to present in its true light. It is a subject worthy the mightiest intellect of man—yea, great enough for an angel; and probably they alone can fully understand its import. The employment of praise or singing is, for aught we know, the only talent or acquisition on earth, transferred to heaven.

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Spirit of Jewish Music (1887) Louis S. Davis It is not at all remarkable that music of some kind should have been known in ages almost prehistoric; for, as a tone is, after all, only a prolongation of sound on any one degree of the chromatic scale, the human race could not have been very old before some individual made his discovery by blowing through a tube. Whether the tube was the throat or a piece of bamboo the difference was only in the timbre. The wonder, therefore, is not that music should have been discovered, but that the human race should for four thousand years have lived with the knowledge that there was a tone-world without the ability to enter it. There are, of course, sufficient reasons for this crystallizing, chief of which is the lack of mechanical appliances which, in our day, have made of such instruments as the piano and organ a marvel of ingenuity, power and sweetness. Still less a matter of wonder does it come when we remember that the knowledge of steam and electricity as active and tremendous forces were realized long before any glimmering intimation of the science of music; and yet it remained for Handel to write the Messiah while the forces which now shake the world still slept, nothing more than a perception, a realization which had existed from the earliest breath of the race. With regard to ecclesiastical music, or indeed music of any kind, the first authentic information of which we are possessed comes to us from the land of the Pharaohs. On the banks of the Nile, history was carved in characters of stone the achievement of this early civilization, giving ample record of the respect in which music was held, and the importance attached to its performance in all religious rites. Barbaric as must have been its character, not only on account of the primitive nature of the instruments, the thin, disconnected Davis, Louis S. “Spirit of Jewish Music.” In Studies in Musical History. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1887.

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harmonies, the poverty and attenuation of melody, there is that seeking for the ethereal, that feeling for the beyond, which gave to tone-history a beginning that, through all the ages of waiting, held fast the promise of its immortality when its laws should be comprehended, and the union of tone and spirit become forever one and indivisible. When Verdi wrote that superlative anachronism, the opera “Aida,” he unconsciously performed an act of poetic justice. The scenery, the costumes, the instruments, yea, even the tombs, are all there with the studied exactness of detail, harmony and chronology, which reveal the hand of the archaeologist wherever the curtain rises. Suppose that, instead of the voluptuous, almost lurid splendor of the music, we would substitute the ancient Egyptian mode of clothing thought in tone, how inexpressively flat and meaningless it would then appear. Yet the fruit which Verdi plucked sprang from the seed planted on Egyptian soil four thousand years ago, and amid the tombs and temples, the groves and palaces of the land of the Nile, we hear the evolutionized echo of the tone-life of pre-historic man. Under the religious despotism of Egypt ecclesiastical music arrogated to itself and maintained an importance which has left its traces on the manners of the people of that country today. Where the temples of Luxor and Carnac rise in pyramidal majesty, amid the pomp and splendor of Thebes, sang the mighty army of the priesthood. No organ there to shake the vast halls and open courts with the thunder of its double diapason, or weave its colossal harmonies in sympathetic utterance with the surrounding immensity, but a voice which spoke of a faith as supreme and gigantic as the autocracy under which it governed a nation of slaves. And these slaves—Here, amid the scenes of grandeur, which today, with the everlasting solitude brooding among its sphinxes and its columns, with its ritual forever departed, amid its stones standing stripped of their wealth of gold and ivory, precious wood and precious stones, appalls the modern traveler with the sense of its sublimity and his littleness here at the summit of Egyptian power, and in the midst of a ceremonial conducted nowhere else, since man drew breath, on so vast a scale, lived and listened to the hymn of religion and of despotism, a nation at once slave and alien. The Jew might look and listen, but he looked for a deliverer and he listened for his voice. In the choral thunder of the Egyptian priesthood he heard only the prayer of idolatry and the voice which governed him by the power of the lash. In despite of four centuries of slavery, the polytheism of the land of his adoption had taken but little hold on the heart which cherished the remembrance of the God of Abraham. The unifying power of the pharaohs stopped short when it encountered the unit of Goshen. Here, as in subsequent ages, they might murder his children and hold him and his people as property of the Government, but behold the limit. Few as were the traditions possessed by the Jews at this time they, nevertheless, sufficed to maintain external agency. But with that remarkable race-

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capacity for discriminating, and the no less remarkable ability to assimilate, it was not strange that, rejecting the dominion of Egypt, they should have retained for their civil and religious code a compilation largely based on the law of their taskmasters. Thus is was that the music also became incorporated into their ritual, never to depart from it while Israel should be Israel. On the banks of the sacred river, beneath the shadow of the pyramid, within the precinct of the walls where the names of Isis and Osiris were uttered with reverent and bated breath, and in the lowly dwelling of the slave, Israel had sung his lamentations and songs of bondage. But the hut and the temple were alike to disappear to give place to the arch of heaven, and the hymns of bondage to be substituted by anthems of freedom and victory. And now begins one of the most remarkable and sublime successions of composers of religious psalmody whose history was ever recorded by the pen of man. From the day of the Exodus until the close of the Old Testament history there passes before us in almost unbroken procession, judges, kings, prophets and priests, who were in the loftiest, broadest and profoundest sense the greatest of poets to which the race has ever given birth. From this day Jewish psalmody, with its concrete immensities of thought, was to be the foundation of all ecclesiastical music. By the law of repetition we find men of the nineteenth century deriving strength from the hymns which, more than three thousand years ago, gave inspiration and endurance to the Jewish people in their life-and-death struggle. Under the theocracy founded by Moses, ecclesiastical music was a term synonymous with national music. Of all instances to which humanity is susceptible, those of religion and patriotism are, I think, the most powerful and enduring. Moses was perhaps the only man at that epoch who could gauge the dynamics rendered possible by such a union. Filled with assurance that the God of Battles was with him, and nerved and stimulated by the thought that the eye, not of his General, but of his General’s General, was upon him, the defense of his home and the honor of his God were so blended into one that, to the Jew, a victory over an army of idolaters was as much a religious rite as the ritual of the tabernacle. Thus it was that every patriot was a religionist, and every true religionist was a devout patriot. As in the case of the galvanic battery, the closing of the circuit between the positive and the negative poles makes known the presence of the electric current, so it was that the completion of the circuit of positive and negative religion and patriotism, through its very intensity, produced a current of thought whose vibrations shall continue to be felt when perhaps the name of the people from whom it sprung will have passed into oblivion. The text remains, but the music was oral, as in the case of all preceding and most of the following music in every land. It is believed that many of the melodies now in use in the Jewish ritual have an origin pre-dating the Christian era by some centuries. But as for this claim there is no verification; it must always remain an open question. Nor

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have we, as in later periods, the means of estimating the growth and development of Jewish music, either as an art or an auxiliary to ecclesiasticism. There is indeed a comparative method by which may be guessed the character of Jewish music at the time of the Christian era; but this process would only show that melodies now in use are either of a comparatively recent date or have been so chromatically altered as to render them past recognition save by the student of the old Greek modes. The difference in these modes, or scales as they are now called, lay, of course, in their succession of tones. They had not, as we have, major and minor scales, but differed from us in having one to suffice for both. Thus the Dorian mode, corresponding to our key of D (of which the Phrygian and Lydian, with all their derived keys, were but transpositions, as in the case of the modern scale), differed from our scale of D in that its third, sixth and seventh were made minor. With this explanation I trust I shall be more fully understood when I repeat that, although there may exist Jewish melodies today which were written prior to the Christian era, their identity is so veiled or lost by chromatic alterations as to be almost unrecognizable. These primitive modes continued during some centuries of Christian music, and, indeed, are still found in the old Gregorian chants and German chorals. That there were many instruments, and many kinds of instruments, is a fact patent to the most casual reader of either sacred or profane history, but their compass and scope was limited, and they, if not from choice, from necessity were subordinated to music of the voice. As from the storehouse of Egyptian wisdom the Greek and the Jew had alike derived all that was known of music, so in a later period was Christianity to build on their work, and to fashion its hymns and chants upon the harmonies and melodies which lineally descended from the music of the Pharaohs. While Christianity, in its musical heritage, owes no more to the Jew than to the Greek, so far as real tone-knowledge is concerned, inasmuch as it first had being on Jewish soil, incorporating the Old Testament belief with the New, we may readily believe that where Jewish theology expounded the doctrines of the Christian, Jewish music would early be adopted as his psalmody. There remains a noble, but as yet unwritten chapter, which shall one day place music before the world as one of the great factors which go to make up history. Mighty weapons are the battle-hymns of Jew and Christian, Catholic and Protestant. You can hear them through all the ages that have been, clear and strong, forever welling up from the heart of the nations. And whether these be the hymns of peace or hymns of war, songs of grief or gladness, they are insensibly and imperceptibly fashioning the history of the race. This is, to my thinking, a field of speculation which to a careful student might yield a rich harvest. So far as I know, it is a subject which has never been directly discussed, but the time will come when we shall realize the great historic importance of ecclesiastical music.

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Ancient Jewish Hymns (1910) Louis C. Elson The hymns of the Old Testament were, as we have indicated, the spontaneous outflow of the religious nature. No form of worship requiring song was instituted by Moses. No order of singers is included among the officers of the tabernacle. Indeed, the earliest history of the Hebrew race is practically without song. As it has been said, “we read of altar and prayers and accepted intercessions, and we feel sure that those who walked in the light like Enoch or Abraham must have had their hearts kindled with music; but from the green earth rising out of the flood—from the shadow of the great rock at Mamre, from the fountains and valleys and upland pastures of the Promised Land, where the tents of the Patriarchs rose amidst their flocks—from the prisons and palaces of Egypt we catch no sound of sacred song.” But then, this is a subject with which history did not concern itself—and we must not infer from this silence the utter absence of song—for scattered over the earlier history there are traces of its presence. The first examples, as we should expect, are of a very in-formal character—the product of some crisis in the life of the individual or the nation. Improvised songs born of great occasions, though to our colder western temperament almost impossible, are yet comparatively common among Eastern people like the Hebrews, even to this day. It is a common gift among the Italians. The first of such songs is that of Miriam in celebration of the delivery of Israel from their Egyptian pursuers: “Sing ye to Jehovah, for he hath triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea”; but although this is the first recorded, it is almost certain that it was preceded by others, for before this we read of instruments of music. Elson, Louis C. “Ancient Jewish Hymns.” In University Musical Encyclopedia. New York: The University Society, 1910.

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Since the two greatest fountains of song have ever been love and religion, we may feel sure that those who had reached to the use of musical instruments, however rude, would employ them to accompany the words of passion or devotion which in exalted moments would spring to their lips. In Genesis 4:21 we are told that Jubal “was the father of all such as handle the harp and the pipe,” that is, of all string and wind instruments. While in verses 23–24 we have Lamech’s song to his wives—the first example of a song, though not a sacred one, in the pages of Scripture, yet possessing many of the features of later Semitic poetry. Later on we read in the account of Laban’s interview with Jacob of “songs, with tabret and with harp” (Gen. 31:27). It is not at all likely that such a song as that of Miriam could have been uttered if she had not previously been accustomed to lyric improvisation. So grand an outburst and so equal to its grand occasion, although doubtless touched and enlarged by the editor of the book which records it, implies not only aptitude but exercise; while the fact that she led a procession of women, who chanted a chorus to her song, shows that songs had before this, in the time of their Egyptian captivity, been wedded to music. Somewhat later in the history we find that when Moses returned from the mount, he heard the people, who had made a calf for worship, joining aloud in a song to their newly fashioned god. It is considered by some all but certain that the lawgiver himself was the author of Psalm 90, which has been called the swansong of Moses. This may have been the first contribution—the nucleus—of that wonderful collection the Book of Psalms, into which were gathered the noblest lyric utterances of widely severed times. We catch here and there in the sacred history glimpses of the widening and deepening river of song to which those we have mentioned were the first tributary streams. In the Book of Numbers 21:17, we have the song which Israel sang, “Spring up, O well.” In the Book of Judges we meet with the song of Deborah and Barak, which was cast in a distinctly metrical form, and sung with a musical accompaniment—another improvisation by a prophetess, that is one in a measure trained to music and song. But as the religious life of the nation grew deeper this kind of improvised song led the way to a school for the cultivation of music and sacred utterance. This was a chief function of the schools of the prophets which came into such prominence in the time of Samuel. Dean Stanley says: “Whatever be the precise meaning of the peculiar word, which now came first into use as the designation of these companies, it is evident that their immediate mission consisted in uttering religious hymns or songs, accompanied by musical instruments, psaltery, tabret, pipe, and harp, and cymbals. In them, as in the few solitary instances of their predecessors, the characteristic element was that the silent seer of visions found an articulate voice, gushing forth in a rhythmical flow, which at once riveted the attention of the hearer. These, or such as these, were the gifts which under Samuel were now organized, if one may so say, into a system. From Ramah, the double

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height of the watch-men, they might be seen descending, in a long line or chain, which gave its name to their company, with psaltery, harp, tabret, pipe, and cymbals.” From this school under Samuel the prophet, David, the sweet singer of Israel, probably caught the inspiration which afterward found expression in the psalms which form so important a part of the Psalter that the book as a whole has been known as “The Psalms of David.” It is impossible to say with certainty what portions of the Psalter we owe to his pen, probably they are fewer than is commonly supposed; but the impetus he gave to sacred song is indicated by the fact that though some portions of the book belong to an age earlier than his, and that the larger portion came into being long after he had passed away, yet the book as a whole goes under his name. The Book of Psalms was doubtless thus ascribed just as the Book of Proverbs was to his son Solomon, because, as Professor Cheyne says, “Solomon had become the symbol of plain ethical ‘wisdom,’ just as David had become the representative of religious lyric poetry.” But then a reputation like this does not grow out of nothing. David not only contributed to the songs of the people, but through him the service of song was added to the ordinary worship of the sanctuary, and made a fixed and integral part of the daily offering to Jehovah. Before his time, if ever connected with the tabernacle at all, it had been fitful and occasional, depending to a large extent on individual enthusiasm. “For so mighty an innovation no less than a David was needed. The exquisite richness of verse and music so dear to him—‘the calves of the lips’—took the place of the costly offerings of animals. His harp or guitar was to him what the wonder-working staff was to Moses, the spear to Joshua, or the sword to Gideon.” Thus sacred song found its way into the regular services of the temple, and the Psalms became the liturgical hymnbook of the Jewish Church. How completely the union of song and sacrifice (in the national worship) had been effected was made manifest at the dedication of the temple. In the account contained in 2 Chronicles 12–14, we read: “Also the Levites which were the singers, all of them, even Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and their brethren, arrayed in fine linen, with cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding their trumpets: it came even to pass when the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying, For he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever: that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the Lord; so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.” In the seventh chapter of the same book we find that, when Solomon had made an end of praying, all the children of Israel bowed themselves with their faces to the ground upon the pavement, and worshiped, and gave thanks unto the Lord, saying, “For he is

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good; for his mercy endureth for ever.” Thus, prayer and praise, the two most vital elements of a true worship, are found as integral parts of the service. It is somewhat difficult to say with certainty what place was afterward held by sacred song in the regular services of the temple. Certain psalms have been identified as having been used at particular seasons. But it is generally admitted that from this time onward, save when interrupted by the calamities which befell the nation, song, no less than sacrifice, held its ground as part of the Jewish worship. The Levites, without the accompaniment of any of their usual musical instruments, used to sing in the temple on each day of the week a different psalm. “On other occasions,” says the distinguished rabbinical scholar Paul Isaac Hershon, “various other psalms were sung, and sung so loud that their voice could be heard as far as Jericho, a distance of about twelve miles. On such occasions the youngsters of the Levites were permitted to enter the hall of the sanctuary in order to spice with their fine ‘thin voices’ the rougher voices of the elder Levites.” “The same psalms that were sung in the temple are now merely repeated by every orthodox Jew in his daily morning prayer. Having no temple, the priest does not sacrifice and the Levite does not sing! Ichabod! the glory is departed! How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land!” The later history naturally tells only of the special occasions in which the people broke into song, but these serve to confirm the idea that worship through song had become a habit among the people. “There is the song of Jehoshaphat and his army, the chant of victory sung in faith before the battle, and itself doing battles in that the Lord fought for those who trusted him, and they had nothing to do but divide the spoil and return to Jerusalem, with psalteries and harps and trumpets, into the house of the Lord. There is the song of Hezekiah, when he recovered from his sickness, and the psalm of Jonah from the depths of the sea, made up from the memory of other psalms sung in happier hours. There was many a song by the waters of Babylon, whispered low that the oppressors might not hear. There was the song of liberated Israel, at the dedication of the wall of the Holy City (another witness to the customs of the past), when the singers sang aloud and they all rejoiced: so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard afar off.” All these serve to show how the lyric spirit prevailed among the people, ready, when touched by any deep emotion, to give rhythmic utterance to their prayer and praise. It is with David, the minstrel king, however, that the stream of song suddenly grows broad and deep. Around him the chorus begins to gather, which has now grown to such a glorious multitude. The Psalms formed at once the justification and inspiration of all the noble songs of the later history of Israel, to say nothing of lyric notes, which are heard sounding through the pages of the prophets. But most remarkable is it, that when we reach the New Testament

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we find no lyric book corresponding to the Psalter. There are distinct psalms, like the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, kindled from the lyric fire of the Hebrew Psalter; and hints which indicate the presence of the lyric gift in the Apostolic Church, but there is no Christian Psalter in the New Testament, and the reason is not far to seek. It is not that the lyric fire has departed, but that the Old Testament Psalter has so sounded the deepest notes of the soul in joy and sorrow, in darkness and light, that it is adequate to the needs, not only of Jewish, but Christian hearts. Thus it was not for an age, but for all time. Just as the octave in music can express the loftiest conceptions of the composers of every age, from the simple Gregorian chant to the intricate music of Beethoven, so the Psalter, meeting the deepest needs of the soul, becomes the fitting vehicle through which Christian as well as Jewish feeling can find expression. And so we find, as a matter of fact, that through by far the greater part of the history of the Church the Psalms have formed its worship-song; they have had a place in the services of every church of Christendom where praise has been offered. They have been said or sung in grand cathedral or lowly meetinghouse, by white-robed priests and plain-clad Puritans. The hearts of Roman and Greek, Armenian and Anglican, no less than Puritan and Nonconformist, have been kindled into praise by the Psalms of David and his company. Edward Irving says: “From whatever point of view any Church hath contemplated the scheme of its doctrine, by whatever name they have thought good to designate themselves, and however bitterly opposed to each other in Church government or observance of rules, you will find them all, by harmonious consent, adopting the Psalms as the outward form by which they shall express the inward feelings of the Christian life.” And even those who refused to sing the Psalms in the form in which they are found in Scripture—who deemed it dangerous and even heretical so to do—have sung them in metrical versions from which much of their glory had departed. Until quite recently there were churches whose only hymnal consisted of these versions. Thus the Psalms have been at once an inspiration and a bondage: an inspiration, in that they have kindled the fire which has produced the hymnody of the entire Church; a bondage, because by stereotyping religious expression they robbed the heart of the right to express in its own words the fears, the joys, the hopes that the Divine spirit had kindled in their souls. Had there been no Psalter in the canon of Scripture, the Church would have had no model for its song—no place at which to kindle its worship-fire; but, on the other hand, its worshiping instinct would have compelled it to create a psalter of its own, and so there would have been an earlier and fuller development of hymnody in the Church. The very glory and perfection of the Psalter made the Church for long ages content with the provision thus made for its worship, and so it discouraged all who else would have joined the company of the singers. And even those who at last ventured to join their company, did so timidly, and chiefly as adapters of the Psalms for public worship. George

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Wither, Sir Philip Sidney and his sister belong to this class. Even when Dr. Watts began to write, his hymns were used only as supplemental to the Versions; indeed, a large part of his compositions are themselves metrical renderings of the Psalms, though some of them are so alive with his peculiar genius as to deserve rank as original compositions. Mighty indeed was the spell the Psalter exercised over the Church, and rightly so, for it is the heart-utterance of the noble men whose mission it was to give the world religion. And as we have not outgrown the art of Greece or the laws of Rome, so neither have we outgrown the worship-song of Israel. This is so deep and true that it expresses the longings and praise even of those who have sat at the feet of Christ and learned of him. And as in the most sacred moment of his life one of these psalms served to express his deepest feelings, so they have inspired and expressed the feelings of his followers in all aftertime. As has been well said, “the Church has been singing these psalms ever since, and has not yet sung them dry,” and she will go on singing them until she takes up the new song in the heavenly city. It should be frankly admitted that there are elements in the Psalms distinctly Jewish, and expressive of the feeling of earlier days. There are imprecatory notes that are out of harmony with the gentler melody of Christ. These ought to be dropped as unsuitable to Christian worship; but as a whole the Psalms form the noblest treasury of sacred song, and their inspiration may be discerned in every hymn that is worthy of a place in the Church’s worship. Her hymnody can never be understood apart from the Psalter, and it will be found that those whose hearts are steeped the most deeply therein have given to the Church the songs that she will not willingly let die.

,4.

Primitive and Ancient Religious Music (1903) Edward Dickinson Leon Gautier, in opening his history of the epic poetry of France, ascribes the primitive poetic utterance of mankind to a religious impulse. “Represent to yourselves,” he says, “the first man at the moment when he issues from the hand of God, when his vision rests for the first time upon his new empire. Imagine, if it be possible, the exceeding vividness of his impressions when the magnificence of the world is reflected in the mirror of his soul. Intoxicated, almost mad with admiration, gratitude, and love, he raises his eyes to heaven, not satisfied with the spectacle of the earth; then discovering God in the heavens, and attributing to him all the honor of this magnificence and of the harmonies of creation, he opens his mouth, the first stammerings of speech escape his lips—he speaks; ah, no, he sings, and the first song of the Lord of creation will be a hymn to God his creator.” If the language of poetical extravagance may be admitted into serious historical composition, we may accept this theatrical picture as an allegorized image of a truth. Although we speak no longer of a “first man,” and although we have the best reasons to suppose that the earliest vocal efforts of our anthropoid progenitors were a softly modulated love call or a strident battle cry rather than a sursum corda; yet taking for our point of departure that stage in human development when art properly begins, when the unpremeditated responses to simple sensation are supplemented by the more stable and organized expression of a soul life become self-conscious, then we certainly do find that the earliest attempts at song are occasioned by motives that must in strictness be Dickinson, Edward. “Primitive and Ancient Religious Music.” In Music in the History of the Western Church. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1903.

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called religious. The savage is a very religious being. Of all the relations of his simple life he is hedged about by a stiff code of regulations whose sanction depends upon his recognition of the presence of invisible powers and his duties to them. He divines a mysterious presence as pervasive as the atmosphere he breaths, which takes in his childish fancy diverse shapes, as of ghosts, deified ancestors, anthropomorphic gods, embodied influences of sun and cloud. In whatever guise these conceptions may clothe themselves, he experiences a feeling of awe which sometimes appears as abject fear, sometimes as reverence and love. The emotions which the primitive man feels under the pressure of these ideas are the most profound and persistent of which he is capable, and as they involve notions which are held in common by all the members of the tribe (for there are no skeptics or non-conformists in the savage community), they are formulated in elaborate schemes and ceremonies. The religious sentiment inevitably seeks expression in the assembly—“the means,” as Professor Brinton says, “by which that most potent agent in religious life, collective suggestion, is brought to bear upon the mind”—the liturgy, the festival, and the sacrifice. By virtue of certain laws of the human mind which are evident everywhere, in the highest civilized condition as in the savage, the religious emotion, intensified by collective suggestion in the assembly, will find expression not in the ordinary manner of thought communication, but in those rhythmic and inflected movements and cadences which are the natural outlet of strong mental excitement when thrown back upon itself. These gestures and vocal inflections become regulated and systematized in order that they may be permanently retained, and serve in their reaction to stimulate anew the mental states by which they were occasioned. Singing, dancing, and pantomime compose the means by which uncivilized man throughout the world gives expression to his controlling ideas. The needed uniformity in movement and accent is most easily effected by rhythmical beats; and as these beats are more distinctly heard, and also blend more agreeably with the tones of the voice if they are musical sounds, a rude form of instrumental music arises. Here we have elements of public religious ceremony as they exist in the most highly organized and spiritualized worships—the assemblage, where common motives produce common action and react to produce a common mood, the ritual with its instrumental music, and the resulting sense on the part of the participant of detachment from material interests and of personal communion with the unseen powers. The symbolic dance and the choral chant are among the most primitive, probably the most primitive, forms of art. Out of their union came music, poetry, and dramatic action. Sculpture, painting, and architecture were stimulated if not actually created under the same auspices. “The festival,” says Professor Baldwin Brown, “creates the artist.” Festivals among primitive races, as among ancient cultured peoples, are all distinctly religious. Singing and dancing are inseparable. Vocal music is a sort of chant, adopted because of its

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nerve-exciting property, and also for the sake of enabling a mass of participants to utter the words in unison where intelligible words are used. A separation of caste between priesthood and laity is effected in very early times. The ritual becomes a form of magical incantation; the utterance of the wizard, prophet, or priest consists of phrases of mysterious meaning or incoherent ejaculations. The prime feature in the earlier forms of worship is the dance. It held also a prominent place in the rites of the ancient cultured nations, and lingers in dim reminiscence in the processions and altar ceremonies of modern liturgical worship. Its function was as important as that of music in the modern Church, and its effect was in many ways closely analogous. When connected with worship, the dance is employed to produce that condition of mental exhilaration which accompanies the expenditure of surplus physical energy, or as a mode of symbolic, semi-dramatic expression of definite religious ideals. “The audible and visible manifestations of joy,” says Herbert Spencer, “which culminate in singing and dancing, have their roots in instinctive actions like those of lively children who, on seeing in the distance some indulgent relative, run up to him, joining one another in screams of delight and breaking their run with their leaps; and when, instead of an indulgent relative met by joyful children, we have a conquering chief or king met by groups of his people, there will almost certainly occur salutatory and vocal expressions of elated feeling, and these must become by implication signs of respect and loyalty— ascriptions of worth which, raised to a higher power, become worship.” Illustrations of such motives in the sacred dance are found in the festive procession of women, led by Miriam, after the overthrow of the Egyptians, the dance of David before the ark, and the dance of the boy Sophocles around the trophies of Salamis. But the sacred dance is by no means confined to the discharge of physical energy under the promptings of joy. The funeral dance is one of the most frequent of such observances, and dread of divine wrath and the hope of propitiation by means of rites pleasing to the offended power form a frequent occasion for rhythmic evolution and violent bodily demonstration. Far more commonly, however, does the sacred dance assume a representative character and become a rudimentary drama, either imitative or emblematic. It depicts the doings of the gods, often under supposition that the divinities are aided by the sympathetic efforts of their devotees. Certain mysteries, known only to the initiated, are symbolized in bodily movement. The fact that the dance was symbolic and instructive, like the sacrificial rite itself, enables us to understand why dancing should have held such prominence in the worship of nations so grave and intelligent as the Egyptians, Hebrews, and Greeks. Representations of religious processions and dances are found upon the monuments of Egypt and Assyria. The Egyptian peasant, when gathering his harvest, sacrificed the first fruits, and danced to testify his thankfulness to the gods. The priests represented in their dances the course of the stars and scenes from

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the histories of Osiris and Isis. The dance of the Israelites in the desert around the golden calf was probably a reproduction of features of the Egyptian Apis worship. The myths of many ancient nations represent the gods as dancing, and supposed imitations of such august examples had a place in the ceremonies devoted to their honor. The dance was always an index of the higher or lower nature of the religious conceptions which fostered it. Among the purer and more elevated worships it was full of grace and dignity. In the sensuous cults of Phoenicia and Lydia, and among the later Greek votaries of Cybele and Dionysus, the dance reflected the fears and passions that issued in bloody, obscene, and frenzied rites, and degenerated into almost incredible spectacles of wantonness and riot. It was among the Greeks, however, that the religious dance developed its highest possibilities of expressiveness and beauty, and became raised to the dignity of an art. The admiration of the Greeks for the human form, their unceasing effort to develop its symmetry, strength, and grace, led them early to perceive that it was in itself an efficient means for the expression of the soul, and that its movements and attitudes could work sympathetically upon the fancy. The dance was therefore cultivated as a coequal with music and poetry; educators inculcated it as indispensable to the higher discipline of youth; it was commended by philosophers and celebrated by poets. It held a prominent place in the public games, in processions and celebrations, in the mysteries, and in public religious ceremonies. Every form of worship, from the frantic orgies of the drunken devotees of Dionysus to the pure and tranquil adoration offered to Phoebes Apollo, consisted to a large extent of dancing. Andrew Lang’s remark in regard to the connection between dancing and religious solemnity among savages would apply also to the Hellenistic sacred dance, that “to dance this or that means to be acquainted with this or that myth, which is represented in a dance or ballet d’action.” Among the favorite subjects for pantomimic representation, united with choral singing, were the combat between Apollo and the dragon and the sorrows of Dionysus, the commemoration of the latter forming the origin of the splendid Athenian drama. The ancient dance, it must be remembered, had as its motive the expression of a wide range of emotion, and could be employed to symbolize sentiments of wonder, love, and gratitude. Regularly ordered movements, often accompanied by gesture, could well have a place in religious ceremony, as the gods and their relations to mankind were then conceived; and moreover, at a time when music was in a crude state, rhythmic evolutions and expressive gestures, refined and moderated by the exquisite sense of proportion native to the Greek mind, undoubtedly had a solemnizing effect upon the participants and beholders not unlike that of music in modern Christian worship. Cultivated as an art under the name of orchestik, the mimic dance reached a degree of elegance and emotional significance to which modern times afford no proper parallel. It was not unworthy of the place it held in the society of poetry and music, with which

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it combined to form that composite art which filled so high a station in Greek culture in the golden age. The Hellenic dance, both religious and theatric, was adopted by the Romans, but, like so much that was noble in Greek art, only to be degraded in the transfer. It passed over into the Christian Church, like many other ceremonial practices of heathenism, but modified and by no means of general observance. It appeared on occasions of thanksgivings and celebrations of important events in the Church’s history. The priest would often lead the dance around the altar on Sundays and festal days. The Christians sometimes gathered about the church doors at night and danced and sang songs. There is nothing in these facts derogatory to the piety of the early Christians. They simply expressed their joy according to the universal fashion of the age; and especially on those occasions which, as for instance Christmas, were adaptations of old pagan festivals, they naturally imitated many of the time-honored observances. The Christian dance, however, finally degenerated; certain features, such as the nocturnal festivities, gave rise to scandal; the church authorities began to condemn them, and the rising spirit of asceticism drove them into disfavor. The dance was a dangerous reminder of the heathen worship with all its abominations; and since many pagan beliefs and customs, with attendant immoralities, lingered for centuries as a seductive snare to the weaker brethren, the Church bestirred itself to eliminate all perilous associations from religious ceremony and to arouse a love for an absorbed and spiritual worship. During the Middle Age, and even in comparatively recent times in Spain and Spanish America, we find survivals of the ancient religious dance in the Christian Church, but in the more enlightened countries it has practically ceased to exist. The Christian religion is more truly joyful than the Greek; yet the Christian devotee, even in his more confident moments, no longer feels inclined to give vent to his happiness in physical movements, for there is mingled with his rapture a sentiment of awe and submission which bids him adore but be still. Religious processions are frequent in Christian countries, but the participants do not, like the Egyptians and Greeks, dance as they go. We find even in ancient times isolated opinions that public dancing is indecorous. Only in a naïve and childlike stage of society will dancing as a feature of worship seem appropriate and innocent. As reflection increases, the unrestrained and conspicuous manifestation of feeling in shouts and violent bodily movements is deemed unworthy; a more spiritual conception of the nature of the heavenly power and man’s relation to it requires that forms of worship should become more refined and moderate. Even the secular dance has lost much of its ancient dignity from somewhat similar reasons, partly also because the differentiation and high development of music, taking the place of dancing as a social art, has relegated the latter to the realm of things outgrown, which no longer minister to man’s intellectual necessities. As we turn to the subject of music in ancient religious rites, we find that

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where the dance had already reached a high degree of artistic development, music was still in dependent infancy. The only promise of its splendid future was in the reverence already accorded to it, and the universality of its use in prayer and praise. On its vocal side it was used to add solemnity to the words of the officiating priest, forming the intonation, or ecclesiastical accent, which has been an inseparable feature of liturgical worship in all periods. So far as the people had a share in the religious functions, vocal music was employed by them in hymns to the gods, or in responsive refrains. In its instrumental forms it was used to assist the singers to preserve the correct pitch and rhythm, to regulate the steps of the dance, or, in an independent capacity, to act upon the nerves of the worshipers and increase their sense of awe in the presence of the deity. It is the nervous excitement produced by certain kinds of musical performance that accounts for the fact that incantations, exorcisms, the ceremonies of demon worship among savages and barbarians are accompanied by harsh-sounding instruments; that tortures, executions, and human sacrifices, such as those of the ancient Phoenicians and Mexicans, were attended by the clamor of drums, trumpets, and cymbals. Even in the Hebrew temple service the blasts of horns and trumpets could have had no other purpose than that of intensifying emotions of awe and dread. Still another office in ancient ceremony, perhaps still more valued, was that of suggesting definite ideas by means of an associated symbolism. In certain occult observances, such as those of the Egyptians and Hindus, relationships were imagined between instruments or melodies and religious or moral conceptions, so that the melody or random tone of the instrument indicated to the initiate the associated principle, and thus came to have an imputed sanctity of its own. This symbolism could be employed to recall to the mind ethical precepts or religious tenets at solemn moments, and tone could become a doubly powerful agent by uniting the effect of vivid ideas to its inherent property of nerve excitement. Our knowledge of the uses of music among the most ancient nations is chiefly confined to its function in religious ceremony. All ancient worship was ritualistic and administered by a priesthood, and the liturgies and ceremonial rites were intimately associated with music. The oldest literatures that have survived contain hymns to the gods, and upon the most ancient monuments are traced representations of instruments and players. Among the literary records discovered on the site of Nineveh are collections of hymns, prayers, and penitential psalms, addressed to the Assyrian deities, designed, as expressly stated, for public worship, and which Professor Sayce compares to the English Book of Common Prayers. On the Assyrian monuments are carved reliefs of instrumental players, sometimes single, sometimes in groups of considerable numbers. Allusions in the Bible indicate that the Assyrians employed music on festal occasions, that hymns to the gods were sung at banquets and dirges at funerals. The kings maintained bands at their courts, and provided a considerable variety of instruments for use in the idol worship.

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There is abundant evidence that music was an important factor in the religious rites of Egypt. The testimony of carved and painted walls of tombs and temples, the papyrus records, the accounts of visitors, inform us that music in Egypt was preeminently a sacred art, as it must needs have been in a land which, as Ranke says, there was nothing secular. Music was in the care of the priests, who jealously guarded the sacred hymns and melodies from innovation and foreign intrusion. In musical science, knowledge of the divisions of the monochord, systems of keys, notation, etc., the Egyptians were probably in advance of all other nations. The Greeks certainly derived much of their musical practice from the dwellers on the Nile. They possessed an extensive variety of instruments, from the little tinkling sistrum up to the profusely ornamented harp of twelve or thirteen strings, which towered above the performer. From such an instrument as the latter it would seem as though some kind of harmony must have been produced, especially since the player is represented as using both hands. But if such were the case, the harmony could not have been reduced to a scientific system, since otherwise a usage so remarkable would not have escaped the attention of the Greek musicians who derived so much of their art from Egypt. Music never failed at public or private festivity, religious ceremony, or funeral rite. As in all ancient religions, processions to the temples, carrying images of the gods and offerings, were attended by dances and vocal and instrumental performances. Lyrical poems, containing the praises of gods and heroes, were sung at public ceremonies; hymns were addressed to the rising and setting sun, to Ammon and the other gods. According to Chappell, the custom of caroling or singing without words, like birds, to the gods existed among the Egyptians—a practice imitated by the Greeks, from whom the custom was transferred to the Western Church. The chief instrument of the temple worship was the sistrum, and connected with all the temples in the time of the New Empire were companies of female sistrum players who stood in symbolic relations to the gods as inmates of his harem, holding various degrees of rank. These women received high honors, often of a political nature. In spite of the simplicity and frequent coarseness of ancient music, the older nations ascribed to it an influence over the moral nature which the modern music lover would never think of attributing to his highly developed art. They referred its invention to the gods, and imputed to it thaumaturgical properties. The Hebrews were the only ancient cultivated nation that did not assign to music a superhuman source. The Greek myths of Orpheus, Amphion, and Arion are but samples of hundreds of marvelous tales of musical effect that have place in primitive legends. This belief in the magical power of music was connected with the equally universal opinion that music in itself could express and arouse definite notions and passions, and could exert a direct moral or immoral influence. The importance ascribed by the Greeks to music in education of youth, as emphatically affirmed by philosophers and lawgivers, is based upon this belief. Not only particular melodies, but the different modes

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or keys were held by the Greeks to exert a positive influence upon character. The Dorian mode was considered bold and manly, inspiring valor and fortitude; the Lydian, weak and enervating. Plato, in the second book of the Laws, condemns as “intolerable and blasphemous” the opinion that the purpose of music is to give pleasure. He finds a direct relation between morality and certain forms of music, and would have musicians constrained to compose only such melodies and rhythms as would turn the plastic mind toward virtue. Plutarch, in his discourse concerning music in his Morals, says: “The ancient Greeks deemed it requisite by the assistance of music to form and compose the minds of youth to what was decent, sober, and virtuous; believing the use of music beneficially efficacious to incite to all serious actions.” He even goes on to say that “the right moulding of ingenuous and manners civil conduct lies in a well-grounded musical education.” Assumptions of direct moral, intellectual, and even pathological action on the part of music, as distinct from an aesthetic appeal, are so abundant in ancient writings that we cannot dismiss them as mere fanciful hyperbole, but must admit that music really possessed a power over the emotions and volitions which has been lost in its later evolution. The explanation of this apparent anomaly probably lies, first, in the fact that music in antiquity was not a free independent art, and that when the philosophers speak of music they think of it in its associations with poetry, religious and patriotic observances, moral and legal precepts, historic relations, etc. Music, on its vocal side, was mere emphasized speech inflection; it was a slave to poetry; it had no rhythmical laws of its own. The melody did not convey aesthetic charm in itself alone, but simply heightened the sensuous effect of measured speech and vivified the thought. Mr. Spencer’s well-known expression that “cadence is the comment of the emotion upon the propositions of the intellect” would apply very accurately to the musical theories of the ancients. Certain modes (that is, keys), on account of convenience of pitch, were employed for certain kinds of poetical expression; and as a poem was always chanted in the mode that was first assigned to it, particular classes of ideas would come to be identified with particular modes. Associations of race character would lead to similar interpretation. The Dorian mode would seem to partake of the sternness and vigor of the warlike Dorian Spartans; the Lydian mode and its melodies would hint at Lydian effeminacy. Instrumental music also was equally restricted to definite meanings through association. It was an accompaniment to poetry, bound up with the symbolic dance, subordinated to formal social observances; it produced not the artistic effect of melody, harmony, and form, but the nervous stimulation of crude unorganized tone, acting upon recipients who had never learned to consider music as anything but a direct emotional excitant or an intensifier of previously conceived ideas. Another explanation of the ancient view of music as possessing a controlling power over emotion, thought, and conduct lies in the fact that music existed only in its rude primal elements; antiquity in its conception and use of

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music never passed far beyond that point where tone was the outcome of simple emotional states, and to which notions of precise intellectual significance still clung. Whatever theory of the origin of music may finally prevail, there can be no question that music in its primitive condition is more directly the outcome of clearly realized feeling than it is when developed into a free, intellectualized, and heterogeneous art form. Music, the more it rises into an art, the more it exerts a purely aesthetic affect through its action upon intelligences that delight in form, organization, and ideal motion, loses in equal proportion the emotional definiteness that exists in simple and spontaneous tone inflections. The earliest reasoning on the rationale of musical effects always takes for granted that music’s purpose is to convey exact ideas, or at least express definite emotion. Music did not advance so far among the ancients that they were able to escape from this naturalistic conception. They could conceive of no higher purpose in music than to move the mind in definite directions, and so they maintained that it always did so. Even in modern life numberless instances prove that the music which exerts the greatest effect over the impulses is not the mature and complex art of the masters, but the simple strains which emanate from the people and bring up recollections which in themselves alone have power to stir the heart. The song that melts a congregation to tears, the patriotic air that fires the enthusiasm of an assembly on the eve of a political crisis, the strain that nerves an army to desperate endeavor, is not an elaborate work of art, but a simple and obvious tune, which finds its real force in association. All this is especially true of music employed for religious ends, and we find in such facts a reason why it could make no progress in ancient times, certainly none where it was under the control of an organized social caste. For the priestly order is always conservative, and in antiquity this conservatism petrified melody, at the same time with the rites to which it adhered, into stereotyped formulas. Where music is bound up with a ritual, innovation in the one is discountenanced as tending to loosen the traditional strictness of the other. I have laid stress upon this point because this attempt of the religious authorities in antiquity to repress music in worship to a subsidiary function was the sign of a conception of music which has always been more or less active in the Church, down even to our own day. As soon as musical art reaches a certain stage of development it strives to emancipate itself from the thralldom of word and visible action, and to exalt itself for its own undivided glory. Strict religionists have always looked upon this tendency with suspicion, and have often strenuously opposed it, seeing in the sensuous fascinations of the art an obstacle to complete absorption in spiritual concerns. The conflict between the devotional and aesthetic principles, which has been so active in the history of worship music in modern times, never appeared in antiquity except in the later period of Greek art. Since this outbreak of the spirit of rebellion occurred only when Hellenistic religion was no longer a force in civilization, its results were

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felt only in the sphere of secular music; but no progress resulted, for musical culture was soon assumed everywhere by the Christian Church, which for a thousand years succeeded in restraining music within the antique conception of bondage to liturgy and ceremony. Partly as a result of this subjection of music by its allied powers, partly, perhaps, as a cause, a science of harmony was never developed in ancient times. That music was always performed in unison and octaves, as has been generally believed, is, however, not probable. In view of the fact that the Egyptians possessed harps over six feet in height, having twelve or thirteen strings, and played with both hands, and that the monuments of Assyria and Egypt and the records of musical practice among the Hebrews, Greeks, and other nations show us a large variety of instruments grouped in bands of considerable size, we are justified in supposing that combinations of different sounds were often produced. But the absence from the ancient treatises of any but the most vague and obscure allusions to the production of accordant tones, and the conclusive evidence in respect to the general lack of freedom and development in musical art, is proof positive that, whatever concords of sounds may have been occasionally produced, nothing comparable to our present contrapuntal and harmonic system existed. The music so extravagantly praised in antiquity was, vocally, chant, or recitative, ordinarily in a single part; instrumental music was rude and un-systematized sound, partly a mechanical aid to the voice and the dance step, partly a means of nervous exhilaration. The modern conception of music as a free, self-assertive art, subject only to its own laws, lifting the soul into regions of pure contemplation, where all temporal relations are lost in a tide of self-forgetful rapture—this was a conception unknown to the mind of antiquity.

R The student of the music of the Christian Church naturally turns with curiosity to that one of the ancient nations whose religion was the antecedent of the Christian, and whose sacred literature has furnished the worship of the Church with the loftiest expression of its trust and aspiration. The music of the Hebrews, as Ambros says, “was divine service, not art.” Many modern writers have assumed a high degree of perfection in ancient Hebrew music, but only on sentimental grounds, not because there is any evidence to support such an opinion. There is no reason to suppose that music was further developed among the Hebrews than among the most cultivated of their neighbors. Their music, like that of the ancient nations generally, was entirely subsidiary to poetic recitation and dancing; it was un-harmonic, simple, and inclined to be coarse and noisy. Although in general use, music never attained so great honor among them as it did among the Greeks. We find in the Scriptures no praises of music as a nourisher of morality, rarely a trace of an ascription of magical properties. To the Hebrews the arts obtained significance only as they

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could be used to adorn the courts of Jehovah, or could be employed in the ascription of praise to him. Music was to them an efficient agent to excite emotions of awe, or to carry more directly to the heart the rhapsodies and searching admonitions of psalmists and prophets. No authentic melodies have come down to us from the time of the Israelitish residence in Palestine. No treatise on Hebrew musical theory or practice, if any such ever existed, has been preserved. No definite light is thrown upon the Hebrew musical system by the Bible or any other ancient book. We may be certain that if the Hebrews had possessed anything distinctive, or far in advance of the practice of their contemporaries, some testimony to that effect would be found. All evidence and analogy indicate that the Hebrew song was a unison chant or cantillation, more or less melodious, and sufficiently definite to be perpetuated by tradition, but entirely subordinate to poetry, in rhythm following the accent and meter of the text. We are not so much in the dark in respect to the use and nature of Hebrew instruments, although we know as little of the style of music that was performed upon them. Our knowledge of the instruments themselves is derived from those represented upon the monuments of Assyria and Egypt, which were evidently similar to those used by the Hebrews. The Hebrews never invented a musical instrument. Not one in use among them but had its equivalent among nations older in civilization. And so we may infer that the entire musical practice of the Hebrews was derived first from their early neighbors the Chaldeans, and later from the Egyptians; although we may suppose that some modifications may have arisen after they became an independent nation. The first mention of musical instruments in the Bible is in Genesis 4:21, where Jubal is spoken of as “the father of all such as handle the kinnor and ugab” (translated in the revised version “harp and pipe”). The word kinnor appears frequently in the later books, and is applied to the instrument used by David. This kinnor of David and the psalmists was a small portable instrument and might properly be called a lyre. Stringed instruments are usually the last to be developed by primitive peoples, and the use of the kinnor implies a considerable degree of musical advancement among the remote ancestors of the Hebrew race in their primeval Chaldean home. The word ugab may signify either a single tube like the flute or oboe, or a connected series of pipes like the Pan’s pipes or syrinx of the Greeks. There is only one other mention of instruments before the Exodus, viz., in connection with the episode of Laban and Jacob, where the former asks his son-in-law reproachfully, “Wherefore didst thou flee secretly, and steal away from me; and didst not tell me, that I might have sent thee away with mirth and with songs, with toph and kinnor?” (Gen. 31:27)—the toph being a sort of small hand drum or tambourine. After the Exodus other instruments, perhaps derived from Egypt, make their appearance: the shofar, or curved tube of metal or ram’s horn, heard amid the smoke and thunderings of Mount Sinai (Ex. 19), and to whose sound the

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walls of Jericho were overthrown (Jos. 6); the hazozerah, or long silver tube, used in the desert for announcing the time for breaking camp (Num. 10:2 –8), and employed later by the priests in religious service (2 Chron. 5:12, 13; 29:26 –28), popular gatherings, and sometimes in war (2 Chron. 8:12, 14). The nebel was either a harp somewhat larger than a kinnor, or possibly a sort of guitar. The chalil, translated in the English version “pipe,” may have been a sort of oboe or flageolet. The band of prophets met by Saul advanced to the sound of nebel, toph, chalil, and kinnor (1 Sam. 10:5). The word “psaltery,” which frequently appears in the English version of the psalms, is sometimes the nebel, sometimes the kinnor, sometimes the asor, which was a species of nebel. The “instrument of ten strings” was also the nebel or asor. Percussion instruments, such as the drum, cymbals, bell, and Egyptian sistrum (which consisted of a small frame of bronze into which three or four metal bars were loosely inserted, producing a jingling noise when shaken), were also in common use. In the Old Testament there are about thirteen instruments mentioned as known to the Hebrews, not including those mentioned in Daniel 3, whose names, according to Chappell, are not derived from Hebrew roots. All of these were simple and rude, yet considerably varied in character, representing the three classes into which instruments, the world over, are divided, viz., stringed instruments, wind instruments, and instruments of percussion. Although instruments of music had a prominent place in public festivities, social gatherings, and private recreation, far more important was their use in connection with religious ceremony. As the Hebrew nation increased in power, and as their conquests became permanently secured, so the arts of peace developed in greater profusion and refinement, and with them the embellishment of the liturgical worship became more highly organized. With the capture of Jerusalem and establishment of the royal residence within its ramparts, the worship of Jehovah increased in splendor; the love of pomp and display, which was characteristic of David, and still more of his luxurious son Solomon, was manifest in the imposing rites and ceremonies that were organized to the honor of the people’s God. The epoch of these two rulers was that in which the national force was in the flower of its youthful vigor, the national pride had been stimulated by continual triumphs, the long period of struggle and fear had been succeeded by glorious peace. The barbaric splendor of religious service and festal pageant was the natural expression of popular joy and selfconfidence. In all these ebullitions of national feeling, choral and instrumental music on the most brilliant and massive scale held a conspicuous place. The description of the long series of public rejoicings, culminating in the dedication of Solomon’s temple, begins was the transportation of the ark of the Lord from Gibeah, when “David and all the house of Israel played before the Lord with all manner of instruments made of fir-wood, and with harps (kinnor), and with psalteries (nebel), and with timbrels (toph), with castanets (sistrum), and with cymbals (tzeltzelim)” (2 Sam. 6:5). And again, when the

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ark was brought from the house of Obed-edom into the city of David, the king danced “with all his might,” and the ark was brought up “with shouting and with the sound of a trumpet” (2 Sam. 6:14, 15). Singers were marshaled under leaders and supported by bands of instruments. The ode ascribed to David was given to Asaph as chief of the choir of Levites; Asaph beat the time with cymbals, and the royal paean was chanted by masses of chosen singers to the accompaniment of harps, lyres, and trumpets (1 Chron. 16:5, 6). In the organization of the temple service no detail received more careful attention than the vocal and instrumental music. We read that four thousand Levites were appointed to praise the Lord with instruments (1 Chron. 23:5). There were also two hundred and eighty-eight skilled singers who sang to instrumental accompaniment beside the altar (1 Chron. 25). The function performed by instruments in the temple service is also indicated in the account of the reestablishment of the worship of Jehovah by Hezekiah according to the institutions of David and Solomon. With the burnt offering the song of praise was uplifted to the accompaniment of the “instruments of David,” the singers intoned the psalm and the trumpets sounded, and this continued until the sacrifice was consumed. When the rite was ended a hymn of praise was sung by the Levites, while the king and the people bowed themselves (2 Chron. 29:25–30). With the erection of the second temple after the return from the Babylonian exile, the liturgical service was restored, although not with its pristine magnificence. Ezra narrates: “When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the order of David king of Israel. And they sang one to another in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord, saying, For he is good, for his mercy endureth forever toward Israel” (Ezra 3:10, 11). And at the dedication of the wall in Jerusalem, as recorded by Nehemiah, instrumentalists and singers assembled in large numbers, to lead the multitude in rendering praise and thanks to Jehovah (Neh. 12). Instruments were evidently employed in independent flourishes and signals, as well as in accompanying the singers. The trumpets were used only in the interludes; the pipes and stringed instruments strengthened the voice parts; the cymbals were used by the leader of the chorus to mark the rhythm. Notwithstanding the prominence of instruments in all observances of private and public life, they were always looked upon as accessory to song. Dramatic poetry was known to the Hebrews, as indicated by such compositions as the Book of Job and the Song of Songs. No complete epic has come down to us, but certain allusions in the Pentateuch, such as the mention in Numbers 21: 14 of the “book of wars of Jehovah,” would tend to show that this people possessed a collection of ballads which, taken together, would probably constitute a national epic. But whether lyric, epic, or dramatic, the Hebrew poetry was delivered, according to the universal custom of ancient nations, not in the

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speaking voice, but in musical tone. The minstrel poet, it had been said, was the type of the race. Lyric poetry may be divided into two classes: first, that which is the expression of the individual, subjective feeling, the poet communing with himself alone, imparting to his thought a color derived solely from his personal inward experience; and second, that which utters sentiments that are shared by an organization, community, or race, the poet serving as the mouthpiece of a mass actuated by common experiences and motives. The second class is more characteristic of a people in the earlier stages of culture, when the individual is lost in the community, before the tendency towards specialization of interests gives rise to an expression that is distinctly personal. In all the world’s literature the Hebrew psalms are the most splendid examples of this second order of lyric poetry; and although we find in them many instances in which an isolated, purely subjective experience finds a voice, yet in all of them the same view of the universe, the same conception of the relation of man to his Creator, the same broad and distinctly national consciousness, control their thought and diction. And there are very few even of the first class which a Hebrew of earnest piety, searching his own heart, could not adopt as the fitting declaration of his need and assurance. All patriotic songs and religious poems properly called hymns belongs in the second division of lyrics; and in the Hebrew psalms devotional feeling, touched here and there with a patriot’s hopes and fears, has once for all projected itself in forms of speech which seem to exhaust the capabilities of sublimity in language. These psalms were set to music, and presuppose music in their thought and their technical structure. A text most appropriate for musical rendering must be free from all subtleties of meaning and over-refinement of phraseology; it must be forcible in movement, its metaphors those that touch upon general observation, its ideas those that appeal to the common consciousness and sympathy. These qualities the psalms possess in the highest degree, and in addition they have a sublimity of thought, a magnificence of imagery, a majesty and strength of movement, that evoke the loftiest energies of a musical genius that ventures to ally itself with them. In every nation of Christendom they have been made the foundation of the musical service of the Church; and although many of the greatest masters of the harmonic art have lavished upon them the richest treasures of their invention, they have but skimmed the surface of their unfathomable suggestion. Of the manner in which the psalms were rendered in the ancient Hebrew worship we know little. The present methods of singing in the synagogues give us little help, for there is no record by which they can be traced back beyond the definite establishment of the synagogue worship. It is inferred from the structure of the Hebrew poetry, as well as unbroken usage from the beginning of the Christian era, that the psalms were chanted antiphonally or responsively. That form of verse known as parallelism—the repetition of a thought in different words, or the juxtaposition of two contrasted thoughts forming an

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antithesis—pervades a large amount of the Hebrew poetry, and may be called its technical principle. It is, we might say, a rhythm of thought, an assonance of feeling. This parallelism is more frequently double, sometimes triple. We find this peculiar structure as far back as the address of Lamech to his wives in Gen. 4:23, 24, in Moses’ song after the passage of the Red Sea, in the triumphal ode of Deborah and Barak, in the greeting of the Israelitish women to Saul and David returning from the slaughter of the Philistines, in the Book of Job, in a large portion of the rhythmical imaginative utterances of the psalmists and prophets. The Oriental Christian sang the psalms responsively; this method was passed on to Milan in the fourth century, to Rome very soon afterward, and has been perpetuated in the liturgical churches of modern Christendom. Whether, in the ancient temple service, this twofold utterance was divided between separate portions of the choir, or between a precentor and the whole singing body, there are no grounds for stating—both methods have been employed in modern times. It is not even certain that the psalms were sung in alternate half-verse, for in the Jewish Church at the present day the more frequent usage is to divide at the end of a verse. It is evident that the singing was not congregational, and that the share of the people, where they participated at all, was confined to short responses, as in the Christian Church in the time next succeeding the apostolic age. The female voice, although much prized in secular music, according to the Talmud was not permitted in the temple service. There is nothing in the Old Testament that contradicts this except, as some suppose, that reference to the three daughters of Heman in 1 Chronicles 25:5, where he said, “And God gave to Heman fourteen sons and three daughters”; and in verse 6: “All these were under the hands of their father for song in the house of the Lord.” It is possible, however, that the mention of the daughters is incidental, not intended as an assertion that they were actual members of the temple chorus, for we cannot conceive why an exception should have been made in their behalf. Certainly the whole implication from the descriptions of the temple service and the enumeration of the singers and players is to the effect that only the male voice was utilized in the liturgical worship. There are many allusions to “women singers” in the scriptures, but they plainly apply only to domestic song, or to processions and celebrations outside the sacred enclosure. It is certainly noteworthy that the exclusion of the female voice, which has obtained in the Catholic Church throughout the Middle Age, in the Eastern Church, in the German Protestant Church, and in the cathedral service of the Anglican Church, was also enforced in the temple worship of Israel. The conviction has widely prevailed among the stricter custodians of religious ceremony in all ages that there is something sensuous and passionate (I use these words in their simpler original meaning) in the female voice—something at variance with the austerity of ideal which should prevail in the music of worship. Perhaps, also, the association of men and women in the sympathy of so emotional an office as that of song is felt to be prejudicial

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to the complete absorption of the mind which the sacred function demands. Both these reasons have undoubtedly combined in so many historic epochs to keep all the offices of ministry in the house of God in the hands of the male sex. On the other hand, in the more sensuous cults of paganism no such prohibition has existed. There is difference of opinion in regard to the style of melody employed in the delivery of the psalms in the worship of the temple at Jerusalem. Was it a mere intoned declamation, essentially a monotone with very slight changes of pitch, like the “ecclesiastical accent” of the Catholic Church? Or was it a freer, more melodious rendering, as in the more ornate members of the Catholic Plain Song? The modern Jews incline to the latter opinion, that the song was true melody, obeying, indeed, the universal principle of chant as a species of vocalism subordinated in rhythm to the text, yet with abundant movement and possessing a distinctly tuneful character. It has been supposed that certain inscriptions at the head of some of the psalms are the titles of well-known tunes, perhaps folksongs, to which the psalms were sung. We find, e.g., at the head of Psalm 22 the inscription, “After the song beginning, Hind of the Dawn.” Psalm 56 has, “After the song, The silent Dove in far-off Lands.” Others have, “After lilies” (Ps. 45 and 69), and “Destroy not” (Ps. 57–59). We cannot on a priori principles reject the supposition that many psalms were sung to secular melodies, for we shall find, as we trace the history of music in the Christian era, that musicians have over and over again borrowed profane airs for the hymns of the Church. In fact, there is hardly a branch of the Christian Church that has not at some time done so, and even rigid Jews in modern times have employed the same means to increase their store of religious melodies. That the psalms were sung with the help of instruments seems indicated by superscriptions, such as “With stringed instruments,” and “To the flutes,” although objections have been raised to these translations. No such indications are needed, however, to prove the point, for the descriptions of worship contained in the Old Testament seem explicit. The instruments were used to accompany the voices, and also for preludes and interludes. The word “Selah,” so often occurring at the end of a psalm verse, is understood by many authorities to signify an instrumental interlude or flourish, while the singers were for a moment silent. One writer says that at this point the people bowed in prayer. Such, generally speaking, is the most that can definitely be stated regarding the office performed by music in the worship of Israel in the time of its glory. With the rupture of the nation, its gradual political decline, the inroads of idolatry, the exile in Babylon, the conquest by the Romans, the disappearance of poetic and musical inspiration with the substitution of formality and routine in place of the pristine national sincerity and fervor; it would inevitably follow that the great musical traditions would fade away, until at the time of the birth of Christ but little would remain of the elaborate ritual once committed to the guardianship of cohorts of priests and Levites. The sorrowing exiles

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who hung their harps on the willows of Babylon and refused to sing the songs of Zion in a strange land certainly never forgot the airs concentrated by such sweet and bitter memories; but in the course of centuries they became lost among the strange peoples with whom the scattered Israelites found their home. Many were for a time preserved in the synagogues, which, in the later years of Jewish residence in Palestine, were established in large numbers in all the towns and villages. The service of the synagogue was a liturgical service, consisting of benedictions, chanting of psalms and other Scripture passages, with responses by the people, lessons from the law and the prophets, and sermons. The instrumental music of the temple and the first synagogues eventually disappeared, and the greater part, if not the whole, of the ancient psalm melodies vanished also with the dispersion of the Levites, who were their especial curators. Many details of ancient ritual and custom must have survived in spite of vicissitude, but the final catastrophe, which drove a desolate, heart-broken remnant of the children of Judah into alien lands, must inevitably have destroyed all but the merest fragment of the fair residue of national art by sweeping away all the conditions by which a national art can live. Does anything remain of the rich musical service which for fifteen hundred years went up daily from tabernacle and temple to the throne of the God of Israel? A question often asked, but without a positive answer. Perhaps a few notes of ancient melody, or a horn signal identical with one blown in the camp or in the temple court, may survive in the synagogue today, a splinter from a mighty edifice has been submerged by the tide of centuries. As would be presumed of a people so tenacious of time-honored usages, the voice of tradition declares that the intonations of the ritual chant used in the synagogue are survivals of forms employed in the temple at Jerusalem. These intonations are certainly Oriental in character and very ancient, but that they date back to the time of David cannot be proved or disproved. A style of singing like the wellknown “cantillation” might easily be preserved, a complete melody possibly, but the presumption is against an antiquity so great as the Jews, with pardonable pride, claim for some of their weird, archaic strains. With the possible exception of scanty fragments, nothing remains of the songs so much loved by this devoted people in their early home. We may speculate upon the imagined beauty of that music; it is natural to do. Omne ignotum pro magnifico (Everything unknown is taken for magnificent). We know that it often shook the hearts of those who heard it; but our knowledge of the comparative rudeness of all Oriental music, ancient and modern, teaches us that its effect was essentially that of simple unison successions of tones wedded to poetry of singular exaltation and vehemence, and associated with liturgical actions calculated to impress the beholder with an overpowering sense of awe. The interest which all must feel in the music of the Hebrews is not due to its importance in the history of art, but to its place in the history of culture. Certainly the art of music was never more highly honored, its efficacy as an

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agent in arousing the heart to the most ardent spiritual experiences was never more convincingly demonstrated, than when the seers and psalmists of Israel found in it an indispensable auxiliary of those appeals, confessions, praises, and pious raptures in which the whole afterworld has seen the highest attainment of language under the impulse of religious ecstasy. Taking “the harp the monarch minstrel swept” as a symbol of Hebrew devotional song at large, Byron’s words are true: It softened men of iron mould, It gave them virtues not their own; No ear so dull, so soul so cold, That felt not, fired not to the tone, Till David’s lyre grew mightier than his throne.

This music foreshadowed the completer expression of Christian art of which it became the type. Inspired by the grandest of traditions, provided with credentials as, on equal terms with poetry, valid in the expression of man’s consciousness of his needs and his infinite privilege—thus consecrated for its future mission, the soul of music passed from Hebrew priests to apostles and Christian fathers, and so on to the saints and hierarchs, who laid the foundation of the sublime structure of the worship music of a later day.

,5.

Religion and the Art of Music (1914) Waldo Selden Pratt The word “religion” is constantly used in two senses that sometimes need to be somewhat carefully distinguished. On the one hand, it denotes certain inner states of the heart toward God and toward godliness. In this usage it is applied to the description of beliefs, moral sentiments, and such purely spiritual qualities as make up personal experience and character. On the other hand, it also denotes certain bodies of formulated statements and practices in which such inner religious life comes to social manifestation, including many details of embodied thought or concrete action that are so distinct from a genuine soulexperience that they may sometimes be unwillingly substituted for it or thrown into a kind of opposition to it. The one sense of the word is subjective, the other objective. The one belongs to the sphere of private individuality, the other to that of social institutions. However much harm may result from using this distinction as a means of evading practical spiritual obligations, it is still necessary and valuable for clear thinking. Religion as a social phenomenon is largely characterized by outward institutions, such as the organizations of church polity, the fixed elaborations of church doctrine, and the established customs of church worship, all of which readily offer themselves to ordinary historical and scientific scrutiny. These things are in themselves external to the essence of religion, and yet in many cases are almost the only available data for the study of religion. So far as they go, they are surely valuable as indications of the more intimate and intangible sides of religion, and as obviously powerful agencies in determining and perpetuating religious experience. When one takes up the question of the relations of the art of music to religion, it is natural to think first of its evident historic connection with certain Pratt, Waldo Selden. “Religion and the Art of Music.” In Musical Ministries in the Church: Studies in the History, Theories, and Administration of Sacred Music. New York: G. Schirmer, 1914.

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aspects of religion as a social manifestation, especially with the great religious institution of public worship. This connection has been so constant and so close that it immediately challenges attention. Music actually seems to be necessary to public worship. At least, its prevalence in all kinds of public worship, with but insignificant exceptions (as among the Quakers), suggests that it has an altogether peculiar aptness for incorporation into the observances that constitute this, the most conspicuous of the social embodiments of religion. In illustration of this point it is not necessary to traverse the items in the prodigious catalogue of the various applications of music in public worship in every century and land. The main outline of the list is entirely familiar—from the Hebrew Temple with its choir and its Psalms, and from the synagogue and early Christian fraternities, with their cantillation and choral antiphony, through the slowly-formed rituals of both the Eastern and the Western Churches, with their sonorous and sumptuous services, and through the much simpler usages of all the different Reformed Churches, with their return in some way to true congregational praise, even to the manifold customs of modern Christendom, with its curious blending in its several denominations of musical habits derived most variously through distinct lines of tradition. Everywhere and always public worship has chosen to make utterance freely through poetry meant for singing, and to count music, usually both vocal and instrumental, as a cherished and indispensable part of its liturgical apparatus. Single items in this list often seem at first sight to stand far apart and even in opposition; yet close study shows that all are bound together by remarkable bonds of historic continuity and essential relationship. The union of religion with music, therefore, can be illustrated by instances drawn from every quarter of the civilized world and from every age throughout not less than three millenniums. This general fact is well known, and something of its massive magnitude is perhaps duly appreciated. We must remember, however, that emphasis upon this fact is often suspected of being prompted by a kind of mere sentimentality or being called forth by the casuistry of the special pleader. In these days of highly complex culture and of the infinite subdivision of intellectual interests that they may be separately pursued, the great art of music has become so specialized and so elaborate in itself as to claim full independence as a social fact. Music now has its own literature and periodicals, its own established commercial enterprises, its own professional class, its own system of education, its own vast circle of devotees and students, its own artistic laws and doctrines, its own organic momentum as an independent fine art, at least coordinate with the other historic fine arts. Religion, it may be said, is another such independent phenomenon. Music and religion, it may be urged, have nothing important to do with each other; except, of course, in the one particular that religious worship does more or less utilize musical implements and skill in a comparatively

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petty way for its own purposes. The connection between the two subjects may thus be minimized until it seems to be only incidental and accidental. The captious critic may exclaim, “Music has always been used in war, and with notable results; and are we therefore to lecture learnedly on War and Music as if they were somehow akin?” Or possibly he turns the matter about by saying, “Public worship is singularly dependent for success on certain aspects of practical building, like acoustics or ventilation; and are we therefore soberly to discuss Religion and Acoustics or Religion and Ventilation as necessary to each other?” In view of possible scoffs like these it may be well to recall one or two considerations that go to show that the relation now before us is not so loose or casual as either some musical enthusiasts or some religious workers would have us imagine.

R It is worth remembering, in the first place, that the art of music is what it is today largely in consequence of what religion has done for it. By this I mean that the demands that religion has put upon music, the opportunities and incentives for its development that religion has afforded, and the basis of knowledge and character that religion has supplied for musical culture—I mean that these have furnished to music the necessary occasion and atmosphere and nutriment for its growth to the stature of a great and famous fine art. Music is to a striking degree the creation or child of the Church. Many of its most ordinary technical ways and resources were discovered or invented primarily because the Church needed them. Hundreds of the most constructive masters were trained primarily as ecclesiastical officers, so that sometimes for ages together the entire direction of its artistic progress has been given by those whose minds were full of religious ideas and whose work was actuated by religious motives. The stages of advance leading up to our modern musical styles were many of them strictly ecclesiastical undertakings, called forth by religion, intended to dignify religion, and more or less potent in fostering and conserving religion. This point will bear illustration, though necessitating reference to a few musical technicalities. It is well known that all orderly musical procedure in composition rests upon three constructive doctrines: Harmony, dealing with chords and tonality, Counterpoint, dealing with voice-parts and their interweaving, and Form, including every grade of the rhythmical disposition of tone-materials. Harmony and Counterpoint are distinguishable, though vitally interdependent. In our modern theories we usually put Harmony first, but historically Counterpoint was developed first. The altogether extraordinary elaboration of Counterpoint in the later Middle Ages was the first systematic effort to deliver music from its ancient bondage to mere poetical recitation, and to give it laws of internal structure and organization somewhat analogous to those of architecture. For some three centuries—say from about 1200 to after 1500—

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almost the entire energy of those who made music a real study was put upon the solution of this problem, whose difficulty is but slightly appreciated by those who have not themselves wrestled with it. The result was the formulation of certain laws of musical grammar and rhetoric that have never since been abrogated, though their applications have been extended and multiplied. Every composer today must follow the lines of procedure once for all established rudimentally by tedious experiment and toil some five hundred years ago. Now, the important fact for us here is that every step in this process was taken by ecclesiastics and primarily for the upbuilding of church music. Nowhere but in the Church was there an adequate opening or a salient motive. The Gregorian style, out of which Counterpoint grew, was itself a style peculiar to the Church. The few pioneers in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries whose names we know were all monks. The earliest piece of Counterpoint that is now extant, whose date is conjectured to be about 1226, appears to have been written in an English abbey. Of the recognized masters in the gradual unfolding of the contrapuntal system, observe that Dufay (died 1474) was a priest, Okeghem (died 1495) a canon, Josquin des Prés (died 1521) at least a duly appointed choirmaster and organist, and remember further that the culmination of the whole contrapuntal movement in the sixteenth century was dominated by the splendid series of church musicians connected with St. Mark’s, in Venice, or by Lassus (died 1594), the life-long protégé of the Duke of Bavaria, or by Palestrina (died 1594), whose whole career was spent in active Church service, most of it in the Papal Chapel. Apparently, then, we may safely say that this exceedingly rich expansion of music from insignificance into an artistic system whose possibilities in this special direction of contrapuntal structure are still by no means exhausted, would have been inconceivable at this period and perhaps for centuries after, if it had not been for the stimulus of religion and the cordial support of the Church. But even before the end of the fifteenth century, and still more as the sixteenth century progressed, it became clear that purely contrapuntal advance, strong and remarkable as it was, came up against limitations and disclosed inherent imperfections. The whole truth regarding musical composition could not be seen from the merely contrapuntal point of view. The Gregorian system had brought over to the Middle Ages from ancient times a theory of scales that was defective, and strict Counterpoint had failed to solve the fundamental problem of Form. The necessary supplement was furnished rapidly throughout the sixteenth century by grafting into sacred music certain new features that seem to have been chiefly derived from earlier secular music of what was then esteemed a much humbler sort, from the song of the Troubadours of France and the Minnesinger of Germany and their successors and from the folkdances of the peasantry. The origin of these new elements cannot be claimed for the Church, and their first motives were not distinctly religious. But one or two of the main

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channels through which they were now poured into the stream of general musical tendency were distinctly religious. It will be enough for our purposes to dwell upon one of these—the famous hymn singing of the Reformation. This was organized first by Luther and later by Calvin and diligently cultivated by their followers for purely liturgical and evangelistic purposes. It was carried forward into practical effect by musical enthusiasts, and it spread far and wide because it appealed to universal musical tastes. In consequence, to an extent that is but poorly appreciated by musical historians, the clear instinct or intuition of the common people as to musical methods was made to assume control of professional or scholastic composition. As we pass over into the seventeenth century, we find that the whole theory of music has undergone a revolution, true Harmony and true Form now for the first time taking their places with Counterpoint as structural determinants of the art. Both of these constructive elements were strongly developed in the rapidly multiplying chorales of Germany and Switzerland and Scotland. Wherever the Reformation spread, the practice of constant hymn singing went, and wherever hymn singing appeared, the whole course of musical progress was directed, as never before, into usages in which Counterpoint was fully supplemented by its necessary companion elements. It would be foolish to claim that this great transition would not have occurred without the aid of Protestant congregational singing, but it is equally foolish to belittle the part that singing played in hastening and diffusing the ideas that distinguished modern music from medieval at the outset of its career. Contemporaneous with these movements and involved in them was another of almost equal importance. The organ, though apparently of Greek origin in the time of Alexandria’s eminence as a center of culture, had early been appropriated by the Christian Church as its peculiar musical instrument. During the next millennium the use of the organ seems to have been confined to the barest support of plain song, and its construction remained very simple. But as Counterpoint developed, the structure of the organ necessarily became more complicated and the technique of its players more skillful. About 1500 we find that the arrangement of the keyboard had become nearly what we now have, and many other important details of construction had been greatly improved. The art of organ building had become so mature and lucrative that we now find it for the first time escaping from the monasteries and becoming here and there a secular trade. As the instrument improved, its players began to reach out more or less eagerly after music suitable for it alone, independent of singing. To write music of this purely instrumental sort began to be an ambition with leading composers—a wholly new ambition in the field of scholastic music. Without stopping for details, we may simply remind ourselves of the obvious influence of this upon the general advance of the art of composition. Previously the only instruments in common use (besides the organ) had been solo

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instruments, like the flute or the shawn, or at most such petty appliances for producing small groups of tones as the harp and the lute. There was nothing at all adequate for producing sustained and concerted efforts except the organ. Neither of the prototypes of the modern piano had come to maturity, the violin was still almost a century away, and of course there was nothing like the true orchestra. So in the sixteenth century the church organ suddenly asserted itself, both in Italy and in Germany, until it became a powerful artistic influence. Its leadership continued to grow stronger through the seventeenth century, especially in Germany, in spite of the steady rivalry of other instruments. In 1700, when Handel and Bach appear actively in the field, large organs were everywhere common in Northern Europe, dexterous organists were abundant, and the artistic importance of organ music was more or less generally acknowledged. At that time, especially in England and Germany, most prominent musicians were organists of course, very much as today most of them are pianists. This fact must be given due weight in estimating the nature of the foundation on which presently was to be rested the whole great fabric of the music of the Classical Period, through which the transition was ultimately made to the styles of the nineteenth century. Here let us turn back a moment. The existence of well-developed organs and their incessant use as the basis for all church music led to one rather surprising result. The old medieval Counterpoint has grown in its own way and within its own field to perfection in the hands of great catholic masters of the sixteenth century that seemed to be final and unsurpassable. The so-called Palestrina style closed a period, and from its rather cold and ethereal completeness there was a decided reaction. Italian music, in particular, branched off in the seventeenth century into wholly new undertakings, most of them widely divorced from sacred things. It looked as if the fine art of music in its craving for dramatic expression was now to part company with religion more and more. But just here the spirit of Protestantism stepped in. The new materials and methods of composition with which the Reformation chorales were an illustration were soon subjected to a steady development in combination with the true contrapuntal idea. German organ music began to work over chorale themes in a contrapuntal manner, and in the process uncover unsuspected possibilities in contrapuntal form. The same drift appeared strongly in German writing for voices. And so before the seventeenth century was done a new school of counterpoint had become established, preserving the essential principles of procedure in the other style, but applying them with a confident enterprise and independence, and exhibiting at every point a positive power of fresh artistic creativeness. Out of this came forth in the early part of the eighteenth century the splendid polyphony of Handel and Bach. Handel displayed his genius chiefly in his masterly oratorio choruses; Bach chiefly in still more wonderful organ works. The two together made an epoch in musical history, the characteristic feature of which was a display of the latent capacity

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of contrapuntal expression as much as made possible and desirable upon the church organ and in church services. The influence of this achievement shows no sign of passing away. The pure Palestrina style is no longer widely known except in the ritual music of the Roman Catholic Church, and exerts no appreciable control upon modern music as a whole. But the impress of Bach on the present century—and to a less degree of Handel also—is deep and pervasive. The patriarchal leadership of Bach has been acknowledged by hosts of musical workers with a peculiar affectionate reverence, and yet often without any adequate recognition of the plain fact that this sturdy organist at Weimar and cantor at Leipsic was what he was chiefly because he and all his tribe were steeped in the traditions and the spirit of Protestant church music. The streams of tendency that flow through him and broaden out from him are thoroughly religious and profoundly evangelical. There are many other related points that might be urged. Modern music is largely dominated by the opera. Yet, if we go back two hundred and fifty years, we find that the opera and the oratorio of that day were almost indistinguishable, both being primitive attempts to give a musical treatment to a dramatic text, secular or sacred. Soon after 1650 they began to separate, though never far enough to lose all traces of kinship. The oratorio, transplanted from Italy to Germany and thence later to England, took on many features from pure church music, and in the hands of Mendelssohn, a Christian Jew, attained a striking culmination as a composite art-form—one of the broadest and noblest in the whole range of music. The educative energy of this particular combination of religious ideas with musical expression is not sufficiently appreciated. Not to speak of the well-known influences of the oratorio in creating and shaping standards of musical taste in a country like England, it may be worth while to remark that in the present century German opera has been given evidence of being repeatedly touched by the spirit of its sister art-form. It is most interesting, for example, to note how Wagner’s mind steadily reverted toward the exaltation of ethical topics, toward the presentation of real soul-struggles, and finally expressed itself in that peculiar religious fantasy, “Parsifal.” Music in our day, in obedience to strenuous inner impulses of growth, is pushing out hither and thither, both through vocal and through instrumental forms. It lingers upon all sorts of topics, yields to manifold moods, and addresses manifold tastes. Much of it is evidently non-religious, and some of it is animated by worldly, sensuous, and even pessimistic spirit. Yet in its total movement it seems to be unable and unwilling to escape from the fascination of religious subjects and sentiments. Often it plainly reverts, consciously or unconsciously, to those religious modes of expressing itself that were almost its only available ways of realizing its conceptions. So sometimes it seems to the thoughtful observer as if it were a divine law that music as a fine art must continually return in some way to religion for a fresh impulse of life, must frequently expend its artistic powers with keenest zest upon sentiments that are either

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religious or proximately religious, and, thus must continue to acknowledge itself still, as it was in all its younger days, the chosen handmaid and interpreter of religious worship and religious enthusiasm

R One cannot tell just how far these phases of music history may be familiar to the ordinary reader, nor how great a value he may be inclined to place upon the view of them that has been here advanced. Their importance may well be thoughtfully weighed by every strenuous mind, as indicating in what ways the art of music is really indebted to religion, not only for its having grown into a significant fine art, but for no small part of its technical methods and character. This general proposition might still be further developed and illustrated at length. But it is possible that our argument thus far may seem overtechnical and also a trifle transcendental. Accordingly, it is time to turn the subject about and look at it from its reverse side. Whether or not music be so deeply indebted to religion as has been claimed, surely religion as a social institution owes much to music. This is almost a platitude, but yet may profitably be dwelt upon for a moment. The most striking result of the constant association of music with religion is the steady evolution of the great poetic act of Hymnody—a special application of poetry to religious uses that is so extensive and so rich that it merits a whole series of chapters by itself. For example, very few persons ever stop to consider how much music had to do in giving us the Book of Psalms and in setting it in canonical place in the Old Testament. Without raising any of the vexed questions as to who wrote the Psalms and when and under what circumstances, we may safely assert that the editing of the Book into its present form was occasioned chiefly by the fact that music has a recognized place in the Hebrew ritual. The selection of the materials to be included in the completed collection was probably influenced by observing what had proved in experience to be liturgically useful for musical rendering. Possibly many points in the final redaction and arrangement were determined by musical considerations. And certainly the way in which the completed Book passed into habitual usage and became before Christ’s time one of the best-known parts of the Old Testament was through song. However rude may have been the artistic quality of Hebrew music and however foreign to our modern notions, it was still music, artistic according to the standards of its time and place. If this practice of music in public had not been, the Psalter, with all its inexhaustible richness of thought, imagery and diction, is not likely (humanly speaking) to have been framed as it was, nor to have become universally current as it did. How signally true this has also been in the long use of the Psalms in the Christian Church! For the Hebrews the Psalter was the only hymnbook. For their Christian successors in some cases it has also been the only hymnbook—

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of necessity at the outset of Christianity, and of choice at certain periods since and among certain groups of believers. Other parts of the Scriptures have usually been introduced into public worship by reading; but the Psalms have always been sung if possible, whether in chant or motette style. Thus in innumerable instances the whole Psalter has been sung through in order within stated periods—once a year, once a month, once a week, and even once a day. However perfunctory such urges may have been in many instances, they have still served during long ages thoroughly to familiarize at least the clergy with the verbal contents of the Psalms, and, wherever translation into the vernacular was permitted, the laity as well. The general point that we are considering might be endlessly illustrated by reference to the history of the gradual accumulation of the vast treasures of Christian hymnody. The composition of hymns has always been due in large measure to the desire to furnish matter for singing, and the practical popularity of hymns has always been closely dependent upon the wide familiarity with them that has come from the reiterated utterance of them in song. The sweep and significance of this fact we shall see more in detail at a later point. Here it is enough to remark that if music had done nothing else for religion than this—to afford an occasion for the Hebrew Psalms and for the far more extensive literature of Christian hymns, as well as to furnish a medium whereby these Psalms and hymns might become popularly known and loved—if music had done nothing else for religion, it would surely have the right to be emphatically honored for its services in the religious world. But music has certainly done much more—far more than we can here mention except in the most cursory fashion. Those who occupy anything of the Puritan standpoint are apt to think slightingly of the influence of the more elaborate liturgical practices of other branches of the Christian church. They may draw back from desiring to copy these practices in their entirety, and may regret that the formal liturgies have often combined with objectionable doctrines. But to the historian the popular power of stately rituals is undeniable, and, when carried forward by men of deep spiritual earnestness, as they have been and still are, their power has told mightily for reverence, for righteousness, for the exaltation of life in an evangelical sense. Now, if you try to analyze the power of such a ritual as that of the Church of England or of the Lutheran Church, you find at once that it lies not only in the literary eloquence of the liturgy proper, and not only in the impress of such visible accessories as noble architecture or ceremonial pomp, but also and conspicuously in the constant intermingling with these of singing and instrumental music. Strike out this latter element, and the persistent and widespread popular effectiveness of the whole liturgical system would be infinitely impaired, if not altogether destroyed. We are not here arguing that the system of cathedral services as it obtains in England, for example, is absolutely good in its practical working. The system, however, has been historically a power, and the present impor-

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tance of the ideals underlying it cannot be ignored. Our only point is that whatever potency it has had or may be intended to have is due in a large degree to its abundant and painstaking use of music. The same thing is true in an analogous way of our own plainer and much less uniform systems. We also know that religion in its action as a social force is not only a matter of rational cognition, not only a matter of deliberate volition, but also a matter of somewhat indefinable emotional attitudes. We know that the Church in its services, whereby it makes a manifestation of religion to the world and aims to bring religion effectively to bear upon men, must always use a great variety of modes of approach. It must instruct men and indoctrinate them, and it must persuade them and seek to commit them to voluntary action so as to establish religious character. But to do these things it must not fail to appeal by every available artistic means to the great magazines of feeling that lie hidden in every human heart. Of these artistic appeals none is on the whole more penetrating or more intense than music. Nothing that can be urged by those who profess themselves to be insensible to musical impressions, or by those who have become righteously exacerbated by the misuse of sacred music here or elsewhere, can break the force of this general truth. There is no artistic means of getting at the internal springs of feeling in the popular heart that can compare with music. The illustrations of this need not be drawn from the splendid cathedral service, with its imposing array of polished weaponry. They can be found in many a humble church in towns and villages where the elaborate ways of the metropolitan sanctuary are practically unknown and where such ways would be egregiously out of place. Sooner or later in the work of a settled pastor in every organized parish the force of this truth makes itself felt. There is a wonderful, indefinable power in the social routine of the church’s stated services, taken in their massive totality. This power is plainly made up of several elements. Perhaps if we were talking about preaching, we should magnify that element, and of course set it high in all its ideal glory. But the social power of the institution of public worship is not wholly dependent on preaching, nor on any other one element. It is rather due to the intimate blending in varying proportions and relations of several elements, all of which are important both in themselves and for what they symbolize and suggest. Of these constituent elements in public worship that give it its social power music is one, and a powerful one, one that the thoughtful observer can never safely neglect or despise. Personal ignorance of music or prejudice against it may distort the views of single investigators, but the great historic fact remains that music has been continuously and universally of the greatest service to religion in accomplishing its work in society through the specific means of public worship. And music occupies this place of power and honor, not by any accident or because of any audacity on its part, but because the Church through long centuries has been nurturing and training it for this service. A moment since we were saying that religion has done

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much for music. Now we say that music in return has surely done much for religion.

R Before we leave this general and preliminary discussion we must devote a few pages to a more abstruse side of our subject, which, however, is helpful to our main purpose. Thus far we have been examining the general fact that between music and religion as a social institution there is a conspicuous connection, so that part of the social power of public worship is due to music as one of its main constituents. Now, if this power of music in public worship exists, it must grow out of some power in music to reach the individuals of which society consists. Nothing is socially influential that is not first of all personally influential. Music would never have been so magnified and honored as a method of religious expression as it has been if it did not have peculiar personal values to those who produce it and those who hear it. What are these values? Have they any special bearing on our general subject? In particular, has the art of tone some subtle influence upon the inner, subjective, experiential side of religion? Many strenuous advocates of music as a spiritual force make strong statements in this direction. Is their contention extravagant? The proper consideration of this group of questions would take us far afield into the extensive domain of musical aesthetics, and would be out of place here. But we may yet venture to make a few rapid notes upon them without pretending to offer any exhaustive treatment of the problems involved. Observe, first of all, that music has a power unmatched among the other fine arts to act as an illuminator of thought and of life because it is an art of progressive action. It is not fixed and statuesque in its forms, like all the pictorial and plastic arts. It gives, not a single, motionless impression, but a continuously unfolding impression. In working out its intentions it has therefore great capacities, not only for repetition or for contrast, but for an organic development of great effect through intricate involution in details and through unbroken sequences, gradations and accumulations of its materials into extensive wholes. It is not static, but dynamic; not rigid, but infinitely elastic; not pictorial, but dramatic; in short, not inorganic, but vital. These qualities make it a twin sister of speech, especially of poetic speech. Whether or not music be itself a true language, it is at least so analogous with language that the two can be joined in a union that is not mechanical, but fully sympathetic. The great compound art of Song is possible because music and speech are akin by nature. Whatever is true of speech as an interpreter of the human spirit and an influence upon it is likely to be true in some sense and in some degree of song. Now, it is music in the form of song that is prominent in all its religious applications. Religious experience constantly tries to realize itself in words, seeks to bring to utterance what it knows and feels and desires; and, on the other hand, religious experience is largely evoked and shaped by suggestions

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received through words. Words are needed, both for expression and impression. The mind must rest with definiteness on certain images, memories, needs, hopes, cravings, aspirations, ideals, such as only words can embody with precision. But the attempt to use religious terms by themselves as a means either of self-realization or of communication brings out in many directions the weakness of mere language as a full embodiment of religious truth and experience. As everyone knows from his efforts to express himself in prayer, mere words often break down in setting forth certain religious attitudes of the soul. The lack in our spoken prayers of an adequate expression of the emotion that envelopes and permeates the thoughts we have is often due not so much to any real deficiency of feeling in us as to the inherent inadequacy of verbal speech. And what is true of prayer is still more true of such utterances as are attempted in hymns, both those that are meditative or pathetic and those that are jubilant and triumphant. Even the immense resources of poetry as contrasted with mere prose are not sufficient for what we aim to do. Here music comes in, with an almost magical power to incorporate itself with the words we use, to follow their every movement and suggestion, and to add to them just that color and glow and sweep of emotional momentum that are needed. Music thus presents itself as a true extension of language, giving the latter a scope and an intensity impossible for it by itself. Nowhere does language need this expansion and reinforcement more than in the sphere of religious utterance and intercommunication. The historical and scientific aspects of religion, it is true, are finely supplied with the terms necessary to their use; but these are not the aspects that constitute the inner side of religion. When one would set forth or address the heart-life and the soul-life that are the home of spiritual experience, he is bound to find mere language pitifully meager and stiff and cold. Hence in all Christian history men have reached out instinctively and eagerly after every kind of artistic help to fuller expression and suggestion. Painting, sculpture, architecture, dramatic representation, poetry, eloquence—all have been called into religion’s service, and in each case with glorious and monumental results. But we may venture to say that none of these religious uses of art has been or in the nature of the case can be greater in variety, significance, or persistent effectiveness than the special religious applications of music. Our American poet, Sidney Lanier, with his prophetic insight, never wrote a truer line than this—“Music is love in search of a word.” We know what infinite meaning he gave to “love,” and how he meant by it all that the best spiritual thought could require. And what he affirmed of love that might also have been affirmed of hope and peace and joy and all the other cardinal sentiments of the inmost spiritual life. Words alone cannot tell them or preach them, but song can and does in forms too manifold and ethereal to be described. Hence it is that in public worship, where just these sentiments struggle into open manifestation, music, at least in the form of song, becomes practically a necessity.

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But we must not omit a further point. Music evidently does not rest wholly upon speech. It is so independent that sometimes it may nullify the words with which it happens to be joined, or may swing off into regions of its own where neither words nor the processes of ordinary thought can exactly follow it. There it seems to be entirely self-centered and self-determined. Indeed, this field of pure music (without words) is that on which the trained musician is apt to dwell as the only one of genuine importance. Without balancing the delicate question of the relative values of music with words and without words, what shall be said about the moral quality and religious value of pure music and of music considered apart from its words? Is such music essentially neutral in these respects, depending wholly on conditions outside itself, as many would have us believe? Or is it open to classifications as to moral and spiritual character, so that certain types are to be held as unfit for religious use and other types are to be sought and cultivated? For myself, I must feel that all music is in itself a display of the personality of both composer and performer, and hence an appeal to the personality of the hearer. Like other personal communications, it may have—nay, must have—moral values and implications. Hence, with reference to a particular application, as to the uses of religion, it must be regarded as open to exact analysis and criticism and its actual use as subject to rational judgment. The fitness of any musical production for use in public worship does not depend wholly upon its merely formal excellence. Some very poor music has proved itself liturgically useful; and some very perfect music has proved liturgically pernicious. The actual effect depends on so many conditions that at the same moment it may differ in value for different observers and escapes full description in all cases. Yet, even so, we know from the parallel problem of appraising literary effects that there are certain canons of criticism and interpretation that go far toward settling what is the real or absolute character and value. These can be rationally applied by experts and through education can be made more or less generally appreciated. Musical criticism, however, is as yet in a far more chaotic state than literary criticism. Musicians themselves are not all adepts in their own subject, and popular thought is much bewildered. Hence actual music is often produced and used with a provoking blindness to its moral values, and much passes for religious music that cannot continue always to be regarded as healthy and true. We are all conscious of incongruities and abuses in church music. Sometimes they are so glaring as to give rise to disgust and despair about the whole subject. The attempt to discuss them often leads to bitter differences of opinions, severe collisions of judgment, and even personal estrangements. These difficulties are certainly most perplexing. I mention them here simply for this reason. The very existence of such energetic debate regarding them is an irrefragable evidence of an intuitive perception that music has a real moral and religious power. There never would be such persistent debates if

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there were not in the background an obstinate belief that music in connection with religion has certain unattained ideal values. Sacred music would long ago have been laid aside or at least greatly minimized were it not for an instinctive assurance that it might be more than it sometimes is and for an irrepressible demand that it be made more nearly what it ought to be. The real problem about church music is not whether or not it has substantial values with reference to religion as an experience, but how better to realize its ideals by practical means.

PART II

Music and Spirituality

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,6.

Music in Relation to Public Worship (1881) John Bulmer Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. —Ephesians 19

In discoursing on the subject of Music, as an element in Divine Service and an aid in public worship, it is hardly necessary to adduce arguments in favor of a connection which is felt by all to be a most appropriate one, and which is abundantly sanctioned by the authority of Holy Scripture, and in the maintenance of which the consent of the Christian Church has been all but universal. This preliminary point may be taken for granted. And if I should presently detail somewhat the more obvious uses of Music in relation to our common devotions, it will not be so much in the way of inculcating points already recognized as, rather, in order that one part of our subject may be fairly stated and balanced against certain limitations and cautions, that require to be enforced on the other side. Let me further add, that there is no intention to lay down any general rule, or to urge any private view, as to the exact proportion in which a musical element should be introduced into the forms of public worship; as this is clearly a point on which there must always exist some latitude of opinion and diversity of practice, in accordance with the differing circumstances of differing congregations, and the varying musical capacity, also, of individuals composing Bulmer, John. Music in Relation to Public Worship: A Sermon. Cambridge: Jones and Piggott, 1881.

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a congregation. It is sufficient to say that the dignity of the Church’s Service, as our public act of homage to God, demands that its accessory should, as far as possible, be worthy of it, the best-ordered and most perfect that our means admit of; so as the same be also answerable, in each case, to the requirement and capacity of the particular body of worshipers, and thus calculated to assist, or at least not to hinder, those spiritual acts in which all real worship consists. The remarks, therefore, which I propose making, will be addressed to the individual worshiper; who is invited to regard the musical element in Divine Service simply in relation to himself—and, if possible, to judge truly how far, in his own acts of worship, this most excellent help and adornment is answering its rightful purpose—and, whether, in any degree, there may be failures, or misuse of it. I. Now, the ordinary advantages of Music, in conjunction with the Offices of the Church, are sufficiently obvious, to need little more than a brief enumeration. We are familiar with the opening of the 108th Psalm: “O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise.” Fixity of the heart, the concentration of our thoughts upon the spiritual exercise in which we are engaged, is a first condition of acceptable worship. But, by reason of the fleshy infirmity which acts as a perpetual check upon the soul’s better and holier impulses, and in the presence if unnumbered distracting influences external to us, it is a difficult task to keep the mind long and steady occupied upon purely spiritual objects, the more so as such objects are not, by nature, congenial to us; the mind, therefore, is apt to wander and to weary in the acts of worship. But, the accessory of Music is of much service against this defect. By its attractiveness it is ever able to win and hold the attention; and as it strikes freshly on the ear, it has the effect of, as it were, rallying the mind against its distractions; while, by its recurrence at intervals, it will commonly supply the needful stimulus, when our interest has begun to flag, and our devotional energies are failing us. And these musical sounds, in the case of the true-hearted and conscientious worshiper, will surely recall the attention, not to themselves alone, but also to those sacred themes of which they are the melodious setting and embellishment. Again: “Serve the Lord with gladness and come before His presence with a song.” A joyous spirit, always becoming to the Christian, and most especially so in his approaches to the Sanctuary of God, is yet—through our slowness to recognize the great objects of faith and hope, and from manifold depressing and irritating causes—not to the extent it should be, a fact in the Christian’s experience; and, consequently, his “serving the Lord” may often be found deficient in that spirit of “gladness” which the Psalmist enjoins. But, constituted as we are, it must needs be that a duty, the performance of which some sensible pleasure attends should be entered on with greater alacrity and heartiness; and, therefore, the pleasure universally felt in the strains of Music is here with

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advantage made subordinate to the ends of religion. This adjunct is serviceable, not only as effecting an outward liveliness, and removing from our worship the appearance of spiritual dullness, but as indirectly tending to counteract the reality itself. For religious joy is not less likely, but much more likely, to find place within the heart of a worshiper, when the mind has been in a measure tranquilized, and the spirits elevated, and a certain healthy glow imported to the natural feelings—the whole man, in a word, attuned to the work of praise—under the grateful influences of melodious music. Furthermore: the power of Music to touch and impress the emotional elements of our nature is sufficiently known by experience; and this accessory, when judiciously applied, can scarcely fail to be an aid to devotion, in which the emotions are so largely engaged that “worship” has been not un-fitly described as “a holy exercise of the passions.” “The passions, rightly directed,” observes Bishop Atterbury, “are the wings and sails of the mind, which speed its passage to perfection; and they are of particular use in the offices of devotion, which consists of an ascent of the mind toward God.” Now, to take a chief example, that tenderness of feeling, that holy fervor, which is inseparable from the true devotion and spiritual communion, and without which the soul’s approaches to God would be but the cold, hard, acts of a distant, unloving homage—may not even this be somewhat facilitated and prepared by a right application to spiritual ends of that power of Music, whose subduing and kindling influence is so operative on our natural temperament? But I will not further prolong this view of the present subject; the uses, already specified, of Music, as an aid to the acts of devotion, are among the most familiar, and perhaps the most important ones; and they abundantly suffice to vindicate the presence (in just proportion) of a musical element in the order of public worship. II. Let me, therefore, pass on, in the second place, to observe that the embellishment of the Church’s service, the uses of which may be so valuable to each of us, requires, at the same time, to be carefully guarded against possible abuse. It is indeed possible that this musical element in our worship, the intention of which is to stimulate and add fervor to the devotions of all, may fail, in the case of some, to realize this purpose, or even become altogether alienated from its legitimate use. And here, I have not in view the case of any absolutely unmusical persons, to whom such accompaniment might prove rather a hindrance than a help in the performance of religious exercises; this is a very exceptional case, and need not be taken into account. And even were any congregation (to put the most extreme case) composed for the greater part of such persons, it need not, I think, be anticipated that an unpalatable form of worship would (like some new and hard “term of communion”) be forced upon it in disregard of the general sentiment. In what, therefore, I am about further to say, I have regard to the case of the ordinary worshiper, who possesses the average power

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of being interested and edified by a musical accompaniment to the Offices of the Church; addressing myself more particularly to those in whom there exists some natural taste for, and love of, Music. Now, seeing that we are more readily impressible by such things as strike the senses and fall under our natural powers of perception, than by those spiritual objects, which it needs a supernatural agency to bring us into sympathy with, and to enable us to take any cognizance of, the danger to which we are in the present matter liable, is, lest this accessory of Music should cease, in any degree, to be an accessory, and should usurp the place of, and become of greater importance with us than, those spiritual acts of worship themselves, to which it was designed to be subservient. While the worshiper of most earnest and enlightened piety may not dispense with watchfulness over himself on this point, less spiritual minds (or unspiritual minds) are often in great danger of abusing—either consciously, or unconsciously—this attractive adjunct to worship. In the former case, with regard to any who are consciously, perhaps deliberately, in fault in the matter—to whom the musical, or other external, adornment of a service at all, and acquiesced in as much, so perform in spiritual act of devotion, and are content that it should be so—of these we can only say that their participation in the ordinances of the Sanctuary is indeed a profanation, a mere mockery of worship and the “sacrifice of fools”; and that, being such, it must needs be adding to their condemnation, and hastening down upon them the displeasure of Him, whom they dare thus to trifle with and insult. But, there is another and very different class of worshipers, to whom the musical part of the service may occupy other than its true place in their worship, while they themselves remain more or less unconscious of the mis-proportion. There are those who would not designedly come short in the offices of public devotion, who enter the house of God in no spirit of levity, on the contrary, under some real sense of what is both their duty and their privilege, yet whose minds, being of a less spiritual nature, and, it may be, in a measure worldly, may readily become satisfied, that true acts of worship have been performed, and the inner homage of the heart offered, when, all the while, little more than natural feelings have been brought into exercise, and the worshiper’s interest has barely extended beyond an appreciation and enjoyment of the externals of worship. To such persons—especially if with culture and the taste for Music there be joined a certain degree of emotional susceptibility—there exists a danger of mistaking, to some extent, merely aesthetic feeling for the true spirit of devotion. And this is a mistake which the force of the natural inclination may have the effect, in some cases, of rendering less involuntary. I may quote here to you the words of an eminent modern divine, the Rev. John Caird: “Awe, reverence, rapt contemplation, the kindling of the heart and swelling of soul, which the grand objects of faith are adapted to excite, may, in a man of sensitive mind or delicate organization, find a close imitation in the feelings called forth by a tasteful and splendid ceremonial.” To these words, it need

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only be added that, if a spurious devotion is capable of being created by an undue appreciation of the ornate accessories of worship generally, we may well fear so potent (as well as attractive) an element, as that of Magic, might, where not rightly used, contribute largely toward such a result. It is well, therefore, that each individual worshiper should judge himself in this matter, and guard against possible self-deception as to the use which the musical part of our service is sub-serving in his own case—whether it finds its secondary and lawful place, as an aid to the acts of worship, or whether it is being exalted into an end, and acquiesced in as a substitute for the spiritualities of worship. It is, indeed, not easy for the Christian worshiper to analyze minutely his composite mental states, and to distinguish nicely between their natural and supernatural elements, so as to say with certainty where mere aesthetic feeling ends and the true spirit of devotion begins. This is not easy, if it is even possible; but it is not necessary. It is enough for each worshiper to question his conscience and ascertain (as all, who will deal honestly with themselves, can, surely, ascertain), wherein his interest and satisfaction in these sacred ordinances more especially consists; whether it is by the spiritual truths offered to his contemplation and by the inner solemnities of soul-prostration, or by aught attractive and imposing in the mere surroundings of worship, that his mind is more really impressed. I say, more really; for, though impressions that reach us through the medium of our natural senses, may be, and are, more vivid and striking and urgent, they are neither so deep nor so permanent nor so certain, and, consequently, not so real, as those which are of a spiritual class. What, then, is most real to us, in this our public worship? We have an interest in these services, and a satisfaction in attempting them; what is most really the ground of it all? What do we chiefly mean, not merely in the hackneyed phrase as it passes our lips, but within ourselves; what are we most inwardly conscious of, when we say that “we have enjoyed the service”? In the case of some persons, such an inquiry cannot be urged too closely; nor, in the case of any of us, is it superfluous. The matter is one capable of seriously affecting our spiritual health and progress in the Christian life. If we are allowing Music, or whatever other accessory beautifies and enriches our service, so to fail of its true and lawful purpose as to become our chief attraction and most absorbing interest, as often as we resort hither—while the inward realities of worship are made of less account—while there are few breathings of prayer, or upliftings of the soul in praise—while the precious truths of the Gospel gain but slight hearing and the mere fragments of our attention—and while the story of a Savior’s love is listened to with indifference, or even with impatience—if we are guilty, habitually guilty, of this, then we are doing what we can to un-spiritualize and deaden our hearts, and to drive away from us forever the life-giving influences of the Divine Sanctifier. Music, rightly used as an aid to worship, is invaluable; and, as part of our

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public offering to God, it will, surely, be acceptable; but no blessing can attend our upraising of the various forms of sacred Music, unless there also ascend along with them, and far above them, that inner Music of the faithful spirit, holding sweet communion with God, of which the Apostle makes mention in our text: “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.”

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The Mysticism of Music (1915) R. Heber Newton Part I. The Mysticism of Music “Wagner is my religion.” Thus spoke an enthusiast to a friend, remonstrating with him concerning his neglect of church-going. Wagner is one of the greatest masters of music. It was, then, music, as represented by Wagner, of which this enthusiast spoke. He meant what a certain abbé of Paris meant, when listening for the first time to Gluck’s Iphigenia: “With such music one might found a new religion.” Both words are hyperbolic; but each contains a truth in exaggerated form. This thought is borne out by the language of the most philosophically minded of the masters of music, Wagner himself, concerning music. He calls it “Holy Music.” He compares it with Christianity. Again and again, he makes it evident that, to him, all noble music is something so mystic, so sacred, so divine, as not to be separable from religion. “I found true art to be at one with true religion,” he writes in one place. In another place he declares, still more strikingly, “Our own God still evokes much within us, and as [in the confusion wrought by materialistic physical science] He was about to vanish from our sight, He left us that eternal memorial of Himself, our music, which is the living God in our bosoms. Hence we preserve our music, and ward off it all sacrilegious hands; for, if we obliterate or extinguish music, we extinguish the last light God has left burning within us, to point the way to find Him anew.” In such expressions Wagner was but articulating more distinctly the thoughts and feelings which the noblest masters of music have cherished—as notably Beethoven. This ought to be no surprise to the churchman who follows the Church Newton, R. Heber. The Mysticism of Music. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915.

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Year intelligently. The Epiphany season, with which each New Year opens, brings to us the thought of God’s manifestation of Himself to man, apart from all the narrow, ecclesiastical channels, otherwise than through religious dogmas; His manifestation of himself to all mankind through all forms of truth and beauty and goodness. The Magi were led to Christ by the star—through their favorite study of astronomy. So truly wise men, in every line of science and art, may be led to the Christ of God through their favorite studies. The spirit of the Epiphany-tide is expressed in the fine anthem so often sung at the season—“Send out Thy light and Thy truth; let them lead me and bring me unto Thy holy hill.” Our modern world is not more distinctively the age of science than it is the age of music. Perhaps the truths which science has been sent to give men, blurring traditional faith, denying much of the theology of the priests and doctors, may find their corrective in the truths which music has been sent to teach, reflecting the theology of the mystics. Certainly, no narrow, dogmatic, ecclesiastical theology is to be looked for from music. You will never extricate the Thirty-Nine Articles or the Westminster Confession from Beethoven. You may, however, find in music the poetic philosophy which is at the core of the Nicene Creed—the spirit, not the letter of the Creed. You cannot tell the formal religion of a musician from his music. What Protestant would know that Liszt was a Roman Catholic? The flooding tides of music swamp the little sheep-pens of the priest. The religion found in music is as large as man. It is the religion not of the church merely, but of the family, the school, the factory, and the capitol—the life of humanity in all its sacred secularity. “Its sacred secularity”—there is its secret. Restrained by the timid hands of ecclesiastics within the temple, shut up to canticle and oratorio and mass, music burst forth, poured itself into the life of the world, and lo! The cantata and symphony grow so serious, so earnest, that the feelings awakened in listening to them are indistinguishable from the feelings roused in the church; and now even the opera is seen to be capable of growing so mystic as to make a stage scene hush the soul with awe. Here is the broad thought known to all who love music intelligently, that it expresses, outside of the church, the highest principles of religion and morality, as they influence the sentiments and actions of men. Music vindicates thus the cardinal principle of religion, its central article of faith— that human life, as such, is divine, that the secular is after all sacred. Why? Ponder this question, and the suggestions to be now offered may well be anticipated.

I Music, as we know it, was born into the word in the age of science. It is the art of the age of knowledge. We need not, then, be surprised to find that music is not an art merely, that it is a science as well. This, which is true of

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all arts, is preeminently true of music. It is intellectual as well as emotional. It deals with thoughts as much as with feelings. Its contents are ideas. Musicians are measured in the scale of music by their intellectuality. Note that intellectual majesty which crowns the heads of the great masters of music. Handel and Mozart and Beethoven lift above us heads as of the immortals. Intellectuality is stamped on every line of their faces. Music can never cease to be emotional, because thought, in proportion as it is deep and earnest, always trembles into feelings. When one philosophizes after the fashion of Plato, his profoundest passages grow rhythmic and passionate, his paragraphs become prose poems, which cannot be read without the hearer thrilling as under the strains of heavenly music. The loftier the genius of the composer, the nobler his nature, the loftier will be the themes with which he deals, the nobler the thoughts which blossom into feeling through his art. We need not be surprised when the great philosopher from whom Wagner learned so much found himself compelled to recognize “in music itself an Idea of the World.” This saying Wagner interprets as meaning that, “He who could explain music to us wholly in concepts would at the same time have produced a philosophy explaining the world.” Or, as he puts it in another place, “In Beethoven’s music the world explains itself as definitely to every consciousness as the most profound philosophy could explain it to a thinker well versed in the most abstract conceptions.” So that it is a fundamental conviction with Wagner that, “in music the Idea of the World manifests itself.”

II Whence then does music draw its philosophy? Music is not an imitation of nature. Nature provides no ready-made models of melody or harmony, as she provides perfect types of form and color. Hints she gives of music, but only hints. Man evolves music from within his own nature. It is distinctly the human art. It comes forth in the awakening selfconsciousness of man. Music expresses the awakening self-consciousness of the universe, only to find a deeper mystery within himself. The marvelous creations of modern music are studies in self-consciousness; attempts to run the gamut of man’s moods, to fathom the problems of his being, to find a voice for An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light.

Music is, then, man’s interpretation of the mystery of nature found without him, by the secrets of the nature found within him. It is the universe read in terms of self-consciousness. According to music, then, man himself is to yield us our highest philosophy of the universe. We must accept the thought given within his mind as our

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highest and truest thought of the universe. We must implicitly trust that thoughts, as the most adequate manifestation of the Infinite and Eternal Energy which animates nature and which rises with man as self-consciousness. In this thought, music is at one with philosophy; whose masters, from Plato on, have always busied themselves with the study of man, accepting the conceptions which man’s nature gives of the mystery of the universe, and trusting those conceptions. In this, music, also, is at one with poetry, the greatest masters of which likewise find their absorbing theme in man. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Browning, use nature as the setting for the study of man. In contrast with the physical science of our age, which concerns itself wholly with the physical universe, the art of our age, music, concerns itself with the metaphysical universe—the universe above and beyond the realm of physics; having in this the authority of philosophy and poetry. Music bids us look within, if we would find our highest conception of the Idea of the World; trust that conception arising in man’s self-consciousness, as the truest attainable mirror of the Infinite and Eternal Energy, and lean our whole weight on the affirmations of human personality. There is in this one principle a whole theology in a nutshell. No man ever doubts of God or immortality who trusts the instincts and institutions of his own nature, who relies on the trustworthiness of the affirmations of consciousness. And if one’s own self-consciousness be clouded, through the imperfect development of his being, let a man trust the consciousness of the masters of music, since they are at one with the masters of philosophy and poetry: and, finding them devout, religious, hopeful, trustful, let him be sure that “The Idea of the World,” manifesting itself in holy music and in holy philosophy and in holy poetry, is the true vision, and let him be at peace. The great musicians of an age are its interpreters, the priests of nature, leading us within the most holy place of the universe—the soul of man.

III What do we find in entering this holy place, led by “Holy Music”? We find a realm of the invisible, as this inner sphere of life. All sciences lead us up the threshold of this inner creation, this unseen universe, throw the door ajar and point us within. All arts press through the open door into the vestibule of the inner temple. Music takes us by the hand, boldly leads us within, closes the door after us, and then leaves us alone in this inner world. In his oration upon Beethoven, Wagner wrote—“As soon as the first measures, only, of one of Beethoven’s divine symphonies are heard, the entire phenomenal world, which impenetrably hems us in on every side, suddenly vanishes into nothingness; music extinguishes it as sunshine does lamplight. In music’s enigmatically entwined lines and wonderfully intricate characters stand written the eternal symbols of a new and different world.”

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IV This inner, unseen world makes itself felt, under the spell of music, as a most real world; nay, as the real world, the only real world. He who, in listening to a great symphony, forgets himself, forgets those about him, forgets the outer world of things seen and sensible, sitting with eyes closed and ears sealed—is carried away on “the golden tides of music’s sea,” until he feels himself in the presence of thoughts and ideas which seem the true reality of life. To come back to the crowds on the Boulevard, the Avenue, the Square, and the garish light of the world of “reality,” as men term it, is to him, then, to drop into the world of appearances, illusions, shams and unrealities. That which all sciences hint and all art declare, music confirms, as with the oath of the eternal Himself—“the things which are seen are temporal; the things which are unseen are eternal.” Beethoven, in his latter days, became almost completely deaf. Sitting before his piano and playing on it, he could not hear a sound. Yet tender melodies and marvelous harmonies poured forth from his fingers; not as the results of composition, but as the transcripts of the music which the deaf man heard somewhere. “Heard,” I say, for this music was heard, with a most real hearing, as he himself tells us. Heard within, pushing through the inner realm, invisible, inaudible. Ponder this fact for a moment, quietly, and it will be seen that we are taking a solid step forward when we go on to affirm our next thought.

V Music reveals the reality of Spirit; not merely of my spirit or of your spirit, but of Spirit, “writ large”: of what the Hindus meant by “The Self.” Music brings us face to face with a most real world, in which is the manifestation of a most real Power; a Power not ourselves, greater than us all; before us, round about us; in which we, with all things living, live and move and have our being. This is not rhapsodizing or sentimentalizing. It is speaking soberly of this reality, into whose presence music leads us; this realm unseen, unseeable, within the phenomenal world, through which surge the tides of music’s golden sea; melodies enrapturing, harmonies most heavenly, of which the music that we hear in the great symphonies is but a faint echo, thrown out upon the audible world. As the masters who have passed within this mystic sphere tell us, in such rapt experiences they do not compose; they do not invent, they copy; and their noblest works are the memories of these strains which no ear may hear. They are possessed by another and larger life, another and larger being, the Life, the Being which animates the world within, invisible, inaudible, yet, most real. Their spirits open, and the Infinite and Eternal Spirit within all life pours in and fills them to overflowing.

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The deaf Beethoven thus heard that which enabled him to interpret the varied phases and moods of nature’s existence, of man’s whole life. “And now the musician’s eye became enlightened from within. He now cast his glance upon phenomena which, illumined by his inner light, were re-imparted in wonderful reflex to his soul. Now, again, the essence of the nature of things alone speaks to him, displaying them to him in the calm light of beauty. He now understands the forest, the brook, the meadow, the blue ether, the merry throng, the pair of lovers, the song of the birds, the flying clouds, the roar of the storm, the bliss of beatific repose.” How could this be, unless he had found the Spirit which is the life of all things? And thus a notable change passed over Beethoven himself. His natural melancholy, aggravated so pitifully in the early stages of his infirmity, lightened into a serenity which, if not joy, was at least peace; and he seemed to have found the mystic secret of life. How shall we speak of this mystic experience save in the words of the great master of our day, who tells of finding through music, “The God within the human breast, of whom our greatest mystics have always been so certainly and so luminously conscious.” The genius of one of the greatest of French masters of fiction makes this experience perfectly clear. Balzac gives us, in Louis Lambert, this picture of the culmination of musical inspiration, in his description of the improvisations of a genius. “Here Gambara fell into ecstasy, improvising the most melodious and harmonious cavatina that Andrea had ever heard; a song divine, divinely sung; a theme of grace comparable only to that of the O filii et filice, and full of charm which none but a musical genius of the highest order could have given. The Count was filled with admiration. The clouds were breaking, heaven’s blue shining forth; angelic forms appeared, and raised the veils that hid the sanctuary; the light of heaven streamed down in torrents; silence soon reigned. The Count, surprised to hear no more, looked up at Gambara, who, with fixed eyes and rigid body, stammered the word—‘God.’”

VI This is the language of the mystic, not of the ecclesiastic, and as such is unsatisfactory to the theological Gradgrinds, who never feel that they have an idea unless they can condense it and see it; who never think they have a belief unless they can bottle it in a dogma, analyze it, resolve it, label it and store it away among the things which they have exhausted of mystery. Vague this thought of God is, and rightfully so. Vague it must ever be; as vague as the reality transcending our human thinking, making itself felt as reality, while eluding any clearing up by the understanding. The dogmatist would place in our hands a telescope to resolve the spiritual nebulae. The mystic knows that no such lenses have been ground, and humbly offers up the glass which will

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bring within the field of the inner vision the reality which we can never hope to map. The mystic’s thought of God has always been thus rightfully vague. Herein it is the only thought which can meet the need of the age whose science has at least impressed on man, never again to be lost, the truth of the ancient world: “We can by searching find out God.” To the age of science, taught that the Infinite and Eternal Energy which is manifested in the overwhelmingly vast universe now opening on man’s vision must for ever be beyond human comprehension—to this age of science, finding its highest eloquence of worship in silence, ordering as the ritual of its holiest hours the finger upon the lips, comes music, the art of the modern world; with a revelation of the reality of the Infinite and Eternal Soul of all things, whom it manifests within the mind of man; giving us the name for ever sacred to the soul, as the consecrated symbol through which successive ages have declared the faith transcending all definition, and whispering—“God.” Do you fear that in this vagueness there will be loss of power? The thoughts of music are certainly vague, but therein lies their power. Music of the highest order scarcely needs words to express its meaning to the listener— being itself poetry. You are not helped, ordinarily, in the following of a great work by the notes of the program. A libretto is helpful to the interpretation of the musical drama only when written by a genius who is at once a poet and a musician. If you surrender yourself to the music itself, become enraptured with it, you feel that meaning of it, though you cannot put that meaning into words. Words may only becloud the vision of the soul. Mendelssohn entitled his exquisite collection—“Songs without Words.” Can there be such songs without words? You do not doubt it after listening to these wordless strains, whose thoughts and feelings could not be clearer by any articulation of speech. All the greatest thoughts are thoughts too deep for words. Are they unreal, therefore? Is not their power in the speechless wonder with which they thrill us? Words are only intellectual symbols, signs for thoughts, suggesting what they cannot worthily express; and musical notation is only an emotional symbolism, suggesting that which, as feeling, lies beyond all words and thoughts. “Where words end, there music begins.” The greater the thought, the more intense the feeling which it generates— the more surely does it pass out of the intellect into the heart, cease to be a mere thought, and become a mental and spiritual apprehension deeper than all conscious thinking. As Mr. Haweis writes in Music and Morals: “Once raise a thought to its highest power, and it not only is accompanied by the highest emotion, but, strange to say, actually passes out of the condition of a thought altogether, into the condition of an emotion; just as a hard metal, raised to a sufficient power of heat, evaporates into the most subtle and attenuated gas.” Wordsworth thus writes of the highest experience of man:

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II. Music and Spirituality Such was the Boy—but for growing youth What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland he beheld the sun Rise up and bathe the world in light! He looked— Ocean and earth, the solid frame of the earth And ocean’s liquid mass beneath him lay In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, And in their silent faces did he read Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy: his spirit drank The spectacle: sensation, soul and form All melted into him: they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live, And by them did he live; they were his life. In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God, Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request; Rapt into still communion, which transcends The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power That made him: it was blessedness and love.

Thus the musician becomes the fit theologian of our age, making us feel the reality of the Infinite and Eternal Spirit whom we name God, and hushing us in the awe of silence, though in the perfect peace and trust.

VII “The prefect peace of trust.” For this Spirit, before whom music leads us to bow in worship, is so revealed to us as, even in our most speechless feeling, to make us sure that It is trustworthy; to assure us that we may say, not It, but He. For, to end with the note with which we began, whither does music lead us, as into the holy place of this awful presence? Within the soul of man. What is the mirror in which this Mystic Face is reflected? The soul of man. How do we come to perceive this vision? By awakening into self-consciousness. The human personality is, then, the revelation of God. That can only mean that we must think of God, if we think of Him at all, in terms drawn from human nature; that we must conceive of God as the Perfect Man, the source and spring of human nature. Its ground and root is then a Being who, however He may transcend personality, cannot be less than personal; of whom the only worthy name is the child’s word, the word of the child soul, of the Eternal Child within the Nazarene—“Our Father which art in heaven.” So, through our mysterious human nature, with its mind, its heart, its conscience, rises dimly the shadow of a Being of Infinite Truth, Infinite Beauty, Infinite Goodness, and we know the profound meaning of The Christ’s words: “If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how

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much more will your Father which is in heaven give the Holy Spirit”—the Spirit revealed through holy music—“unto them that love him?” Love—that is the central word in the mystery of man. It is the core of his being, round which all grows. It is the divinest element in our human nature. It is the best image of the Father of our spirits. Of Beethoven, his great interpreter wrote: “His soul of souls said to him—‘Love is God’; and so he, too, decreed: ‘God is love.’”

VIII “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” He who in the mystic’s vision, through poetry or philosophy or music, or through the spiritual experiences of the search after goodness, finds God, finds that we, too, live and move and have our being in Him, and that, because He is, we shall be also. He cannot die who is in God. Immortality is bound up with the faith in God. So, again, “Holy Music” makes perfectly clear this faith of the human heart, which is the corollary of the faith in God. In that pathetic will which Beethoven wrote, he thus expressed his own onlook: “I go to meet death with joy.” And one feels, as he reads Beethoven’s words about death, that his joy was one passing his understanding; a whisper which he did not clearly interpret, whereof the feeling was truer than the thought. He seemed to think of death—but his feeling of joy was the breath of life from “the land of the living.” How true this is, let us learn from the death of another great master. “One evening, toward sunset, Chopin, who had lain insensible for many hours, suddenly rallied. He observed the Countess, draped in white, standing at the foot of the bed. She was weeping bitterly. ‘Sing,’ murmured the dying man. She had a lovely voice. It was a strange request, but so earnest a one that his friends wheeled the piano from the adjoining parlor to his bedroom door; and there, as the twilight, deepening with the last rays of the setting sun, streamed into the room, the Countess sang that famous canticle to the Virgin which, it is said, once saved the life of Stradella. ‘How beautiful it is!,’ he exclaimed: ‘My God, how beautiful!—again—again!’ In another moment he swooned away.”

IX Thus, unless I have followed her leadings blindly, “Holy Music” comes to us as a prophet from Samaria, revealing to our age of darkened spiritual vision the mystic faith which the Church has imperfectly breathed, through her dogmatic creeds and ecclesiastical institutions, in the suffering soul of men. Close your Bibles, if you must, drop out from your churches, if you cannot attend them, but think not thus to lose the theology which ever has vitalized the Church. Outer body of dead wood may die and fall away, when its time comes. Inner life and soul can never die, while sciences hint and arts lift the veil and holy music leads us within that veil before the altar. Profoundly

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significant is it that, in this age when men turn away from the accredited prophets, these other voices of the soul make themselves heard, in clear, calm tones; giving us again the mystic’s vision and the mystic’s faith. Thus may we hear The Eternal saying unto the Daughter of His Voice, “Holy Music”: Lo, I have given thee To understand my presence and to feel My fullness: I have filled thy lips with power. I have raised thee nigher to the sphere of heaven, Man’s first, last home; and thou, with ravished sense, Listenest the lordly music falling from Th’ illimitable years.

Part II. The Christian Mysticism of Music Richard II, while listening to the strains of music outside his dungeon walls, exclaims: Blessings on his heart that gives me, For ’tis a sign of love.

If music be, indeed, a sign of love, it is the symbol, the sacrament, of the one spiritual reality which is at the heart of the Christian Creed, which is at the core of being. In our previous chapter, we saw grounds to declare that, if we should feel constrained to close our Bibles and wander from the Church, we should still find a theology in music, and that theology the underlying theology of all noble religion—Theism. “Holy Music” reveals to us the thought, the conviction, the faith of God, the Immanent Life of nature, the Spirit indwelling man. Is there anything more suggested by music than this pure Theism? Unquestionably there is. Nothing less, indeed, than the true Christian Theism; not only the idea of the World, but the distinctively Christian Idea of the World. Such a statement need not surprise us, who know the history of modern music. It is the child of Christianity. It was born in the Church. Its cradle was upon the altar. Its first cry was a mass. Again, let it be said, we are to expect not the letter of the Christian Creed, but its spirit; not the secondary accretions of Reformation theology, but the inner and vital thought of the Catholic theology, the theology of the Nicene fathers; and not this as misunderstood by ecclesiastics, but as understood by the mystics—the only class who hold the key to the Nicene Creed.

I There is a science as well as an art in music. Art there is in music, unquestionably. At first sight it seems altogether an art, a skill achieved by genius, unaccountably transcending all rules.

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The boy gifted with a genius for music begins to play after his own sweet will. In the old barn or up in the garret, away from the family, he steals to be alone with his fiddle, surrendering himself to his boyish improvisations, which know no law. If he be sent at work under a master, he cannot keep behind the plodding steps of the pedagogue, but leaps in a bound to the mastery of his art, such as dazzled the world in the boy Mozart. With the growing consciousness of power, he overleaps all recognized systems and defies all known rules; accomplishing marvels such as those with which Paganini astonished the musical world. Yet is he only flying over the terra firma of science, along which mere talent plods wearily. That terra firma of fixed rule, of rigid system, is there, beneath him, and, but for it, genius could not fly in its atmosphere of inspiration. The masters may never know the principles on which they work, the system which runs through their work. Turner did not know the geology which he illustrated in his pictures of the Alpine rock strata. The boy Mozart did not know that all his wizard actions were reducible to science. Yet, when the critic comes to study genius, he discovers that these defiances of rule are but the actions of a higher rule, protests against conventionality, expansions one and all of law. He finds that the master’s beautiful chords and progressions thence are not capricious violations of rule, possible to genius though unattainable by ordinary composers. There proves to be nothing haphazard in the work of genius. All turns out to be orderly, methodical, accordant with law. So the rules which are laid down for the student prove to be but the translation, into consciously recognized methods, of the unconscious processes of the master—a systematizing of the practices of genius for the use of talent. The master’s magical action was the unconscious, instinctive movement of mind along the lines of law, which criticism clears for all to see and follow. Art is thus the forerunner of science; and the master’s use of harmonies, which are justifiable at the time by no known laws, are justified then in their efforts, and, later on, by a larger knowledge. The rules of musical art are, thus, not arbitrary, but necessary, natural. What seem to be empirical rules, drawn from the practice of the masters, prove to rest upon natural principles, by which, unknowingly, the masters wrought. Thus a science opens beneath the art of music—and the magical realm of harmony proves to be but one sphere of the universal reign of law. In the familiar tradition which has come down from history, Pythagoras discovered the musical scale by watching certain blacksmiths, pounding iron in a smithy. Observing, reflecting, experimenting upon the sounds which he there heard, the simple, physical secret of sound revealed itself to him—the law which the child learns, when he takes a number of pieces of glass and by arranging them in different lengths produces a scale, and makes a tune. We know now that the magic of music can be learned and practiced, that the wizard genius works upon fixed principles, that the most bewildering beautiful harmonies are all expressions of mathematical relationships, that on the world

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of sound there is a reign of law. Tennyson’s fine touch sums up the mystery of music, in a pregnant word: “And music in the bounds of law.” Thus we find in music the secret of the universe. There is no fear that our age will miss this open secret in the realm of science. We may, however, discover it quite as clearly in the realm of art. The great art-critic, Winkelmann, studied the Apollo Belvidere with a minuteness of criticism never given before; and discovered that every most seemingly careless sweep of its beautiful lines reveals the action of exactest mathematics. He found that he could give the secret of that classic statue in terms of figures; that its charm was a matter of scientific proportion; that he could write the formula for each curve of that noble form. The realm of the beautiful is, equally with the realm of the true and the good, under the universal reign of law.

II Yet, further, as we thus find hinted to us in the secret of music, all laws are correlated. The law of one sphere proves to be the law of the other spheres. We may translate a law of physics into terms of aesthetics and of ethics. When Winkelmann found the law governing the lines of Apollo Belvidere, he found it in terms not of art, but of mathematics. He found a mathematical statement of the law of proportion which shaped every curve of that wonderful form. It is only as we break up into bits of men—clergymen and other such professional manikin—that we fancy the laws of our individual spheres to be isolated. The men in whom the various powers of life blend know that all spheres of life are concentric, that the laws of one world are the laws of all worlds. This was fertile thought which inspired Goethe, in those marvelous guesses at truth which anticipated some of the greatest discoveries of modern savants. I shall never forget the enthusiasm with which a great-braided friend, whose friendship grows dearer to me as the years of that privileging comradeship recede, followed the Ariadne clue to this knowledge. Himself artist and musician and lover of science, he one day left my side in a railway train to talk with a musician whom I had introduced to him. For an hour or two, he talked absorbingly; returning to my side with his face all aglow, to assure me that he had found a certain law of form, which he was seeking, in a law of sound which he had learned from my musical friend—as he had long hoped prove the case. In despair of discovering that law in art, he found it in music.

III Nor is it that all spheres manifest this interchange of thought, but, from Winkelmann’s study of the Apollo, we learn that this universal mystery of law,

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reigning everywhere, one and the same through all spheres, translating itself from one tongue to another, finds its highest term in the language of that art which we are now studying. In the secret of music we hold the key to that universe in which is the reign of law. Shakespeare is thought to be merely poetizing when he describes the universe in that glowing vision familiar to us all: There’s not the smallest orb which thou beholdest; But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins. Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Dost grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Yet this is what all great poets have seen, declaring, in some form, the conviction of Emerson, that: The world was built in order, And the atoms march in tune.

The language of poetry is the language of philosophy. The oldest, most widespread, and most insistent of the clues to the problem of the universe has been found in that mystic doctrine of numbers which Pythagoras first taught our Western world. He meant, as all mystics have meant, that the inner law of the creation is a law of proportion. If we could find that inner law of the universe, it would be expressed in terms of numbers, it would reveal a science of proportion. Thus the movements of nature would prove to be a harmony; and, if we had ears fine enough to hear, we should listen in calm hours to a music of the spheres.

IV Let me give you three striking illustrations of these high thoughts of law to which we have been led. Some years ago, the great savant, John Tyndall, made certain curious experiments in the translation of colors into sounds. Arranging a row of various colored lights, by a very simple mechanism he caused the vibrations of the light waves to translate themselves into sound waves, and thus produced a sound for each color, a prism of sound. Within recent years, a very curious book has been given to the Englishspeaking people. It is the result of long study by a man of remarkable metaphysical powers and of equally remarkable mathematical powers. Early in life, he conceived the idea that—since the synthetic laws of mathematics express the inner and cosmic laws of proportion, through and by which all life is ordered—philosophy itself might be translatable into terms of metaphysics; that a mathematical diagram might be drawn in which the fundamental postulates of philosophy should be expressed to the eye. Working out along the

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lines of metaphysics, by the severest and most logical processes, he reached the great ultimate thoughts in which the universe has ever centered; and then, by his rare mathematical talent, he was enabled to express these formulas in forms visible to the eye—in mathematical diagrams. What was the result? Certain great typical forms, exquisitely beautiful, marvelously proportioned, which proved to be the great typical forms of the flower world. But more than this, these very flower forms prove to be those which we find through the universe—from crystals to the convolutions of certain vast nebulae scattered through space. They thus prove to be cosmic forms—universal and essential. Some thirty years ago, a rarely gifted musician, to whom I am indebted for much stimulating thought, showed me certain photographs which he had just received from England. They were pictures of most subtle, mathematical figures, which were, at the same time exquisitely beautiful forms, strangely suggestive of the great typical forms of the flower world. And my friend thus interpreted to me these puzzling pictures. Some time before, a scientific musician bethought him of making the chords of music record the lines of their soundwaves, so that the eye could have a picture of the forms thus produced. Suspending fine pins from the wires of a piano, so that they should move delicately over sheets of paper, by striking the chords carefully and allowing the sound to die out naturally, he succeeded in making the vibrations of the sound wave of each chord trace the lines of its movements. The results were designs of mathematical exactness, of exquisite beauty, strangely suggesting the great typical flower forms. These diagrams were thus the expression, to the eye, of the music which the ear hears; the audible world translated into the visible world; the revelation of a mystery until then unseen by human eye, un-grasped by human thought. If one studies these diagrams carefully and lets the thoughts which they awaken lead him out amid the mysteries of the cosmos—then in the vision which they open of the mystery of law, of the law which is everywhere present, acting in all life, directing all, controlling all, everywhere one and the same, where will he find himself? Before the one supreme mystery of the universe, of which all theology is an expression, in which all faith rests. This vision is that which the great mystics of all ages and creeds have beheld, and which, in such dim fashion as speech could render, they have sought to picture before men, in philosophic thought. This is the vision which the great Alexandrian Hebrew, Philo, beheld; he who was indirectly instrumental in shaping the form of philosophy into which the early Christian Church ran its speculation concerning the Man in whom the moral law lived perfectly; the vision which he pictured, as best he could, in a noble eulogy of law: For God, as Shepherd and King, governs according to Law and Justice, like a flock of sheep, the earth and water and air and fire, and all the plants and living things that are in them, whether they be mortal or divine, as well as the courses of

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heaven and the periods of sun and moon, and the variations and harmonious revelations of the other stars; having appointed His true Word, His First-Begotten Son, to have the care of his great flock, as the Vicegerent of the Great King.

This was the vision before our Yankee mystic, the Hindu seer of Concord, when, closing the wonderful strain of the “Woodnotes,” he declares that— “Conscious Law is King of Kings.” The universe under law, all law one, that law immanent in nature, directing all, ruling all—what is this but the very presence and action of the Infinite and Eternal Intelligence, God? Gaining this vision, we reach the heart of the Christian Faith, we hold the key to the Nicene Creed, whose doctrines of the Trinity and of the Incarnation of the Logos are but the expressions of this very thought, world-old and worldwide. The Nicene Fathers, as we can now see, were shaping a cosmology and theology in one; a cosmic theology; a theology which finds the secret of the universe in the Law everywhere present, all ruling, all directing; itself the Vicegerent of the Infinite and Eternal Intelligence, God. That indwelling Law of creation seemed to these fathers none other than God Himself; yet, as it were, a secondary form of the God who, in His essential nature, transcends all human thought. Thus they conceived of a Dual God; the Father, transcendent, unknowable, who in creation manifests Himself partially, so that the universe is an image of Him, His Only-Begotten Son. This Law divine is not merely the law of the material creation but of the moral order. It is not only a law physical, but a law ethical, acting with moral aim, in moral beings, toward moral ends; working towards the creation of character. God is the Good One, ever moving to lift into goodness, and so into Himself; thus reconciling man unto God. The Good Man, who perfectly realizes the idea, the thought of God, in man; who embodies in an individual the moral energy which is working in the universe—this Man we rightly identify with that divine Logos or Law which is immanent in nature, indwelling man, the life and soul of all things, the redeeming and reconciling power of God in humanity. Thus we affirm—“The Word was made flesh.”

V On the surface of things, it does not seem as though law was thus ordering all things in nature and mastering all powers in man—out-working a moral purpose. Law in nature does not seem to have morally mastered the universe. It is everywhere holding the millions of stars which the monster Lick telescope reveals, in the harmonious movements of a beautiful physical order; but where, men say, are the more harmonious movements of a beautiful moral order in nature? Strife and discord seem everywhere present. The very law of progress

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appears to be the savage struggle for existence. Everywhere, to the inquiry of a tender conscience, it has seemed to man that— Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shrieked against his creed.

Discord is everywhere—but harmony? And the story of man, is it not also one of law in the lower and physical nature, but of lawlessness in the spirit? The savage struggle for existence, does it not reproduce itself in the history of man? He dreams of laws of goodness, but they fail to order his life into the harmonies of character. He dreams of heavenly purity, and wallows in the lusts of the flesh. He dreams of angelic self-control, and reels along the street with the unsteady step of the drunkard. He dreams of divine justice, and sanctions with religion a social order of cruel injustice. He dreams of universal brotherhood, and finds the mainspring of civilization still in selfishness. The vices and crimes of human nature, the ruin which sin works—this is the pathos of history, the mystery over which tragedy broods, with endless fascination. There seems to us no mastery of an immoral chaos by moral law, as there must be, if the Christian Creed is the true interpretation of that Conscious Law which is King of Kings. Discord, not harmony, seems to prevail, and life appears no order, but a sad disorder. We turn to music, and find the key of the puzzle. In the latest born, the highest of the arts, the most central of the sciences, there is discord. That discord measures the superiority of modern music to ancient music. Ancient music was melodic. One strain flowed in a sweet unison of peace and purity, but as an un-evolved and rudimentary art. Modern music, the music of the man, as distinguished from the music of the child, is characterized by harmony. The scientific music, through which thought speaks and law rules, seems to the uneducated ear largely discord. To climb to harmony we must mount by the way of discord. Discord is imperfect harmony. To the ear accustomed to the simple melodious strains of rudimentary music, the musical dramas of Wagner seem only dissonance. When I stand before a great orchestra, it seems to me that I am in the presence of a symbol of the universe. If I am too near to any of the instruments, the effect is not harmonious, but discordant. One instrument dominates the others, clashes with the rest, seems out of harmony with the mass of sound. If I would understand the secret of that mighty mass of sound, I must stand where the instruments blend. Even there, too, my inner ear must listen, and coordinate the separate and clashing sounds, duly. The mighty orchestration is only possible by the development of the individual parts, which seem to be forever running away with all order and rushing into chaos. You cannot have a Tristan and Isolde without this dissonance of various instruments, apparently clashing, yet, at the right distance, coordinating into harmony.

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The captious critic of the universe stands so close to creation that he fails to coordinate the jarring instruments into a symphony. He forgets that, as Pope long ago saw, we too should see: All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood.

Nor has he found the truth which the philosopher-poet of modern India, Rabindranath Tagore, has learned in his inner experience: “When Thou commandest me to sing, it seems that my heart would break with pride; and I took to Thy face, and tears come to my eyes. All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony—and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.” As I stand before the great orchestra, I am self-condemned, again, if, in my impatience, I will not hear the work out; thus to find how the clashing dissonance, which seems to me only discord running riot, is on the way to the pure harmony in which it melts at length. What interpretation of great symphony of music-drama can there be which fails patiently to follow on the stress and strain of the earlier movements into the reconciliation of the final harmony, with its peace serene, seraphic, its joy unspeakable and full of glory? The ancients used to speak of man as the spectator of the drama of the universe. If he would rightfully judge that drama, he must see it out. He must, at the least, refrain from criticism upon the work whose issue he does not see and hear. The final harmony of a great symphony is not merely auditory, but intellectual and spiritual. It is not only the harmony which the ear hears, but the inner harmony of which it is the expression, the ultimate harmoniousness of life. It expresses, sacramentally, the close of the battle of life, the issue of the tragedy of life; and the outward and visible sign—the heavenly harmony—is the sacrament of the inward and spiritual grace, the good thing given of God, the victory, the reconciliation, the restoration; salvation from sin, character won, God found. This is the inner secret of that strain of peace and hope with which the heavenly knight bids adieu to the scene of suffering and temptation, of sin and sorrow, in Lohengrin. Through what storm and struggle does Beethoven express, in the immortal Ninth Symphony, the turmoil and perturbation of the soul of man; its seemingly vain and fruitless effort to find satisfaction, the discord which prevails within, un-reconciled, un-harmonized. The clashing sounds of the multitudinous instruments of the great orchestra seem but the audible sign and symbol of that inner discord in which man’s powers strive in vain for harmony. But there rises from the harsh dissonance a soft, sweet strain, simple as the song of a child, serene as the song of the seraphs. Lost again in the great tumult, once more it emerges; losing itself and re-emerging, again and again; each time

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growing clearer, rising stronger, mounting higher, until at length it bursts forth in that matchless song of peace and joy which has forever enshrined, in perfect form, the bliss of the human soul, attaining its goal, gaining the end of its being, reconciling its powers, finding itself in God. Our great scientific musician distinctly declares that Beethoven’s problem in that Symphony was to find in music the original type of human purity, a strain expressive of the ideal Good Man of his creed. “In precisely that work, the deliberately recalling Will of its Creator unmistakably prevails. We meet its expression without any intermediation. When, to the raging of the desperation that after each silencing constantly returns, as with the cry of fright of one awakening from a fearful dream, that Will calls out in the actually spoken word, the ideal sense of which is none other than— ‘Man is good after all.’”

VI And thus we return to the thought with which we began, having completed the circle. Music is the sign of love. Love is the central reality of life. It is the secret of the power which is working through all things, creating, redeeming, restoring. It is the symbol of that Triune God, who is at once Creator, Redeemer, and Reconciler. So, again, Wagner writes of Beethoven, expressing the ultimate truth to which he reached and which he prophetically revealed through music: “His soul of souls said to him—‘Love is God’; and so he too decreed— ‘God is love.’” It is what Browning, the most virile poet of our day, tells us in conclusion of his noble poem, “Saul”: All’s love, yet all’s law.

There is a reign of law, and that law is love. “God is love.” Jesus is the Christ of God, the incarnation of that divine love. He is the Savior who has come to save us from our sins, by breathing within us that moral energy, that spiritual life, in which all the discords of earth shall be lifted into the harmonies of heaven; and man shall gain the mastery of himself, and be at peace. It is a fundamental law of musical composition that great works should begin and end in the same key. That great poem, that great symphony which we call the universe, began in love divine. It will close in love human made divine, the love of God outworking itself in the love of man, reconciling all things unto itself. Handel desired that he might die on a Good Friday. On that day which commemorates the dying love of a man in whom the living love of God is seen, as in a sacrament of flesh, the spirit of the great musician passed away; to find the secret of his earthly harmonies in that love, infinite and eternal, which is working out the redemption of all life, the lifting of all discord into harmony, the mastering of all sin into goodness.

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The Emotions in Music (1874) E. Janes Writers upon psychology have hitherto somewhat neglected the subject of emotion. The problem of knowledge has occupied their attention, almost to the exclusion of the problem of feeling. How we know, is a more important inquiry than how we feel; and hence far more has been written upon the human intellect than upon the sensibilities or even the will. Probably, too, far more has been written upon what might be called abstract psychology—upon the laws of thought, as these laws must rule the mental operations of all intelligent beings—than upon what we may call concrete psychology—or the science of mind as known to us, dwelling in and manifested by a bodily organism. The former might be a very good mental science for disembodied spirits, but the latter only could be of any practical use to us in the present stage of our existence. The science of the human mind, it is evident, must be intimately connected with the science of the human brain, and the human nervous system, by which the mind finds expression and has the power of action. There is, indeed, a growing tendency, among thinkers and writers on these subjects, to study the mind and the body in connection, but they generally fall into one or the other of two opposite dangers. One class of thinkers, absorbed with the fact that the mind works through the brain and the nerves, forget the part played by the corporeal organism, and ignore the fact that, as different tools do different work, and different instruments produce different music, though employed by the same hand, so the instrument of thought or of the expression of thought must necessarily modify, in some way, the operations of the mind inhabiting and using it. Some of them even go so far as to claim, explicitly or implicitly, that the most plainly corporeal desires and feelings, such as hunger Janes, E. “The Emotions in Music.” In George P. Fisher, Timothy Dwight, and William L. Kingsley eds., The New Englander, vol. XXXIII. New Haven, CT: Tuttle, Morehouse, and Taylor, 1874.

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and thirst, or the desire to sleep, or physical fear, or the shudder of disgust, pertain to the immortal spirit of man. On the other hand, another class go as far in the opposite direction, reducing all to materialism, making thought and feeling to be functions or secretions of the brain, and eliminating the immortal part altogether. It is not the purpose of the present article, however, to attempt to mediate between these two ways of viewing the phenomena of intelligence and feeling, or to try to decide precisely at what point matter ceases and mind begins, or vice versa. The former will accomplish itself. Materialism cannot continue to satisfy the human mind, for it ignores a most important class of phenomena, and hence is an incomplete philosophy, therefore no philosophy at all. And a psychology, which is applicable to disembodied spirits alone, which ignores the body and the brain, cannot thrive in this age, so full of material science, so noted for progress in physiology. “Psychology,” says President Porter, “is usually limited to the science of the human soul, in its connection with the human body.” There can be no doubt that the two will be more and more studied in connection, and their natural relations investigated. But to lay down the exact limits between the influence of each would seem to be a problem too difficult for human powers, and of little or no value in itself, but perhaps that will be incidentally approached, and by successive approximations. Perhaps the time will come when the philosophy of emotion will be revised, and more fully developed, and it will then probably be found that the physical system has far more to do with the emotions than with the intellectual powers. It is certainly far easier to conceive that a pure spirit, without the bodily machinery of expression, can think, reflect, and imagine, than that such a spirit could feel, without the corporeal means of impression. Perception may be an instantaneous act of the mind acting through the sense, and then the deductive powers may be busy in the matter for a long time, until some result is reached, whereupon the physical machinery must again be called upon to assist in its expression. It may be that light will be thrown upon this subject by the revival of the old distinction between the soul and the spirit. According to this ancient and profound distinction, the soul, the necessary counterpart of the body and intimately if not inseparably connected with it, contains the principle of animal life, and is the seat of sense, feeling, and emotion; while the spirit, independent in existence, lofty in its attributes, using the body as instrumental and subordinate, is the seat of intellectual perception, reflection, intuition, and moral will or choice. Dr. Brown-Séquard has recently, in a course of lectures in Boston, defended the theory, “that there are two sets, or a double set, of mental powers in the human organism, or acting through the human organism, essentially different from each other. The one may be designated as ordinary conscious intelligence;” that is, he probably means the power of sense—perception, emotion, etc.: “the other a superior power ... which solves, sometimes suddenly, sometimes unexpectedly, nay even

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in sleep, our problems and perplexities ... acting through us, without conscious action of our own.” Professor Agassiz, in quoting this theory, in the words given above, adds the suggestion, if we understand him rightly, that the former class of mental powers do not offer in kind from those of the lower animals. Doubtless, these distinguished lecturers had in mind some such distinction as the ancient and spiritual one between the soul and spirit. President Porter, in his work, The Human Intellect, says: “The term soul originally signified the principles of life or motion in a material organism.... Traces of this signification may be distinctly discovered in the three-fold division of man into body, soul, and spirit, in which the soul occupies the place between the corporeal or material part, and the spiritual or noetic.... When the soul was limited to man, and signified the human soul, it came to designate by eminence those endowments by which man is distinguished from the animals, instead of denoting, as previously, those which he has in common with them.” There is a debatable land between the soul and the body, by whatever name it may be called. And whether we call it the animal soul or the corporeal spirit, or if we divide it between the mind and the brain, attributing some things to the activity of the one and some to that of the other, it will be found that it is to this debatable region that the emotions for the most part belong. And if the brain and the mind were each to claim its own, those emotions which are excited through the senses, by means of music for instance, would fall to the share of the physical organism. It is universally admitted that the emotions, usually called by that name, such as love, anger, hatred, are complex, comprising much which is simply intellectual, and in no way emotional. Thus the perception of the loveliness or desirableness of the object loved, the selfish desire to enjoy or possess it, and the earnest purpose to satisfy this desire, all these are commonly joined together with what is properly called emotion, and the whole complex state of the mind is termed love. When the intellectual element has been eliminated, what remains may truly be called emotion, but in this emotion itself there must be distinguished two elements, one excited by the senses, by the sight or hearing of the object loved, a physical emotion, and the other aroused by the intellectual perception of excellence of character, or congeniality of tastes, or other loveable qualities. There is a valid distinction between sense-perception and intellectual perception, or thought. By the first I may see a man; by the other I may perceive some abstract relation in which he stands—as, he is responsible for his actions, or, he is a member of the Church. In like manner, emotions may be divided into sense-emotions and intellectual emotions. A man who sees a stone falling down upon his head is filled with fear, perhaps utterly paralyzed by it. But this is entirely physical; the intellect, the spirit has nothing to do with it, as is shown by the fact that a brute is affected in the same way. One who hears an act of injustice or cruelty is filled with indignation, but with this feeling the physical organism has nothing to do; it is purely intellectual.

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Using here the beautiful distinction between the soul and the spirit, we may say that each of the senses fills a double office; in one it is the servant of the spirit, in the other it is a direct avenue to the soul, a means by which the latter is subjected to emotional excitement. The spirit cannot come into direct contact with matter, but must have its royal messengers, its servants, whose reports are expressed in language, and being passed upon by the judgment, may be accepted or rejected. But the soul is open to direct impression, and has no choice but to be excited by that emotion whose appropriate cause is placed before the senses. According to the ordinary usage of language, we speak of the emotions as excited by music, or, by the sight of beauty, or by sublimity. But if there is any truth in the above suggestions, it would be more in accordance with the true philosophy of the subject to speak of the emotion of the ear, and that of the eye, or, of the auricular emotion and the ocular emotion. Music has a powerful influence upon the mind, so powerful that perhaps those who are susceptible to its power are incapable of analyzing it, just as an angry man is prevented by the heat of his passion from observing the phenomena of his anger, so as to describe them afterwards. But perhaps something may be found out by inquiring what experience any one susceptible to emotion of music passes through on being subjected to its influence. Its plaintive melodies and minor chords seem to fill his very soul with the deepest melancholy. Despair and despondency settle down upon his mind. A flood of sadness seems to enter at every avenue of his soul. His head droops, and the tears gather in his eyes, against his will, perhaps contrary to his efforts. But let the air or the harmonies change, let a quick movement begin, let rich chords and stirring combinations of instruments be introduced, and his sadness and despair vanish as quickly as they came, and a singular exaltation succeeds. The susceptible hearer seems to feel the music permeating every tissue of his brain. His eyes flash, his head rises and sways to and fro, keeping time with the music. It is not joy, not delight; it is ecstasy. Now these are evidently the two opposite poles of the same emotion. One is depression of the nerves, the other is exaltation; and the rapidity and certainty of the change from one to the other show, even if consciousness did not give the same verdict, that it is not the immortal spirit which is excited to joy, fear, sorrow, courage, or despair, but that these feelings are due to the depression or exaltation of the brain and nervous system through the ear, by means of music. Or, we may express the fact by saying, that it is the soul, the principle of animal life, which is affected by music, and not the spirit. It is also important to notice in this connection the fact that the partitions between these different forms of musical emotion are extremely thin; how thin, is best known by those who feel them most vividly. At the Boston Peace Jubilee, when the immense orchestra and vast chorus burst suddenly into the triumphant notes of Luther’s grand choral hymn, a man seated in a prominent position in the gallery was observed to break into an uncontrollable agony of

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tears. Many persons have experienced the same feeling, if they have not so yielded to it. An accomplished musician of our acquaintance was once challenged by a distinguished theological professor to make him weep, by the power of music. He soon brought tears to the professor’s eyes by a performance upon the piano, which consisted, in reality, of Yankee Doodle in slow time. Beyond this mere impression upon the nerves, most of the power of music is derived from association, and not from the music itself. The liveliest air is solemn enough to the exile. The plaintive wailing of the bagpipes excites the Scot to a martial ardor and courage. Yankee Doodle, though a British burlesque, excites no anger, and, though an utterly trivial air, excites no contempt, in any American bosom; but long association has made it stirring and patriotic. “America,” originally a Jacobite tune, excites our patriotic ardor now, quite as well as though it had been composed to honor the exiled tyrant James. The Marseillaise hymn means nothing to us; to the Frenchman it is frenzied excitement. These facts show that the principle association must be carefully eliminated, if we would rightly understand musical emotion. Another indication that there is but one emotion of music, is found in the fact that all who are susceptible to music at all are affected by it in the same way, allowance being made for whatever is the result of association. All are here on the same level; no difference exists, save in degree. The person of finely attuned and delicate ear and thorough musical culture is moved to tears or rapture, while the one of less subtle and delicate auricular mechanism, or less culture, is simply deeply moved. His spirits rise or fall as the character of the music changes; the same strange depression, the same divine-seeming exaltation, the same exquisite pleasure, are felt by both persons. If one feels music at all, it must be in the same way, with difference only in degree, according to nature and education. Moreover, those whose susceptibility has been improved by education, are conscious that their experiences in hearing music are the same in kind as when their perceptions were childish or uneducated. They have gained in the power, but more especially in the definiteness of the impressions which music makes upon them. If it be true that music excites in the mind different emotions and different combinations of them, surely the infinite varieties of temperament and intellect ought to render the effects various beyond all computation or foresight. The same strains ought to excite one man to anger and another to grief, according to the nature of his mind, or his momentary previous feeling. But if there is only one emotion of music, it would exist in various degrees of force, delicacy, and cultivation, but the same in kind in all, which we find in fact to be the case. And, if this is the true theory, we should expect to find some persons deprived altogether of this emotion, through some physical defect, or some missing link in the mysterious chain which binds the body and soul together. And this too is actually the case. Many persons “have no ear for music.” It is hard to believe that such persons are created with all the emotions of their fellow man, but deprived of susceptibility to that mode

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of exciting them which is at once the most powerful, pleasurable, and beautiful. There may be some who never love, some who never hate, some who are not revengeful, but none are deprived of all passion or emotion; each one has some capability of being excited by external causes. Far simpler and more analogous with other phenomena is the supposition that the emotions which depend upon the senses form a class by themselves, and while each sense has its own peculiar emotion, one or more may be defective in its physical or psychical machinery, so that one man may listen unmoved to the most exquisite harmonies, and another may take in with his eye all the beauties and sublimities of earthly scenery with knowing it. There are some interesting facts connected with the execution and composition of music which are in point here. The wonderful mechanical mastery displayed by some performers over their instruments, comes within the province of that curious principle of the coordination of motions, which is one of the most remarkable discoveries of modern physiology. For example, when a man walks, there come into play a large number of independent muscles. But the man does not will the alternate flexion and contraction of each of these muscles; he wills to walk, and this volition carries with it all the subordinate volitions of each separate muscle. This peculiar power, called the coordination of motions, is said by physiologists to reside in a particular part of the brain, the cerebellum, and it lies at the basis of all improvement in mechanical skill of every kind. Of course, this same cerebellum presides over the mechanical part, the execution, in short the art of music. Without this no amount of practice would give skill, no brilliancy of talents could avail to produce anything more than the rudest music. The immortal part of man, then, seems to have nothing to do with the execution of music, as such. The composition of music suggests a similar conclusion, though leading us into a higher region. For music as a science is strictly mathematical, that is, mechanical. Its precise division of time and its profound calculation of harmonies employ high mathematical talents. Precision in the performance and pleasure in the hearing, as well as facility and success in the composition of the higher class of music, depend upon the mathematical capacity of the mind. Great composers have often been men of the most splendid talents, nor can we doubt that in the composition of their more sublime works their vast talents have found the fullest scope. The world is full of mysteries. The most common and simple operations of nature display forces beyond the ken of human science. Equally incomprehensible is the link which connects the soul with the body which it inhabits. It is impossible to explain how the will has power over the bodily organism, and in like manner we can never expect to understand how it is that certain sounds or sights fill the soul with emotion, without regard to association or expectation. In the case of spoken and written language we instinctively feel that its arbitrary signs are interpreted only by the intellect, the personal reason,

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and that whatever emotional or passional excitement arises thence is a very different thing from the emotions excited through the senses, and results from, if indeed it does not consist in, a deep and absorbing perception of the relations, causes and consequences of the facts thus conveyed, aided, perhaps, by the imagination. For otherwise it is the case of music. No operations of the reasoning powers intervene, no arbitrary signs require interpretation, no volition and no imagination has anything to do with its effect. Through the air and the physical system it reaches at once the seat of passion and feeling. No induction, no deduction, no reasoning, no conception, has anything to do with it. Music, subjectively considered, is purely sensuous. Plato says that “harmony, melody, and rhythm, combined in music, flow from a corresponding state of mind, and hence music tends to reproduce this state.” This harmony of mind, this music of the spirit, is the end and ideal of Plato’s philosophy, as, indeed, is it not also of Christianity? And so, according to Plato, the perception of harmony and relation of sounds must fit the soul for perceiving the higher harmonies of the spiritual world, and excite its desire for them, thus elevating and purifying the mind. But Plato’s soul-harmony has no resemblance to that ecstasy or intoxication which we call the excitement of the emotion of music. Yet it need not be demanded that in music, or in anything else, all pleasures of the senses should be despised and denied, and the highest speculative uses should be alone pursued. Pleasure is a good thing. The highest good is not stoical indifference. But let men understand that pleasure, even in the refined and elevated form of music, does not involve the exercise of the highest faculties, that emotion of this kind is not the noblest power with which we are endowed. This pleasure of the senses should be considered as recreation, and is not worthy to be pursued as an end in life. For it is a fact conveying a useful lesson, and also confirmatory of our theory, that there are some who are consumed by what might be called the lust of the ear, corresponding to the lust of the eye which the Apostle Paul condemned. There are some who seem almost to live for no other end than to enjoy the delights of music. They know nothing of the spiritual uses found by Plato in music, for indeed platonic souls are rare. They care nothing for the tender or lofty associations connected with the strains they worship—they live for the titillations of the ear, as epicures for the pleasures of taste. They are music-mad. Music is to them both religion and culture, home, friends, and country. And while love and patriotism and duty and all higher sentiments are thus swallowed up in one absorbing pursuit and passion, they often contrive to believe that their course is the very one which raises them up to a spiritual elevation far above other men. Moreover, it is fashionable to imitate their raptures, and there is a cant in this worship, as in all others. One of these imitators, who had really but slight knowledge or taste in music, once said in our hearing, just after listening to a symphony of Beethoven: “Such music as that lifts me right up above this world; it burns

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away the human sin and weakness, and purifies and benefits me more than a thousand of your Calvinistic sermons about everlasting punishment.” He was doubtless correct in supposing that his mind was not in a fit state to understand Calvinism or any other system or theology. And doubtless, too, he was guilty both of cant and bigotry. Plato utters another important fact when he says that even a strong and vigorous mind becomes enervated, stupefied, and weakened by exclusive cultivation in this direction. And how emphatically is this true now, when the new, modern art of music has been carried to so great perfection. The fact is, no one power of the human constitution can be exercised beyond measure without causing a deformity. Over indulgence of the imagination weakens the judgment. Perception being unduly cultivated, the exercise of the speculative reason becomes irksome and difficult. The astronomer’s acuteness of eye is not likely to coexist with the musician’s accuracy of ear. The susceptibilities are not safe without the intellect. The man who lives in a world of feeling, of emotion, of sense-pleasure, cannot rise to any height of moral grandeur, will not meet boldly a great crisis in his fate, or resist nobly and successfully when assailed by temptation. While we admit that music has important intellectual and spiritual uses, we ought not to forget its undue cultivation, as art, or science, or emotion, is unfavorable alike to intellect and to morals. But we need not on this account banish and condemn music, because others abuse or worship it. No! Delightful music, companion of solitude, alleviation of sorrow, which gives expression to our joys, accompanies and assists our worship, shall be our recreation and a worthy attendant upon our festivities and religious services, but not itself worship, nor an object of worship. The application of the above theory of the nature of music to its use in religious services is almost too obvious to be mentioned here. If music is entirely sensuous, its performance cannot be an act of worship. When we assemble in the house of God, the calming, solemnizing strains of music may serve to turn our minds away from everyday pursuits by soothing our weary brains with their sweetness. But let not the lascivious strains of the opera recall the most trivial pursuits at the most sacred hour, nor let the marvels of difficult execution and the display of perfect training excite astonishment and vulgar curiosity where only reverence or gratitude or contrition have any proper place. This is profanation of the house of God. Let music, too, enliven our social gatherings, but let it not be cultivated by those who care not for it, for mere purposes of display. This is profanation of a noble art, by vanity and foolish ambition.

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Music, Emotions, and Morals (1893) Hugh Reginald Haweis My topic is “Music, Emotion and Morals.” I find that the connection between music and morals has been very much left out in the cold here, and yet music is the golden art. You have heard many grave things debated in this room during the last three or four days. Let me remind you that the connection between the arts and morals is also a very grave subject. Yet, here we are, ladies and gentlemen, living in the middle of the golden age of music, perhaps without knowing it. What would you have given to have seen a day of Raphael or to have seen a day of Pericles, you who have been living in this great Christian age? And yet the age of Augustus was the golden age of Roman literature. And the age of Pericles was that of sculpture, the Medicean age of painting; so the golden age of music is the Victorian or the Star-Spangled Banner age. Music is the only living, growing art. All other arts have been discovered. An art is not a growing art when all its elements have been discovered. You paint now, and you combine the discoveries of the past; but you cannot paint better than Raphael; you cannot build more beautiful cathedrals than the cathedrals of the middle ages; but music is still a growing art. Up to yesterday everything in music had not been explored. I say we are in the golden age of music, because we can almost within the memory of a man reach hands with Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner. We place their heads upon pedestals side by side with Raphael and with Michelangelo, yet we have no clear idea of the connection between the art of music and morals, although we acknowledge that great men like Beethoven are worthy of a place along with the great sculptors, poets and

Haweis, Hugh Reginald. “Music, Emotions, and Morals.” In John Henry Barrows, ed., The World’s Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions, Held in Chicago in Connection with the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Chicago: The Parliament Publishing Company, 1893.

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painters. Now let me tell you that you have no business to spend much time or money or interest upon any subject unless you can make out a connection between the subject and morals and conduct and life; unless you can give an art or occupation a particular ethical and moral basis. If anyone asks you what is the connection between music and morals, I will give it to you in a nutshell. This is the connection. Music is the language of emotion. Emotion is connected with thought. Thought is connected with action, action deals with conduct, and the sphere of conduct is connected with morals. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, if music is connected with emotion, and emotion is connected with thought, and thought is connected with action, and action is connected with the sphere of conduct, or with morals, things which are connected by the same must be connected with one another, and therefore music must be connected with morals. Now, the reason why we have grouped all these three worlds—music, emotion, morals—together, is because emotion is coupled with morals. The great disorders of our age come not from the possession of moral feeling, but from its abuse, its misdirection and the bad use of it. Once discipline your emotions, and life becomes noble, fertile, and harmonious. Well then, if there is this close connection between emotion or feeling, and the life, conduct, or morals, what the connection between emotion and morals is, that also must be the character of the connection between music, which is the art medium of emotion, and morals. Nothing good and true was ever carried out in this world without emotion. There has never been a great crisis in a nation’s history without some appropriate air, some appropriate march, which has been the voiceless emotion of the people. I remember Garibaldi’s hymn. It expresses the essence of the Italian movement. Look at all your patriotic songs. Look at “John Brown’s body is a-mouldering in the ground, But his soul is marching on.” The feeling and action of a country passes into music. It is the power of emotion through music upon politics and patriotism. I remember when Wagner, as a very young man, came over to England and studied our national anthems. He said that the whole of the British character lay in the first two bars of “Rule Britannia.” And so your “Star-Spangled Banner” has kindled much unity and patriotism. The profoundly religious nature of the Germans comes forth in their patriotic hymn, “God Save the Emperor.” Our “God Save the Queen” strikes the same note, in a different way, as “Rule Britannia.” This shows the connection between emotion and music and politics and patriotism. It throws great light upon the wisdom of that statesman who said: “Let who will make the laws of a people; let me make their national songs.” I find it quite impossible for me to exclude religion from my topic, or the power of emotion through music upon religion and through religion upon morals, for religion is that thing which kindles and makes operative and irresistible

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the sway of moral nature. I read that our Lord and his disciples, at a time when all words failed them and when their hearts were heavy, when all had been said and all had been done at that last supper, after they had sung a hymn, went out into the Mount of Olives. After Paul and Silas had been beaten and thrust into a noisome dungeon, they forgot their pain and humiliation and sang songs, spiritual psalms, in the night, and the prisoners heard them. I read, in the history of the Christian Church, when the great creative and adaptive genius of Rome took possession of that mighty spiritual movement and proceeded to evangelize the Roman Empire, that St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan in the third century, collected the Greek modes and adapted certain of them for the Christian Church, and that these scales were afterward revived by the great Pope Gregory, who gave the Christian Church the Gregorian chants, the first elements of emotion interpreted by music which appeared in the Christian Church. It is difficult for us to overestimate the power of these crude scales, although they seem harsh to our ears. It is difficult to describe the effect produced by Augustine and his monks when they landed in Great Britain, chanting the ancient Gregorian chants. When the king gave his partial adherence to the mission of Augustine, the saint turned from his king and directed his course toward Canterbury, where he was to be the first Christian archbishop. Still, as he went along with his monks, they chanted one of the Gregorian chants. That was his war cry. “Turn away, O Lord, thy wrath from this city, and thine anger from its sin.” That is a true Gregorian; those are the very words of Augustine. And later on I shall remind you of both the passive and active functions of Christian Church—passive when the people sat still and heard sweet anthems; active when they broke out into hymns of praise. Shall I tell you of a great comfort which the church owes to Luther in his carriage as he approached the City of Worms and sang his hymn, “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott”? Shall I tell you of others who have solaced their hours of solitude by singing hymns and spiritual psalms, and how at times hymn singing in the church was almost all the religion that the people had? The poor Lollards, when afraid of preaching their doctrine, still sang, and throughout the country the poor and uneducated people, if they could not understand the subtleties of theological doctrine, still could sing praise and make melody in their hearts. I remember how much I was affected in passing through a little Welsh village some time ago at night, in the solitude of the Welsh hills, as I saw a little light in a cottage, and as I came near I heard the voices of the children singing: “Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly.”

And I thought how these little ones had gone to school and had learned this hymn and had come home to evangelize their little remote cottage and lift up the hearts of their parents with the love of Jesus.

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I now approach the last clause of my discourse. We have discovered the elements of music. Modern music has been three or four hundred years in existence, and that is about the time that every art has taken to be thoroughly explored. After that, all its elements have been discovered; there is no more to be discovered, properly speaking, and all that remains is to apply it to the use, consolation and elevation of mankind. Music is the most spiritual and latest born of the arts in this most material and skeptical age; it is not only a consolation, but a kind of ministering angel in the heart; it lifts us up and reminds us and restores in us the sublime consciousness of our own immortality. For it is in listening to sweet and noble strains of music that we feel lifted and raised above ourselves. We move about in worlds not realized; it is as the footfalls on the threshold of another world. We breathe a higher air. We stretch forth the spiritual antennae of our being and touch the invisible, and in still moments we have heard the songs of the angels, and at chosen seasons there comes a kind of open vision. We have “seen white presences among the hills.” Hence in a season of calm whether, Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither.

PART III

Standards of Sacred Music

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The Art of Gregorian Music (1896) Dom Andre Mocquereau I Plato has given us an excellent definition of music. “It is,” he says, “art so ordering sound as to reach the soul, inspiring a love of virtue.” He would have the best music to be that which most perfectly expresses the soul’s good qualities. “It is to serve no idle pleasures,” he says in another place, “that the Muses have given us harmony, whose movements accord with those of the soul, but rather to enable us thereby to order the ill-regulated motions of the soul, even as rhythm is given us to reform our manners, which in most men are so wanting in balance and in grace.” This was the high ideal which the Greeks had of music. It was, in their conception, the expression of order in all things: far from regarding it as a mere pastime, they made it the indispensable foundation of civilization and morality, a source of peace and of order for the soul, and of health and beauty for the body. Their masters were insistent that “rhythm and harmony should be so identified with the minds of the young that as they became more balanced and composed, they might be better able to speak and act aright. For, as a matter of fact, man’s whole being has need of rhythm and of harmony.” The very nature of that music, its dignity and simplicity, its gentle, tranquil movement seconded the master’s endeavors, and led, as it were, naturally to the desired end. “The ancients,” says Westphal, “never attempted to express the actual and passionate life of the soul. The noise and bustle whither modern music carries our fancy, the representation of strife and strain, the portrayal of those opposing forces which contend for the mastery of the soul, Mocquereau, Dom Andre. The Art of Gregorian Music. Washington, D.C.: Catholic Education Press, 1896.

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were all alike unknown to the Greek mind. Rather was the soul to be lifted into a sphere of idealistic contemplation, there to find peace with herself and with the outer world, and so to rise to greater power of action.” Greek music may not always have remained faithful to this ideal, but it is enough to know that in its primitive purity it rose to such heights. The Catholic Church, that society of souls established by our Lord Jesus Christ, is the depository of all that is good and beautiful in the world. She inherited the traditions of antiquity, and gave a foremost place to the art of music, using it in her liturgy as well as for the instruction and sanctification of her children, no light task indeed when one recalls the state of society when that peaceful conquest was begun. But Holy Church set her strength and her hope in her divine Head, that true Orpheus, whose voice has power to charm the beasts, and melt the very rocks. She had, moreover, treasured those words of St. Paul: “Teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles.” In the mouth of the great Apostle this precept had all the force of law: rightly, therefore, may music be considered a constituent element of the Church’s worship. St. Dennis was of this opinion, and none have treated of the divine psalmody with greater insight than he. It was, in his conception, the preparation for the deepest mysteries of the faith. “The hallowed chant of the Scriptures,” he writes, “which is essentially a part of all our mysteries, cannot be separated from the most sacred of them all (he is speaking of the mystery of the Eucharist or Synaxis). For in the whole sacred and inspired Book is shown forth God, the Creator and Disposer of all things.” St. Dennis then describes that great drama at once human and divine which is enacted in our sacred books, and in the liturgy, and continues: “Wherefore the sacred chants form, as it were, a universal hymn telling forth the things of God, and work in those who recite them devoutly an aptitude for either receiving or conferring the various sacraments of the Church. The sweet melody of these Canticles prepares the powers of the soul for the immediate celebration of the holy mysteries, and by the unison of those divine songs, brings the soul into subjection to God, making it to be at one with itself and with its fellows, as in some single and concordant choir of things divine.” Peace, strength, purity, love: in very truth, the music of the Christian Church soars to greater heights than that of the ancients. Is it possible, however, for any music of man’s making to realize this ideal? Can modem music do so? If the question were put, no doubt the answer would be, “Quo non ascendam?” What shall hinder it? Were you to enquire of M. Combarieu, who has plunged more deeply than any other critic into the potentialities and ideals of music, he would doubtless reply that this high ideal does not transcend its powers. But although I both admire and respect the views of this distinguished musician, I cannot share them. I know modern music well: it cannot, in its present form, rise to the heights of the Christian ideal. And if you name those great creators of the classic symphony, Hadyn,

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Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, I must again answer in the negative. Those eagles of their art never attained to the tranquil spheres of Christian music. They had indeed force of conception, inspiration, the flight of genius: some had, moreover, the light of faith, the flame of love; one thing only was lacking, and that was a language so pure, so free from all earthly alloy, as to be able to echo faithfully that divine calm, that ordered peace, that ever attuned melody which rings in the heart of Holy Church, and reminds the exiles of earth of the tranquil, endless harmonies of the heavenly Jerusalem. Far be it from me that, in thus criticizing these great composers, I should seem to disparage them. To disown them would be to disown my dearest memories. Often, as a child, I was lulled to sleep to the sound of the sonatas, the trios and the quartets of Beethoven, Mozart, or Haydn. And when I grew to man’s estate, I took my place as cellist in an orchestra conducted by that revered master, M. Charles Dancla, a professor at the Conservatoire. I know the power of orchestral music. At Pasdeloup, and at the Société du Conservatoire more especially, I was alternately swayed, overwhelmed, soothed and entranced; it is the conviction born of this experience that enables me to assert today that the ideals of Christian art are not, and cannot be, found therein. Is, then, this ideal realized by Palestrina? A few days hence, in this very place, M. Bordes, one of the greatest authorities on this subject, will, no doubt, answer this question. Moreover, M. Camille Bellaigue has already treated of the characteristics and the beauties of Palestrina’s compositions in the Revue des Deux Mondes. One remark, however, I will allow myself: The Church could not have allowed sixteen centuries to elapse before she found a chant befitting her worship. Shall we, then, find what we seek in the Gregorian chant? I venture to think so: nevertheless, it must be borne in mind that this hallowed chant has in our days so fallen into disrepute, and is so condemned and discredited that to present this patrician outcast as the most artistic and finished realization of the Church’s prayer would seem folly. That music which, in the days of its glory, was so full of beauty, is today unrecognizable. Like the Master whom it hymns, the chant is come to the hour of its passion. “Non est species ei, neque decor, et vidimus eum et non erat aspectus et desideravimus eum.” There is neither beauty nor comeliness: the music which we hear in our churches does not attract us: it is an object of contempt: “Unde nec reputavimus eum.” And yet, notwithstanding its sorry plight, something of the ancient power and majesty remains. You have but to read the impressions recorded by Durtal in Huysman’s book, “En Route,” to see that the chant is still able to turn souls to God. Along the way, bestrewn with relics and with blood, are yet some faithful ones who pray and hope beside the grave where the chant awaits the day of resurrection. That day, gentlemen, has already dawned: A day real enough, even if not all glorious and resplendent as that of the Master. In many places the chant, even now is heard. Rome has summoned it to the venerable

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feasts of St. Gregory; it is installed in the Vatican; Venice has restored it to its former place beneath the dome of St. Mark’s. Everywhere the chant is found: in Belgium, in Germany, in England, in Spain, in America. It is used by all the great religious orders; in France it has invaded all our churches. It has existed in a quiet way in Paris for some years, and today you meet it at the Institut Catholique, so that it may be said to have fairly established itself in the very stronghold of intellectual culture. You are soon to hear the chant for yourselves, and I trust that its artless, unaffected beauty will go straight to your heart. But before you do so, you will allow me, I hope, a few words by way of introduction. The chant is invariably set to words. Among the ancients music was regarded as the auxiliary of poetry: “It was speech raised to the highest term of power, acting simultaneously upon the sensitive and intellectual faculties.” Unconscious of its own power, music did not at once throw off the yoke of centuries in the first ages of Christianity. Indeed, had it existed as a separate art, the Church would not have made use of it. Music without words would not have served her end, which is to give her children not sacred melodies only, and vague musical impressions, but also theological and philosophical truths, and definite acts of faith, of love and of praise, which music alone could never formulate. The primitive conception of music was therefore perfectly adapted to the Church’s purpose. Set, as it were, at the confluence of those two streams of civilization, the Jewish and the Greco-Roman, the Church, with her rare insight, borrowed from the music of both whatever was most suited to her purpose. The words, and also the whole scheme of her psalmody, were taken from the books of Holy Scripture, that treasure the Church had received from the Lord’s hands. The psalmody of the Roman office, indeed, with its verses and strophes characterized by antiphons, which serve as refrains, has a most unmistakable Jewish flavor. The Psalter stood forth above all others as the book of divine praise: the Church added thereto songs of her own making. This is not the place to remind you of the surpassing beauty of the Liturgy: it ought, nevertheless, to be done, for, in order fully to fathom the meaning of the chant, it is imperative that we should understand, love, and live those hallowed canticles. For it must ever be borne in mind that they are the essential part of plainsong. But however great their beauty, the mere recitation of the words does not suffice. The Church does not merely know her dogmas: she loves them, and therefore she must sing them. “Reason,” wrote Joseph de Maistre, “can only speak; but love sings.” But the Church sings for yet another reason. Although the word of God has such power that it would seem that the mere hearing would enthrall both mind and heart, it is, alas, addressed to mortal men, to souls dull and heedless, buried, as it were, beneath the covering of flesh and sense, which must be pierced before it can touch them. And therefore the

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Church summons to her aid that most subtle and penetrating of all arts, music. Albeit inferior to speech in the world of the intelligence, it reigns supreme in the world of sense, possessing, as it does, accents of matchless strength and sweetness to touch the heart, to stir the will, and to give utterance to prayer. It was from the Greco-Roman stream that the Church borrowed the elements of her music. She chose diatonic melody because of its dignity and virility, for chromatic and inharmonic melodies accorded but ill with the pure worship of God. It is, moreover, probable that the Church adapted her songs to the Greek modes and scales; to what extent, however, it is impossible to say. It has been recently asserted, though without any sort of proof, that the pagan airs or nomes, were adopted by the Church, and used by the early Christians. But this assertion is in manifest contradiction with all that we know of the Fathers, and of the Councils, as well as with the mind of the Church. Until further information comes to hand, I incline to think that the airs to which our antiphons are set, whether simple, florid, or neumatic, are in very deed of the Church’s own composition. Whether this be so or not, of this marriage of Jewish poetry done into Latin, with the chant, was born a new art, perfect in its kind, which, though imbued with the principles of antiquity, was nevertheless well fitted to serve the Church’s purpose. One of our modern poets most aptly describes it: Beau vase athênien, plein de fleurs du Calvaire. And so it is: Like the music of the ancients, its offspring is simple and discreet, sober in its effects; it is the humble servant, the vehicle of the sacred text, or, if you will, a reverent, faithful, and docile commentary thereon. Even as a healthy body is an instrument perfectly fitted to serve the soul, and to interpret its workings, so the chant interprets the truth, and gives it a certain completeness which words alone could not achieve. The two are bound up together: the word sheds the rays of intellectual light upon the mysterious shadow world of sound, while the melody pervades the words with deep inward meaning, which it alone can impart. Thus mingled, one with the other, music and poetry ravish man’s whole being, and uplift the soul to the blissful contemplation of truth. Before we pursue our subject further, you ought to hear some examples of plainsong. The real value of a statue cannot be estimated from a description, however graphic. And so I propose setting before you a fair statue of ancient church music, not mutilated, but restored, living, and complete. It will be easier for me afterwards to make you admire the dignified simplicity, the harmony and proportion, of its lines and the pervading sweetness of its expression. To aid me in this attempt, the execution of the chant should be perfect. The voices should be pure, flexible, and trained as in the great academies of the capital. Nevertheless, I have thought it better not to choose trained singers for my purpose. Not that I consider art to be a negligible quantity in the execution of plainsong. On the contrary, it is a point on which many, unhappily, have fallen into regrettable exaggerations which are only calculated to discredit

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the chant. But on this occasion, in order to prove that a lengthy training is not an indispensable condition, and, at the same time, to show what results may be attained by such ordinary means as may everywhere be found, and in the conviction, moreover, that culture and intelligence will always give a better rendering than mere art, however perfect, I have chosen some young men who would be much astonished were I to introduce them to you as great artists. I therefore refrain from doing so; this, however, I may say of them, they have the type of soul which can appreciate and render these holy melodies. [At this point the Schola sang the following simple chants: An Ambrosian Gloria in excelsis, the Ambrosian antiphon In lsrahel, followed by the psalm Laudate Pueri, and the Gregorian antiphon Cantate Domino with the Magnificat.]

II Gentlemen, you have been listening to plainsong in this simplest form. We shall now be able to study its features, its aspect, and expression. If it be beautiful, wherein does its beauty lie—is it of earth or of heaven? And if this beauty be something heavenly, if it act upon our souls like a gentle and refreshing dew, how does it go to work? What are its means of action, the elements of which it makes use? This we must first ascertain by a rapid analysis of details. I do not propose to do more today than to sketch these in brief. When I was speaking a little while ago of the marriage of words and music in the chant, I omitted to say that some modern critics have drawn a somewhat surprising conclusion from this fact. They allege that this intimate connection between text and melody is precisely the principle underlying modern musical drama, which has reached its zenith in the works of Richard Wagner. The famous composer, alluding to his opera, “Tristan and Isolde,” says: “In ‘Tristan’ the fabric of the words has the full compass planned for the music: in fine, the melody is already constructed in poetic form.” But may not Wagner’s rule be applied most exactly to plainsong? Whereupon the critics forthwith leap to the conclusion that Gregorian music is Wagnerian music and vice versa. To maintain such a conclusion, however, it is evident that one or another of the terms of the comparison must be omitted. The snare into which the critics have fallen is obvious. They should have foreseen that although the principles which govern Gregorian and Wagnerian music are identical, the same principles in application may attain widely differing results. And, as a matter of fact, have you not noticed that as we listen to these melodies, our habits, taste, and judgment are utterly nonplused? The truth is that, there, a wide gulf separates the chant from Beethoven’s overpowering symphonies and Wagner’s fantastical dramas. Though the expression of beauty be the end of both, the two arts lie at opposite poles: literary and musical terms, tonality, scales, time, rhythm, movement, the very ideals differ, as analysis will show.

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Take the first element: unison. Plainsong is unisonous; it is simple, clear, luminous, stripped of all disguise: all can understand it, the most fastidious artist as well as the man in the street. It does not lurk beneath the obscure and whimsical maze of the myriad sounds of an orchestra, hardly to be followed, even by cultivated ears. Harmony, in the modern meaning of the word, is unknown: it relies upon its own intrinsic charm to move and enthrall us. Plainsong is like a great, still-flowing river: the sacred text is broadly reflected on the surface: the clear, limpid stream, so to speak, is unison; the sonorous waves of an accompaniment, harmonious though they be, sadly trouble the surface and sully those limpid depths. This alone was enough to differentiate it from all modern music. But what follows is still more characteristic. It will be well at this point to bring to mind some principles which have been most ably exposed by M. Mathis Lussy, in his treatise on “Expression in Music.” I quote them in an epitomized form: Modern music is composed of three principal elements: 1. The Scale, or tonality, in the two modes, major and minor. 2. Time, that is, the periodic recurrence at short intervals of a strong beat, breaking up a piece of music into small fragments, called measures, of equal value or duration. 3. Rhythm, that is, the periodic recurrence of two, three, or four measures of the same value so as to form groups or symmetrical schemes, each of which contains a section of a musical phrase and corresponds to a verse of poetry. These three elements impress upon our consciousness a threefold need of attraction, of regularity, and of symmetry. No sooner has the ear heard a series of sounds subject to the laws of tonality, of time, and of rhythm, than it anticipates and expects a succession of sounds and analogous groups in the same scale, time, and rhythm. But, as a rule, the ear is disappointed of its expectation. Very often the group anticipated contains notes extraneous to the scale-mode of the preceding group, which displace the tonic and change the mode. Or, again, it may contain notes which interrupt the regularity of the time, and destroy the symmetry of the original rhythmic plan. Now, it is precisely these unforeseen and irregular notes, upsetting tone, mode, time, and the original rhythm, which have a particular knack of impressing themselves upon our consciousness. They are elements of excitement, of movement, of force, of energy, of contrast: by such notes is expression engendered. It must be admitted that this theory contains a certain measure of truth, but can it be said to be complete? Are not order, calm, and regularity most potent factors of expression, even in modern music? Moreover, if expression must be denied to all music which does not employ such elements of excitement, then it must be denied to Gregorian music, which rejects, on principle,

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all such expedients, being thereby distinguished from all compositions of modern times. The comparison and the scrutiny of the three elements of which we have been speaking will be a convincing proof of this assertion. We will deal first with tonality. It is well known that Gregorian tonality is very different from that of modern music. In the latter are found diatonic and chromatic intervals, major and minor modes, discords, the leading note, modulations, and constant irregularities of tone. What is the result? Agitation, excitement, frenzy, passionate emotional and dramatic expression; in short, the violent and excessive disturbance of the hapless human frame. Gregorian tonality, on the contrary, seems ordained to banish all agitation from the mind, and to enfold it in rest and peace. And since the chant is all in unison, discord, that most effective element of expression, is unknown. It follows that the leading note is also debarred; and as a matter of fact, long before there could be any question of its use, anything resembling such a note was excluded by the rules laid down for the composition of the chant. In plainsong, the cadence is never made by approaching the final from the semitone below: a whole tone must invariably be used in such a case. This rule gave the cadence a certain dignity and fullness of expression to which modern music cannot attain by means of the ordinary rules of composition. Gregorian tonality likewise proscribes the effeminate progressions of the chromatic scale, admitting only the more frank diatonic intervals. These intervals are arranged in scales, eight in number, called modes, the distinct characteristics of which evoke varying impressions and emotions. Bold or abrupt changes from one mode to another are also proscribed, though the chant is by no means lacking in modulations, for these are essential in any music. In plainsong, the modulation is effected by passing from one mode to another. Some compositions borrow the sentiments they seek to interpret from several modes in succession: the mere change of the dominant or reciting-note is enough to give the impression of a true modulation. These changes of mode are effected very gently: they move and mildly stimulate the soul, without either shock or disturbance. You must not be surprised that the means employed should be so simple and elementary: it is to the higher faculties of the soul that the chant makes appeal. It owes its beauty and dignity to the fact that it borrows little or nothing from the world of sense. It passes through the senses, but it does appeal to them: it panders neither to the emotions nor to the imagination. Plainsong is capable of expressing the most tremendous truths, the strongest feelings, without departing from its sobriety, purity, and simplicity. Modern music may perhaps arouse and voice coarse and violent passions, although I grant that this is not always the case. The chant, however, cannot be so abused: it is always wholesome and serene: it does not react upon the nervous system. Its frank diatonic tonality, and the absence of chromatic intervals, whose semitones give an impression of incompletion, seem to render plainsong incapable of expressing anything but the perfection of beauty, the naked truth,

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“yea, yea, and nay, nay.” For the unyielding diatonic scale has a certain angelic quality which never varies: an ear accustomed to its matchless candor cannot tolerate melodies, sensuous even when the love of God is their theme. If from the study of sounds and their progression, we proceed to analyze their duration and intensity, we shall find that the contrast between plainsong and modern music is as great as before. In modern music the simple beat, that is, the unit of time which, when once adopted, becomes the form of all the others, may be divided indefinitely. An example will serve to make my meaning clear. A bar, or measure, in simple duple time is composed of two crochets: each crochet constitutes a beat, and may be divided into two quavers; these again into semiquavers, demisemiquavers, and so on, until the subdivisions become infinitesimal. It is easy to see how such facility of division may introduce much mobility or instability into modern music. In plainsong, on the contrary, the beat, or pulse, is indivisible: it corresponds to the normal syllable of one pulse, and cannot be divided any more than a syllable can be. Thus, in writing a piece of plainsong in modern notation, the crochet becomes the normal note and unit of time; it must never be broken up into quavers. I have no hesitation in declaring that plainsong is syllabic music, in the sense that the syllable is the unit of measure, and that not only in antiphons, where each note corresponds to a syllable, but also in vocalizations (melodic passages or neums), where the notes, momentarily freed from words, remain subject, nevertheless, to the time of the simple beat, previously determined in the syllabic passages. This approximate equality of duration is the inevitable consequence of the intimate connection which existed among the Greeks between the words and the melody. It is explained by a fact familiar to all philologists and grammarians, namely the transformation which the Latin language underwent during the first years of the Christian era. Quantity, once paramount in poetry, and to a certain extent, in Ciceronian prose, eventually gave place to accent. Little by little the short and long syllables came to have the same value: in prose as in poetry, syllables were no longer measured, but counted. Quantity was no more. In actual practice, the syllables were neither short nor long, but of equal duration, strong or weak, according as they were accented or unaccented. An evolution of such import was bound to react upon the music of the Church, which was in its infancy at the time that these changes were being effected. Plainsong was modeled on the prose of the period: it therefore adopted its rhythm, from its simplest elements, the primary fundamental pulse, for example, to its most varied movements. And just as there were two forms of prosody, the one metric, the other tonic; two forms of prose, and two “cursus,” so there were two forms of music, the metric and the tonic; the latter, like the tonic prose and cursus, was based upon the equality of notes and syllables.

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It must be understood that this equality is not a metronomical equality, but a relative equality—the mean duration resulting from all the syllables taken as a whole, and pronounced in accordance with their material weight: this, to the ear, produces a distinct sense of equality. Nevertheless this equality becomes more rigorous as the melody frees itself from the text, for then the shades of inequality caused by the varying weight of the syllables, entirely disappear and make way for more equal musical durations. It is not to be inferred from this fact that the notes are all equal in length. As a matter of fact, though a beat may never be divided, it may be doubled and even trebled. Just as in embroidering upon canvas, the same color in wool or silk may cover several stitches, so upon the canvas of the simple beat, the same note may include two, three or four stitches and thus form a charming melodic scheme. Adequate attention has not been paid to this fundamental distinction between plainsong and modern music, notwithstanding the fact that it influences in no small degree the whole movement of the phrase and the expression as well. It is to the indivisibility of the beat that the Roman chant owes, in great measure, its sweetness, calm, and suavity. Since Latin is the language of the Roman liturgy and the Latin syllables are the prima materies of Gregorian rhythm, it will be well to examine the nature of the Latin accent at the period when the Gregorian melodies were written, drawing attention to important differences between the character of the tonic accents at that date and in more recent times. Now the Latin accent has not the same force as is usually attributed by modern musicians to the first beat of the measures, not as the accent in the Romance languages. In Latin, the accent is indicated by a short, sharp, delicate sound which—inasmuch as it is the soul of the word—might almost be called spiritual. It is best represented by an upward movement of the hand which is raised only to be lowered immediately. In modern music this swift flash is placed on a ponderous material beat, crushing and exhausting the movement. This surely is a misconception. For the Latin accent is an impulse or beginning which requires a complement: this, as a matter of fact, is found in the succeeding beat. It is therefore most aptly compared to the upward movement of the hand in beating time, no sooner raised than lowered. In modern music, however, this impulse or beginning is placed on the second and downward beat, on which the movement comes to rest. And this again is surely a misconception. Nor is this all: for the Latin accent is essentially an elevation of the voice: which plainsong—that faithful interpreter—translates constantly by a rise of pitch; and, once more, the upward movement of the hand corresponds and gives plastic expression to the lifted accent. But modern figured music, misled by the ponderous weight of the stroke by which the Latin accent is so often emphasized as well as by the downward movement of the hand, represents this

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accent by lowering the pitch of the note. Have we not here a complete reversal of the text—both melodically and rhythmically, which is unjustifiable even from a purely musical standpoint? In modern music the character of the accent is utterly transformed: melody, rhythm, delicacy and joyous impulse, all are lost, and converted into the Romance accent. Hence there arises between words and music a continual conflict, an initiating apposition, which, albeit imperceptible to the inattentive and uncultured public, is nonetheless painful to those who appreciate the characteristics of the Latin accent, and the rhythm of the Latin phrase. It is, in fact, an outrage to the ideal which one has a right to expect in every artistic or religious composition. A very few months of familiarity with plainsong would suffice to make you grasp fully these statements. As one listens day after day to the chant, the mind opens to the appreciation of that music, the rhythm and style of which are so essentially Latin: very soon the judgment appraises it at its true value, and ultimately the exquisite feeling, the consummate skill behind that fusion of words and melody become apparent, and scholars and musicians alike applaud its artistic perfection. On the other hand, a closer knowledge of plainsong makes us discover in modern religious music—beneath the real beauty of some of the compositions—the awkwardness, the unconscious clumsiness, of this mixed romance—Latin rhythm which disfigures even the noblest musical inspirations. We are now come to the succession of groups, of sections of the phrase, and to the phrase itself; that is to say, to rhythm properly so-called. You may already have noticed that in the Gregorian phrase the groups of two pulsations or of three do not succeed each other so uniformly, nor so regularly as in figured music. In plainsong, a mixture of times is the rule, whereas in figured music it is the exception. The ancients, who were familiar with this mixed rhythm, gave it the name of numerus, number, or rhythm. Impatient of restriction and constraint, plainsong shook off the trammels of symmetry: thus in the course of the melody, the groups of two notes or of three or of four, etc., succeed each other as freely as in oratorical rhythm. Any combination is admitted provided it be in harmony and in proportion. “This proportion,” says Dom Pothier, “is based upon the relation in which the component parts of the song or speech stand to each other or to the whole composition.” Nevertheless, the chant does not altogether disdain measure and successions of regular rhythms: but these are never cultivated to the extent of accustoming the ear to them and making it expect the recurrence of regular groups. Never is the ear shocked or surprised. The measures and rhythm succeed one another with amazing variety, but never at the cost of smoothness. There are no syncopations, no broken rhythms, nor yet any of those unexpected, irregular, unnatural effects, which break the ordinary movement of the phrase by introducing elements of agitation, of strife, and of passion. All this is unknown in plainsong. All the accented pulses, whether of the measure or of the rhythm, all the notes which

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give expression such as the pressus and the strophicus, although scattered irregularly over the texture of the melody, are invariably found in their regular place at the beginning of the measure. This solid foundation of regular rhythm gives the Roman chant that calm, dignity and evenness of movement which become the sacred liturgy. Was I not right in saying that the art of Gregorian music had little in common with the art of modern music? Henceforward no one will confuse Wagner’s methods with those which animate the Gregorian chant. And if we would define the results which issue from this analysis, we shall form the following conclusions: Gregorian music disclaims, or rather rejects on principle all elements of confusion, agitation, or excitement: it courts, on the other hand, all that tends to peace and calm. It will be well, after having thus analyzed the details of the chant, to view it as a whole, and to study its main distinctive features. To refresh us, however, after these somewhat dry researches, the Schola is kindly going to render the melismatic pieces mentioned in the program, namely, the communion Videus Dominus, and the Introits Reminiscere and Laetare.

III The most striking characteristic of plainsong is its simplicity, and herein it is truly artistic. Among the Greeks, simplicity was the essential condition of all art; truth, beauty, goodness cannot be otherwise than simple. The true artist is he who best—that is, in the simplest way—translates to the world without the ideal conceived in the simplicity of his intellect. The higher, the purer the intellect, the greater the unity and simplicity of its conception of the truth; now, the closest interpretation of an idea which is single and simple is plainly that which in the visible world most nearly approaches singleness and simplicity. Art is not meant to encumber the human mind with a multiplicity which does not belong to it: it should on the contrary tend to so elevate the sensible world that it may reflect in some degree the singleness and simplicity of the invisible. Art should tend not to the degradation, but to the perfection of the individual. If it appeals to the senses by evoking impressions and emotions which are proper to them, it only does so in order to arouse the mind in some way, and to enable it to free itself from and rise above the visible world as by a ladder, cunningly devised in accordance with the laws laid down by God Himself. Whence it follows that plainsong is not simple in the sense that its methods are those of an art in its infancy: it is simple consistently and on principle. It should not be supposed that this theory binds us to systems long since out of date: the Church in this matter professes the principles held by the Greeks, the most artistic race the world has ever known. In their conception, art could not be otherwise than simple. Whenever I read Taine’s admirable

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pages on the simplicity of Greek art, I am constantly reminded of the music of the Church. Take for instance, the following passage: The temple is proportionate to man’s understanding—among the Greeks it was of moderate, even small, dimensions: there was nothing resembling the huge piles of India, of Babylon, or of Egypt, nor those massive superimposed palaces, those labyrinthine avenues, courts, and halls, those gigantic statues, of which the very profusion confused and dazzled the mind. All this was unknown. The order and harmony of the Greek temple can be grasped a hundred yards from the sacred precincts. The lines of its structure are so simple that they may be comprehended at one glance. There is nothing complicated, fantastic, or strained in its construction; it is based upon three or four elementary geometrical designs.

Do you not recognize in this description, Gentlemen, the unpretentious melodies of the Gregorian chant? They fill but a few lines on paper: a few short minutes suffice for their execution: an antiphon several times repeated and some verses from a psalm, nothing more. They are moreover so simple that the ear can easily grasp them. There is nothing complicated, weird or strained, nothing which resembles those great five-act operas, those interminable oratorios, those Wagnerian tetralogies which take several days to perform, bewildering and confusing the mind. The same simplicity is found in Greek literature and sculpture. To quote Taine again: “Study the Greek play: the characters are not deep and complex as in Shakespeare; there are no intrigues, no surprises—the piece turns on some heroic legend, with which the spectators have been familiar from early childhood; the events and their issue are known beforehand. As for the action, it may be described in a few words—nothing is done for effect, everything is simple—and of exquisite feeling.” These principles, Gentlemen, may all be applied to plainsong. “No loud tones, no touch of bitterness or passion; scarce a smile, and yet one is charmed as by the sight of some wild flower or limpid stream. With our blunted and unnatural taste, accustomed to stronger wine,” I am still quoting Taine, “we are at first tempted to pronounce the beverage insipid: but after having moistened our lips therewith for some months, we would no longer have any other drink but that pure fresh water; all other music and literature seem like spice, or poison.” You will no doubt ask how so simple an art, from which the modern means of giving expression are systematically excluded, can faithfully interpret the manifold and deep meaning of the liturgical text. Seemingly this is impossible. But here you are mistaken, Gentlemen. In music, as in all art, the simpler the means, the greater the effect and impression produced. Victor Cousin has a telling saying: “The less noise the music makes, the more affecting it is!” And so simplicity excludes neither expression nor its subtleties from the chant. What then is this expression, whence does it spring, and what is its nature? Let me make yet another quotation, for I like to adduce the theories of modern

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authorities in support of the aesthetics of the chant: behind their shelter, I shall not be exposed to any charge of having invented them to suit my case. M. Charles Blanc, in his “Grammar of the Graphic Arts,” says that “Between the beautiful and its expression there is a wide interval, and moreover, an apparent contradiction. The interval is that which separates Christianity from the old world: the contradiction consists in the fact that pure beauty (the writer is speaking of plastic beauty) can hardly be reconciled with facial changes, reflecting the countless impressions of life. Physical beauty must give place to moral beauty in proportion as the expression is more pronounced. This is the reason why pagan sculpture is so limited in expression.” I am well aware, Gentlemen, that in sculpture, more than in any other art, the greatest care must be taken not to pass certain appointed bounds, if the stateliness which is its chief characteristic is to be preserved. I am also aware that in other arts, such as painting or music, it is legitimate to indulge more freely in the representation of the soul’s manifold emotions. All this I grant, Gentlemen: nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that these distinctions are very fine indeed, and that in every art, the higher laws of aesthetics are the same. The laws of musical expression are analogous to those of plastic expression: there too it may be asserted that pure musical beauty accords ill with the tonal, metrical or rhythmic changes of a melody reflecting the manifold old impressions of the soul in the grip of its passions. There too we may say that the more intense is the expression, the more the beauty of the music as music gives way to moral beauty. How then are we to reconcile beauty, by its very nature serene and immutable, with the restlessness and versatility which are the essential characteristics of expression? The problem is by no means easy of solution. Ancient art, with deeper insight, loved beauty so much that it shunned expression: our more sensual modern art endeavors to obtain expression at the expense of beauty. But the Church in her song has found, it would seem, the secret of wedding the highest beauty without any change to a style of expression which is both serene and touching. This result is attained without conscious effort. For, as a sound body is the instrument of a sound mind, so the chant, informed by the inspired word of God, interprets its expression. This expression is enhanced both by the smoothness of the modulations, and by the suppleness of the rhythm. And as the melody is simple and spiritual, so likewise is the expression: it belongs, like the melody, to another age. It is not, as in modern music, the result of surprise, of discord, of irregularity or disorder; it does not linger over details, nor endeavor to chisel every word, to cut into the marble of the melody every shade of emotion. It springs rather from the general order, the perfect balance and enduring harmony of every part, and from the irresistible charm born of such perfection. Measured and discreet, ample liberty of interpretation is left to the mind by such expression. Always true, it bears the signal stamp of the beauty of fitness: it becomes the sanctuary, it becomes those who resort thither that they may rise to the spiritual plane.

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“No defilement shall touch it,” no dimness, nor stain but a limpid virginal purity: like the ancient Doric mode, it breathes modesty and chastity. It is, moreover, infinite in its variety. “Attingit ubique propter munditiam suam.” What, for example, could be more artless and expressive than the Ambrosian Gloria which was sung to you? It turns upon two or three notes, and a short jubilus. A modern composer would consider it monotonous and insipid, but to me its simplicity is charming, and its frank and wholesome tonality refreshing. That joyous neum has a rustic ring about it that reminds one of the hillsides of Bethlehem and fills me with the joy and peace of Christmastide. It is indeed a song worthy of the angels, those pure spirits, and of the poor shepherd folk. The same characteristics are found in the little carol “In Israhel orietur princeps, firmanentum pacis.” It contains but six short words, yet these suffice to make a melodic composition of exquisite delicacy and expression. In the Introit Reminiscere, you heard the plaintive accents of sorrowful entreaty, and in the Laetare, those of a joy so sweet and calm as to be almost jubilant. As for the communion Videns Dominus, it has no equal. No melody could express more vividly the Savior’s tears and His compassion for Lazarus’ grief-stricken sisters, and the divine power of His bidding to death. In presence of the masterpieces of Greek art, the most discerning modern artists frankly confess their inability to appreciate them at their true value. To use Taine’s words: “Our modern perceptions cannot soar so high.” And we may in like manner say of the musical compositions of the early Church that they are beyond the reach of our perceptions: we can only partially and gradually comprehend the perfection of their plan; we no longer have their subtlety of feeling and intuition. “In comparison with them we are like amateurs listening to a musician born and bred: his playing has a delicacy of execution, a purity of tone, a fullness of accord, and a certain finish of expression, of which the amateur, with his mediocre talents and lack of training can only now and again grasp the general effect.” The finishing touch has yet to be added to this brief outline of plainsong; this suavity, or more correctly, unction, the supreme quantity in which all the elements we have been discussing converge. The product of consummate art, it crowns the chant with a glory unknown in all other music, and it is on account of this very unction that the Church has singled it out for her use: It is this quality which makes plainsong the true expression of prayer, and a faithful interpretation of those unspeakable groanings of the Spirit who, in the words of St. Paul, “prays in us and for us.” We sometimes wonder at the secret power the chant has over our soul: it is entirely due to unction, which finds its way into men’s souls, converts and soothes them, and inclines them to prayer. It is akin to grace, and is one of its most effectual means of action, for no one can escape its influence. The pure in heart are best able to understand and taste the suavity of this unction. Yet, for all its delectable charm, it never tends to

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enervate the soul, but like oil, it makes the wrestler supple and strengthens him against the combat; it rests and relaxes, and bathes him in that peace which follows the conquest of his passions. A last word as to the style of execution best suited to plainsong. There can of course be no doubt that an able and artistic interpretation is eminently suited to music so subtle and so delicate, but I hasten to add that mere technique is not enough: it must be coupled with faith, with devotion and with love. There must be no misunderstanding in this matter. Notwithstanding its beauty, plainsong is both simple and easy: it is within the capacity of poor and simple folk. Like the liturgy and the Scriptures, and, if such a comparison be admissible, like the Blessed Sacrament itself, this musical bread which the Church distributes to her children, may be food for the loftiest intellects as for the most illiterate minds. In the country it is not out of place on the lips of the ploughman, the shepherd, or laborer, who on Sundays leave plough and trowel or anvil, and come together to sing God’s praises. Nor is it out of place in the Cathedral, where the venerable canons supported by the fresh young voices of a well-trained choir sing their office, if not always artistically, at least with the full appreciation of the words of the Psalmist “Psallite sapienter.” Very possibly the chant is neither rendered, understood, nor appreciated in precisely the same manner in a country church as in a cathedral. But it would be unfair and unreasonable to except of village folk an artistic interpretation of which their uncultured minds have no inkling, since, after all, their devotion and taste is satisfied with less. But on the other hand, a suitable interpretation may in justice be expected and required of them: the voices should be restrained, the tone true and sustained, the accents should be observed, so too the pauses, the rhythm, and the feeling of the melody. All that is needed beyond this is that touch of devotion, of feeling, which is by no means rare among the masses. With this slender store of musical knowledge, the village cantor will not, I confess, become an artist. He will not render the full beauty, the finer shades of the melody: nevertheless, he will express his own devotion and withal he will carry his audience with him. For the simple folk who listen to him are no better versed than he in the subtle niceties of art: neither he nor they can fully appreciate the chant, but they are satisfied with that which they find in it: it contents their musical instincts and appeals to their ingenuous piety. Is this then all, Gentlemen? Does such an easy victory fulfill the Church’s intentions: is her aim merely to win the approval of our good peasants? Indeed, such is not the Church’s meaning: she does not rest content with well-meaning mediocrity: she has her colleges, her greater and lesser seminaries, her choirs, her monasteries, and her cathedrals. Of these she demands an intelligent rendering of the chant so dear to her heart, that it may compel the admiration of the most exacting critics, and be at the same time the most perfect expression of her official prayer. Here indeed is art most necessary: here we may despoil the Egyptians of their most precious vessels, and fairly borrow,

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without any scruple, from profane artists, the methods whereby to restore to the voice its true sweetness and purity. Art teaches us how to use the voice, to sing the neums softly or loudly as the case may be, to pronounce the words, to give delicacy to the accents, to phrase correctly, to bring out the expression and the true meaning of the ideas contained in the words. Art conceals natural or acquired defects, and restores to nature its primitive beauty and integrity. In plainsong, the aim of art is to provide the soul with a docile, pliant instrument, capable of interpreting its sentiments without deforming them. To attempt to sing without training or art; “naturally,” as the saying goes, would be as foolish an undertaking as to pretend to attain to sanctity without setting any check upon our impulses. Art is to the right interpretation of the chant what the science of ascetics is to the spiritual life. Its proper function is not to give vent to factitious emotions, as in modem music, but rather to allow genuine feeling complete freedom of expression. It is with intent that I use the word freedom, for freedom is simply the being able to yield without effort to the rules of the beautiful, which become as it were natural. Art then is necessary, but as I have already said it is not sufficient in itself. To sing the chant, as it should be sung, the soul must be suitably disposed. The chant should vibrate with soul, ordered, calm, disciplined, passionless: a soul that is mistress of itself, intelligent and in possession of the light; upright in the sight of God, and overflowing with charity. To such a soul, Gentlemen, add a beautiful voice, well-trained, and the singing of those hallowed melodies, will be a finished work of beauty, the music of which Plato dreamed, a music which inspires a love of virtue: nay, more, you will have the ideal of Christian prayer as St. Dennis understood it, the realization of the great Benedictine motto: “Mens nostra concordet voci nostrae.” “Let our mind concord with our voice” in the praise of God. LAUS DEO ET AGNO

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Sing to the Harp with a Psalm of Thanksgiving (1801) William Jones “Sing to the Harp with a Psalm of Thanksgiving” (Psalm 98:6.). These words, like many others in the Psalms of David, assert and encourage the use of music, both vocal and instrumental, in the worship of God: the propriety and benefits of which will be evident from such an examination of the subject, as the present occasion may well admit of: and I hope the good affections of my hearers will be as ready to enter into a rational consideration of the nature and uses of music, as their ears are to be delighted with music. For this art is a great and worthy object to the understanding of man: it is wonderful in itself; and, in its proper and best use, it may be reckoned amongst the several means of grace, which God in his abundant goodness hath vouchsafed to his church; some to direct our course through this vale of tears, and some to cheer and support us under the trails and labors of it. Music will need no other recommendations to our attention as an important subject, as I mean to show in the first place, that it derives its origin from God himself: whence it will follow, that so far as it is God’s work, it is his property, and may certainly be applied as such to his service. The question will be, whether it may be applied to anything else. What share so ever man may seem to have in modifying, all that is found in this world to delight the senses is primarily the work of God. Wine is prepared by human labor; but it is given to us in the grape by the Creator. The prismatic glass is the work of art; but the glorious colors which it exhibits to Jones, William. “Sing to the Harp with a Song of Thanksgiving.” In The Theological, Philosophical and Miscellaneous Works of the Rev. Williams Jones in Twelve Volumes. London: F. and C. Rivington, 1801.

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the eye are from him who said, Let there be light. Man is the contriver of musical instruments; but the principles of harmony are in the elements of nature; and the greatest of instruments, as we shall soon discover, was formed by the Creator himself. The element of air was as certainly ordained to give us harmonies in due measure, as to give respiration to the lungs. This fluid is so constituted as to make thousands of pulses at an invariable rate, by means of which the proportions and coincidences of musical sounds are exactly preserved. The same wisdom which established the seven conspicuous lights of the firmament, which gave names to the periodical measure of time in a week; and which hath distinguished the seven primary colors in the element of light, hath given the same limits to the scale of musical degrees, all the varieties of which are comprehended within the number seven. In the philosophical theory of musical sounds, we discover some certain laws which demonstrate that the divine wisdom hath had respect, and made provision for the delight of our senses, by accommodating the nature of sounds to the degree of our perception. As this must be a pleasing consideration to the lovers of music, I shall beg leave to enlarge upon it. There is no such thing in music as a simple solitary sound. Every musical note, whether from a string, a pipe, or a bell, is attended by other smaller notes which arise out of it. When a string sounds in its whole length, the parts also sound in such sections or divisions as have a certain proportion to the total sound. We find by calculation and experiment, that these measures are harmonious in the greater of them, but in the lesser they run into discords. Now here is the wisdom and goodness of God manifest; that these sounds are so well tempered to the human ear, that we feel all the pleasant without any of the disagreeable effect. Were the ear more sensible, or these discords louder, all music would be spoiled. There is another providential circumstance in the theory of sounds, that if a pipe is blown to give its proper note, a stronger blast will raise it to its octave (8 notes higher). This is done by an instantaneous leap, which if it were done by procession from the one to the other, as bodies in motion rise or fall, not music, but a noise would be the consequence, most disagreeable to the ear; to which nothing is more offensive than a sound rising or falling by the way of the whole immediate space, and not by just intervals; for that is a principle of noises as they differ from notes: and a curious principle it is, if this were a proper occasion for pursuing it. We find music as a work of God in the constitution of the air; which is made capable of proportionate vibrations to delight us; and in such degrees and manner as to save the ear from offence and interruption. Music may be farther traced as the work of God in the nature of man: for God hath undoubtedly made man to sing as well as to speak. The gift of speech we cannot but derive from the Creator; and the gift of singing is from the same Author. The faculty, by which the voice forms musical sounds, is as wonderful

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as the flexures of the organs of speech in the articulation of words. The human pipe is of a small diameter, and very short when compared with the pipes of an organ: yet it will distinctively give the same note with the pipe of an organ eight feet in length. The moveable operculum on the pipe of the human throat, which is imitated by the reed of the organ, has but a very small range: yet with the contraction and expansion of the throat, it will utter a scale of seventeen degrees, and divide every whole tone into a hundred parts; which is such a refinement on mechanism as exceeds all description. But, more than this, man is an instrument of God in his whole frame. Besides the powers of the voice in forming, and of the ear in distinguishing musical sounds, there is a general sense, or sympathetic feeling, in the fibers and membranes of the body, which renders the whole frame susceptible of musical emotion. Every person strongly touched with music must be assured that its effect is not confined to the ear, but is felt all over the frame, and to the innermost affections of the heart; disposing us to joy and thankfulness on the one hand, or to penitential softness and devotion on the other. Whence it follows, that when words convey to the mind the same sense as the music does, and dispose us to the same affection, then the effect of music is greatest; which consideration at once gives, to vocal, the preeminence above instrumental music. It is a very observable experiment in music, that when one stringed instrument is struck, and another in tune with it is held upon the palm of the hand, it will be felt to tremble in all its solid parts. Thus doth the frame of man feel and answer to instruments of music, as one instrument answers to another. Man is to be considered as a musical instrument of God’s forming; he has music in his voice, in his ear, and in his whole frame. Hence the Psalmist, when he calls upon the lute and harp to awake, hath rightly added, I myself an instrument which God hath formed for his own use, will awake right early: I will utter, and I will feel such sounds as are worthy of a soul awakened to the praise and glory of God. Now we have derived music from its proper origin, we are to consider the end which it is intended to answer. The mind of man is subject to certain emotions, which language alone is not sufficient to express; so it calls in the aid of bodily gestures and musical sounds, by which it attains to a higher kind of expression, more adequate to its inward feelings. In prayer, words alone are not adequate to the affections of the soul: so the eyes are lifted up to the everlasting hills, the knees are bent, and the body falls prostrate upon the dust, to denote the prostration of the mind. So naturally are the knees bended, and the hands folded together, when we are imploring the divine forgiveness, that the word supplication is taken from thence. In joy and thanksgiving, the tongue is not content with speaking; it must awake and utter a song; while the feet are also disposed to dance to the measures of music; as was the custom in sacred celebrations of old among the people of God, before the world and its vanities

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had engrossed to themselves all the expressions of mirth and festivity. They have now left nothing of that kind to religion; which must sit by in gloomy solemnity, and see the world, the flesh, and the devil, assume to themselves the sole power of distributing social happiness. When the holy prophet David danced before the ark of God, Michal scorned him in her heart, as if he was exposing himself, and robbing the vain world of its tributary right: for which she was barren to the day of her death; as all they are likely to be in their hearts, who are either ashamed of the condemnation, or can find nothing cheerful and pleasant in the worship of the God of Israel. However this may be, it must be admitted, that nothing adds so fully to the expression of joy, as the sound of instruments accompanying the voice. When the mind is intent upon some great object, then all the aids of speech are called for. They are, therefore, never so proper and necessary as in the praises of God, the best and the greatest. “When you glorify the Lord,” says the son of Sirach, “exalt him as much as you can; and when ye exalt him, put forth all your strength, and be not weary for you can never go far enough” (Ecclus. 43:30). Here music appears in its proper character: but to call in assistance of great sounds to magnify little or worthless things, is absurd and ridiculous. The powers of speech are more than they deserve: but certainly, laborious celebration, when dedicated to trifles, is to the reproach of human judgment. The winds of heaven, and the waves of the ocean, which can transport the loftiest ships, were not intended to float a cork, or to drive a feather. When the highest music is applied to the highest objects, then we act with reason and propriety, and bring honor to ourselves, while we are promoting the honor of the Maker. If a musician has any sense of great things, they must lead him to higher performances in his art than little things: they call for a higher sort of expression; and accordingly we find, in fact, that masters have exceeded themselves when their talents have been turned to divine subjects on the service of the church; in whose archives are to be found the most sublime and excellent of all musical compositions. What is the sense and subject of the most perfect piece of music in the world, but the humiliation of man, and the exaltation of God? Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name be the glory! In truth, there is nearly the same proportion between the music of the church and the music of secular assemblies, as between the venerable Gothic aile of the cathedral and the common chamber; and there is the like difference in their effects upon the mind; for its elevation and enlargement are better than its levity, and rapture is above mirth. It may have been made a question by some people, more melancholy than wise, and soured with the principles of spurious reformation, whether instrumental music may be lawfully applied to divine worship. But it is no question at all. The voices of men are to speak praises of God: but not them alone. Every devout and well-informed mind hears the whole frame of nature, the world and all things that are therein, joining in one great instrumental chorus

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to the glory of the Creator. Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad— let the sea make a noise, and all that therein is; let the floods clap their hands— let the field be joyful, let the valleys sing—let all the trees of the world rejoice before the Lord. This is a grand sentiment, sufficient to overpower and confound all the sullen objections of enthusiastic melancholy, and to awaken the stupidity of indevotion itself. Here the whole inanimate creation is musical; and the thought hath been plainly borrowed by our best poet in his supposed hymn of Adam and Eve in Paradise; which will naturally occur to the memory of those who are acquainted with it. Sounds from inanimate bodies, such as musical instruments, are, therefore, undoubtedly to be used in divine worship; and all ages and nations of the world have admitted them. On occasion of the overthrow of Pharaoh and his host, Miriam the prophetess took a timbrel in her hand to celebrate the glorious triumph of the Lord. In the service of the tabernacle and temple, all kinds of instruments were used, and bands of singers and musicians were appointed in so great a multitude, that their sound must have produced an astonishing effect. A father of the church informs us, that the music of the temple, on great occasions, from the multitude of performers, and the elevation of the place, was heard to the distance of ten miles. That the songs of Zion were usually accompanied by the harp, according to the exhortation in the text, appears from the 137th Psalm. Even the Heathens, in their sacred festivals, retained the use of instrumental music. When the golden image was set up in the plain of Dura, the signal was given for the act of adoration by the sound of all kinds of instruments. In the lowest state of the church, when the sufferings of our blessed Savior were at hand, himself and the company of his disciples still followed the custom of adding music to their devotions; they sung a hymn. Pliny, the minister of the emperor Trajan, tells his master how the first Christians made it their practice to sing hymns to Jesus Christ, as to God. We are surely not to wonder, if instruments were not used while the church was in an afflicted and persecuted state: it could have no organs when it had no public edifices to put them in, supposing them to have been then in use; but when the church was supported and established by the kingdoms of the world, it assumed a like form of worship with that which prevailed in the prosperous days of David and Solomon. We find organs in the church as early as the seventh century, near 1200 years ago. And here let all the admirers of the musical art stop a while to reflect with gratitude and devotion, that the invention of choral harmony in parts arose from the Trinitarian worship of the Christian church. It is certain, we have no music of that form extant in the world, but such as is Christian; nor do we read of any: and had it not been for the schools of music, established and maintained by the church, I will venture to say, there had, at this day, been none of that excellent music with which all of us are now charmed, and I hope, many of us edified. Look out of Christendom into the kingdoms

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of China, Tartary, Turkey, and the regions of the southern world, and you will discover no music but what is beggarly and barbarous, fit only to amuse the ears of children or savages. Everything that is great and excellent in this way, hath come down to us from the Christian church. O holy and blessed society, which hath thus introduced us to all that we can know and feel of heaven itself! How shall we celebrate thee, how shall we cultivate and adorn thee, according to what we have derived from thee! Let others be cold and indifferent, if they will, to our forms of worship; but upon musicians, if they know themselves, religion hath a particular demand; for they would never have been what they are, if God in his infinite goodness, had not brought us to the improvements of the gospel. If we proceed now to enquire, what are the subjects to which music may be applied, we shall find the chief of them set down for us in the 33rd Psalm; where the righteous are directed to praise the Lord with instruments of music, because “his word is true, and all his works are faithful.” The wisdom of his words, and the wonders of his works, are, therefore, to be celebrated in our sacred songs; he is to be praised as the defender of his people, giving victory to their arms against their heathen enemies; feeding, healing, and delivering out of all danger those who trust in him, as their help and their shield. To all these subjects music may be applied; and this is the use we may make of it in the Te Deum, and all the hymns of the morning and evening service; to the words of which, such strains of harmony are adapted in this our Church of England. But as the mind has another language of sighs and tears, very different from that of praise and triumph, so the scale of music affords us a melancholy key with the lesser third, and a mournful sort of harmony proceeding by semitones, which is exceedingly fine and solemn, and reaches to the bottom of the soul, as the lighter sort of music plays upon the top of it. That musical sounds are applicable to prayer and supplication and penitential sorrow, none will doubt, who hears the Anthem, I call and cry; or that other, Call to remembrance, O Lord; by two of our most ancient and excellent composers, Tallis and Farrant: or that versicle of the Burial Office, Thou Knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts, by the greatest of modern masters, Purcel. Thus much for the subjects of music. The form of the Anthem derives itself naturally from the structure of some of the Psalms, in which we so frequently find the soliloquy, the dialogue, and the chorus. Thus, for example: The Lord hear thee in the song of trouble, is the voice of a company encouraging a priest in his intercession; who also answers for himself, and expresses his confidence; Now know I that the Lord helpeth his anointed: then all join together in supplication, Save Lord, and hear us when we call upon thee. The solo, the verse, and the chorus, in our church music, express all these turns in the sacred poetry, when they are properly applied. The responsory form of our chanting by alternate singing in the choir

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is agreeable to the heavenly worship of the seraphim, in the vision of the prophet Isaiah, where they are represented as crying one to another with alternate voices, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts.” The version of the Psalms into practical meter leads to a sort of Psalmody so plainly measured, as to be easily comprehended and performed by the generality of the people in a congregation; and simple as this music may appear, the greatest masters have thought it worthy of their cultivation, and we have some divine pieces of harmony in this kind. The old hundredth Psalm, which is ascribed to Martin Luther, is deservedly admired; the 113th is excellent; so are the old 81st, the 148th, and many others, which are judiciously retained in our congregations. Such is the state, and such the excellence of our music, in the Church of England; and long may the sound of our cathedrals and churches go up to heaven and reach the ears of the Lord. To what hath here been said on the nature, and use, and state of music, I wish it were in my power to add something effectual toward the reformation of some abuses; for such will find admission into all societies, through negligence in some, and want of judgment in others. As God is the greatest and best of beings, and it is the highest honor of man in this life to serve him, every thing relating to his worship should be ordered with decency, propriety, reverence, and affection. “I will sing with the spirit and with the understanding also” (Corinth. 14:15), saith the Apostle: so should we sing, and so should we perform in all our approaches to the throne of Grace; our music should be the music of wise men and of Christians. No lame, or maimed, or defective sacrifice was permitted to be ordered in the temple of God; who, being the first proprietor of all things, hath a claim to the best of everything, and consequently to the best music, performed in the best manner we are able. Church music has a proper character of its own, which is more excellent than that of secular, or profane music, and should always be preserved. Without the restraints of discretion, wisdom, and authority, the art of man is apt to run out into excess and impropriety; and while it affects to be too fine, and too powerful, becomes ridiculous. What is it but vanity that betrays the poet into bombast, the orator into buffoonery, the composer of music into useless curiosity, the performer into ineffectual rapidity and flourish? Thus do men always fail of their end, when they think more about themselves than about their subject. Queen Elizabeth, therefore, took what care she could by her injunctions, that affection, which spoils all other things, should not be permitted to spoil the music of the Church: and it hath been rightly observed, that the music from the Reformation to the Restoration was more plain and solemn in its style than that which succeeded; though it still preserved great excellence. The performer on the organ, who, for the time he is playing by himself, hath the minds of the congregation under his hand, should take care not to mislead

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the ignorant into vain fancies, nor to offend the judicious with unreasonable levity. In the tone of the diapasons of the church organ, there is nothing noisy and military, nothing weak and effeminate, but a majestic sweetness, which is fittest to dispose the mind of the hearer to a devout and holy temper. If the diapasons could speak in articulate words, there is not a text in the Bible which they would not utter with dignity and reverence; and hence their music is of excellent use to prepare the people for the hearing of the scripture. Many have felt the effect of it: and I hope I shall give no offence if I add it as a suspicion, that they who do not feel the power of slow harmony upon the organ, have not the right sense of musical sounds. The organist should, therefore, by all means, cultivate that style of harmony which is proper to this noble capacity of his instrument. The Psalmody of our country churches is universally complained of, as very much out of order, and wanting regulation in most parts of the kingdom. The authority of the minister is competent to direct such music as is proper, and to keep the people to the ancient forms. A company of persons, who appoint themselves under the name of the singers, assume an exclusive right, which belongs not to them but to the congregation at large; and they often make a very indiscreet use of their liberty; neglecting the best old Psalmody, till the people forget it, and introducing new tunes, which the people cannot learn; some of them without science, without simplicity, without solemnity; causing the serious to frown, and the inconsiderate to laugh. I have frequently heard such wild airs as were not fit to be brought into the church; through the ignorance of the composers, who were not of skill to distinguish what kind of melody is proper for the church, and what for the theater, and what for neither. If any Anthems are admitted during the time of divine service, country choristers should confine themselves to choral harmony, in which they may do very well; and our church abounds with full Anthems by the best masters. No solos should ever be introduced without an instrument to support them; and besides, these require a superior degree of expression to make them tolerable. The Psalmists of country choirs may with care and practice sing well in time and tune; and in choral music, or music of several parts, the want of due expression is compensated by the fullness of harmony: but they can never attain to the speaking of music without being taught. There is an utterance in singing, as in preaching or praying, which must be learned from the judgment of those who excel in it. A man can no more sing a solo for the church without a musical education than a clown can speak upon the stage for a learned audience in a theater. When we consider the performance of sacred music as a duty, much is to be learned from it. If music is a gift of God to us for our own good, it ought to be used as such, for the improvement of the understanding, and the advancement of devotion. Services, Anthems, and Psalms should be understood as lessons of purity in life and manners. Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, saith

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the Psalmist, for it becometh well the just to be thankful. What, shall we praise God with our lips, while we blaspheme him with our lives? Praise, saith the son of Sirach, is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner, for it was not sent him of the Lord. Praise to the Lord is proper to those only who derive blessings from the Lord; it is impertinent and false when it comes from those who are never the better for him. O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy: but let not them say so, who are very loud and forward in singing, while they are insensible of the greatness and the value of those subjects which our music celebrates: like the sounding brass of a trumpet, which makes a great noise, but feels nothing. Others there are, who are not chargeable with this error: loose, irreligious people, who have an absolute dislike and contempt for divine music: and they are right; for it would carry them out of their element. But God forbid that we should be where they are: no; let us keep our music and amend our lives. It must be our own fault, if our music doth not contribute to our reformation, and we may have it to answer for in common with the other means of improvement which we have abused. All our church music tends to keep up our acquaintance with the Psalms, those divine compositions, of which none can feel the sense, as music makes them feel it, without being edified. The sacred harp of David will still have the effect it once had upon Saul; it will quiet the disorders of the mind, and drive away the enemies of our peace. Another excellent use of music, is for the increase of charity; and this in more senses than one. When Christians unite their voices in the praise of God, their hearts become more united to one another. Harmony and Charity never do better than when they meet together; they are of the same heavenly original; they illustrate and promote each other. For as different voices join together in the same harmony, and are all necessary to render it complete; so are all Christians necessary to one another. The high and the low all meet together in the church of Christ, and form one body. As those who perform their different parts in a piece of music, do all conspire to the same effect; so are we all members one of another; and as such, are to be unanimous in the performance of our several duties to the praise and glory of God. And as a greater heat arises from a collection of a greater number of rays from the sun, so more Christians, united in charity and harmony, are happier and fewer. The most critical judges of music must deny their own feelings, if they do not allow that the effect of music is wonderfully increased by the multiplication of voices. Indeed the principle is attested and confirmed by the grand performances of the present age, so greatly and skillfully conducted of late years to the astonishment of the hearers. Magnitude of sound will strike the mind as well as the sweetness of harmony; and this is one reason why we are all so affected with the sound of thunder, to which the sound of a great multitude may well be compared. Thus it comes to pass in the union of Christians: the joy and peace of

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every individual increases in proportion as charity is diffused and multiplied in the church. But there is another sense in which charity is promoted in music. This happens on those occasions, when music is promoted with a charitable intention. Very considerable sums are raised from the contributions of those who come to be treated with sacred harmony. The poor are fed, the sick are healed, and many good works are carried forward. Blessed be the art, which from the hands and hearts of the wealthy and the honorable, can draw relief for the poor and needy! The widows and orphans of the poor clergy of this church were the first objects relieved through the medium of church music: and let us hope they will rather be gainers than losers by all improvements in this way: for they who are related to the church have, undoubtedly, a priority of claim upon the music of the church. I am, lastly, to remind both my hearers and myself, that all our observations upon this subject will be to no purpose, unless from the use of divine music, and its effect upon us, we learn to aspire to the felicity of heaven, of which it gives us a foretaste. While we are in this lower state, there is no vehicle like sound for lifting the soul upwards toward the eternal source of glory and harmony. We may conceive of the spirit of man as riding on the wings of Psalmody to the celestial regions, whereto its own powers could never transport it. A great admirer and practitioner of sacred music, who was also a man of great piety and devotion, was present at a grand church performance, with which he felt his mind so rapt and elevated, that in describing the sensation afterwards, he made use of this emphatic expression: “I thought I should have gone out of the body.” O what a place would this world be, were it our only employment thus to be rising upwards towards heaven, to visit God with our hearts and affections, adoring his greatness, and delighted with his goodness! But this we can attain to only by uncertain intervals: the corruptible body will soon recall the soul from its heavenly flights. How high so ever it may mount, on certain occasions, it must descend again to the wants and weaknesses and sorrows of mortality; as the lark, from its loftiest song in the air, drops to its lowly residence upon the ground. However, what we do enjoy must make us wish for more. What then have we to do, but to fit ourselves for that society, which praise God without interruption in his own glorious presence, and rest not day and night? When the heavenly scenery is described to us in the revelation: “I heard, as it were, the voice of the great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings saying, Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him!” Who can read these words without a desire to add his own voice to that multitude, and to sing as a member of that kingdom, in which the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! How must the soul be filled with that immense chorus of men and angels, to which the loudest and mightiest thunder shall add dignity without terror, and be reduced to the temper of an accompaniment!

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God of his infinite mercy give us grace so to pray, and so to sing, and so to live, in this short time of our probation, that we may be admitted into the celestial choir, where with angles and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, and with sounds as yet unheard and unconceived, we may laud and magnify the adorable name of God; ascribing to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, into whose name and worship we were baptized upon earth, all honor, glory, power, might, majesty and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

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Church Music: General Considerations (1904) A. Madeley Richardson Quot homines, tot sententiae may be said of Church music of the present day. Every one has his opinions, his tastes, his preferences, and his prejudices; and amid so many conflicting tongues it is sometimes difficult for the inexperienced student to know what to think, what to accept, and what to believe. Every clergyman ought to know something of the art of music generally, and of Church music in particular. It is in reality as important as many of the other studies usually required as a preliminary to ordination, perhaps more so than most of them. In the exercise of his office he is constantly surrounded by music, as by one of the most potent forces through which the life and work of the Church is carried on; and to be entirely ignorant of its principles and practice is to be placed in a position of most serious disadvantage. This is not to say that every clergyman should be a skilled musician; that is neither necessary nor desirable. But he should know sufficient of the history, theory, and practice of the art on which so much of the success of his work depends, to be able to take an intelligent interest in it when discussed, to manage his own voice and part correctly, and to give strength, support, and sympathy to those others upon whom he relies for its practice in the service of the Church. The fact that English Church music is at present in a state of chaos, though at first sight somewhat disconcerting, need not alarm nor discourage us. It is a sign of life and progress. The old days of lethargy and stagnation are past; therefore let us rejoice. We are suffering now, not from lack of interest, but Richardson, A. Madeley. “Church Music: General Considerations.” In Church Music. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1904.

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from misdirected enthusiasm. This is an inevitable consequence of the revival of life and energy. English Church music has a great past; it has also a recent past of sloth and inaction. It has further, we may confidently say, a great present and a still grander future. It is in a very similar position to ritual. Few people are now to be found who will assert that no ritual is at all admissible. But when we seek to discover what things are lawful and what are not, we find ourselves in a state of hopeless confusion. We are confronted with ancient authority, medieval authority, modern authority, and no authority; and amid the strife of tongues and conflict of opinions, it seems well-nigh hopeless to seek for truth and order. To return to music. One man will tell us that, to be quite correct, we must use only medieval music, as having the support of ecclesiastical authority and tradition; another, equally confident, will assert that we need pay no regard whatever to authority or tradition, but may use every man what seems right in his own eyes. As of old, as today, the true and safe path lies in the mean. Let us respect and learn from the past; let us, in the light of its teaching, use the God-given materials of the present, remembering in all things that the end and object of our art is not to please this or that person, not to be trammeled by this or that old and worn-out tradition, but to fulfill its purpose in the world as a living force. The raison d’être of Church music is worship, and worship only. This may be thought an obvious truism, but it is very necessary to be borne in mind, as, being so plain, it is most easy to forget. The simple idea of worship is not difficult to grasp, but what does it mean put into actual practice? How can we truly worship through music? Music as worship has a twofold aspect—Offering and Edification. The offering to God, and the edification of the faithful. The first thought suggests that we must offer the best and highest that it is possible to produce in the art in question: the best kind rendered in the best way; the second that, though it may be granted that there is an absolute beauty independent of the opinions and feelings of people, yet for practical purposes we should use that form of it which is felt to be beautiful by the majority. Music is the most ephemeral and intangible of the arts. That its beauty is absolute may be accepted as a general statement, but to us it is in actual practice relative. History tells us that from the commencement of the world until now mankind has always been subject to the influence of music, and has paid its homage as divine art. But when we come to examine the actual forms and the mediums through which the art has been practiced, we are confronted by a remarkable fact, which may be expressed as follows: Music, though reigning supreme in the human heart, is subject to restrictions of time, place, and education. Unless all these conditions are favorable, the sympathy between the maker of the music and the recipient or hearer is lost; that is, though clearly

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possessing an absolute beauty of its own, its relative beauty for the individual is absent. When an ordinary person speaks of the beauty and power of music, he refers not to music in general, but to that of his own time, place, and level of education; in other words, we can only appreciate the music to which we are accustomed. Very little ancient music has survived, but there is quite enough to show that, if it were to be performed today, it would touch no chords of sympathy in the hearts of the hearers, it would sound ugly and futile. Yet this is the music that soothed the rage and madness of King Saul, that inspired the magnificent poetry of the Psalms. These were the strains employed when— Orpheus with his lute made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing.

Again, in our own day, the Oriental nations have music of a high order, doubtless to them appearing quite as beautiful a form of art as ours does to us, and giving to them the same feelings and inspiration. Yet, when we hear it, we perceive nothing but a most painful jargon, unendurable to our ears. With our own people, every individual likes that which he has become accustomed. There are endless gradations, from the vulgarity of the music hall song to the sublimity of Beethoven and Wagner. But here clearly it is mainly a question of culture and education. The “coster” thinks his melody beautiful, because it is all that he knows of music; the person of culture enjoys Wagner, because he has accustomed himself to that kind of music. It is reasonable to suppose that, if these two individuals were to change places and start life afresh, the result would be that the attitude of mind depends rather upon habit and use than upon physical organization. All these considerations point to two important principles which will be of use in dealing with our subject: 1. That people will appreciate and be affected by that kind of music with which they have become familiar. 2. That, this being the case, it follows that by constantly hearing music of a certain kind they will learn to perceive its particular message. We offer, then, to God a thing of beauty, upon which all our talents and energies should be expended to render it as little unworthy of its object as may be: its quality should be such that it may carry with itself a further offering, nobler resolves, for which purpose no power on earth is more potent than music. Music, the language of the emotions, has an influence which no one can explain, but no one will deny. The better it is the greater its power. It helps people to feel in a certain way. There are gradations in music. Not all music tends to edification. There

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is music of vulgarity and frivolity, as well as sublimity and grandeur. The highest kind of music tends to produce the highest kind of emotion, and from this proceed all kinds of virtue. It is something to tell people that they must not be selfish, mean, hard-hearted, proud; but very often the clearest arguments and soundest reasoning will produce no change in these respects. If people want to feel and act in a certain way they will do it. Music is able to produce the desire for good and holy things; it supplies no arguments, but implants longings and aspirations, which are the sources from which proceed good actions and holy lives. Divine love is the greatest thing in the world: sacred music seems to hold it in solution. It takes its tone from sacred words, and reflects their meaning and force with tenfold intensity, possessing the heart of the listener and filling it full of spiritual life and energy. Think of concrete cases. Compare the effect of the words, “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” at first merely spoken, and then sung to Handel’s sublime music by a great singer. Repeat the words, “Lacrymosa Dies illa, qua resurget ex favilla judicandus homo reus,” and then listen to them wedded to the immortal strains of the dying Mozart. Read the sentence, “And sorrow and sighing shall flee away,” then bow the head and hearken to the Divine Voice speaking through the mortal man, Samuel Sebastian Wesley. We cannot account for this wonderful power of music, but we know and feel it; we listen, and are convinced. Bearing in mind the secondary object of Church music, edification, our work should be built upon the foundation of its primary object, the offering to God. A man’s life and energies cannot be better occupied than in seeking to return to the Giver of all beauty the best he can produce of those forms of beauty which the human brain is enabled to create upon the earth. All the arts are employed in the service of God: architecture, painting, sculpture, etc. In these we seek to give the best, but they one and all differ from music in that their beauty is passive; created once and for all, it remains quiescent until destroyed by time. Music, on the other hand, is active and living, its message can be conveyed to the world only by living agents interpreting it at a given time. The composer of the music directs the performers as to what they must do, but the music proper does not exist until they obey these directions. Here is at once the weakness and the strength of music. For its beauty we are constantly dependent upon the skill of the interpreter, either our own or that of others, and if this skill fails the music fails, at any rate in respect of the intention of the creator. An unskillful performance is a mere travesty of great and beautiful music, a libel upon the composer, who is ever at the mercy of the performers. On the other hand, when the executants are skillful, and are competent to understand and to interpret to others the hidden thoughts of a

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great musician then we have an art force greater than that of any passive art. The tone poet lives again in his music, his own voice speaks to the listener, in whose being the vibrations find an answering chord, and he is moved, figuratively and literally. We thus see that questions of Church music divide themselves under two heads, touching the composers and the executants. We must, of course, first decide what music we use, and then next how we shall get it rendered. It is a comparatively easy task to select suitable music; it is a far more difficult matter to secure its adequate performance. Whether it be rendered by clergy, choir, or congregation, the same difficulties are ever present. Knowledge and skill are the two things needful; without them music is nothing, with them everything. How to acquire them, how to keep them, and how to use them, is the constant care of the true guardian of Church music; with the never-to-be forgotten thought behind all that neither is of any avail, neither can bring any blessing, without sincere purpose and true intention—the guiding light that should illuminate every step of the way towards all that is high and great in our art.

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Secular Currents in Synagogal Chant in America (1918) Joseph Reider The distinction between religious and secular music is not readily admitted. There is a considerable group of people, some of them very learned in the art and science of sound, who claim that music per se is one and indivisible, either good or bad, grammatically correct or wrong, and that the colored moods or feelings we experience at a recital are simply due to association of ideas. Thus a chant or anthem becomes to us a sacred composition because we hear them in a cathedral or synagogue instead of a music hall or theater. The world-renowned Miserere given in the Sistine Chapel at Rome during the holy week is used as an illustration. This famous performance, over which tourists enthuse and rave ad extremun, when noted down and analyzed outside the cathedral atmosphere, as was done surreptitiously by Mozart, proves to be prosaic and simple to the marked degree. They also cite instances of sacred oratorios, like Handel’s Esther and Mendelssohn’s Elijah, being offered on the operatic stage and evoking feelings quite contrary to those evoked within the cold Gothic walls of the oratory. That there is a modicum of truth in this assertion is evident with anyone conversant with the influence of the environment on such a sentient being as man. Indeed, even apart from this, it must be admitted that what we generally characterize as holy and secular melodies are not as far apart as we are prone to think. They often merge together so that we are not able to distinguish their line of demarcation. Nevertheless, the division of music into religious and secular is legitimate, and is justified not alone by time-honored usage but also by essentially differing characteristics which serve as criteria for determination of the artistic status of a certain melody. Reider, Joseph. “Secular Currents in Synagogal Chant in America.” The Jewish Forum (Winter 1918).

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To begin with, all true religious tunes have a certain breadth, strength, dignity, and simplicity, which are rarely met with in secular songs. These stern qualities are obtained in various ways, such as the use of slow movement, the employment of only one note or syllable, the use of common time, major or augmented intervals, and, last but not least, an upward diatonic progression. The opposite is true of secular tunes, which are generally florid and melismatic, fugal and mellifluous, having slurs and appoggiaturas, with the result that two or more notes are given in one syllable, employing mostly triple time, minor or diminished intervals, and chromatic progression. The one represents innate reverence, the other innate flippancy. To make their relation still clearer by a simile, sacred stands to secular music as Gothic architecture stands to the building style of the Renaissance: it is pointedness versus rotundity, masculinity against femininity, ruggedness instead of suppleness. The same relation obtains in painting between the early Church style as exemplified in Fra Angelico on the one hand and the Renaissance style of Raphael, Michael Angelo and Rubens on the other; in the former we find perpendicularity and a suggestion of infinity, in the latter roundness and perfection and nothing left to the soaring imagination. The nearest approach to religious song is the Gregorian chant of the Catholic Church which admittedly goes back to Temple music at least as far as content is concerned. This chant has various ramifications, but all of them portray a self-surrendering faith, the humility and abnegation of a pietistic soul, subjective resignation and extinction of egotism. The most typical representative is the famous Cantus Peregrinus, which Jesus of Nazareth is supposed to have intoned to the Hallel on the Feast of Passover (comp. Mark 14, 26). It is a primitive and elementary tune, consisting of two short phrases, one ascending and the other descending, terminating in the minor la, so characteristic of the Orient; nevertheless it is full of strength, dignity, and beauty. Its antiquity may be vouchsafed, even aside from the well-authenticated tradition by dint of what of we know of the origin of human speech and song. It has been determined beyond any doubt that originally all music was religious and consisted in intensive speech-song, a kind of dramatic recitation, with as much rigidity and as little floridity as possible. The speech was dominant, the song subservient, and this is exactly what we find in these rugged tunes, as anyone may convince himself by hearing the Sanctus and the Gloria of the Eucharistic service. Another example of general and antique religious song, more familiar to us Jews, is the well-known tune Leoni, which is sung at some congregations to Yigdal on Sabbath eve. It is so pathetic and reverent, selfdenying and God-exalting, that it is hard to find its equal in the whole Jewish liturgy. Its ancient Jewish origin is attested to not merely by the characteristic minor key, but also by the almost monotonous simplicity represented by the constantly reoccurring phrase of upward progression. I might also mention the world-renowned tune for Kol Nidre, which in its basic outline barring the

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abbellimenti and fiorituri of ambitious composers, is deeply religious and soul stirring. Or I might refer to that powerful and all-engulfing hymn of the Sephardim at the close of the Day of Atonement, Eil Nora Alila, which in my mind is always associated with Luther’s Eine feste Burg, both being ascendant and aggressive in the highest degree. But all these genuine tunes are rare exceptions in our liturgy. For the most part our ancient hymns have undergone a radical metamorphosis, due to various internal and external factors, but chiefly to the strange environments to which the Jews found themselves at the entrance of the Diaspora. Under the conditions of flux and re-flux, of continuous immigration and emigration, in which the Jews henceforth found themselves, it was inevitable that even their closely guarded and strictly observed chant should be affected by current popular melodies. As a matter of fact, it can be maintained with a considerable degree of certainty that the synagogal chant was never absolutely pure and uncontaminated, that there was always some leaven of folksong mixed with the pabulum of the hymn. But with the supremacy of ecclesiastical over secular music until the end of the Middle Ages this admixture was not noticeable, being of a negligible quality and therefore enjoying the connivance of the clergy. It was only during the Renaissance, when popular got the ascendancy over ecclesiastical music, that the contamination of the chant began to grow apace. It was the natural result of the process of secularization, which was supreme and dominant in the Christian Church of those days and culminated later on in the excrescence of the Muggletonians in England and the Salvation Army brotherhood in America, in the revival methods of the Protestant John Wesley, who borrowed some of the Devil’s best tunes in order that all of them might not be thrown away upon an unworthy service. The Jews, without even a hierarchy to restrain them, proved excellent imitators in this attractive and seducing practice. As an authority on the subject, Francis L. Cohen, expresses it very succinctly: Beginning with the sixteenth century it became a frequent practice among Ashkenazim as well as Sephardim, to adopt melodies foreign to the synagogue, and to liberally reproduce there the folksongs of the country. Many hazzanim would themselves compose melodies for the service, but these would be influenced rather by the popular music of the day than by the Jewish spirit of the older tunes. The larger number of the tunes henceforward introduced bear plain token of their outside origin, to which indeed many of them are clearly traceable. Such are the liturgical hymns for Sabbath, and for Hanukah, and other similar occasions, the larger portion of the melodies which characterize the three festivals, together with nearly all, if not quite all, of the hymns for singing in the home circle, according to the good old Jewish custom. Much of this adopted music is of a jingling prettiness; some little of it, however, well worth preservation.

The subject of secularization is highly interesting and fascinating not only from the religious but also from the musical standpoint, and I intend to deal with it at some length on another occasion. Here I want to touch upon it only

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insofar as it affects the various practices in our American synagogues and temples. Corresponding to the three great classes of the Jewish population in America, viz. the Spanish, the German and the Russian-Polish Jews, we can diagnose three distinct tendencies in the treatment of synagogue music: the Sephardim retain their love for Moorish and generally Oriental folk tunes, the Ashkenazim indulge in operatic airs and oratorio themes, while the RussianPolish Jews, in addition to their love for Slav and generally eastern European melodies, imitate everything melodious in the musical register. Some of these tendencies manifested themselves already in the Middle Ages, but they became accentuated with the advance of time and the consequent evolution of new musical forms. With the immigration of the Jews to the new continent these practices were transplanted here and continued their undisturbed development. With reference to the Spanish and Portuguese the dictum of Carl Engel still holds true: “In the synagogal hymns of the Sephardic Jews,” he says in his work National Music, “who were expelled from the Spanish Peninsula at the end of the fifteen century, distinct traces and characteristics of Moorish music are still preserved.” These characteristics, as anyone acquainted with Arab music knows, are primarily chromatic and inharmonic scales, built up of semitones and demi-semitones, instead of whole tones and half tones as case in the diatonic mode of the Europeans. It is the nature of these chromatic intervals that they yield a certain softness and effeminacy which we style minor mode. Another feature is the nasal twang, so common in the Orient, and no doubt the result of the peculiar scale system. The impression on a cultivated ear is something doleful and lugubrious, or else of something cold, turgid and anemic. This canorous style, with some modification, of course, found its way into the Sephardic synagogue at an early date and has since become naturalized there, so much so that the claim is often heard that it represents the oldest form of synagogue music and probably goes back to the Temple service. Thus the hymn Az Yeshir Moshe is claimed by the Sephardim to be the oldest melody of the synagogue. Whether there is any basis for this claim, I cannot discuss now; but I want to state my doubts in the face of the newly published collection of songs of the Yemenite Jews (Idelsohn, Gesaenge der jemischen Juden, Leipzig 1914). The Yeminite Jews, as is well known, remained without any outside influence for nearly two thousand years; and if any Jewish chant is to claim a hoary antiquity and perchance Temple ancestry, it is certainly the Yemenite chant with its pristine simplicity and elementary structure, its small range and narrow compass, its paucity of modulation and monotony of modes, its diatonic and often pentatonic scale. The Sephardic chant, on the other hand, is quite elaborate and developed, has a variety of motives and modes, a high range of tonality, a great number of scales, a system of modulation, and last but not least, chromatic intervals. The piyyutim are crooned in the Irak (Dorian) mode, but quite frequently also in the l’Sain (Hyper-Dorian or A minor) and the l’Sain-sebah (A minor with G sharp modern harmonic minor), reminding

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us of the romantic folksongs of the Iberian Peninsula and the cooing ditties of medieval Provence. In this connection it is interesting to quote the Rev. D. J. Sola, from his book Ancient Melodies of the Liturgy of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews (1857): When the Sephardic ritual became fixed and generally established in Spain, and was enriched by the solemn hymns of Gabriol, Judah ha–Levi, and other celebrated Hebrew poets, chants or melodies were composed or adapted to them, and were soon generally adopted. It would have been, indeed, most desirable that the sublime ways of our pious poets should have ever been found combined with equally sublime and sweet strains by devotionally inspired musical composers of our own nation. But this was not always practicable; and at a very early period it became necessary to sing these hymns to the popular melodies of the day; and in most collections we find directions prefixed to hymns replete with piety and devotion, that are to be sung to the tune of Permetid, bella Amaryllis, Tres colors in una, Temprano naces, Almendro, and similar ancient Spanish or Moorish songs—a practice no doubt very objectionable, for obvious reasons, and from which the better taste of the present age would shrink.

The profanation became so universal that hardly a congregation escaped it. Its traces may be pursued in the mahzorim coming from the Orient, a great majority of which bear superscriptions on the head of each piyyut indicating by first line the popular melodies to which the piyyutim were to be sung. From the standpoint of musical history this material is quite important. It is also interesting to note that the Rev. Leeser states on one occasion that the hymn Ki Eshmera Shabbat was publicly caroled forth by an adventurous songster in a most respectable congregation to the popular love tune of “Meet Me by the Moonlight Alone,” and by another, to the well-known song Partant pour la Syrie—a practice which he condemns in strong terms. The Sephardim, in their process of secularization, never went beyond the folksong. There is only one instance of an attempt to introduce operatic airs in their service, probably in imitation of the flourishing German temples. In Leeser’s Occident of Dec. 1, 1859, a correspondent from New York states that “for some time past there appeared in the Jewish papers an advertisement for singers a la opera, for the Portuguese Synagogue of this city; the thing went so far that an advertisement even appeared in a London periodical—but the electors at a recent meeting, with scarcely a dissenting vote, refused to permit any such folly to be introduced in place of good old fashioned orthodox worship.” The Ashkenazim have likewise been good adepts in this art of secularization. They were particularly subject to such influences, living as they did in the heart of musical fermentation, in a land where new forms were cropping up overnight and where harmony was marching in the cloud-capped eminencies of triumph and glory. The folksong with its charming simplicity and melodic sweetness naturally exerted great influence, as may still be seen in a minute examination of the hymns. To point out every such instance in the

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Ashkenazic hymnal would lead us too far astray. A few instances will suffice for the present. Thus the grave and pathetic hymn Ledavid baruch is sung at the close of the Sabbath to a jolly dance tune, notwithstanding the fact that it contains such weighty words as “Man is like to vanity, his days are but a shadow that passeth away.” Similarly the hymn Hodu l’adonai for the first days of Passover bears the earmarks of a dance melody, though in its present form it is already attuned to a more serious purpose. Notwithstanding the subject of the prayer requires a lively tune, we expect something more refined and dignified, something broader and weightier, maestoso instead of allegro. Again, the song Echad mi yodea for Passover night is in imitation of a Catholic vesper which was current in Germany during the fifteenth century and was itself patterned after a monkish drink song. Though in the minor key, it has that droning and doleful quality, that flattened intonation, which somehow we associate with the moldering monks in a gloomy convent. Another Passover tune, the famous Hag Gadya, is of foreign origin and of a secular nature. Gay and lively, of terpsichoreal measure and rhythm, it is a typical Provencal folksong of the type that was current during the latter part of the Middle Ages. It is known to have been incorporated in the Ashkenazi ritual during the sixteenth century. The very popular and sweetly hymn Moaz zur yeshuati sung on Hanukah is dressed in the melody of a Lutheran chorale, entitled Nun frent euch, ihr lieben Christen (“Now rejoice, ye dear Christians”) or So weiss ich eins, das mich erfreut (“So one thing I know that gladdens me”). Incidentally it might be remarked that in some places of Eastern Europe this hymn bears the melody of a medieval folksong entitled Die Frau zu Weissenburg. But more potent than the folksong was the influence of the larger and more artistic works such as chorales, oratorios, and operas, which, by dint of their novelty and dramatic dimensions, appealed very strongly to a people steeped in misery. The introduction of operatic airs in the German synagogue had been a notorious practice during the first flush of the Reformation, and this practice persisted throughout the ages until late in the nineteenth century, when, owing to the beneficent activity of men like Sulzer and Lewandowski, the evil was partly stamped out. The process of introducing these airs was slow. As Francis L. Cohen puts it: “It need not be imagined that these foreign airs were at once admitted into the synagogue. They would have been freely used with hymn songs sung in the home circle, as seems later on to have been the usual practice of the German Jews. Then, when their secular origin was forgotten, the melodies would finally have found a place in the synagogal hymnody, and would be jealously treasured as the more purely Jewish music.” In this way, the synagogue service was overburdened with ariosos and cavatinas, traces of which can still be found in the Ashkenazic liturgy. This zeal for imitation was intensified with the entrance of Reform, whose main purpose was to beautify the service through the introduction of good music, both vocal and instrumental. The traditional chant was discarded as too primitive and un-harmonic, not

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suited to the powerful resources of the organ, and in its stead were introduced opera arias from various composers. In this unnatural adaptation the only extenuating circumstance is the fact that they chose their secular airs from the best composers in the field, among them Hayden, Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Mozart, Rossini and Mendelssohn. A particular favorite was Meyerbeer, who, because of his Jewish provenance and faith, was drawn upon very extensively, despite the fact that he was never capable of writing religious music and that of all the operatic composers in those days he was one of the lightest and thinnest. The airs from his Africaine, Huguenots, Prophete, and Robert le Diable, filled the Reformed temples for more than a generation, and some of them may still be detected there. There are also instances of borrowing of Lutheran chorales which, in their turn, have been derived from popular songs. All these things have been transplanted to America, where, as might have been expected, they were considerably augmented by Anglican anthems and Methodist revival songs. Even Moody-Sankey revival tunes and Salvation Army ditties found their way into some German temples. The result was a Christian-like service of an inferior kind, with a concert-hall flavor in it. It is such performances that a writer in the American Hebrew of June 10, 1887 has in mind when he complains of the fact that the choirs in most of the temples sing the most outrageously inappropriate melodies. Says the writer: It is sometimes absolutely grotesque to hear the tunes associated with amorous or dramatic passages in operas, sung to words of religious import. The most ridiculous lack of aesthetic taste is displayed. Seldom is there any true solemnity or other natural emotional force expressed by these choirs. Nothing but declamatory phrasing and sensational yelling and screeching utterly at variance with the character of the service. The whole thing is disgusting to the true artistic temperament, which realizes that melody should be wedded to verse and that the tune itself should be of such a nature that even without the words the hearer should be able to judge of its character. This was possible with the ancient En Kelohenus, Yigdals, Adon Olams and other characteristic Hebrew melodies, but it is utterly impossible with the present hotchpotch concert in the temple.

The Sunday morning service in particular served for a display of virtuosity. At that time the choir, made up largely of non–Jews, would intone “O du mein holder Abendstern” from Wagner’s Tannhauser or, “I dreamt I dwelt in Marble Halls” from Balfe’s Bohemian Girl. Then would follow Christian hymns and anthems such as the Old Hundred and the Doxology. As evidence may be cited the fact that in 1887 Dr. Gustav Gottheil of Temple Emanuel New York, issued a volume entitled Hymns and Anthems Adapted for Jewish Worship, in which under five headings (Worship, God, Man, Israel, For Various Occasions), he offers a collection of hymns, mostly by Christian writers. He draws upon Tate and Brady, Watts, Wesley, Doddridge, Bowring, and Montgomery, as well as upon Whittier, Emerson, Hosmer, and Chadwick, and several native sources. That conditions are the same in our present-day temples

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may be seen from an examination of the latest Union Hymnal published in 1914. This contains more foreign than traditional Jewish material, and although the foreign material is of the highest character and by some of the world’s greatest composers, nevertheless the greatest part of it, from its association with the concert room, remains secular and irrelevant to divine worship. Another practice of the Reform Synagogues should be mentioned here. It has become a custom with some of them to give Handel’s Judas Maccabeus on Hanukah, for no other reason but that the subject of the words is biblical. However, the music is anything but sacred, its floral style reminiscent of the bravura school of Italian opera. In fact, Handel is known as one of the most unchurchly of choral composers, in complete contrast to his contemporary Bach, whose compositions are ponderous and pregnant with religious fervor. Also Mendelssohn’s Elijah is sometimes given there, notwithstanding the fact that, unlike his St. Paul, this is an opera as well as an oratorio, having been presented a number of times on the theatrical stage. The Russian-Polish Jews adopted primarily Slav melodies in their ritual. The Hassidim of Poland and Russia in particular were wont to appropriate folksongs of their Slavonic neighbors for their liturgical hymns. Hence the peculiar characteristics of their chant, which is built on the harmonic minor and has great rhythmic freedom. An outgrowth of this is the unduly florid and excessively embroidered style of the so-called “Polish Hazzanuth,” which has its counterpart in the Greek Church and is a natural concomitant of every purely melodic style of music. These fiorituri and contrappunti alla mente take the place of harmony. Trills, shakes, quavers, and passages, serve as a tonic to the moroseness of a monotonous recitative. In America the Russian-Polish Jews have gone further than that, having appropriated also popular songs and operatic airs from the theatrical stage. Everything depends on the fancy of the Hazzan, who in many cases is ignorant of the very rudiments of music and imposes on the synagogue what he pleases. In an Ohio town, on a Friday eve, I was surprised some years ago to hear a Hungarian cantor intone Adon Olam to Stephen C. Foster’s Old Black Joe. I was anxious to know whether he knew the origin of the tune, and so I asked at the end of the service. But he proved to be absolutely ignorant of its origin, nor had he ever heard of the existence of that sweet bard of negro melodies. He said he picked it up on the street, and on account of its beauty and sweetness introduced it into the synagogue. I also know an old-fashioned hazzan on the East Side of New York who, after hearing the famous “Siciliana” of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and realizing its intrinsic value and exclusiveness as a devotional air, adapted it to Adon Olam, thus regaling his congregation with grand opera without their having the slightest notion of it. I likewise once heard a Galacian hazzan, on Yom Kippur eve, sing the fine piyyut Yaaleh to Liszt’s second rhapsody, while a Hungarian cantor, with great pain, did it to the Rakoczi-March. The Last Rose of Summer is likewise popular

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in some East Side synagogues, where it is sung in violation of time and meter and with little regard of its technical suitability to the particular piyyut. It is enough that a melody is sweet and mellifluous, sad and lachrymose, in order to be accepted by the Polish hazzan, who rarely worries about its provenance. In conclusion, it is interesting to note that also the melody of Hatikvah, the cheval de bataille of the Zionists, which of late is being used for Shir hama’alot and other liturgical purposes, appears to be foreign and secular, as its main theme occurs in Smetana’s symphonic poem entitled On the Moldau. I am aware of Dr. Pool’s contention that this tune is rather an adaptation from the old Sephardic tune to Hallel. However, aside from the authentic information and certain knowledge of the fact which Dr. Pool claims to have and which I dare not impugn, the assertion is based on the similarity of the first or ascending figure or phrase in both melodies. But this is not sufficient as a criterion for authenticity, for the same inceptive figure or musical germ may be found also in other compositions of various lands and ages. In fact, the progression, la, ti, do, re, mi, is characteristic of the minor mode and is quite common in folksongs of all climates. I found it even in English folksongs of the Elizabethan period. One thing is certain, that Smetana did not derive his melody from the Sephardic Hallel. As is well known, this Bohemian composer utilized popular tunes of Bohemia as themes to his larger compositions. The most striking thing is that there is more similarity between Hatikvah and Smetana’s melody than between the former and the Sephardic Hallel, especially with reference to the second or descending figure. However that may be, in its present elaborate shape it appears more like a folksong than an ecclesiastical chant, and hence is inappropriate for liturgical use. It is just to add that efforts are being made now, here and elsewhere, to purge our liturgy of foreign excrescences and preserve the primitive Jewish tunes in a more or less integral state. The St. Cecilie movement, which aims to restore the plain chant within the Catholic Church, was no doubt instrumental in this direction. However that may be, towards the end of the nineteenth century there grew up cantors’ associations in Germany and Austria whose main purpose was to purify and beautify the synagogal chant, and even propagate it among the people through periodic sacred concerts. In this country there was formed the Society of American Cantors, which was succeeded in 1908 by the Cantors Association of America. It has branches in Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. It meets annually to discuss the most important phases of synagogue music, and though so far it has not accomplished much, there is reason to believe that it holds out a good promise for the future.

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Music as an Aid to Worship and Work (1884) W. H. Gladstone, W. Parratt, S. A. Barnett, and C. H. Hylton Stewart W. H. Gladstone In undertaking to read a paper on this important subject, you will readily understand that I come forward with no pretence of authority, and that I speak merely with the genuine interest which, as an humble amateur, I take in it. In addition to other shortcomings, I cannot but feel that some knowledge—did I posses it—of Church music used in other countries, would much assist the consideration how to make our music most conducive to the purposes of public worship. With music, as an aid to work, I shall deal very shortly. We all know familiar instances when work is enlivened and assisted by melody and rhythm: but the music we have to consider today is, I promise, serious music, and the work serious work, of a moral or intellectual kind. If we look at it as no more than a solace and recreation, music is, in general, an aid to all such work. Still more so, when it is such not only to please the ear, but to arouse the interest and intelligence of the listener. Its effect becomes then more distinctly refreshing. Care is soothed, anxiety alleviated, labor itself lightened. Best of all is it, when it enlists personal cooperation; when small societies are banded together for its practice; when the love of the beautiful is kindled, drawing in its train some of the humbler, but scarcely less valuable, qualities of punctuality, attention, and perseverance. Gladstone, W. H., W. Parratt, S. A. Barnett, and C. H. Hylton Stewart. “Music as an Aid to Worship and Work.” In C. Dunkley, ed., The Official Report of the Church Congress, Held at Carlisle. London: Bemrose and Sons, 1884.

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There is one case, however, in which my own experience suggests an exception to the general rule. It was not until I had been some time at the university that I paid much attention to music, and then, I must confess, I found it so seductive and engrossing, that it interfered very seriously with other studies, which should have had the first claim. At schools, it is both necessary and possible that the practice of music—especially of the pianoforte—should be fenced about by stringent rules; but, at the university, this is not possible, and there music will remain, I fear, a formidable competitor with the sterner and more solid studies which primarily belong to the place. It is under this head, of Music as an Aid to Work, that I should prefer to place a large class of hymns, such as those used by Messrs. Moody and Sankey. As for the street-bawling and braying of the Salvation Army, I will only say it is sad to see to what extent the holy and beautiful art of Sacred Music may be perverted and profaned. But these hymns of Messrs. Moody and Sankey deserve, no doubt, to be regarded as powerful aids to Missionary work. Many of them are pathetic and affecting; many cheerful and encouraging; nearly all gratify and attract—and this is a great matter. But whether they can be in any real sense aids to worship, I doubt very much. I should not like to do injustice to those many earnest and religiously-minded persons who feel elevated by them. Mr. Moody himself tells his hearers, that he relies as much on hymns as on his words to sing the Word of God down into their hearts. But are they of a quality—of course, I speak now of the tunes only—to lend themselves to the higher purposes of worship, rather than to others of a more trivial kind? Are they likely to act permanently upon the religious temper of the multitude? So light in texture, that there is nothing, save the words to which they are put, to distinguish them from the ballads of the music halls, it would seem that the worship they suggest must be, to a great extent, superficial and unreflective, and that they are liable to great abuse. They easily touch upon popular sentiment, and are taken up with a facility dangerous in the highest degree to that reverence due to the words—a consideration which will come home to any person who may ever hear (as I have chanced to do) the hymn, “Safe in the arms of Jesus,” emanating from the upper room of a public house. I pass on to our principle theme—music as an aid to worship. And here we feel that the great musical activity of the present day—the extraordinary degree of development to which the art has attained—the new resources, appliances, and facilities that modern invention has given us, cast upon us an increased responsibility in applying these advantages rightly and effectually to God’s greater honor and glory. As the weapons which we wield are more potent than of yore, it matters all the more that they be put to a right use. Music is a great and glorious gift of God; but it may, like other things, be abused; and our means of abusing it are increased, as well as our means of improving it. Music is not a mere study—not merely a fine art. Rather is it a moral agency, designed to foster and sustain the best aspirations of our nature. Its operation

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is not, indeed, direct: it cannot of itself make a good man, or a bad man—cannot, of itself, deteriorate or raise the moral nature; but it can awaken echoes of itself in minds susceptible to its influence—it can wonderfully answer to, and reinforce emotions and desires—can quicken the spiritual sensibility— can minister to the heart’s affections. Such, when rightly used, are its powers: great, therefore, is the failure, and heavy the responsibility, if it be diverted to lower uses. But we have not only to consider it in the abstract—we have, also, to bear in mind the exceedingly solemn and weighty character of the words to which it is coupled. Hence, our music must be, not only lofty and refined, but also well correlated to the purport of those words, ever at hand (as it were) to improve the occasion, and so foster the sense of the high dignity of the act of worship. For, if it fails to do this, it will do positive harm by lowering and detracting from the real import of what is going forward. It may promote inattention and indifference to the very words it ought to illuminate; it may even divert men’s thoughts to other scenes and subjects: possibly it may excite ridicule and disgust. I have known people leave a church—so incongruous to their ideas of worship was the music which was being sung. And, to take a common instance, what a jar upon one’s feeling is it to hear some solemn psalm—the expression of the Psalmist’s innermost heart—sung in some light, complacent chant, with, perhaps, a staccato accompaniment on the organ, intended to prevent any slackening of the time! How very far from the real meaning of the text must be the ideas presented to the minds of singers and congregation! In truth, the setting of the Psalms is a matter that demands and repays long and careful consideration. It will be evident then, I think, that the spirit of one who writes for the Church, must not be that of a mere musician. He must be this, but he must be something more. His office has some analogy to that of the preacher. He, too, has to select, expound, and illustrate his text, to dive into its inner meanings, and clothe it in a vesture of song. Moreover, his sermon must be one that will not only bear, but win its way by repetition. Hence, it must be founded on canons of taste and right feeling that will endure amid the fluctuations of fashion. This, I think, our best musicians feel. Such was the spirit in which one, whose name has been endeared to thousands by his hymns—Dr. Dykes— approached his task. Dr. Wesley confesses the same. “It is an act of worship,” says he, “when the musician, in his private chamber, devotes his whole mind to his vocation.” Hear also the great Palestrina: “Nothing, most Blessed Father,” he says, in his Dedication of the Vesper Hymns, “is so congenial to me, as to be able to give myself to the study of music, which is the occupation of my life, to my own discretion; that is to say, when I am under no pressure from without to demean with trivialities so excellent an art, but, when I can abide by my purpose of embracing topics which most fully show forth God’s praise, and which, pondered in all their weightiness and dignity of word and idea, and embellished with some amount of musical art, may well move the heart of

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man to devotion.” “For,” he continues, “what better subject could I have to portray?” But it is time to pass on from these general considerations to the particular features of the music in our churches and cathedrals. And here we come upon the two great divisions of congregational and choir music. It may be unnecessary to compare these two, for we want both. Yet, I should augur ill of the vitality of that church music which could not enlist the voices of its congregation in the musical service, sooner than I should of that which failed to exhibit its highest developments. The one is the right and duty of the people at large; the other is for the advantage of those who have a musical ear. The one can, or ought to be had in every parish, and is attainable by care and judgment; the other can only be had in certain places, with the cost of money and special training. But, while both kinds are worthy of all effort to attain, they would, I think, be kept more distinct than they are, and either the one or the other should be aimed at, according to the disposition and resources of the particular congregation. I urge this as a matter of policy and convenience, not of principle. Where the necessary conditions of available funds, or an abundant musical instinct are present, as in some of our great Lancashire and Yorkshire towns, the two may be combined with advantage; but where they are wanting, as is the case in the vast majority of our parish churches, the attempt to combine the two commonly results in falling between two stools, and attaining excellence in neither. As a rule, I would say, let parish churches avail themselves of their regular congregations for the encouragement of congregational singing, leaving choir music, requiring skill and refinement to execute, to establishments able to do it justice, but which, on the other hand, often lack the advantage of a regular congregation accustomed to sing together. It may seem strange, but I think it is the case, that, unless discretely managed, a choir may not only not assist, but may even discourage the congregation from taking their proper share. Not only is there a tendency for the choir to usurp the office of the congregation, but there is also a tendency for the organ to usurp the office of the choir. Upon this latter point, however, I do not now dwell. The choir is supposed to lead the congregation, but, practically, it too often takes the words out of their mouths. The reason of this is, that the choir often leads where the people cannot easily follow. The pitch of the monotone may be rather high. The reciting notes of many chants are too high, and their range too great; their intervals also not always quite simple or natural. Then, again, the pace, especially of the hymns—the most important part of congregational singing—may be too rapid for a large body of voices, many of whom require time to get out their notes, or a little pause to take breath between the verses. The old-fashioned mode of hymn-singing condescended too much, perhaps, to these physical infirmities; but the slower time, and the organ voluntary before the last verse gave a kind of dignity and importance to the hymn

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as a feature in the service, which one sometimes misses now. Another fault may be a want of discrimination in choosing tunes and chants—no preference given to those that the congregation are disposed to join in—others that do not suit them persisted in, because the choir may like them, or, perhaps, the organist may be partial in his choice. In these ways, it may easily happen that, if their wants are not specially and primarily consulted, the congregation will insensibly, but surely, abandon their part to the choir; and, I am afraid, this is very commonly the case in country churches. Real congregational singing is, so far as I know, rarely to be heard. At the Temple, in London, and, no doubt, elsewhere, there is more or less of it, but, as a rule, the part sustained by the congregation in English churches (for I except Welsh, where the people sing by instinct) is faint and timid. If it be so, what a loss is here! The effect of a large body of voices, singing with one heart and consent, is one of the grandest and most inspiring things conceivable. There is something, so to speak, contagious in it. In its very roughness there is magnificence. Some of us, at one time or another, may have heard enough to enable us, at all events, to dwell with delight upon the imagination of it. With what rupture do those who were present at the great meeting at St. James’ Hall some years ago, speak of the mere recitation of the Athanasian Creed! In Holland, there is said to be magnificent congregational singing in unison. I have myself heard very fine hymn-singing in Zurich, where the congregation joined largely in the harmony, supported by the full organ. Dr. Stainer tells us that to hear the Psalm-tune at Cologne, sung by the country people all down the nave, is quite enough to last a lifetime. Is it most unfortunate that in England, which we justly boast is not un-musical, we cannot produce any such realities? I cannot but think that with more consideration for the congregation, and more curbing of ambitious tendencies on the part of choir and organist, we might see a vast improvement in the people’s share of the musical service, and more especially in that which is their chief opportunity, namely, the hymns. Of these we have an immense store: the important thing is to select the best. The taste of our day is not always, I fear, in favor of the best. One of the editors of Hymns Ancient and Modern, tells us that, when contributions were invited for the first edition of the work, the tune of which he received the greatest number of copies, was from a chorus in Weber’s Oberon. And he speaks of the pressure put upon them, in preparing the last edition, for more pretty and modern tunes. Dr. Arnold, of Winchester Cathedral, tells us that people are constantly asking him for music with a swing and a go. Hymns of this class should be admitted sparingly, and with judgment. I should be sorry to find tunes like Sullivan’s St. Gertrude, effective as it is as a processional hymn, freely introduced into our service. And I am probably taking one of the best. Happily, we have in Hymns Ancient and Modern, a work which, while by no means free from faults, both of commission and omission, yet upholds a high and worthy standard of harmony. Our composers have not been slow to adapt to

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that wonderfully rich upgrowth of original hymns, which has entirely superseded the metrical versions of the Psalms, a variety of tunes with more color and expression than formerly prevailed. I need hardly mention Dr. Dykes and Dr. Gauntlett, as typical names amongst many others of distinction, who have labored successfully in this field. Yet, I trust, we shall never be drawn from paying due honor to that grand and imperishable type, of which such tunes as the Old 113th, the Old 137th (not to mention the Old 100th), are specimens; also such tunes as Upsal and Bohemia in Mercer, Cleves and Arnheim in Dr. Wesley’s European Psalmist—melodies mostly drawn from the land of Luther—that soil in which they have so marvelously thriven. Such tunes are, indeed, the very jewels of our treasure house; none, I believe, so profoundly affect human sensibility; none are so capable of sublime effect. Viewed thus, in its length and breadth, it must be confessed that in the hymnody of the Church we possess an ornament to her service, and an addition to her strength, the value of which it would be hard to over-estimate. It is interesting to remember that, historically, the congregational chant is the very basis of our musical service. The ancient plain song of the Church was never, as at Geneva, set aside: on the contrary, it was adapted by the Reformers to our vernacular liturgy, for an account of which I may refer you to an interesting article in the twelfth volume of the Christian Remembrancer. We are there told, in a note, that the original term was not “plain chant,” as we have it now, but in the Latin, Planus cantus, meaning, the writer says, congregational song in parochial churches, corporation songs in cathedrals and colleges. The term Planus cantus, or plain song, was, according to this, given later, in contradistinction to the florid counterpoint which came to be written upon it. Historically, therefore, as well as by right, the English Church is the people’s Church, and her song the people’s song. It was sung by male voices, and their part was called the tenor, as holding or sustaining the chant. This is the case to the present day in Tallis’ harmonized Responses. Splendid as were the achievements of the ancient Plain Song—and, indeed, still are for certain purposes—the musical system on which it was founded was so different and incongruous with that of more recent times, that it could hardly be expected to survive in its integrity, after the changes brought about by the Reformation, and after the newborn science of harmony had shaken that system to the core. But where it lends itself to harmonic treatment, it still retains wonderful beauty and power. Witness the responses already referred to, and, especially, that sublime setting of the Litany for five voices, alas! too seldom heard. Witness the intonation of the 51st Psalm, as sung at St. Paul’s Cathedral, in the annual Passion service. Witness its pathos and solemnity in the office of Holy Communion. Then consider, too, the marvelous potency and fertility of themes which inspired such giants of the modern art as Handel and Bach, kindled in the Sistine Chapel the enthusiasm of Mendelssohn, and still continue to draw our Church composers under the spell

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of their attraction. Surely we have guarantees sufficient that the spirit of this ancient song can never die, but will live on honored and revered so long as Church music exists worthy of the name. It remains to be considered whether the use of the Gregorian tones is, or is not, the best mode of singing the Psalms. As a recitation by male voices in unison, they were, and, no doubt, still would be, under such conditions, well adapted to the purpose; but the Psalms, taken as a whole, seem to me to require a musical treatment more ample and more varied. They have great diversity of character; the tone of them is strongly accentuated, and demands a corresponding musical coloring; and they are 150 in number. The Gregorian tones are only eight, and though these may be eked out by variations to a larger number, that number is still inadequate. Besides, the variations are puzzling, and have no special character. So that, for these wonderful hymns or poems (for such not a few of them are), with their alternate notes of thanksgiving and supplication, their profound and glowing sentiment, we have to be content (if we adopt Gregorians) with a few strains of very devotional, but somewhat neutral tone, and these sung not in unison, but in the far less effective and satisfactory manner of octaves between the treble and baritone voices. I think, then, it is not to be wondered if we naturally turn to the freer air and the greater variety of color of the Anglican chant, single and double, so as to re-echo the words of the Psalmist in a strain attuned, as nearly as may be, to the spirit of the particular psalm. One further question arises before I leave this part of the subject, as to whether our congregational singing should be in octaves, or in harmony. The former must either strain the voices, or else unduly fetter the compass of the melody. It is apt to be irksome and monotonous; and except by way of contrast, it is scarcely effective. Try then, all you can, to have the singing in parts: let the music be in the hands of the congregation; let the tunes and chants be such as approve themselves popular; let them be simple in harmony, not chromatic; of moderate compass—as a rule never higher than E—and you may thus get people to take an interest, and by degrees to qualify themselves for taking a part, and so build up a structure of song that will render the service something like what it ought to be. But, above all, force nothing upon an unsympathetic congregation. Offer good music, but persevere only with that which proves acceptable. As there is nothing so inspiring to man’s fellow-creatures, so we may believe there is nothing so worthy of the worship of the Almighty as the consertaneous uplifting of the heart and voice in the great congregation. But I must hasten on in the short time that remains to me, to that other branch of the subject, namely, choir or cathedral music. We here abandon the idea of worship by the collective voice of the congregation, but we seek to fulfill it by appealing through the ear to the inner sensibilities of the soul, and for this purpose we employ all the resources of the art; all the genius of our

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composers, and the skill of our singers. Nor is it the ear only, but the eye also that should here minister to the spirit of devotion. The mellow notes and linked harmonies float down the long aisles and around the carved capitals, uniting the two sister arts of music and architecture in a loving conspiracy of assault upon the religious imagination. More than one passage of “John Inglesant” may recur to your minds upon this topic, nor is it easy to refer to it without having in remembrance Milton’s well-known lines: There let the pealing organ blow To the full voic’d quire below, In service high and anthems clear, As may with sweetness through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes.

As people come to listen and not to join, it is in Cathedral music that a perfect performance should be more particularly aimed at. It is not in the more elaborate portions of the music, where the choirs are, as it were, upon their mettle, that failure is most likely; but rather in the commoner matters of personal demeanor and in the chanting that slovenliness first shows itself, and with disastrous effect. A choir may be deficient in numerical strength: this is much to be regretted, and the short-sightedness of those who have caused it much to be deplored: but the weakest choir may shine in its chanting; and, living, as I do, near the cathedral town of Chester, I may be permitted to instance that choir as one example of careful and beautiful chanting. But the foremost and best example of what the musical service should be, is, undoubtedly, that of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the distinguished organist of which church may have the satisfaction of having brought it to a point of excellence, probably, never before attained in this country. (Not but that I should think all the better of it, if genuine English compositions were substituted for the adaptations from Schubert and others, which figure somewhat prominently in the anthem lists.) One or two special features deserve mention. Once in the week the service is sung by men—an admirable opportunity either for unison singing with the organ, or for a distinct type of harmonized music, hitherto much neglected by Church composers. Once in the week, again, music is rendered by voices only, without organ—a most excellent practice, deserving of being largely followed, partly as an act of wholesome discipline for the choir, but mainly for the display of the peculiar beauties of purely vocal music. For there is a vast amount of the finest Church music which is not only not improved, but is actually spoilt by organ accompaniment. This is true, I imagine, of Palestrina en bloc, of much of Farrant, Tallis, Gibbons, and Byrd; in great measure of J. S. Bach, and of some splendid specimens from such musicians as Mendelssohn, Samuel Wesley, and Sterndale Bennett. It would be well indeed if this most noble department of Church music—probably the most impressive of all—were more in favor both with singers and composers. Well

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do I remember the impression made upon myself by an unaccompanied piece of Pittone’s, which I heard in Rome at the obsequies of a cardinal nearly twenty years ago. The unaccompanied singing of the Imperial choir in Russia is described as extra-ordinarily fine—especially for the richness and depth of the bass voices. I fancy if some of us could hear it, we should come to think a little less of our foreign adaptations and our florid organ accompaniments. Practically, however, it is chiefly with the aid of the organ that music in this country is an effective aid to worship, and of its use, on which so much depth depends, I say little or nothing; it would be impertinent for me to do so in the presence here today of one at least of its greatest masters. Not only the highest technical skill, but a vast amount of judgment and forbearance are among the qualities required in the management of the huge instruments of modern days. Happily we have amongst us many worthy representatives of this most delightful but also most arduous and responsible profession. I shall only name one, who is gone, but to whom the Church owes much for his devoted, life-long, and admirable labors in her service—George Cooper—one who signally upheld the lofty character of his art, and the tradition of whose teaching will, I trust, long bear fruit at the hands of a host of pupils. I shall only notice one point as regards the organ, and allude to an old custom which prevailed, I believe, in parish churches, and among other cathedrals at St. Paul’s, York, Dublin, and Lichfield, and which used to delight me much at New College, Oxford, some twenty years ago, of having a soft voluntary played after the Psalms and before the First Lesson. It has, I fear, everywhere fallen a victim to the desire of curtailing the length of the service, but a more favorable moment for allowing the organ to deliver a message of peace and tranquility could not be; and it is a custom which, within moderate limits, I, for one, should like to see restored. The main question, however, is what constitutes Church music, and is it possible to lay down any cardinal principles to distinguish it from other kinds? And when I speak of Church music, I mean such music as may properly form part and parcel of the daily service of the Church. I am not now speaking of oratorio, which stands on a somewhat different ground, being a thing complete in itself, and not necessarily connected with any act of worship. It is clear that this title of Church music cannot be claimed for any particular age or master to the exclusion of others, seeing that its types vary according to the degree of development to which the art has at different times attained, and according to the particular bent of one and another genius. Thus we have the widely different types of Palestrina, of Handel, of Bach, of Mendelssohn, and of Spohr— to come down no later; or, if we take our own composers, of Gibbons, of Purcell, and of Wesley—all marked by strong individuality of their treatment of the common subject matter, yet all having constantly in view a high and noble idea of the purpose for which they wrote. It is in truth by its intention and effects, not by the name or the composer of the date of its composition,

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that each work must be judged. To rank as Church music, in the true sense of the word, it must be in harmony with the spirit of worship. That spirit is fundamentally always one and the same; it is the spirit breathed in the Psalms of David and in the Book of Common Prayer. The music that accords with it must be orderly and reverential, never running into license or extravagance—in its emotion there should always be a certain reserve, composure rather than excitement, calmness rather than passion. This is not altogether the temper of the present day. Most of our composers give us highly colored, highly-strung music, which serves to excite rather than to refresh, to strike the ear rather than to impress the heart. This is not the music that we really want, and that we can incorporate into our Daily Prayers. Does not Nature give us her most exquisite beauties in no flashing colors, but in subdued and delicate hues? And so it should be with the best Church music, as we see it in Palestrina, and in many specimens of our own composers. Probably no anthem has given so much satisfaction to generation after generation as that simple one of Farrant, “Lord, for Thy tender mercies’ sake;” and it is no exaggeration to say it is as green now as the day it was written, more than 300 years ago. And the reason I take to be this; that, while it is beautiful music, it is entirely true to its nature. In precisely the same spirit is conceived the beautiful air in Sir Sterndale Bennett’s “Woman of Samaria”—“O Lord, Thou hast searched me out.” I am far from saying that all our music should be written in this strain. The religious emotions are infinite in their variety, and in the evolution of the myriad secret relations of the principle of symmetry or proportion lies a perpetual task for the musical artist. To what extent richness and grace of detail can be combined with nobility of form and purpose we see in the works of Sebastian Bach, who was to the Church of the 18th century what Palestrina was to the Church of the 16th—its apostle of music—and whom M. Gounod calls “that Colossus upon whom rests all the music of modern times.” I have already noticed the bad habit (as I cannot but think it), of ransacking foreign masses, and other music of continental composers, adapting them to English words, not always taken from Holy Writ, and dragging them into our service, to the exclusion of a vast store of genuine native composition, infinitely more appropriate to the particular purpose. Mr. Barrett, in a paper read before the Musical Association, complains that our Church composers are occasionally led away by the beauty and variety of the effects modern organs are capable of producing, to write their music in the style of organ solos, with the accompaniment of voices, with the effect of destroying the beauty of cathedral singing; the art which, especially as regards “verse” singing, has, he considers, been lost, vociferation having taken place of vocalization. I will not undertake to say how far this latter opinion may be absolutely correct, but I venture to remark on another tendency, which, I think, is to be regretted, namely, that of composing “Services” at inordinate length, and in the most ornate style of anthem; a total departure from the old and well-established type

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of “Service,” inherited from the days of plain song, admired and imitated by Mendelssohn, and cultivated by such admirable men as Goss, Turle, and Stainer. Moreover, it is a pity to spend so much time in this way, when enough cannot be found for some long but splendid specimens of the anthem, like that of Wesley’s, “Let us lift up our heart.” One word before I close this long paper, as to the oratorio. I have not, indeed, included it under the term of Church music as an integral part of the Church Service, although certain numbers from oratorios are frequently, and with excellent effect, introduced into it. But I do claim the oratorio as a rightful appanage of the Church; and, as musical knowledge spreads, I hope it may be heard more and more in our cathedrals, and less and less in our concert and music halls. One great work in this class, the Passion music of Sebastian Bach, I will say, is almost intolerable outside the walls of a church. Presenting to us, as they do, with all the force of which music is capable, the scenes and events of Scripture, I can see in such performances nothing unbefitting the House of God; whilst, in another point of view, we should be doing far more homage to Handel by allowing his divine airs and massive choruses to roll out their echoes in the vast spaces of a cathedral, than by using the names of the great singers of opera to attract the public. In conclusion, we must remember that no music, however sublime, can ever be a substitute for worship, though it is its best and most powerful ally. That alliance is, I think, appropriately and beautifully described in a stanza cited in one of Sir Walter Scott’s works: Devotion borrows Music’s tone, And music took Devotion’s wing; And, like the bird that hails the sun, They soar to heav’n, and soaring sing.

W. Parratt The subject of our consideration this evening has been much widened in scope and interest by including within the scheme, Work, as well as Worship. The influence of music upon worship is acknowledged and felt by all; but its effect upon working power is more obscure, and would be pronounced harmful by some, beneficial by others, and denied altogether by a third class. As this is an aspect of the question that has, so far, received scant attention, as it is the more debatable, and as it compels reference to fundamental principles which underlie both views, I shall address myself to the first, apologizing if the time limit obliges me to be suggestive rather than argumentative. The attitude of society towards music has long been a source of interest and puzzle to me. Judged by its expressed opinions, one would suppose that music was one of the keenest delights of life; but its behavior in presence of

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good music, the long rows of languid listeners at a severe concert, the persistent chatter which goes on in many drawing rooms, especially during the performance of instrumental music, makes one suspect the sincerity of these statements, and this is a result to be anticipated when conventional taste is in advance of culture and intelligence. The fine sayings about music would fill a volume. Many are beautiful, some foolish, and some false; but none tell us what we want to know, how and why music exercises over us a strange fascination. “Music is the silence of heaven,” we are told. The other day, in the paper, I saw a quotation that architecture was “frozen music.” It is commonly asserted that music is the one pleasure in which over-indulgence is impossible, a position which ought to be challenged; and I think if we inquire what it is that music does for us, we shall find that it ought to be reasonably limited in quantity, and carefully discriminated in quality. Herbert Spencer, in an interesting essay on the origin and functions of music, evolves his theory of the art from what I may term impassioned speech. “Music,” he says, “is the commentary of the emotions upon the propositions of the intellect;” and, so far as vocal music is concerned, this is intelligible, and probably true. But when we turn to the highest order of instrumental music, we find ourselves in this difficulty—there are no propositions of the intellect to be commented upon. Yet the skilled musician would certainly place wordless music in the highest rank of all. That this is not the prevailing view is clearly shown by the eagerness with which concert-goers study the analytical remarks which pretend to interpret for us the composer’s mind, but too often drag down a great work to the level of mere program music. We treat our instrumental music as a Greek treated natural phenomena. Listening to the thunder, and watching the sunset, he wove of them stories of great beauty. I hope the time will never come when we shall cease to be deeply impressed by natural beauties of sound and sight, though for us they are no longer entangled in these fables. Some day, music may emancipate itself in the same manner. Must we, then, find the highest use of music in its power of intensifying language? I should be sorry to think this. A really earnest piece of music, such as a symphony of Beethoven, excites in our minds those exalted states of feeling out of which ought to spring the deepest thoughts and the noblest resolves; and they would so spring if we listened in a more passive frame of mind, not fretting until we can fit to the notes definite ideas, not explaining to ourselves that here the composer thought of a storm and shipwreck, and here of a great cathedral echoing to some beautiful anthem. The last material, the most subtle, of the arts is ready to carry us out of this world, and we do our best to pull it back again. We must all have felt that the mysterious influence of music affords internal evidence, which is by no means worthless, of our immortal nature. We strain our mental vision to catch a glimpse of the eternal shore, but it seems to me that the misty veil which hides it is more easily penetrated by sound.

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We claim, then, for music more than the mere power to refresh, soothe, and tranquillize, valuable as this is to the overtaxed mind and body. Its higher function of sustaining in the mind a condition of calm and controlled excitement, if I may use such an apparent contradiction in terms, must to the brainworker be of vast importance. To say the truth, we have not yet discovered the proper way of listening to music. We sit in long uncomfortable lines, with the bitter blaze of hundreds of gaslights in our eyes. Why, when we go to use our ears, we should thus excite the wrong organ, I have never been able to understand. The halls in which we listen to music are not commonly so beautiful as to form suitable backgrounds for great sound pictures. This applies also with great force to many of our town churches. A beautiful church has its loveliness enhanced by the play of light and shadow, and a bad one has its defects softened; but the point of importance here is, that the mind is left in a far more receptive condition for all refining influences when outward things are not forced upon the attention. The emotional aspect of music has its dangers, dangers so great that many people consider it a positive hindrance to work, and, if it is indulged in to excess, I am afraid this is true. All emotional disturbance ought, I suppose, to have its result in thought and action. Mere idle stirrings of the heart must be harmful, and lead to dulled sensibility, weakened will, and incapacity for exertion. It might seem that fears as to an excess of music are imaginary, but the amount of music-making in the world is now enormous, and is daily increasing. It is a mystery to me how the mind can retain its freshness from beginning to end of a four days’ feast of music. Even a single concert of unusual length leaves the brain drenched and saturated with a jumble of sounds, and it is only necessary to listen to the fragmentary remarks which catch the ear from a dispersing audience, to find proof that the criticism is much more prominent than the enjoyment and appreciation. We now approach the difficult question—Can abstract music, by which I mean music not associated with words, have any ethical relations? The morality of art is always rather hazy. As applied to music, it can scarcely be said to exist in any intelligible shape, and yet the fact that music has its moral side is by no means new to the world. The Greeks attached the greatest importance to it, an importance, as it seems to us, altogether out of proportion to the meager musical material at their disposal. In these days, though there may be some undercurrent of opinion as to the moral effect of abstract music, it almost never comes to the surface, and most people, if they think about it at all, will say, that music without words has no connection with ethics. It is a perplexing problem, to which no decisive answer can be given. We may easily make a list of composers, from Palestrina down to Brahms, and say with confidence, none of these men wrote a single unhealthy bar of music; and another list, especially among later writers, of men who, partly from sentimental weakness, more probably from this than from any vice in their music, have written much

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that could certainly do no good; but the broader line between helpful and hurtful work is faint, and could not be marked out with clearness: it is even conceivable that it might vary for different hearers. Nobody could fail to be the better after hearing a symphony of Beethoven; few would come out unscathed from a course of Chopin, with his endless complaint and peevish whine. In this case, doubtless, a man’s own feelings are the best guide. This seems sure, that we have only capacity for a certain amount of music, and it is a pity to fritter it away upon trivial works. The efforts which are being made to provide good music for the less wealthy classes are full of hope. The appreciation of even severe styles is by no means wanting. I have seen an East-end audience listen with obvious interest and pleasure to a concert in which the comic song element found no place, and where a fugue was received with genuine applause. Turning now to music in its relation to worship, it must be evident that much that has been said in the general question applied here. The probability that beyond a certain point the effect of music diminishes in proportion to its amount, must bring to mind many choral services where this limit has been reached and passed. The opening sentences are sometimes sung, the Confession partly harmonized, the Apostles’ Creed elaborately accompanied, even the Epistle and Gospel chanted with inflections for each stop. The parts of the service which naturally lend themselves to musical treatment suffer by being placed on a level with the rest. It is scarcely necessary in this place to insist upon the value of music as an aid to worship, but I should like to give a few hints, gathered from a very varied experience, as to the way in which that help may best be given. In ordinary churches, the point of prime importance is to persuade the congregation to sing. This is one of the commonplaces of the subject, but it is still the main difficulty. We have all seen the listless lounge of a congregation which is having its singing done for it at one end of the church. Few listeners to even the best music are as much interested and affected as the feeblest performer on his own voice. Much has already been done to banish this apathy of the congregation. The average choir is very much better than that of twenty years ago; so much better, indeed, that a new danger has arisen— the more highly-trained singers demand more elaborate and difficult music, so that the gap between choir and people is wider than ever. And yet choir trainers find it exceedingly difficult to get a good muster of their forces for the practice of hymns and chants only. One remedy for this is to allow an occasional, even a weekly, anthem, keeping the rest of the service quite simple. Anthems with solos should generally be avoided, for obvious reasons, but even a simple solo may be made into a kind of chorus for all the voices belonging to the part, sometimes even with increased effect. Another way out of this difficulty would be to try and make the whole congregation into the choir. During part of my Oxford time I was organist of St. Giles’ Church, as well as of Magdalen College, and I persuaded the vicar to invite the people to remain after evening

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service, and practice the chants and hymns for the following Sunday. A very large number stayed, and we had, I think, about six or eight such meetings before my removal to Windsor interrupted the experiment. I must say I found it very difficult to get more than the usual inward murmur which does duty for congregational singing; but there were signs of improvement, and I think we even learnt a simple setting of the Communion Service hymns. In connection with this subject, I should like to say a few words about the position of organ and choir. Without in the least desiring to restore the old west end gallery state of things, it is certain that in many churches now the organ and choir are almost useless for the purpose of supporting and controlling the congregational singing. The modern architect scarcely ever knows what to do with the organ. When he can, he builds a sort of little house for it on the side of the chancel; and yet the organ may be made as grand to the eyes as its sound is to the ear. Its pipes are susceptible of the most effective grouping. All this we should have known, if the Puritans had not smashed up nearly all the old cases. Abroad, there are examples enough of what may be done, and to the curious in those matters I recommend Mr. Hill’s recently published work on “Medieval Organ Cases.” The constructive skill of organ builders is now so great that almost any difficulty of arrangement can be overcome, and the first consideration ought to be to place the organ where it can command the singing. Choirs, too, when in a narrow chancel at the end of long church, are quite out of range, and their power of leading the service is seriously affected. I would have them occupy such a place as they hold in most cathedrals, as nearly as possible in the middle of the people. I am aware that considerations of space will make difficulties here, and that the choir now occupies seats which might otherwise be empty; but all this might be overcome, and no effects ought to be spared which might arouse life and vigor to worship, which is too often wanting in both. The average churchgoer will not lift up his voice unless he is coaxed and encouraged by sounds on all sides of him.

S. A. Barnett “We must have something light or comic.” So say those who provide music for the people, and their words represent the world’s opinion with regard to the popular taste. The uneducated, it is thought, must be unable to appreciate that which is refined, or to enjoy that which does not make them laugh. The opinion is not justified by facts. In East London, the city of common people, crowds have been found willing, on many a winter’s night, to come and listen to part of an oratorio, or to selections of classical music. The selections and oratorios have been given in churches or chapels by various choirs and choral societies; the concerts have been given in schoolrooms, on Sunday evenings, by professionals of reputation. Over those who

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are generally so independent of restraint, who cough and move as they will, there has reigned a death-like stillness as they have listened to some fine solo of Handel. On faces which are seldom free of marks of care, except in the excitement of drink, a calm has seemed to settle, and tears to flow, for no reason but because “It is so beautiful.” Sometimes the music has appeared to break down the barriers shutting out some poor fellow from a fairer past, or a better future than his present. The oppressive weight of daily care has seemed to lift, and other sights to be in his vision, as at last, covering his face, or sinking on his knees, he has made prayers which cannot be uttered. Sometimes it has seemed to seize one on business bent, to suddenly snatch him to another world, and not knowing what he feels, to make him say out, “It is good to be here.” To the concerts, hardheaded unimaginative men have crowded, described in a local paper as being “friends of Bradlaugh.” They have listened to, and apparently taken in, different movements of Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin. The loud applause which has followed some moments of strained rapt attention, has proclaimed the universal feeling, and shown that among the people of East London many may be found who care for high-class music. There is enough in these facts to make the world reconsider its opinion that the people can care only for what is light or laugh-compelling. Minds not educated to understand the mysteries of music, or to be interested in its creation, have depths which respond to its call, and music may thus at the present moment have a peculiar mission. “Man cannot live by bread alone” expresses a truth to which the religious and the secularist subscribe. The desire to be is stronger than the desire to have. There is in those men, whom the rich think to satisfy by increased wages and model lodgings, a greater need of being something they are not, than of having something they have not. The man who has won an honorable place, who by punctuality, honesty, and truthfulness has become the trusted servant of his employer, is often weary with the very monotony of his successful life. He has bread in abundance, but, unsatisfied, he dreams of himself filling quite another place in the world—as the leader doing much for others; as the patriot suffering for his class and country or as the poet living in others’ thoughts. There flits before him a vision of a fuller life, and the visions stir in him longings to share such life. The woman who is the model wife and mother, whose days are filled with work, whose talk is of her children’s wants, whose life seems so even and uneventful, so complete in very prosaicness—she, if she could speak out the thoughts which flit through her brain as she silently plies her needles, or goes about her household duties, would tell of strange longings, of passions, and aspirations which have no form in her mind. “There is no one,” says Emerson, “to whom omens that would astonish have not predicted a future and uncovered a past.”

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It is in the spiritual world that they who cannot live on bread alone must find their food. This spiritual world has been, and is the domain of religion. That which science has not known, and can never know; that which material things have not satisfied and can never satisfy, the longing of man to be something higher and nobler, it has been the glory of religion to develop, as it reveals through Jesus Christ the God who is higher than the best. The spiritual world in which our aspirations move is the domain of religion, and forms of worship are the means by which we are brought into this world. Religion thus sustains and guides our aspirations, and forms of worship unite the spiritual world of aspirations with the material world of the senses. A true form of worship would do away with the pernicious opposition between what is religious and what is material. There would be no despisers of forms, rituals and expressions, if they lifted men into a spiritual world, where Christ is, and where they would be at one with God, who is perfect. The sense of something better than their best has been to men the spring of noblest effort and highest hope, and it is because the present words and forms of worship give so little help to unite them with the best, that many of those born to aspire and live, not on bread alone, speak slightingly about religion, and profess they find no need of prayers nor of church-going. The present forms (be they words or rituals) do not express present thoughts, they do not therefore unite the material and the spiritual, and they do not carry daily hopes and longings into the spiritual world. For want of words or expressions, man’s aspirations lose their sustenance and guide. Man is dumb, and is in the world without religion. In other times the words of the Prayer Book, and the phrases now labeled “theological,” did speak out, or, at any rate, did give some form to men’s vague, indistinct longing to be something else and something more. The picture of God, drawn in familiar language, gave a distinct object to their longing, as they desired to be like Him and to enjoy Him for ever. In these days historical criticisms and scientific discoveries have made the old expressions inadequate to state man’s longing, or to picture God’s character. The words of prayers, be they the written prayers of the English Church, or be they that re-arrangement of old expression called “extempore prayer,” do not always fit in with the longings of those to whom, in these later days, sacrifice has taken other forms, and life and possibilities. The descriptions of God, involving so much that is only marvelous, often jar against the minds which have had hints of the grandeur of law, and which have been awed, not by miracles, but by holiness. Petitions for the joys of heaven fall short of their wants who have learnt that what they are is of more consequence than what they have, and the anthropomorphic descriptions of God tend to make Him seem less than many men who are not jealous, nor angry, nor revengeful. Words fail to carry modern thoughts or wants. There still lives in man that which gropes after God, that which reaches to the spiritual world of righteous-

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ness and love, where Jesus Christ is at God’s right hand, but it can find no form to be the means of bringing it to the spiritual world. Men cannot express their highest. They are dumb creatures. Dumbness involves a loss which it is hard to exaggerate, and constitutes an unfailing claim for pity. He who cannot express his highest is dumb, and today a book might be written on the sorrows of man as a dumb animal. It is no accident that the dumb were held to be possessed by devils, and often now it seems to me that it is because they cannot express their thoughts of themselves or of God that so many live base and unworthy lives. Thought—hope and love—has outstripped words. Men cannot say what they think, nor put into words what they know. They are ignorant of what they have been unable to express, ignorant of themselves and of God. They are without the form which would lift them into the domain of religion, and their aspirations are without guidance. Because they are dumb, they are not only sad and suffering, they are mean and selfish. There is need, then, for some power to open their lips to enable them to say what they are and what they want; there is need of a form of worship to unite the spiritual and material worlds. Music seems to have some natural fitness for this purpose: 1. In the first place, the great musical compositions are the results of inspiration. The master, raised by his genius above the level of common humanity to think fully what others think only in part, and to see face to face what others see only darkly, puts into music the thoughts which no words can utter, and the description which no tongue can tell. What he himself would be, his hopes, his fears, his aspirations; what he himself sees of that Holiest and Fairest which has haunted his life, this he tells by his art. Like the prophets he has had his vision, and his music proclaims what he himself desires to be, and expresses the emotions of his higher nature. Others, lesser men, find in his music the echo of their own wants. Great men are little men writ large; the best is what the worst may be, the greatest master is a man akin to the lowest man, and the voice in which he tells his hopes thus finds its response in human nature. That music which unfolds passions and aspirations which have never been realized by the ordinary man speak no strange language, for it will make him recognize his true self and his true object. In the music which unfolds is the expression of the wants of a great man, all who are men find an expression for wants and visions for which no words are adequate. Music may be what prayer often fails to be, a means of linking men with the source of the highest thoughts, and of enabling them to enjoy God. 2. In the second place, it may be said that the best existing expression of that which has been found to be good has been by parables, words, i.e., which are not limited to time or place, but are of universal application. A parable does not die with the age in which it is spoken, it lives on, giving to every age a different conception of that which the eye cannot see nor the tongue utter,

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but leaving with each age the sense of having learnt at the same source. In some degree all art is thus a parable. Titian’s Assumption helped the medieval saints to worship the Virgin Mother, and helps us now to realize the true glory of womanhood. Music, though, even better than poetry and painting, fulfills this condition. It reveals that which the artist has seen, and reveals it with no distracting circumstance of subject, necessary to a picture or to a poem. They who listen to great musical composition are not drawn aside to think of some historical or romantic incident; they are free to think of which such incidents are but the clothes. They may have different conceptions, the cultured and the uncultured may see from a different point of view the vision which inspired the master, but they will have the sense that the music which serves all alike brings them to the same source. Music is the parable for this century. Creeds have ceased to express that which men in their inmost hearts most reverence, and are now symbols of division rather than of unity. Music is a parable, and like all parables is unmeaning, foolish, and sensuous to those who will not think, to those who having eyes see not, and seek not the revelation of God through modern life. It condemns the fools who will not understand, to greater folly, but tells the thoughtful, the student and the earnest seeker, in sounds that will not change, of that which is worthy of worship; and tells to each true hearer just in so far as by nature and circumstances he is able to understand it, while it gives to all that feeling of common life and that assurance of sympathy which has in old times been the strength of the Church. By music men may be taught to find the God who is not far from any one of us, and be brought within reach of the support which comes from the sympathy of their fellow creatures. 3. Lastly, it may be urged there is still one other requisite in a perfect form of religious expression. It must have association with the past. The emotions which such expressions are to cover are rooted in old memories, and the inner life is never brand new. A brand new form of worship, therefore, would utterly fail to express wants which if born in the present are born of parents who lived in the past. Music fulfills the necessary condition. Music which expresses the yearnings of the men of today, expressed also the yearnings of the men of old days. They who feel music telling their unuttered wants and unsyllabled praises may recognize in its sound the echoes of the songs which broke from the lips of Miriam and David, of Ambrose and Gregory, and of the simple peasants, as 100 years ago they were stirred to life in the moors of Cornwall and Wales. This association of music with religious life gives it immense power. When the congregation is gathered together, and the sounds rise which are full of that which is, and perhaps always will be, “ineffable,” there floats in also memories of other sounds—poor and uncouth—in which simpler ages have expressed their wants and hopes. The atmosphere becomes, as it were, religious, and all feel that music is not only beautiful, but the means of bringing them near to the God of all the world, who was, and who ever shall be.

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Music may thus give expression to the inner life, to the aspirations which reach out to that which is not bread; and it is for the want of such expression that work is often mean and worship meaningless. Music cannot indeed take the place of defining words, nor of intellectual propositions; and left to rule alone its influence might be only sensuous. There is, however, little danger of the lonely rule of music for the children of this age. They who are vigorous in the search of truth, and fearless in its application, they who are rational and scientific, are under an influence which saves them from the dominance of the vague emotion of feeling or of sense. The true children of the age seek and work, they doubt and analyze, and they without fear may let the longings which science and discovery have loosened find expression in music, and themselves wait in patience for the day on which they shall say, “This is what I hope,” “This is what I believe.” It is a mistake to put thoughts into words which are too small for them, and it is a mistake to give up thinking. Music divorced from scientific thought will not satisfy the soul. Music united with the teaching which is the world’s latest news of God may rouse the buried life, and once more give men rest in God through Jesus Christ.

C. H. Hylton Stewart I think it is a wise move on the part of the committee of management that they have allotted to music such a high place on the list of subjects for discussion at this Congress; for surely all will acknowledge that as music has been one of the most important factors in the great Church revival, so now she is one of the most powerful engines in the hands of the clergy, not only for attracting large crowds to their churches, but for conveying Divine truths into the souls of men. Some there are who will disagree with me here, no doubt. I will not waste time by proving the fact, I will content myself with saying that the “evidence is too strong to admit a contrary opinion.” It has always seemed to me that, by being placed at the tail end of the Congress, music has lost much of that treatment and serious consideration which is her due, and we, the clergy, have lost many a practical suggestion which might prove helpful to us in our endeavor to make it an ever-increasing aid to worship. While asking for your generous indulgence for this, my first paper on the subject, I would fain hope that the remarks I shall have the honor of laying before you may prove helpful. Not feeling sure as to what is meant by music as an aid to work, I have confined my attention to music as an aid to worship, it being almost impossible to do justice to both parts of the subject in one paper. Rightly do we call music “the civilizer”—“the recreator”—“the purifier of the emotions”—yet we must go much higher still. As said Charles Kingsley, “Music is a sacred—a divine—a God-like thing, and was given to man by

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Christ, to lift up our souls to God, and make us feel something of the glory and beauty of God, and of all that God has made.” Are not these words very true? Do they not express to the full the real object, the power and work of music? Have we never experienced such a power, when listening to a symphony of Beethoven, Mozart, or Mendelssohn? Or when kneeling at St. Paul’s Cathedral, the music of the Choral Eucharist has chased life’s sorrows and worries away, and linked our hearts by the chain of meditation and love to Him, whose heart ever beats in unceasing pulsation with our own? Or again, when joining with our people in the village church in hymn and chant, the common bond of membership and brotherhood in Christ has seemed very real, and the Divine presence very close? How zealously, then, should we guard it against abuse: how eager ought we to be to make use of it, to the fullest extent, in the services of the sanctuary. We cannot but be thankful for the great strides music has made, both in our cathedrals and churches. Indeed, a church without its full Choral Matins and Evensong, and in many cases without its Choral Celebration, is difficult to find. But here, while appreciating to the full the devotional services which come from the hands of our cathedral organists, I must enter my humble protest against much of the music that we are compelled to listen to both in church and cathedral; of all that we hear, it cannot be said that it is an aid to worship. There is a lack of that devotional feeling, and, as a natural consequence, a lack of devotional rendering, in some of the present-day compositions of Church music. There is too much noise—a too great striving after effect—notably in the music written for the office of Holy Communion, which detracts from, instead of adds to, the beauty of the words. While, then, fervently praying that “the music of the future” may never find its way into the service of the sanctuary, let me earnestly plead with Church composers, and ask them to remember this: that the line of Church music must be very finely drawn: they have ample opportunities for musical skill in secular works: they live in the midst of an age in which men crave for all that is exciting as well as beautiful and ornate; but when they approach the words of the Bible, or the Canticles of the Church, and especially the Office of the Holy Communion, let them (the church composers) seek the twin-sistered spirit of self-control and reverence, and work on the grand old lines of the cathedral school, wherein, thank God, the spirit of Croft and Purcell are still alive: I would bid them remember that music must be an aid to worship—or it is valueless: Music can do what words often fail to do: as Mendelssohn said, “Music begins where words end,” and then they will find that they are not only raising their own position as composers of Church music, to one of greater dignity, but that they will be doing a great share of the work of the clergy, in their endeavor to bring home Divine truths and doctrines to the souls of men. I have been, en passant, alluding to cathedrals, let me add one or two suggestions. The advance of Church music is mainly due to our cathedrals, to the

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unbroken order of service and anthem which has been, and is daily sung within their walls. This practice has set men thinking, and it has educated the English mind, and the result is that choral services abound. But I think it is a matter for very great regret (nay, is it not a disgrace?) that, although we clothe our Matins and Evensong, and our Communion Office as far as the Nicene Creed, with most beautiful music, the remainder of the chief act of Christian worship (in which the Church Triumphant and Church Militant are joined together) is deprived of it, although due provision is made for it in the rubrics. At St. Paul’s this is not so; would that every cathedral followed its example! I know that amongst other trivial objections it will be said that it would make the service too long. But if the Eucharistic Service is the chief service of our church; if music is an aid to worship; if the cathedral service is the highest idea of the church service on earth—as I maintain it ought to be, and is—surely the services might be so divided, that on every Sunday the strains of choral Communion (of course with the celebrant’s part properly sung), might be heard in each cathedral. It is impossible to over-estimate the value of the choral Eucharist as an aid to worship. Again, we do not contemplate our congregations in the cathedral joining in the services and anthems; it was never intended that they should do so; it is therefore very desirable to introduce a hymn as an introit to the Communion Office, as well as in the other Sunday services. My own experience tells me that that one hymn is greatly valued, and we all know the delight of being able to join in some portion of a cathedral service. Another point I would urge is the practice of occasional organ recitals. In our cathedral we have, in addition to our Sunday services, a nave service in the evening all the year round, and at its conclusion—excepting in Advent and Lent—our organist gives a short recital. Large numbers remain for it: the cathedral doors are locked, and no one is allowed to enter after the recital has begun. I can testify to the quiet reverent behavior of the listeners, and I believe that the music they hear, surrounded with all the sacred associations connected with the building, fosters, not only a love for music, but also a reverent attachment to the house of God. I think this plan might be advantageously carried out in many parish churches also. As my last point in connection with cathedrals, I would urge very decidedly in them the performance of oratorios. The question to my mind is a very simple one: were those grand works of Handel, Bach, and Mendelssohn meant to be used? If so, where is so appropriate a place as in a cathedral? Reverence alone seems to demand it, rather than in a music hall, the sacred words are greeted with applause, akin to that bestowed on a popular song, and where, probably, the night before, the audience had been entertained by a traveling troupe, or by a political demonstration. Of course the question of payment for admission will crop up here, and on this head opinion is much divided. The performance of an oratorio (which in all cases should be coupled with a distinct form of service), is necessarily very costly,

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and, of course, if we could depend on an offertory, or devise some like means to defray the expense, so as to avoid any payment for admission, it would be most desirable. Personally I long to see the cathedral crammed to the full with the rich and poor, especially the poor, entranced with the devotional music of oratorios, with our leading English singers, band and chorus, to which they have been welcomed free of all charge, but this-much-to-be-wished-for state of things cannot be secured yet. There can be no doubt that amongst our people the opinion is growing stronger and stronger that the cathedral, rather than the concert room, is the place in which to listen to our grand oratorios; and as this feeling gains ground, some scheme for admission—other than payment for ticket—may develop: but rather than condemn such works as “The Messiah,” “the Elijah” and others to the concert room—while sympathizing with objectors—I should turn to them a deaf ear, rather than let others be debarred from having the Bible narrative told so devotionally as it is done both by the music and its interpreters. If the ordinary and regular services of the Cathedral are carefully attended to, and not interrupted, I do not see that any one can have the whereat to grumble, and I should respectfully ask all objections to stop at home. Music is an aid to worship: the most sublime music lies in our oratorios (I need not quote instances) wedded to the gospel story; could we analyze the hearts of men, we should find that to very many that gospel story, and the gospel comforts, have come home with a tenderness and reality hitherto unknown and unfelt—and have lived afterwards in their memory— by reason of the interpretation that the music has lent to the words. I respectfully condemn the foregoing remarks to the thoughtful consideration of all Church Chapters. Do not for one moment imagine that, coming from a cathedral, I would advocate the use of elaborate services and anthems in our parish churches. Far from it. Though there are in London, and in some of our large towns, a few churches with all the appliances at hand, and with congregations consisting of what is known by the term of “the upper classes,” where such a custom has been in use for some years, I am by no means in favor of increasing their number. In such churches you cannot look for much congregational singing. We desire that the Church should maintain her present hold on the affections of our people, and not only maintain, but increase it. We desire to make our churches the “Homes” of our brethren. If so, we must make our services light and hearty, by using music of a simple and melodious kind; in a word, we must do all in our power to increase congregational singing—and this ought not be a matter of very great difficulty in this nineteenth century. Let me say here, before entering more fully on this subject, a few words upon intoning and chanting the service. I believe intoning to be the right and reverent way of “saying” the prayers—nay, further, I believe it to be the best way of “praying” the prayers. But to intone well, i.e., in tune and with distinctness of enunciation, two qualities absolutely necessary for the reverent rendering of a service, is a

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matter not learnt in a day, but only after careful study. I would recommend, therefore, considering that musical services are everywhere on the increase, that all who contemplate entering the ministry should take lessons in intoning the prayers; or, at all events, see that they have a few hints given to put them on the right track. I am sure that any application of the kind made to our cathedral chanters would be gladly responded to. Of course all cannot intone, but I am sure all can monotone, and surely it is a more reverent way than the practice of preaching the prayers. Here let me say that more attention must be paid by clergy and choirs to the saying of the Confession, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Creeds. All must agree with the very useful remarks of the Bishop of Bedford in his articles on the Church Service, which have been appearing in Church Bells. There is far too much gabbling of these several portions of the service, in cathedrals as well as in ordinary churches, especially of the Confession. Greater care should be shown to the small words, such as “and” and “which”; and all unseemly hurry would then be avoided. The “Ely use,” or inflected Confession is, I am sure, a mistake; it is contrary alike to the spirit of the words and of the rubric. The choirs should not be allowed to begin the Lord’s Prayer after the words “Our Father,” or the Creed after “I believe”; surely they are the most important words of all: they should be said with the Priest, who by dwelling sufficiently long on each of the two words, would give his choir ample time to get up with him. It may be thought that what I am now saying is superfluous, but I am convinced that by paying attention to these points, we shall not only raise the “tone” of our services, but our choir will enter upon the more difficult portions in a more reverential spirit. To think them of secondary importance can only be wrong. But now to the broader subject of congregational singing. It has often been argued that this is best promoted by using Gregorian music; chiefly, I presume, because it requires unison singing. To this I cannot agree. I have had a good deal of experience, both in Anglican and Gregorian music, and I fearlessly side with those who oppose the latter, and agree most heartily with Professor Macfarren, in thinking it but the “remnant of false antiquarianism, and of ecclesiastical error!” Remember, I am speaking of Gregorian music, pure and simple; not of Gregorians as they are sung at All Saints’, Margaret Street, or at the Festival of the L. G. Choral Association, at St. Paul’s. In such cases they cease to be Gregorians, for the latter they are embellished with band accompaniment; in the former, with the most artistic and lovely harmonies, from the hand of a talented musician. But take a tone similar to that heard in the two places abovementioned, and teach it to your country choir; give it to the country organist (often a school-master, and often a rector’s daughter) to accompany—one who will play the same harmony all the way through a psalm or canticle—or, perhaps, with but one or two changes—(the accompaniment often being that of a broken-winded harmonium), and, so far from thinking it conductive to congregational singing, you will soon be convinced, as I have been, of the contrary;

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and you will agree with the American gentleman of the not over-reverent story with which, no doubt, many of you are acquainted. One word here on unison singing. To sing canticles, psalms, and hymns entirely in unison, will, I think, be found quite impractical. Choirs do not like it; and I do not think it is fair to thrust it upon them; not only does it destroy much of the beauty of a tune or chant, but to accomplish it the music will have to undergo complete revision, so that all the notes may be brought within singable compass, especially for bass voices. By all means try to induce the congregations to sing the melody in unison; for the musical, as well as the devotional effect, is often sadly marred by the manufactured tenor part by some would-be musician in the body of the church. Having disposed of Gregorian, the next thing to be excluded from our services is all music of a secular description—especially the secular adaptations to which we are tempted to wed many of our beautiful hymns: for our object must be to raise the “tone” of our musical service—and not to introduce anything which will in any way compromise or lower the dignity of our standard of worship. The light and pretty six-eight time tunes, such as we find in a book of some merit, called “The Church Army Songs,” are very suitable for home use, and for mission services; but, when we come into the church, I think we want music of a more glorified and devotional character. We are still craving for a more comprehensive hymnbook—but, in so doing, I think we are wasting our breath. Of all our hymnals, I believe the “Ancient and Modern” to be the best. At all events, the church does a very good work with it, in spite of many errors, distasteful alike to clergymen and musicians. We can make a still greater aid to worship by a more careful study of the manner in which its hymns should be sung; by distinguishing between the time of a festal and ferial hymn; by the introduction of a unison verse here and there, and so forth. In our eagerness for something new, in our anxiety to do the best for our people, do not let us grow impatient; but in the faith that our efforts will be accepted and blessed by the Great Lover of Souls, let us determine to make the best use of what we have. Now I come to the Psalms. One thing most conducive to congregational singing is uniformity in the use of the Psalter and chant book. The chant book is at present our greatest want. But we have much that is useful in those books used at St Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, and in the “Cathedral Psalter Chant Book”; it is very hard to say which is the best of these. To those of my hearers who are fond of unison singing—and who can get their choirs to sing the Psalms in unison—I would recommend a book containing chants to be sung in unison, with a free organ accompaniment, edited by Dr. Hopkins of the Temple; it will be found a most excellent and useful collection. Let me recommend each choir to make its own MS. Collection of chants, it will be found by far the best plan. With regard to the Psalter, the best, to my mind, for all purposes, especially

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for congregational singing, is the “Cathedral Psalter,” published by Novello & Co. The singing of the psalms is the most important part pf our choral services, and it is distressing to find how disgraceful it often is in country parishes— this is due mainly to the pointing used, and indeed to the want of thought in choosing appropriate chants. Every clergyman has his own private views on pointing; but here is a Psalter which has supplied a long felt want, a distinct advance upon all others, arranged most carefully by a committee of five eminent men; in use in most of, if not all, our cathedrals; supplied at a cheap rate by the publishers: consisting a preface wherefrom its use may be clearly learnt; with proper marks for taking breath, thus avoiding all unseemly hurry in recitation; when once tried by the very countriest of country choirs, delighted in because it is so easy (I speak thus from experience gleaned from practicing country choirs for choral festivals in our diocese). Why should not the clergy give up their particular fads, and make this Psalter universal? It would be a grand step forward, if when our people went about from different churches we could ensure their finding, at all events, uniform pointing of the psalms. It would be a grand help towards congregational singing. What a treasure we have in these Psalms of ours, and when sung as they are sometimes so gloriously in our cathedrals and churches, how helpful they are to our devotion! To accompany them well every organist should study them well (in this he will receive much assistance from “Paragraph Psalter,” edited by Canon Westcott); he should endeavor to play each verse as if it were a prayer from his own individual heart to the chief Musician (the title applied by St. Augustine to our Lord), he will have then little difficulty in creating sympathy between his choir and himself, and will greatly enhance, greatly aid the worship of the church in which he officiates. Of the canticles—to find a suitable setting of the Te Deum appears to be the most difficult matter. Novello’s “Parish Choir Book” will meet the wants of many churches, but if a simpler form is desired, I would recommend the use of a series of single chants rather than that of a solitary double chant, the effect of which is monotonous in the extreme. We sadly need some simple services in chant form, and our church composers will not find their time wasted if they set to work and write some, on the model of the “Goss in A,” or “Wesley’s Chant Service in F.” The use of anthems is the subject of much discussion. I think it would be a great mistake to do away with them altogether. The choir likes to sing an anthem—it is a relief to them—and we must take their desires and wishes into consideration. The congregation, too, often likes to listen to an anthem. The mistake is that very often those are introduced which are far beyond the capabilities of the choir, or the understanding of the people. A clergyman goes to a cathedral and hears an elaborate and effective anthem easily sung by a highly trained choir, and he resolves at once to have it in his own church. The anthem is purchased, practiced, and the result—well, it is more easily imagined than described. There are plenty of easy and effective

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anthems which will meet the wants of the congregation, as well as the sometimes too ambitious desires of our choir men, and their occasional introduction on the great festivals, and on the Dedication or harvest festival, is a very justifiable and politic thing, but as a rule they are a mistake, for they do not encourage congregational singing. In those churches where choral celebrations are the custom, let me recommend the “Short Settings,” edited by Dr. Martin, of St. Paul’s; as well as Dr. Stainer’s “Office Book for the Holy Communion.” Both will be found full of useful material. You will gather from all I have said, that in order to make music an aid to worship, I strongly advocate congregational singing in our parish churches. To ensure this, the truest method, to my mind, lies in the use of tuneful, melodious Anglican music; in an uniform Psalter, which lies at our very doors; in simple, but dignified hymn tunes, and in a reverent and distinct monotoning of the prayers. To make it all an aid to worship is the work of the parish priest, in conjunction with his organist. Let me plead for a little more mutual confidence between both. Both, I am sure, have the same aim in view. The clergyman, unquestionably, is the head of his choir, as, indeed, of all his church officers of every kind; and only in the most exceptional cases should he ever dream of handing over his responsibilities. He must instill into his choir the necessity of attending to the words as well as to the music; words first, music next, as their exponent. By friendly intercourse with his organist and choir, both in private as well as in the practice room; by words of kind encouragement, and, when necessary, of gentle rebuke; he will, I am sure, gain the sympathies of both; and, when once that sympathy is established, there will be unity—and nothing conduces so much to the successful issue of a service, as the clergy, choir, and organist, being of one heart and one mind. One more point I am constrained to remark upon, and it is this: that every adult member of our choirs should be a communicant. I would not allow the best of singers to enter the choir unless he was a regular communicant. The system of admitting those into a choir who are not, in the hope of “keeping them from going elsewhere, and of their eventually becoming communicants,” is a mistaken one. Such action lowers the status of a choir. In our communicants lies the strength of the Church: we believe them to have a greater appreciation of personal holiness, and a strong reverence for all things pertaining to the Church; two qualities for which, depend upon it, all our people look in a choir. They are expected to be—and should be—the leaders in Church membership, as well as in the songs of the Church: and in that church where its choir derive their spiritual life through the Divinely appointed means of grace, there shall we find, depend upon it, music the greatest aid to worship.

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Index Abraham 24, 27 absolute music 6 Adam and Eve 126 Adon Olam 144, 145 Advent 168 Agassiz, Louis 93 Aida 24 Alexandria 55 Alps 83 Ambrose 42, 101, 165 Ambrosian Chant 110, 119 Ammon 39 Amphion 39 Anglican Chant 153, 170 antiphony 108, 110, 113 Apis 36 Apollo Belvedere 84 –85 Apostle’s Creed 160 Apostolic Church 31 Arabs 141 Arion 39 ark 44 –45 Armenian Church 31 Asaph 29, 45 Ashkenazi Judaism 7, 141, 142 –143 asor 44 Assyria 35, 38, 42, 43 Athanasian Creed 151 Atterbury, Francis 68 Augustine 101, 172 Augustus 99 Austria 146 Az Yashir Moshe 141

77, 78, 81, 89 –90, 97–98, 107, 110, 119, 135, 144, 158, 160, 162, 167 Beimel, Jacob 6 Belgium 108 Belliague, Camille 107 bells 44, 123 Benaiah 21 Benedictine 121 Bennett, Sterndale 154, 156 Berlioz, Hector 107 Bishop of Bedford 170 Blanc, Charles 118 Bohemia 146, 152 Bohemian Girl 144 Book of Common Prayer 38, 156 Book of the Wars of Jehovah 45 Boston 92 Boston Peace Jubilee 94 Brahms, Johannes 159 Brown, Baldwin 34 Brown-Séquard, Charles Edward 92 Browning, Robert 76, 90 Byrd, William 154 Byron 50 Cain 19 Caird, John 68 Calvin, John 55 Calvinism 98 Cantate Dominio 110 Canterbury 101 canticle 106, 167, 171, 172 cantillation 43, 49, 52 Cantors Association of America 146 Cantus peregrinus 139 Carnac 24 castanets 44 Cathedral Psalter Chant Book 171, 172 cathedral service 60, 150, 153, 154, 168, 169, 172 Catholic Church 47, 48, 57, 105–121, 139, 146 Cavalleria Rusticana 145 ceremonial ritual 6 –8

Babylon, waters of 30 Babylonian Exile 45, 48–49 Bach, Johann Sebastian 2, 56, 144, 152, 154, 155, 156, 157, 168 Balfe, Michael William 144 ballads 148 Balzac, Honoré de 78 Barak 28, 47 Baroque Period 5 Beethoven, Ludwig van 31, 73, 74, 75, 76,

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Index

Chaldeans 43 chalil 44 charity 130–131 Chester, England 153 Chicago 146 China 127 choir 34, 44, 150–151, 153, 160–161, 167, 173 Chopin, Frédéric 81, 160, 162 chorales 26, 56, 143, 144 Christendom 31, 46, 47, 52, 126 –127 Christmas 37 Church Army Songs 171 Church of England (Anglican Church) 31, 59, 133–134 church revival 166 Cicero 113 Classical Period 56 Cohen, Francis L. 140, 143 Cologne 151 Combarieu, Jules 106 Communion 152, 161, 167, 168 congregational singing 150–151, 152, 153, 160, 165, 169–171 Cook, Nicholas 5 Cooper, George 155 Copland, Aaron 5 Cornwall 165 counterpoint 53–55 Cousin, Victor 117 creeds 165 Croft, William 167 Cybele 36 cymbals 27, 38, 44, 45 dance 34, 35–36, 37–38 Dancla, Charles 107 Dante 76 David 21, 29, 30, 35, 43, 44 –45, 47, 49, 50, 122, 125, 126, 130, 156, 165 Deborah 28, 47 Dennis 106, 121 Devil 140 Diaspora 140 diatonic tonality 112 –113 Dionysus 36 divine love 136 Doctrine of Affections 5 Dorian mode 26, 40, 119, 141 Dorian Spartans 40 drums 38, 44 Dublin 155 Dufay, Giullaume 54 Dura 126 Durkheim, Émile 7 Durtal 107 Eastern Church 47, 52 Echad mi yodea 143 edification 134 –136 Egypt (Egyptians) 23–25, 26, 27, 28, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 120

Eil Nora Alila 140 “Ein Feste Burg” 101, 140 Elijah 138, 145, 169 Elizabethan Period 146 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 85, 162 En Kelohenu 144 Engel, Carl 141 England 56, 57, 86, 100, 101, 108, 127, 140, 146, 151 Enoch 27 Epiphany Season 74 Esther 138 Eucharist 106, 139, 167, 168 European Psalmist 152 Evensong 167, 168 Exodus 25, 43 extemporate prayer 163 Ezra 45 Farrant, Richard 127, 154 female voice 47–48 flageolet 44 flute 48, 56 Foster, Stephen 145 Fra Angelico 139 France 7, 54, 95 funeral 35, 127 Gabirol, Solomon ibn 142 Galicia 145 Garden of Eden 126 Garibaldi 100 Gauntlett, Henry John 152 Gautier, Leon 33 German Jews 141 Germany (German) 7, 8, 47, 54, 55, 56, 57, 108, 142, 143, 152 Gibbons, Orlando 154, 155 Gibeah 44 Gideon 29 Gloria in excelsis 110, 119, 139 Gluck, Christoph Willibald von 73 “God Save the Emperor” 100 “God Save the Queen” 100 Goethe, Wolfgang von 84 Good Friday 90 Goshen 24 Goss, John 157 Gothic cathedral 125, 138, 139 Gould, H. F. 17 Gounod, Charles Edward 156 Gradgrind 78 Greco-Roman 108–109 Greece (Greek) 26, 31, 32, 35, 36 –37, 39 –40, 41, 42, 55, 101, 105–106, 109, 112, 116 –117, 145, 158, 159 Gregorian chant 26, 31, 54, 101, 105–121, 139, 153, 170, 171 Gregory 101, 108, 165 Gustav, Gottheil 144

Index Hag Gadya 143 ha-Levi, Judah 142 Hallel 139, 146 Handel, George Frideric 23, 56, 90, 138, 144, 145, 152, 155, 156 Hanukah 140, 143, 145 harmony 53–54, 55, 111, 130 harp 19 –20, 29, 42, 43, 45, 50, 56, 130 Hassidim 145 Hatikvah 146 Haweis, Hugh Reginald 79 Haydn, Franz Joseph 106, 107, 144 hazozerah 44 hazzan (hazzanim) 140, 145–146 heathens 37, 126 Hellenism 36 –37, 41 Heman 29, 47 Hershon, Paul Isaac 30 Hezekiah 21, 30 Hill, Arthur George 161 Hindus 38 Hinei Ma Tov 7 Hodu l’adonai 143 Holland 151 Holocaust 7 Holy Ghost 132 Homer 76 Hungary 145 hymn (hymnody) 58, 59, 106, 143, 148, 149, 171 Hymns Ancient and Modern 151–152, 171 Iberian Peninsula 141, 142 Idelssohn, Abraham Z. 141 idol worship 38 Imperial Choir 155 In Israhel 110 India 89 Institut Catholique 108 interfaith concerts 1 Introit 116, 119 Irving, Edward 31 Isaiah 128 Isis 25, 35 Italy 56 Jacob 9, 20, 28, 43 Jacobite 95 James, William 9 Jeduthun 29 Jehoshaphat 30 Jericho 30, 44 Jerusalem 30, 44, 45, 49, 107 Jesus Christ 18, 21–22, 48, 58, 74, 80–81, 87, 101, 119, 126, 148, 162, 163, 166, 167 Job, Book of 45 “John Brown’s Body” 100 John Inglesant 154 Jonah 30 Joshua 29 Jubal 19 –20, 43

Judah 49 Judas Maccabeus 145 Judea 21 Ki Eshmera Shabbat 142 Kierkegaard, Søren 5 Kingsley, Charles 166 –167 kinnor 43, 44 Kol Nidre 139–140 Kovno 7–8 Laban 20, 28, 43 Laetare 116, 119 Lainer, Sidney 62 Lambert, Louis 78 Lamech 28, 47 lamento bass 5 Lancashire 149 Lang, Andrew 36 Lassus, Orlande de 54 Last Supper 22 Latin 114 –115, 152 Lazarus 119 Ledavid baruch 143 Leeser, Isaac 142 Leipzig 57 Lent 168 “Leoni” 139 Levites 21, 29, 30, 45, 48, 49 Lewandowski, Louis 143 L.G. Choral Association 170 Lichfield 155 Lick telescope 87 Liszt, Franz 74 Logos 87 Lohengrin 89 Lollards 101 London 142, 149, 161, 162, 169 Lord’s Prayer 170 Lussy, Mathis 111 lute 56 Luther, Martin 55, 94, 140, 143, 144 Lutheran Church 59 Luxor 24 Lydia 36 Lydian mode 26, 40 lyre 20, 43, 45, 50 Magdalen College 160 Magi 74 magic 39, 68, 71 Magnificat 31, 110 mahzorim 142 Maistre, Joseph de 108 Mamonides, Moses 8–9 Mamre 27 Maoz Tzur 143 Marini, Steven A. 6 Marseillaise 95 Mascagni, Pietro 145 materialism 92

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Index

Matins 167, 168 Medicean Age 99 Mendelssohn, Felix 2, 57, 79, 138, 144, 145, 152, 154, 155, 157, 167, 168 Messiah 169 Mexicans 38 Meyer, Leonard B. 5 Meyerbeer, Giacomo 144 Michal 125 Michelangelo 99, 139 Middle Ages 37, 47, 53, 54, 56, 140, 143 Milan 47, 101 Milton, John 154 minnesinger 54 Miriam 20, 27, 28, 35, 126, 165 Miserere 138 Misinai tunes 7 Moody-Sankey tunes 144, 148 Moors 141, 142 Moses 20, 21, 25, 27, 28, 47 Mount of Olives 22, 101 Mount Sinai 43 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 75, 83, 99, 107, 136, 138, 144, 167 Muggletonians 140 musaf service 8 music halls 148 Musical Association (England) 156 mysterium tremendum 8 Nazarene 80 nebel 44 Nehemiah 45 neumes 113, 119 New York 142, 144, 145, 146 Nicene Creed 74, 83, 87 Nile 23, 24, 39 Nineveh 38 Nonconformist 31 numinous experience 8, 9 Nunc Dimittis 31 Obed-edom 45 Oberon 151 oboe 44 offering 134 Ohio 145 Okeghem, Johannes 54 “Old Black Joe” 145 opera 57, 117 oratorio 57, 155, 161, 168–169 organ 19 –20, 23, 24, 55, 56, 124, 126, 129, 144, 154, 155, 156, 161, 171, 173 Orpheus 39, 106 Osiris 25, 35 Otto, Rudolph 8–10 Oxford 155, 160 Paganini, Nicolo 83 pagans 109, 118 Palestine 43

Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da 2, 54, 56, 57, 107, 149, 155, 156, 159 Pan’s pipe 43 pantomime 34 Paris 73, 108 Parish Choir Book 172 parish service 150, 173 Parsifal 57 Passover 139, 143 patriotic songs 46, 100 Paul 22, 97, 101 Pericles 99 Pharaoh 23, 26, 126 Philadelphia 146 Philistines 47 Philo 86 –87 Phoebes Apollo 36 Phoenicians 36, 38 Phrygian mode 26 piano 23, 56, 148 Pittone, Ottavio 155 piyyut (piyyutim) 141, 142, 146 plainsong 48, 111, 112, 113, 115, 119, 152, 157 Plato 40, 97, 105, 121 Pliny 126 Plutarch 40 polytheism 24 Pool, David de Sola 146 Pope, Alexander 89 Porter, President 92, 93 Portuguese Jews 142 Prés, Josquin de 54 pressus 116 program music 158 Promised Land 27 prophets 47 Proudfoot, Wayne 9 Provence 143 Proverbs, Book of 29 Psalmist 20, 47, 50, 68, 120, 124, 129, 130, 149, 152 Psalms 1, 6, 21, 28, 29, 30, 31–32, 46, 48, 52, 58–59, 68, 110, 122, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131, 135, 149, 151, 153, 155, 171 Psalms, Book of 29, 58 Psalter 29, 31–32, 58–59, 108, 170–171, 172, 173 psaltery 29, 44 psychology 91–92 Purcell, Henry 127, 155, 167 Puritans 31, 161 Pythagoras 83, 85 Quakers 52 Queen Elizabeth 128 Rabbinic Sages 1 Ramah 28 Raphael 99, 139 Red Sea 47 Reform Judaism 143–144, 145

Index Reformation 55, 56, 82, 128, 152 Reformed Church 52 religious studies 1, 9 Reminiscere 116, 119 Renaissance 139, 140 Restoration 128 Richard II 82 Rome (Roman) 31, 32, 48, 99, 101, 107–108, 114, 115, 138, 155 Rosh Hashanah 7 Rossini, Giachino 144 Rubens, Peter Paul 139 “Rule Britannia” 100 Russia 155 Russian-Polish Jews 141, 145 Sabbath 139, 140 sacrificial rite 35, 38, 45 St. Cecilie Movement 146 St. Gertrude 151 St. Giles Church 160 St. James Hall 151 St. Mark’s Basilica 54, 108 St. Paul 145 St. Paul’s Cathedral 152, 154, 155, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172 saints 50 Salamis 35 Salvation Army 140, 144, 148 Samuel 28–29 Sanctus 139 San Francisco 146 Saul 47, 135 Schubert, Franz 154 Schumann, Robert 162 Scotland 55 Scott, Sir Walter 157 secular music 48, 138–146, 171 selah 48 Sephardic Judaism 140, 141, 142, 146 seraphim 87, 128 Shakespeare, William 76, 85, 117 shawn 56 Shir ha-ma’a lot 146 shofar 43–44 Sidney, Philip 32 Silas 22, 101 Sistine Chapel 138, 152 sistrum 39, 44 Smetana, Bedrich 146 Société du Conservatoire 107 Society of American Cantors 146 Sola, David J. 142 Solomon 21, 44, 45, 126 Song of Songs 45 Song of the Sea 20, 47 Sophocles 35 Spain 37, 108, 142 Spencer, Herbert 35, 40, 158 Spohr, Louis 155 Stainer, John 151, 157

179

Stanley, Dean 28 “Star-Spangled Banner” 99, 100 Stradelli 81 strophicus 116 Sullivan, Arthur 151 Sulzer, Salomon 143 supplication 153 Switzerland 55 synagogue music 7–8, 46 –49, 138–146 Synaxis 106 Tabernacle 21, 25 tabret 29 Tagore, Rabindranath 89 Taine, Hippolyte 116 –117 Tallis, Thomas 127, 152, 154 Talmud 47 tambourine 43 Tannhauser 144 Tartary 127 Te Deum 127, 172 Temple (Jerusalem) 21, 38, 44, 45, 47–48, 52, 141 Temple Emmanuel, New York 144 Tennyson, Alfred 84 thanksgiving 153 Thebes 24 theocracy 25 Thirty-Nine Articles 74 throat 124 timbrel 20 Titian 165 toph 43 Trajan 126 Trinity 87, 126 Tristan and Isolde 88, 110 troubadours 54 trumpet 20, 29, 38, 45 Turkey 127 Turle, James 157 Turner, J.M.W. 83 Tyndall, John 85 tzeltzelim 44 ugab 43 Union Hymnal 145 United States 95, 140–141, 144 Vatican 108 Venice 108 Verdi, Giuseppe 24 vesper hymns 149 Victorian Age 99 Videus Dominus 116, 119 Viladesau, Richard 10 violin 20, 56 Virgin Mary 81, 165 Wagner, Richard 57, 73, 75, 76, 88, 90, 99, 100, 110, 117, 136, 144 Wales (Welsh) 101, 165

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Index

Watts, Isaac 32 Weber, Carl Maria von 151 Weimar 57 Wesley, John 140 Wesley, Samuel 136, 149, 152, 154, 155 Westcott, Canon 172 Western Church 10, 39, 52 Westminster Abby 171 Westminster Confession 74 Wholly Other 9 Winchester Cathedral 151 Windsor 161 Winkelmann, Johann Joachim 84 –85 Wither, George 31–32

Women of Samaria 156 Wordsworth, William 79 –80 Worms 101 “Yankee Doodle” 95 Yemenite Jews 141 Yigdal 139, 144 Yom Kippur 7, 8, 140 York 155 Yorkshire 149 Zion 49, 126 Zionism 146 Zurich 151