The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-26 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 26, 1868

CHURCH CHOIRS.

Canon Oakeley has done an invaluable ser-
vice to piety and good taste, according to our
notions, in the recent pamphlets he has pub-
lished on the question of singing in our
churches. It is not our province to enter

into the question in its ecclesiastical aspect.
The Archbishop of Westminster has so clearly,
taught us what our view should be in that re-
spect that it would simply be a piece of imper-
tinence were we to offer an opinion. But what,

possibly, may not be unbecoming in us to do,
is to express our strong admiration at the
happy way in which the express wish of autho-
rity—put, indeed, in language which only just
falls short of a command—coincides with the

teaching of the learned and accomplished Canon
of Westminster, and with what seems to us
. .

the only sound rules of healthy taste.
That the true spirit of ecclesiastical music
should have become lost in a country which
has had the spiritual life crushed out of it
by penal laws is not very surprising. And
that the direction and arrangement of choirs
and church music should have fallen into the
hands of well-intentioned ladies and gentlemen
in many of our congregations, is but a neces-
sary consequence of the cramp from which the
Church has suffered. Priests, doubtless, have
been glad to get a little singing at any price
almost, and in every congregation there is
generally a certain clique amongst " the faith-
ful " who are only too glad to get things in
their own hands, and to accommodate things
to their own tastes. No man who has had
to do with choirs of church singers has had
much reason to call in question the criticism
of the Pagan Horace. Of all the touchy
people this world ever produced, those who
have been accustomed to sing in church choirs
are without comparison the touchiest. Be
the choir one of the fashionable ones attached
to fashionable churches, or are they the vulgar
struggling of a parcel of country girls and lads
in a village hamlet, the result is about the
same. There is, we suppose, something more
nearly touching the centre of the human
" ego ' in the voice of a man or woman than
in anything else. The sound that they are
enabled to emit from their throats possibly is
something more intensely personal, is more
absolutely the possession of the singers, than
anything else ; and, consequently, any disre-
spect, or want of appreciation of that peculiar
form of sounds, strikes more forcibly home than
any other kind of blow. We have known per-
sons of considerable pretensions to piety, who
could bear with a saintlike patience to be told
that they were somewhat untruthful, or not
straightforward in all their ways, who could
not stand for a moment to be told that they
were singing rather flat, or that Miss Bobkins
sang with more taste and expression than
themselves. Some take their sensitiveness out
in one way, some in another. Miss Tremolo
is almost ill when Miss Tambureen is going
through her favourite "Et incarnatus," and
Mr. Blunderhead, who is of no religion in par-
ticular, is busily engaged with the latest in-
telligence in his newspaper while Mr. Growler
and Mrs. Squeekam are going through a
flourishing piece of figured sentiment at the
offertory ; and he only becomes conscious of
the obligations which are upon him when he
is roused to commence a solo at the elevation,
which draws tears of devotion from Mrs.
Greene and her two fat daughters, who go
in for groceries and British wines as a matter
of business, and romance as a matter of amuse-
ment. Mrs. F. Sharpe and Miss B. Flatt are
rival prima donnas. The whole service, as far
as their minds are concerned, consists in strain-
ing every nerve to outdo each other in the
solos ; and, between times, in thinking one of
the other—" If she only knew how she has
fallen off, and what a voice she has got, she
would not stick herself up there so boldly."
Some are sentimental singers. They have
learnt from good masters all the unreality of
acting a musical part, and sing with nearly as
much feeling, but not half so much devotion,
as some of the second-class chorus performers
at Covent Garden. Others are wondering all
the time what so-and-so will think of their
voices, and tune their song to please some spe-
cial friend, who is drinking in the fascinating
strains over his Garden of the Soul in the left
hand benches. The greater part of the medio-
crities are simply living in lively anticipations
of the break up of Miss Bobkin's voice, Miss
Tremolo's, and Miss Tambureen's, entertaining
distant hopes that Mr. Blunderhead, Growler,
and Mrs. Squeekam's, together with that never-
ending Mrs. F. Sharpe, and Miss B. Flatt, will
either get an incurable cold some day, go to
India, or get up one of those fortnightly quar-
rels, which may possibly end in their giving
up religion of a Sunday morning altogether.
That such a consummation as this has before
now taken place, we ourselves can assure the
reader from personal experience. The moral
discord of a choir of church singers, with such
extraordinary mixtures of conceit, vanity,
touchiness, worldliness, profanity, indifference,
self-assertion, as is difficult to describe, forms
a somewhat unharmonious accompaniment to
the deacon, subdeacon, and priest at the altar,
who with love, reverence, and devotion take
their part in the adorable mysteries, and offer
that tremendous sacrifice in presence of which
the angels stand in awe.
That all the singing portion of every church
in this country possesses the qualifications of
which we have been giving a faint description,
we are not at all ready to assert. Our picture,
possibly, may be a little overdrawn. We are
rather puffing together a bouquet made up
of flowers, plucked out of different beds, than
pointing out what we have observed growing
together in one alone. That such qualities have
existed we do not assert so much as a matter
of conjecture and evidence, as a matter, from
time to time, of personal observation. And that
we have not put together one quarter of the
abuses, mischiefs, and worse, that manifest
themselves amongst singers at different inter-
vals, will be admitted, we feel confident, by
any man of experience and of observation on
this point. Looking, then, upon the matter as
a simple question of taste, we decidedly con-
sider it incongruous to have Mass going on
at one end of the church, and such perfor-
mances as we have been describing at the other.
And when we go on further and remember
that these musicians are the representatives of
the angels, or, at all events, of the loVe, re-
verence, praise, devotion, and thanksgiving of
the people of God ; and that before His holy
altar, and in His sacred presence, and in the
sight of His assembled people, they sing forth
holiest words at holiest times, we cannot help
the feeling crossing us that, as a matter of
taste, we should prefer something more in
harmony with the solemnity and holiness of the
occasion than the complicated display of vocal
blunders made by pretentious men and women
over music, which very often is far beyond
their capabilities. After the moral incongruity,
to us, nothing is so distasteful as the jarring
effect upon the ear and temper, of music of
which one knows every.note by heart, being
strained and jangled, twisted and excruciated,
and hunted to death by a pack of half-in-
structed and self-confident singers. To bring
into church all the mannerism, method, and
mimicry of the theatre, without the possibility
of being able to introduce its fascinations, or
that which humanly bears about with it a
charm, is one of the most extraordinary blun-
ders we are acquainted with. The opera may
be very good in its way, but it certainly is
not quite the thing for a Catholic church. But,
where all that belongs to the opera in the way
of singing is introduced, except that which
alone lends it a beauty, the fault turns into a
sickly stupidity. It is like an antiquated man
of fashion thinking to ingratiate himself into
a new society by presenting himself without
his wig, his teeth, his paint, and those other
appurtenances which keep for the time being
body and soul together, and prevent the vari-
ous portions of his mortal coil from unwinding
I themselves before the discriminating public.
Nearly all ; the inconveniences and all the
bad taste we have been referring to will be
avoided by substituting boys ig the place of