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FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON, D. D. 
 
 BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
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 The Journal 
 
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 Theological Studies 
 
 October, 1899 
 
40 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 Robert BviJj" 
 
 A PRACTICAL DISCOURSE ON SOME 
 PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGING. 
 
 What St. Augustin says of the emotion which he felt on 
 hearing the music in the Portian basilica at Milan in the year 
 386 has always seemed to me a good illustration of the relativity 
 of musical expression ; I mean how much more its ethical 
 significance depends on the musical experience of the hearer, 
 than on any special accomplishment or intrinsic development of 
 the art. Knowing of what kind that music must have been 
 and how few resources of expression it can have had, — being 
 rudimental in form, without suggestion of harmony, and in 
 its performance unskilful, its probably nasal voice-production 
 unmodified by any accompaniment, — one marvels at his 
 description, 
 
 ' What tears I shed at Thy hymns and canticles, how acutely was my 
 soul stirred by the voices and sweet music of Thy Church ! As those 
 voices entered my ears, truth distilled in my heart, and thence divine 
 affection welled up in a flood, in tears o'erflowing, and happy was I in 
 those tears V 
 
 St Augustin appears to have witnessed the beginnings of the 
 great music of the Western Church. It was the year of his bap- 
 tism when, he tells us, singing was introduced at Milan to cheer 
 the Catholics who had shut themselves up in the basilica with 
 their bishop, to defend him from the imperial violence : 
 
 1 It was then instituted that psalms and hymns should be sung, after 
 the manner of the Eastern Churches, lest the folk in the weariness of 
 their grief should altogether lose heart : and from that day to this the 
 custom has been retained; many, nay, nearly all Thy flocks, in all 
 regions of the world, following the example V 
 
 What great emotional power St. Augustin attributed to 
 
 1 Con/ess. ix 6. 2 Ibid, ix 7. •• 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGH 41 
 
 ecclesiastical music, and of what importance he thought it, may 
 be seen in the tenth book of the Confessions : he is there examining 
 himself under the heads of the senses, and after the sense of 
 smell, his chapter on the sense of hearing is as follows: — 
 
 ' The lust of the cars entangled and enslaved me more firmly, but 
 Thou hast loosened and set me free. But even now I confess that I do 
 yield a very little to the beauty of those sounds which are animated by 
 Thy eloquence, when sung with a sweet and practised voice ; not, 
 indeed, so far that I am limed and cannot fly off at pleasure ' : and 
 yield though I do, yet these sweet sounds, joined with the divine words 
 which are their life, cannot be admitted to my heart save to a place of 
 some dignity, and I hesitate to give them one as lofty as their claim ". 
 
 For sometimes I seem to myself to be allowing them undue honour, 
 when I feel that our minds are really moved to a warmer devotion 
 and more ardent piety by the holy words themselves when they are so 
 sung than when they are not so sung ; and when I recognize that all 
 the various moods of our spirit have their proper tones in speech and 
 song, by which they are, through I know not what secret familiarity, 
 excited. But the mere sensuous delight, to which it is not fitting to 
 resign the mind to be enervated thereby, often deceives me, whenever 
 (that is) the delight of the senses does not so accompany the reason as 
 to be cheerfully in submission thereto, but, having been admitted only 
 for reason's sake, then even attempts to go before and to lead. Thus 
 I sin without knowing, but afterwards I know. 
 
 Then awhile, from too immoderate caution against this deception, 
 I err on the side of too great severity ; and sometimes go so far as to 
 wish that all the melody of the sweet chants which are used in the 
 Davidian psalter were utterly banished from my ears, and from the ears 
 of the Church; and that way seems to me safer which I remember 
 often to have heard told of Athanasius, archbishop of Alexandria, that 
 he would have the lector of the psalm intone it with but a slight 
 modulation of voice, so as to be more like one reading than one 
 singing. And yet, when I remember my tears, which I shed at the 
 hearing of the song of Thy Church in the first days of my recovered 
 faith, and that now I still feel the same emotion, and am moved not by 
 the singing but by what is sung, when it is sung with a liquid voice and 
 in the most fitting " modulation,'' then (I say) I acknowledge again the 
 great utility of the institution. 
 
 Thus I fluctuate between the peril of sensuous pleasure and the proof 
 
 1 This is perhaps rather a quality proper to the sensation. 
 
 3 'Et vix cis praebeo congruentem [locum],' which might only mean 'I cannot find 
 the right place for them.' 
 
42 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 of wholesomeness, and am more inclined (though I would not offer an 
 irrevocable judgement) to approve of the use of singing in the Church, 
 that, by the pleasure of the ear, weaker minds may rise to the emotion 
 of piety. Yet when it happens to me to be more moved by the music 
 than by the words that are sung I confess that I have sinned (poenaliter 
 peccare), and it is then that I would rather not hear the singer V 
 
 What would St. Augustin have said could he have heard 
 Mozart's Requiem, or been present at some Roman Catholic 
 cathedral where an eighteenth-century mass was performed, 
 a woman hired from the Opera- House whooping the Benedictus 
 from the western gallery ? 
 
 It is possible that such music would not have had any ethical 
 significance to him, bad or good. Augustin lived before what we 
 reckon the very beginnings of modern music, with nothing to entice 
 and delight his ears in the choir but the simplest ecclesiastical 
 chant and hymn-tune sung in unison. We are accustomed to 
 an almost over-elaborated art, which, having won powers of 
 expression in all directions, has so squandered them that they 
 are of little value : and we may confidently say that the emotional 
 power of our church music is not so great as that described by 
 him 1,500 years ago. In fact if we feel at all out of sympathy 
 with Augustin's words, it is because he seems to over-estimate 
 the danger of the emotion 2 . 
 
 There is something very strange and surprising in this state of 
 things, this contrast between the primitive Church with its few 
 simple melodies that ravished the educated hearer, and our own 
 full-blown institution with its hymn-book of some 600 tunes, 
 which when it is opened fills the sensitive worshipper with 
 dismay, so that there are persons who would rather not go inside 
 a church than subject themselves to the trial. 
 
 What is the matter? What is it that is wrong with our 
 hymnody? Even where there is not such rooted disgust as 
 I have implied, there is a growing conviction that some reform 
 is needed in words or music or both. 
 
 Assuming that the chief blame lies with the music (as, I think, 
 might easily be proved), I propose to discuss the question of the 
 
 1 Confess, x 33. 
 
 2 St. Augustin does not allow that a vague emotion can be religious ; it must be 
 directed. Few would agree to this. 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGING 43 
 
 music of our hymnody, and I shall proceed on the basis of 
 St. Augustin's principles: I am sure that they would be endorsed 
 by any pious church-goer who had considered the subject, and 
 they may be fairly formulated thus, The music must express the 
 words or sense : it should not attract too much attention to itself : 
 it should be dignified: and its reason and use is to heighten 
 religious emotion. 
 
 One point calls for distinction: Augustin speaks of his emotion 
 on hearing the hymns and canticles ; he writes as if he had had 
 no more thought of taking part in the music himself, than we 
 have of joining in the anthem at a cathedral ; and this might 
 lead to a misunderstanding ; for there is no doubt that these 
 hymns were sung by the people : the story is that the very 
 soldiers who were sent to blockade the basilica, happening to be 
 themselves catholics, joined their voices in the stanzas which 
 St. Ambrose had specially composed to disconcert the Arian 
 enemy. 
 
 The ecstasy of listening to music, and the enthusiasm of 
 a crowd who arc all singing or shouting the same hymn or song 
 are emotions of quite different nature and Value. Now, neglecting 
 the rare conditions under which these emotions may be combined, 
 we shall, as we are speaking of hymns, be concerned chiefly with 
 the latter kind, for all will agree that hymns are that part of the 
 Church music in which it is most desirable that the congregation 
 should join : and I believe that there would be less difference in 
 practice if it were at all easy to obtain good congregational 
 singing, or even anything that is worthy of the name. It seems 
 perhaps a pity that nature should have arranged that where the 
 people are musical (as Augustin appears to have been) they 
 would rather listen, and where they are unmusical they would 
 all rather sing. 
 
 Speaking therefore of congregational hymn-singing, and 
 conceding, as I think we must, that the essential use of such 
 music is- to heighten emotion, then, this emotional quality being 
 the sine qua non (the music being of no use without it), it follows 
 that it is the primary consideration. If we are to have music at 
 all, it must be such as will raise or heighten emotion ; and to 
 define this we must ask, Whose emotion' and What kind of 
 emotion ? 
 
44 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 Let us take this latter question first, and inquire what emotions 
 it is usual, proper, or possible to express by congregational 
 singing of hymns. William Law, in his Serious Ca/l, has an 
 interesting, I may say amusing, chapter on the duty of all to 
 sing, whether they have any turn or inclination for it or no. All 
 should sing, he says, even though they dislike doing so, and 
 I think that what he affirms of private devotion applies with 
 greater force to public worship. It should satisfy the most 
 ardent advocate of congregational singing, and it goes certainly 
 to the root of the matter. 
 
 1 It is so right and beneficial to devotion, has so much effect upon 
 our hearts, that it may be insisted on as a common rule for all persons 
 ... for singing is as much the proper use of a psalm as devout 
 supplication is the proper use of a form of prayer : and a psalm only 
 read is very much like a prayer that is only looked over. ... If you 
 were to tell a person that has such a song, that he need not sing it, that 
 it was sufficient to peruse it, he would wonder what you meant, ... as 
 if you were to tell him that he should only look at his food, to see 
 whether it was good, but need not eat it. . . . You will perhaps say that 
 singing is a particular talent, that belongs only to particular people, and 
 that you have neither voice nor ear for music. 
 
 If you had said that singing is a general talent, and that people differ 
 in that as they do in all other things, you had said something much 
 truer. 
 
 For how vastly people differ in the talent of thinking, which is 
 not only common to all men, but seems, to be the very essence of 
 human nature : . . . Yet no one desires to be excused from thought 
 because he has not this talent in any fine degree. . . . 
 
 If a person were to forbear praying because he had an odd tone in 
 his voice, he would have as good an excuse as he that forbears from 
 singing psalms because he has but little management of his voice. . . . 
 
 These songs make a sense (of) delight in God \ they awaken holy 
 devotion : they teach how to ask : they kindle a holy flame. . . . 
 
 Singing is the natural effect of joy in the heart . . . and it is also the 
 natural means of raising emotions of joy in the mind : such joy and 
 thankfulness to God as is the highest perfection of a divine and holy 
 life.' 
 
 Now though I cannot feel the force of all Law's arguments 
 nor easily bring myself to believe that a person who dislikes 
 singing, and has no ear for music, will readily find any comfort- 
 able assistance to his private devotion from making efforts to hit 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGING 45 
 
 off the notes of the scale ; yet I feel that Law's position IS in the 
 main sound, and that lie has correctly specified the emotion most 
 proper to that kind of uncultured singing which he descrih 
 and though congregational psalm-singing necessarily involves 
 a greater musical capacity than that assumed in Law's extreme 
 case, and may therefore have a wider field, yet we may begin by 
 laying down that JOY, PRAISE, and THANKSGIVING give us the 
 first main head of what is proper to be expressed, and we may 
 extend this head by adding ADORATION and perhaps the involved 
 emotions of AWE and PEACE and even the attitude of contem- 
 plation. 
 
 In such a subject as the classification of emotions as they 
 may be expressed by music of one kind or another, it is plainly 
 impossible to make any definite tabulation with which all would 
 agree. The very names of the emotions will, to different minds, 
 call up different associations of feeling. If any agreement could 
 be arrived at, it would be at the expense of distinction ; and 
 all that I can expect is to have my distinctions understood, 
 and in the main agreed with. And as I am most ready to 
 grant to the reader his right to a different opinion on any detail, 
 I beg of him the same toleration, and that he will rather try to 
 follow my meaning than dwell on discrepancies which may be 
 due to a fault of expression, or to a difference of meaning which 
 he and I may attach to the same word. 
 
 With this apology in preamble, I will attempt to make some 
 classification of emotions as they seem to me to be the possible 
 basis for musical expression in congregational singing. 
 
 We have already one class : I would add a second, to include 
 all the hymns which exhibit the simple attitude of PRAYER. 
 
 A third class I would put under the head of FAITH. Examples 
 of this class will no doubt often cross with those of the first class, 
 but they will specify themselves as CELEBRATIONS of events of 
 various COMMEMORATION, introducing .a distinct form, namely 
 NARRATION, which is a very proper and effective form for 
 general praise. 
 
 Also this section will include all the hymns of BROTHERHOOD 
 and FELLOWSHIP, and of SPIRITUAL CONFLICT, with the corre- 
 lative invitatory and exhortatory songs, as modified by what will 
 be said later. 
 
46 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 Also, lastly, under this same head of Faith, the DOCTRINAL 
 hymns, and professions of creed whether sectarian or otherwise, 
 which, if the definition be taken widely, make a large and popular 
 class, well exemplified by the German hymns of the Reformation, 
 or by those of our Wesleyan revival : strong with the united 
 feeling of a small body, asserting itself in the face of opposition : 
 concerning which we will not speak further, except to recall the 
 fact that this kind of enthusiasm was not absent from the causes 
 which first introduced hymns into the Western Church. 
 
 I believe that this is a pretty full list of all the attitudes of 
 mind that can be properly expressed by congregational singing ; 
 and if we turn to other emotions which are made the subject 
 of church hymns, we shall, I think, see that they are all of them 
 liable to suffer damage by being entrusted to the rough handling 
 of general vociferation. 
 
 Such will be all hymns of DIVINE AFFECTION and YEARNING ; 
 all LAMENTS and CONSOLATIONS ; all descriptions of spiritual 
 conditions which imply personal experience and feeling, as 
 ABASEMENT, HUMILIATION, CONTRITION, REPENTANCE, RESIG- 
 NATION, SELF-DEVOTION, CONVICTION, and SATISFACTION. 
 
 Here I feel that many readers will be inclined to dissent from 
 what I say, and as I shall not again recur to Law, I should like, 
 in order to show my meaning, to call up his extreme example of 
 an unmusical person singing in private devotion. If one pictures 
 such a case as he supposes, is it not clear, whether one imagines 
 oneself the actor or the unwilling auditor, that while such an 
 exhibition of joy might perhaps pass, yet a similar incompetent 
 attempt to express any of the last-named emotions would be 
 only ridiculous? But between this single worshipper and the 
 congregation the incompetence seems to me only a question of 
 degree ; while in the far more considerable respect of the sincerity 
 of the feeling in the hearts of those expressing it, Law's singer 
 has every advantage ; indeed no objection on this score can be 
 raised to him. But now suppose for a moment that he has not 
 the emotion at heart corresponding to his attempt at song, and 
 I think the differentiation of motives for congregational singing 
 will seem justifiable. 
 
 All these last-named emotions, — which I have taken from 
 congregational hymn-books, — and I suppose there may be more 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGING 47 
 
 of them, — call for delicacy of treatment. A Lamentation, for 
 instance, which might seem at first sight as if it would gain force 
 by volume, will, if it is realistic or clumsy, become unmanly, 
 almost so as to be ridiculous, and certainly depressing to the 
 
 spirit rather than purifying. In fact while many of the subjects 
 require beautiful expression, they arc also more properly used 
 when offered as inspiring ideals ; and to assume them to be 
 of common attainment or experience is to degrade them from 
 their supreme sanctity. But in thus ruling them unfit for general 
 singing one must distinguish large miscellaneous congregations 
 from small united bodies, in which a more intimate emotion may 
 be natural: and as there is no exact line of distinction here, so 
 there is no objection to the occasional and partial intrusion of 
 some of these more intimate subjects into congregational 
 hymns. 
 
 To this first question then, as to what emotions are fit to 
 be expressed by congregational music, the answer appears to be 
 that the more general the singing, the more general and simple 
 should be the emotion ; and that the universally fitting themes 
 are those of simple praise, prayer, or faith : and we might inquire 
 whether one fault of our modern hymn-books may not be their 
 attempt to supply congregational music to unfitting themes. 
 
 To the next question, Whose emotio7i is this congregational 
 music to excite or heighten? the answer is plain: It is the 
 average man, or one rather below the average, the uneducated, 
 as St. Augustin says the weaker, mind ; and that in England is. 
 at least artistically, a narrow mind and a vulgar being. And 
 it may of course be alleged that the music in our hymn-books 
 which is intolerable to the more sensitive minds was not put there 
 for them, but would justify itself in its supposed fitness for the 
 lower classes. ' What use,' the pastor would say to one who, 
 on the ground of tradition advocated the employment of the old 
 plain-song and the Ambrosian melodies, ' What use to seek to 
 attract such people as those in my cure with the ancient out- 
 landish and stiff melodies that pleased folk a thousand years ago. 
 and which I cannot pretend to like myself?' Or if his friend 
 is a modern musician, who is urging him to have nothing in his 
 church but what would satisfy the highest artistic sense of the 
 day, his answer is the same : he will tell you that it would be 
 
48 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 casting pearls before swine ; and that unless the music is ' tuney ' 
 and ' catchy ' the people will not take to it. And we cannot 
 hastily dismiss these practical objections. The very Ambrosian 
 music which is now so strange to modern ears was doubtless, 
 when St. Ambrose introduced it, much akin to the secular music 
 of the day, if it was not directly borrowed from it : and the 
 history of hymn-music is a history of the adaptations of profane 
 successes in the art to the uses of the Church. Nor do I see that 
 it can ever be otherwise, for the highest music demands a super- 
 natural material ; so that it would seem an equal folly for 
 musicians to neglect the unique opportunity which religion offers 
 them, and for religion to refuse the best productions of human 
 art. And we must also remember that the art of the time, 
 whether it be bad or good, has a much more living relation 
 to the generation which is producing it, and exerts a more 
 powerful influence upon it, than the art of any time that is past 
 and gone. It is the same in all aspects of life : it is the book 
 of the day, the hero or statesman of the hour, the newest hope, 
 the latest flash of scientific light, which attracts the people. And 
 it must be, on the face of it, true that any artist who becomes 
 widely popular must have hit off, ' I know not by what secret 
 familiarity.' the exact fashion or caprice of the current taste 
 of his own generation. 
 
 And this is so true that it must be admitted that it is not 
 always the uneducated man only whose taste is hit off. In the 
 obituary notices of such men as Gladstone and Tennyson the 
 gossip will inform us, rightly or wrongly, that their ' favourite 
 hymn 1 ' was, not one of the great masterpieces of the world, — 
 which, alas, it is only too likely that in their long lives they never 
 heard, — but some tune of the day : as if in the minds of men 
 whose lives appealed strongly to their age there must be some- 
 thing delicately responsive to the exact ripple of the common 
 taste and fashion of their generation. 
 
 All this makes a strong case : and it would seem, since our 
 hymn-music is to stir the emotions of the vulgar, that it must 
 itself be both vulgar and modern ; and that, in the interest of 
 
 1 I assume ' favourite hymn ' to mean a sung hymn. The interest of the record 
 must lie in its being of a heightened emotion of the same kind as that described by 
 St. Augustin in his own case, What tears I shed, &c. 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGING 49 
 
 the weaker mind, we must renounce all ancient tradition and the 
 maxims of art, in order to be in touch with the music-halls. 
 
 This is impossibly absurd ; and unless there is some flaw in 
 our argument, the fault must lie in the premisses ; we have 
 omitted some necessary qualification. 
 
 The qualification which we neglected is this, that the music 
 must be dignified, and suitable to the meaning ; and we should 
 only have wasted words in ignoring what we knew all along, 
 if we had not, by so doing, brought this qualification into its 
 vital prominence, and at the same time exposed the position 
 of those who neglect it, and the real reason of the mean condition 
 of our church music. 
 
 The use of undignified music for sacred purposes may perhaps 
 be justified in exceptional cases, which must be left to the 
 judgement of those who consider all things lawful that they may 
 save some. But if from the mission service this licence should 
 creep into the special service, and then invade every act of public 
 worship, it must be met with an edict of unscrupulous exclusion. 
 Not that it can be truly described as thus having crept in in our 
 time. It is always creeping, it has flourished in special habitats 
 for four or five hundred years, and before then there is the history 
 of Palestrina's great reform of like abuses. If in our time in 
 England we differ in any respect for the worse, it is rather in 
 the universal prevalence of a mild form of the degradation, which 
 is perhaps more degrading than the occasional exceptional abuses 
 of a more flagrant kind, which cannot hide their scandal but 
 bring their own condemnation. 
 
 There is indeed no extreme from which this abuse has shrunk ; 
 perhaps the worst form of it is the setting of sacred hymns to 
 popular airs, which are associated in the minds of the singers 
 with secular, or even comic and amatory words 1 : of which it 
 is impossible to give examples, because the extreme instances 
 are blasphemies unfit to be quoted ; and it is only these which 
 
 1 It was not an uncommon practice on the Continent (say from 1540 to 1840)1 
 to print books of hymns to be sung to the current secular airs ; and the names or 
 first lines of these airs were set above the hymn-words as the musical direction. 
 M. Douen, in his Clement Ma rot et le psautur Huguenot, vol. i, ch. 22, has given an 
 account of some of these books ; and any one who wishes to follow this branch of 
 the subject may read his chapter. He does not notice the later Italian Laudc 
 Spiritual!, which might have supplied incredible monsters to his museum. 
 VOL. I. E 
 
50 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 could convey an adequate idea of the licence 1 . The essence of 
 the practice appears to be the production of a familiar excite- 
 ment, with the intention of diverting it into a religious channel. 
 
 But, even in the absence of secular or profane association, 
 congregational singing, when provoked by undignified music, 
 such as may be found in plenty in our modern hymn-books> 
 may be maintained without the presence of religious feeling, out 
 of mere high spirits, or as we say, ' in fun,' and may easily give 
 rise to mockery. I have witnessed examples enough in proof 
 of this, but if I gave them it might be thought that I wished 
 to amuse profane readers 2 . And though such extreme disasters 
 may be exceptional outbursts, yet they are always but just 
 beneath the surface, and are the inevitable outcome of the use 
 of unworthy means. The cause of such a choice of means must 
 be either an artistic incapacity to distinguish, or a want of faith 
 in the power of religious emotion when unaided by profane 
 adjuncts. What would St. Augustin have ruled here, or thought 
 of the confusion of ideas, which, being satisfied with any 
 expression, mistakes one emotion for another ? 
 
 Besides, the main fault of these books, from which we should have to quote, 
 is the association of the music, and this is really an accident, the question before us 
 being the character of the music ; so that we should require musical illustration, for 
 though the common distinction between sacred and secular music is in the main 
 just, yet the line cannot be drawn at the original intention, or historical origin of 
 the music : the true differentiation lies in the character of the music, the associated 
 sentiment being liable to change. If we were to banish from our hymn-books all 
 the tunes which we know to have a secular origin, we should have to part with 
 some of the most sacred and solemn compositions; and where would the purist 
 obtain any assurance that the tunes which he retained had a better title ? In the 
 sixteenth century, when so many fine hymn-melodies were written, a musician was 
 working in the approved manner if he adapted a secular melody, or at least 
 borrowed a well-known opening phrase : and since the melodies of that time were 
 composed mainly in conjunct movement, such initial similarities were unavoidable; 
 for one may safely say that it very soon became impossible, under such restrictions, 
 to invent a good opening phrase which had not been used before. The secular 
 airs, too, of that time were often as fit for sacred as profane use ; and if I had to 
 find a worthy melody for a good new hymn, I should seek more hopefully among 
 them than in the sacred music of our own century. 
 
 2 I may give the following experience without offence. When I was an under- 
 graduate there was a song from a comic opera by Offenbach so much in favour as 
 to be de rigueur at festive meetings. Now there was at the same time a counter- 
 part of this song popular at evensong in the churches : it was sung to ' Hark, hark, 
 my soul.' I believe it is called Vencens des flairs. They seemed to me both 
 equally nauseating : it was certainly an accident that determined which should be 
 sung at worship and which at wine. 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGING 51 
 
 The practical question now arises. We know the need ; how- 
 is it to be supplied? We require music which will reach the 
 emotions of uneducated people, and in which they will delight 
 to join, and in which it shall be easy to join : and it must be 
 dignified and not secular. If we condemn and reject the music 
 which the professional church-musicians have supplied with 
 some popular success to meet the need, what is there to take- 
 its place? Of what music is our hymn-book to be constructed, 
 which shall be at once dignified, sacred, and popular? 
 
 The answer is very simple : it is this, Dignified Melody. Good 
 melody is never out of fashion ; and as it is by all confession the 
 seal of high musical genius, so it is that form of music which 
 is universally intelligible and in the best sense popular ; and we 
 have a rich legacy of it. What we want is that our hymn-books 
 should contain a collection of the best ecclesiastical and sacred 
 hymn-melodies, and nothing hit these, instead of having but 
 a modicum of these, for the most part mauled and illset, among 
 a crowd of contributions of an altogether inferior kind ; the whole 
 collection being often such that if an illnatured critic were to assert 
 that the compilers had degraded and limited the old music in 
 order to set off their own, it would be difficult to meet him with 
 a logical refutation. 
 
 The shortest and most practical way of treating this subject 
 will be to give some account of the sources from which the music 
 of such a hymn-book as I propose would be drawn. I will take 
 these in their chronological order. First in order of time are 
 the Plain-song melodies. 
 
 I have already stated the ordinary objection to these tunes, 
 that they are stiff and out of date. Now it may be likely 
 enough that they will never be so universally popular in our 
 country as the fine melodies invented on the modern harmonic 
 system, yet the idea that they are not popular in character, and 
 that modern people will not sing them, is a mistake ; there is 
 plenty of evidence on this point. Nor must wc judge them 
 by the incompetent, and I confess somewhat revolting aspect 
 in which they were offered to us by the Ang!o-gregoriani>ts 
 of thirty years ago, a presentment which has gone far to ruin 
 their reputation ; they are better understood now, and may be 
 heard here and there sung as they should be. They are of 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 great artistic merit and beauty ; and instead of considering them 
 a priori as uncongenial on the ground of antiquity, we should 
 rather be thinking of them that they were invented at a time 
 when unison singing was cultivated in the highest perfection, so 
 much so that a large number of these tunes are, on account of 
 their elaborate and advanced rhythm, not only far above the 
 most intelligent taste of the minds with which we have to deal, 
 but are also so difficult of execution that there are few trained 
 choirs in the 'country that could render them well. To the 
 simpler tunes, however, these objections do not apply : in fact 
 there are only two objections that can be urged against them, 
 and both of these will be found on examination to be advantages. 
 
 The first objection is that they are not in the modern scale. 
 Now as this objection is only felt by persons who have cramped 
 their musical intelligence by an insufficient technical education, 
 and cannot believe that music is music unless they are modulating 
 in and out of some key by means of a sharp seventh ; — and as the 
 nature of the ecclesiastical modes is too long a subject, and 
 too abstruse for a paper of this sort, even if I were competent 
 to discuss it ; — I shall therefore content myself by stating that the 
 ecclesiastical modes have, for melodic purposes (which is all that 
 we are considering), advantages over the modern scale, by which 
 they are so surpassed in harmonic opportunities. Even such 
 a thoroughgoing admirer of the modern system as Sir Hubert 
 Parry writes on this subject, that it ' is now quite obvious that 
 for melodic purposes such modes as the Doric and Phrygian were 
 infinitely (sic) preferable to the Ionic,' i.e. to our modern major 
 keys 1 . And it will be evident to every one how much music 
 has of late years sought its charm in modal forms, under the 
 guise of national character. 
 
 The second objection is their free rhythm. They are not 
 written in barred time, and cannot without injury be reduced 
 to it. 
 
 As this question affects also other classes of hymns, I will 
 here say all that I have to say, or have space to say, about 
 the rhythm of hymn- tunes; confining my remarks generally to 
 the proper dignified rhythms. 
 
 In all modern musical grammars it is stated that there are 
 
 1 The Art of Music, by C. Hubert H. Parry. London, 1893, 1st edit., p. 48. 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGING 53 
 
 virtually only two kinds of time. The time-beat goes either 
 by twos or some multiple of two, or by threes or some multiple 
 of three, and the accent recurs at regular intervals of time, and 
 is marked by dividing off the music into bars of equal length. 
 Nothing is more important for a beginner to learn, and yet from 
 the point of view of rhythm nothing could be more inadequate. 
 Rhythm is infinite. These regular times are no doubt the most im- 
 portant fundamental entities of it, and may even lie undiscoverably 
 at the root of all varieties of rhythm whatsoever, and further they 
 may be the only possible or permissible rhythms for a modern 
 composer to use, but yet the absolute dominion which they now 
 enjoy over all music lies rather in their practical necessity and 
 convenience (since it is only by attending to them that the 
 elaboration of modem harmonic music is possible), than in the 
 undesirability (in itself) or unmusical character of melody which 
 ignores them. In the matter of hymn-melodies an unbarred 
 rhythm has very decided advantages over a barred rhythm. In 
 the former the melody has its own way, and dances at liberty 
 with the voice and sense ; in barred time it has its accents 
 squared out beforehand, and makes steadily for its predetermined 
 beat, plumping down, as one may say. on the first note of every 
 bar whether it will or no. Sing to any one a plain-song melody, 
 Ad coenam Agni for instance, once or twice, and then Croft's 
 148th Psalm l . Croft will be undeniably fine and impressive, 
 but he provokes a smile : his tune is like a diagram beside 
 a flower. 
 
 Now in this matter of rhythm our hymn-book compilers, since 
 the seventeenth century, have done us all a vast injury. They 
 have reduced all hymns to the common times. Their procedure 
 was, I suppose, dictated by some argument such as this : ' The 
 people must have what they can understand : they only under- 
 stand the simple two and three time : ergo we must reduce all 
 the tunes to these measures.' Or again, ' It will be easier for 
 them to have all the tunes as much alike as possible : therefore 
 let us make them all alike, and write them all in equal minims.' 
 
 Both these ideas are absolutely wrong. A hymn-tune, which 
 they hastily assume to be the commonest and lowest form of 
 
 1 And give Croft the advantage of his original rhythm, not the mis-statement in 
 Hymns Ancient and Modern, No. 414. 
 
54 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 music actually possesses liberties coveted by other music 1 . It is 
 a short melody, committed to memory, and frequently repeated : 
 there is no reason why it should submit to any of the time-con- 
 veniences of orchestral music : there is no reason why its rhythm 
 should not be completely free ; nor is there any a priori neces- 
 sity why any one tune should be exactly alike another in rhythm. 
 It will be learned by the ear (most often in childhood), be known 
 and loved for its own sake, and blended in the heart with the 
 words which interpret it : and this advantage was instinctively 
 felt by those of our early church composers who, already 
 understanding something of the value of barred music, yet 
 deliberately avoided cramping the rhythms of their hymn-tunes 
 by too great subservience to it 2 . One of the first duties therefore 
 which we owe to hymn-melodies is the restoration of their free 
 and original rhythms, keeping them as varied as possible : the 
 Plain-song melodies must be left unbarred and be taught as free 
 rhythms, and all other fine tunes which are worth using should 
 be preserved in their original rhythm ; because free rhythm is 
 better, and its variety is good, and because the attraction of 
 a hymn-melody lies in its individual character and expression, 
 and not at all in its time-likeness to other tunes. This last idea 
 has been a chief cause in the degradation of our hymns. 
 
 I may conclude then that the best of these simpler Plain-song 
 tunes are very fit for congregational use. They should be offered 
 as pure melody in free rhythm and sung in unison : their accom- 
 
 1 It would be very damaging to my desire to convince, if I should seem to deny 
 that the mistaken practice of these hymn-book compilers was based on the solid 
 ground of secular common-sense. If anything is true of rhythm it is this, that the 
 common mind likes common rhythms, such as the march or waltz, whereas elabor- 
 ation of rhythm appeals to a trained mind or artistic faculty. I should say that the 
 popularity of common rhythms is due to the shortness of human life, and that if 
 men were to live to be 300 years old they would weary of the sort of music which 
 Robert Browning describes so well — 
 
 ' There 's no keeping one's haunches still, 
 There's no such pleasure in life.' 
 But hymn-melodies must not be put on that level. It is desirable to have in church 
 something different from what goes on outside, and (as I say in the text) a hymn- 
 tune need not appeal to the lowest understanding on first hearing. The simple 
 free rhythms, too, are perfectly natural ; they were free-born. 
 
 2 I need only instance Orlando Gibbons' tune called c Angels.' The original is 
 a most ingenious combination of rhythms ; and its masterly beauty could not be 
 guessed from the inane form into which it is degraded in Hymns Ancient and 
 Modem, No. 8. 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGING 55 
 
 paniment must not be entrusted to a modern grammarian. It is 
 well also to use most of them in their English form, the Old Sarum 
 Use as it is called ; which happily preserves to us a national tra- 
 dition, in the opinion of some experts older and more correct than 
 any known on the continent ; and if the differences in our English 
 version are not due to purity of tradition, they will have another 
 and almost greater interest, as venerable records of the genius of 
 our national taste. These Plain-song tunes have probably a long 
 future before them ; since, apart from their merit, they are indis- 
 solubly associated with the most ancient Latin hymns, some of 
 which are the very best hymns of the Church. 
 
 The next class of tunes l is that of the REFORMATION hymns, 
 English, French, and German, dating from about 1550 to some 
 way on in the seventeenth century. The chief English group 
 is known as Stcrnhold and Hopkins Psalter^ which was mostly 
 of eight-line tunes. This book was virtually put together in 
 Geneva about 1560, and antiquarians make much of it. If 
 stripped, however, of its stolen plumes and later additions it is 
 really an almost worthless affair, the true history of it being 
 as follows. A French musician named Louis Bourgeois, whom 
 Calvin brought with him to Geneva in 154 J, turned out to be 
 an extraordinary genius in melody ; he remained at Geneva 
 about fifteen years, and in that time compiled a Psalter of 
 eighty-five tunes, almost all of which are of great merit, and 
 many of the very highest excellence. The splendour of his 
 work, which was merely appreciated as useful at the time, was 
 soon obscured, for immediately on his leaving Geneva, the French 
 Psalter was completed by inferior hands, whose work, being mixed 
 in with his, lowered the average of the whole book enormously, 
 and Bourgeois' work was never distinguished until, quite lately, 
 the period of his office was investigated and compared with the 
 succeeding editions of his book. Now the English refugees 
 compiled their ' Stcrnhold and Hopkins ' at Geneva, in imitation 
 of the French, during the time of Bourgeois' residence, and took 
 over a number of the French tunes ; though they mauled these 
 most unmercifully to bring them down to the measure of their 
 
 1 I omit, for want of space, mention of the late Plain-song melodies (which 
 would give a good many excellent tunes) ; and for want of knowledge the Italian 
 tunes. 
 
56 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 doggerel psalms, yet even after this barbarous treatment Bour- 
 geois' spoilt tunes were^still far better than what they made for 
 themselves, and sufficient not only to float their book into credit, 
 but to kindle the confused enthusiasm of subsequent English 
 antiquarians, whose blind leadership has had some half-hearted 
 following. But if these French tunes, and those which are pieced 
 in imitation of Bourgeois, be abstracted from this English Psalter, 
 then, with one or two exceptions, there will remain hardly 
 anything of value 1 . 
 
 To leave the English tunes for a moment and continue the 
 subject, we shall practically exhaust the French branch of this 
 class by saying that our duty by them is to use a great number 
 of Bourgeois' tunes, restoring their original form. They are 
 masterpieces which have remained popular on the continent from 
 the first ; thoroughly congenial to our national taste, and the best 
 that can be imagined for solemn congregational singing of the 
 kind which we might expect in England. The difficulty is the 
 same that beset the old original psalter-makers, i.e. to find words 
 to suit their varied measures. But this must be done 2 . These 
 tunes in dignity, solemnity, pathos, and melodic solidity leave 
 nothing to desire. 
 
 1 Comparing the English with the French Genevan Psalter, I do not think my 
 judgement is too severe on our own. It had a few fine tunes original to it ; best of 
 all the cxxxvii (degraded in Hymns Ancient and Modern). This is of such excep- 
 tional beauty that I believe it must have been written by Bourgeois for Whittingham. 
 Next perhaps is lxxvii (called 81st in H. A. M.), the original of which, in Day, 1566, 
 is a fine tune, degraded already in Este, 1592, which version H.A.M. follows : it is 
 said to have come from Geneva. Besides these, xxv and xliv, which are the only 
 other tunes from this source in H. A. M., are very favourable examples, and I do 
 not think that they will rescue the book. Nor can I believe that these old English 
 D. CM. tunes were ever much used. They are too much alike for many of them to 
 have been committed to memory, while all the editions which I happen to have 
 seen are full of misprints, and the four-line tunes which drove them out were 
 early in the field, and increased rapidly. 
 
 2 When one turns the pages of that most depressing of all books ever compiled 
 by the groaning creature, Julian's hymn-dictionary, and sees the thousands of care- 
 fully tabulated English hymns, by far the greater number of them not only pitiable 
 as efforts of human intelligence, but absolutely worthless as vocal material for 
 melodic treatment, one wishes that all this effort had been directed to supply a real 
 want. E.g. the two Wesleys between them wrote thirteen octavo volumes, of some 
 400 pages each, full of closely printed hymns. One must wish that Charles Wesley 
 at least (who showed in a few instances how well he could do) had, instead of 
 reeling off all this stuff, concentrated his efforts to produce only what should be 
 worthy of his talents and useful to posterity. 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES <>. : ' HYMN-SINGING 57 
 
 The English ei;^ht-line tunes of Stcrnhold and Hopkins we 
 may then, with one or two exceptions, dismiss to neglect : but 
 among the four-line 'common' tunes which gradually ousted them, 
 there are about a dozen of high merit : the c being popular still 
 at the present day require no notice, except to insist that they 
 should be well harmonized in the manner of their time, and 
 generally have the long initials and finals of all their lines 
 observed. They are much finer than any one would guess from 
 their usual dull presentment. Their manner, as loved and 
 praised by Burns, is excellent, and there is no call to alter it l . 
 
 Contemporary with this group there is a legacy of a dozen and 
 more fine tunes composed by Tallis and Orlando Gibbons, the 
 neglect or treatment of which is equally disgraceful to all concerned. 
 
 As for the German tunes of the Reformation, attempts to 
 introduce the German church-chorales into anything like general 
 use in England have never, so far as I know, been successful, 
 owing, I suppose, to a difference in the melodic sense of the two 
 nations. But some few of them are really popular, and more 
 would be if they were properly presented with suitable words : 
 and it should not be a difficult task to provide words even more 
 suitable and kind than the original German, which seldom 
 observes an intelligent, dignified and consistent mood. These 
 chorales should be sung very slow indeed, and will admit of 
 much accompaniment. Bach's settings, when not too elaborate 
 or of impossible compass in the parts, may be well used where 
 the choir is numerically strong. He has made these chorales 
 peculiarly his own, and, in accepting his interpretation of them, 
 we arc only acquiescing in a universal judgement, while we make 
 an exception in favour of genius ; for as a general rule (which 
 will of course apply to those chorales which we do not use in 
 Bach's version), all the music of this Reformation period must be 
 harmonized strictly in the vocal counterpoint which prevailed at 
 the end of the sixteenth century ; since that is not only its proper 
 musical interpretation, but it is also the ecclesiastical style par 
 excellence, the field of which may reasonably be extended, but 
 
 1 If old tunes are modernized out of a fine rhythm, a curious result would bt 
 likely to come about ; viz. that modern tunes might be written in the old rhythm 
 for the sake of novelty, while the old were being sung in the more modern way 
 for the sake of uniformity. 
 
58 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 by no means contracted. It is suitable both for simple and 
 elaborate settings, for hymns of praise or of the more intimate 
 ideal emotions, and in a resonant building a choir of six voices 
 can produce complete effects with it. The broad, sonorous swell 
 of its harmonious intervals floods the air with peaceful power, 
 very unlike the broken sea of Bach's chromatics, which, to 
 produce anything like an equal effect of sound, needs to be 
 powerfully excited. 
 
 It is necessary to insist strongly on one caution, viz. that 
 grammar is not style, and settings which avoid modernisms are 
 not for that reason a fair presentation of the old manner. 
 Nothing is less like a fine work of art than its incompetent 
 imitation. And this practically exhausts, as far as I am aware, 
 the material which this period provides. 
 
 The next class will be made up of our RESTORATION hymns, 
 by Jeremy Clark, Croft, and others who added to the succeeding 
 editions of the metrical Psalms. If there are not many in this 
 class, yet the few are good ; and Clark must be regarded as the 
 inventor of the modern English hymn-tune, regarded, that is, as 
 a pure melody in the scale with harmonic interpretation of instru- 
 mental rather than true vocal suggestion. His tunes are pathetic, 
 melodious, and of truly national and popular character, the best of 
 them almost unaccountably free from the indefinable secular taint 
 that such qualities are apt to introduce, and which the bad follow- 
 ing of his example did very quickly introduce in the hands of less 
 sensitive artists. They are suitable for evening services. 
 
 After this time there followed in England, in the wake of 
 Handel, a degradation of style which is now completely dis- 
 credited. Diatonic flow, with tediously orthodox modulation, 
 overburdened with conventional graces, describe these innumerable 
 and indistinguishable productions. And just as the old tunes 
 were related to the motets and madrigals, so are these to the 
 verse-anthems and glees of their time. These weak ditties, in 
 the admired manner of Lord Mornington, were typically 
 performed by the genteel pupils of the local musician, who, 
 gathered round him beneath the laughing cherubs of the organ 
 case, warbled by abundant candlelight to their respectful 
 audience with a graceful execution that rivalled the weekday 
 performances of Celid s Arbour and the Spotted Snakes. Good 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGING 59 
 
 tunes may be written at any time, for style is independent of 
 fashion ; but there are very few exceptions to the complete and 
 unregrctted disappearance of all the tunes of this date. 
 
 We have then nothing left for us to do but to review the 
 material which the revival of music in the last fifty years has 
 given us in the way of hymns. 
 
 This last group divides naturally into two main heads ; first 
 the restoration of old hymns of all kinds, with their plain, 
 severer manner, in reaction against the abused graces ; and 
 secondly the appearance of a vast quantity of new hymns. 
 
 Concerning the restoration of the old hymns, we cannot be 
 too grateful to those who pointed the right way, and, according 
 to their knowledge and the opportunities of the taste of their day, 
 did the best that they could. But, as our remarks under the 
 heads of Plain-song and Reformation hymns will show, this 
 knowledge, taste, and opportunity were insufficient, and all their 
 work requires to be done afresh. 
 
 We are therefore left to the examination of the modern hymns. 
 In place of this somewhat invidious task, I propose to make 
 a few remarks on the general question of the introduction 
 of modern harmony into ecclesiastical music, with reference of 
 course to hymns only. It cannot escape the attention of any 
 one that the modern church music has for one chief differentiation 
 the profuse employment of pathetic chords, the effect of which 
 is often disastrous to the feelings. 
 
 Comparing a modern hymn-tune in this style with some fine 
 setting of an old tune in the diatonic ecclesiastical manner, one 
 might attribute the superiority of the old music entirely to its 
 harmonic system ; but I think this would be wrong. 
 
 It is a characteristic of all early art to be impersonal 1 . As long 
 as an art is growing, artists are engaged in rivalry to develop the 
 new inventions in a scientific manner, and individual personality 
 is not called out. With the exhaustion of the means in the 
 attainment of perfection a new stage is reached, in which 
 individual expression is prominent, and seems to take the place 
 of the scientific impersonal interest which aimed at nothing but 
 
 1 This fact is of course generally recognized. The explanation in the text is 
 one which was elaborately illustrated by the Slade Professor at Oxford, in his last 
 course of lectures on painting. 
 
6o THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 beauty : so that the chief distinction between early and late art 
 is that the former is impersonal, the latter personal. 
 
 Turning now to the subject of ecclesiastical music, and com- 
 paring thus Palestrina with Beethoven or Mozart, is it not at 
 once apparent that Palestrina has this distinct advantage, namely, 
 that he seems not to interfere at all with, or add anything to, the 
 sacred words? His early musical art is impersonal, what the 
 musicians call ' pure music ' ; and if he is setting the phrases of 
 the Liturgy or Holy Scriptures, we are not aware of any adjunct ; 
 it seems rather as if the sacred words had suddenly become 
 musical. Not so with Mozart or Beethoven ; we may prefer their 
 music, but it has interfered with the sacred words, it has, in fact, 
 added a personality. 
 
 It must of course be conceded that this gives a very strong 
 if not logically an almost unassailable position to those who would 
 confine sacred music to the ecclesiastical style. But it seems to 
 me ridiculous to suppose that genius cannot use all good means 
 with reserve and dignity ; and if the modern church music will 
 not stand comparison in respect of dignity and solemnity with 
 the old, the fault must rather lie in the manner in which the new 
 means are used, than in the means themselves ; nor would I 
 myself concede that there is no place in church for music which 
 is tinged with a human personality ; I should be rather inclined 
 to reckon the great musicians among the prophets, and to 
 sympathize with any one who might prefer the personality of 
 Beethoven (as revealed in his works) to that of a good many 
 canonized seers. What is logical is that we should be careful 
 as to what personality we admit, and see that the modern means 
 are used with reserve. 
 
 Now if we examine our modern hymn-tunes, do we find any 
 sign of that reserve of means which we should expect of genius, 
 or any style which we could attribute to the personality of 
 a genius ? Let any one in doubt try the following experiment : 
 copy out some ' favourite tune ' in the ' admired manner ' of the 
 present day, and show it to some musician who may happen 
 not to know it, and ask him if it is not by Brahms ; then see 
 how he will receive any further remarks that you may make 
 to him on the subject of music. 
 
 These new tunes are in fact, for the most part, the indistin- 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGH 61 
 
 guishable products of a school given over to certain mannerisms, 
 and might be produced ad libitum, as indued they are ; just as 
 were the tunes of the Lord Mornington school before described : 
 and though the composers and compilers of these modern tunes 
 would be the first to deride the exploded fashion, their own 
 fashion is more foolish, and promises to be as fugitive 1 . 
 
 I have said very little in this essay on the words of hymns. 
 I will venture to add one or two judgements here. First, that 
 in the Plain-song period, words and music seem pretty equal and 
 well matched. Secondly, that in the Reformation period, and for 
 some time onwards, the musicians did far better than the sacred 
 poets, and have left us a remainder of admirable music, for which 
 it is our duty to find words. Tliirdly, that the excuse which some 
 musicians have offered for the sentimentality of these modern tunes, 
 namely, that the words are so sentimental, is not without point as 
 a criticism of modern hymn-words, but is of no value whatever 
 as a defence of their practice. The interpretative power of music 
 is exceedingly great, and can force almost any words (as far 
 as their sentiment is concerned) into a good channel. 
 
 And if music be introduced at all into public worship it must 
 be most jealously and scrupulously guarded. It is a confusion 
 of thought to suppose that because — as St. Augustin would tell 
 us — it is not a vital matter to religion whether it employ music 
 or not, therefore it can be of little consequence what sort of music 
 is used : and the attitude of indifference towards it, which has 
 seemed to me to be almost a point of correct ecclesiastical 
 manners, must be the expression of a convinced despair, which, 
 in the present state of things, need not surprise. Devout persons 
 are naturally afraid of secular ideals, and shrink from the notion 
 of art intruding into the sanctuary ; and, especially if they have 
 never learned music, they will share St. Augustin's jealousy 
 of it; and it is the more difficult to remove their objections, when 
 
 1 There is one point which I cannot pass over. It has become the practice in 
 modern books to put marks of musical expression to the words, directing the con- 
 gregation when to sing loud or soft. This implies a habit of congregational per- 
 formance the description of which would make a companion picture to the organ 
 gallery of 1830, It seems to me a practice of inconceivable degradation: one 
 asks in trembling if it is to be extended to the Psalms. It is just as if the con- 
 gregation were school children singing to please a musical inspector, and he 
 a stupid one. 
 
62 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 what they are innocently suffering in the name of art curdles the 
 artist's blood with horror, and keeps him away from church. The 
 artist too, to whom we might look for help, is the rara avis in 
 terris, and, in regard to his sympathy with the clergy, would 
 often be thought by them to deserve the rest of the hexameter ; 
 but it is really to his credit that he is loth to meddle with church 
 music. Its social vexations, its eye to the market, its truckling 
 to vulgar taste and ready subservience to a dominant fashion, 
 which can never (except under the rarest combination of circum- 
 stances) be good ; — all this is more than enough to hold him off. 
 Where then is the appeal ? Quis custodiet ? 
 
 The unwillingness of the clergy 2 to know anything about music 
 might be got over if the music could be set on a proper basis ; 
 and in the present lack of authority and avowed principles, it 
 would be well if such of our cathedral precentors and organists 
 as have the matter at heart would consult and work together 
 with the purpose of instructing pastors and people by the exhi- 
 bition of what is good. This is what we might expect of our 
 religious musical foundations, which are justifying the standing 
 condemnation of utilitarian economists so long as the stipendiaries 
 are content indolently to follow the fortuitous traditions of the 
 books that lie in the choir, supplemented by the penny-a-sheet 
 music of the common shops. In the Universities, too, it should 
 be impossible for an undergraduate not to gain acquaintance with 
 good ecclesiastical music, and this is not ensured by an occasional 
 rare performance of half a dozen old masterpieces which are 
 preserved in heartless compliment to antiquity. It is to such 
 bodies that we must first look for help and guidance to give 
 our church music artistic importance : for let no one think that 
 the church can put the artistic question on one side. There is 
 no escape from art ; art is only the best that man can do, and his 
 second, third, fourth or fifth best are only worse efforts in the 
 same direction, and in proportion as they fall short of the best 
 the more plainly betray their artificiality. To refuse the best for 
 the sake of something inferior of the same kind can never be 
 
 1 It must be due to unwillingness that comparatively so few of our clergy can 
 take their part in the service when it is musical. Village schoolmasters tell me 
 that two hours a week is sufficient in a few months to bring all the children up to 
 a standard of time and tune and reading at sight that would suffice a minor canon. 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HYMN-SINGING 63 
 
 a policy ; it is rather an uncorrected bad habit, that can only 
 be excused by ignorance; and ignorance on the question of music 
 is every day becoming less excusable ; and the growing interest 
 and intelligence which all classes are now showing should force- 
 on religion a better appreciation of her most potent ally. Music 
 being the universal expression of the mysterious and supernatural, 
 the best that man has ever attained to. is capable of uniting in 
 common devotion minds that are only separated by creeds, and 
 it comforts our hope with a brighter promise of unity than 
 any logic offers. And if we consider and ask ourselves what 
 sort of music we should wish to hear on entering a church, 
 we should surely, in describing our ideal, say first of all that it 
 mus. be something different from what is heard elsewhere; that it 
 should be a sacred music, devoted to its purpose, a music whose 
 peace should still passion, whose dignity should strengthen our faith, 
 whose unquestioned beauty should find a home in our hearts, to 
 cheer us in life and death ; a music worthy of the fair temples in 
 which we meet, and of the holy words of our liturgy ; a music 
 whose expression of the mystery of things unseen never allowed 
 any trifling motive to ruffle the sanctity of its reserve. What 
 power for good such a music would have ! 
 
 Now such a music our Church has got, and does not use ; we 
 are content to have our hymn-manuals stuffed with the sort of 
 music which, merging the distinction between sacred and profane, 
 seems designed to make the worldly man feel at home, rather 
 than to reveal to him something of the life beyond his knowledge ; 
 compositions full of cheap emotional effects and bad experi- 
 ments made to be cast aside, the works of the purveyors of 
 marketable fashion, always pleased with themselves, and always 
 to be derided by the succeeding generation l . 
 
 Robert Bridges. 
 
 1 Example is better than precept; and my own venture as a compiler of a hymn- 
 book has made it possible for me to say much that otherwise I should not have 
 said. In The Yat tendon Hymnal, printed by Mr. Horace Hart at the Clarendon Press. 
 Oxford, and to be had of Mr. Frowde, price 20s . will be found a hundred hymns 
 with their music, chosen for a village choir. The music in this book will show 
 what sort of a hj'mnal might be made on my principles, while the notes at the end 
 of the volume will illustrate almost every point in this essay which requires 
 illustration, besides many others. As I write, the last sheets of it are in the 
 press, and the printer promises it in October. 
 
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