The soundest writers on art maintain that art, taken abstractly, is neither moral nor immoral. It occupies a sphere apart from that of religion or ethics. It may lend its aid to make religious and moral ideas more persuasive; it may, through the touch of pure beauty, overbear material and prosaic interests and help to produce an atmosphere in which spiritual ideas may range without friction, but the mind must first have been made morally sensitive by other than purely artistic means. It is the peculiar gift of music that it affords a speedier and more immediate means of fusion between ideas of sensuous beauty and those of devotional experience than any other of the art sisterhood. It is the indefiniteness of music as compared with painting and sculpture, the intensity of its action as compared with the beauty of architecture and decoration, which gives to it its peculiar power. To this searching force of music, its freedom from reminiscences of actual life or individual experience, is due the prominence that has been assigned to music in the observances of religion in all times and nations. Piety falls into the category of the most profound and absorbing of human emotions—together with such sentiments as patriotism and love of persons—which instinctively utter themselves not in prose but in poetry, not in ordinary unimpassioned speech, but in rhythmic tone. Music is the art most competent to enter into such an ardent and mobile state of mind. The ecstasy aroused in the lover of music by the magic of his art is more nearly analogous than any other producible by art to that mystic rapture described by religious enthusiasts. Worship is disconnected from all the concerns of physical life; it raises the subject into a super-earthly region—it has for the moment nothing to do with [400] temporal activities; it is largely spontaneous and unreflective. The absorption of the mind in contemplation, the sense of inward peace which accompanies emancipation from the disturbances of ordinary life, those joyous stirrings of the soul when it seems to catch glimpses of eternal blessedness, have a striking resemblance to phases of musical satisfaction where the analytical faculties are not called into exercise. Hence the readiness with which music combines with these higher experiences. Music in its mystic, indefinable action seems to make the mood of prayer more active, to interpret it to itself, and by something that seems celestial in the harmony to make the mood deeper, stronger, more satisfying than it would be if shut up within the soul and deprived of this means of deliverance. Music also, by virtue of its universal and impersonal quality, furnishes the most efficient means of communication among all the individuals engaged in a common act; the separate personalities are, we might say, dissolved in the general tide of rapture symbolized by the music, and the common sentiment is again enhanced by the consciousness of sympathy between mind and mind to which the music testifies, and which it is so efficient to promote.
The substance of this whole discussion, therefore, is that those who have any dealing with music in the Church must take into account the inherent laws of musical effect. Music is not a representative art; it bears with it an order of impressions untranslatable into those of poetry or painting. To use Walter Pater’s phrase, “it presents no matter of sentiment [401] or thought separable from the special form in which it is conveyed to us.” It may, through its peculiar power of stimulating the sensibility and conveying ideas of beauty in the purest, most abstract guise, help to make the mind receptive to serious impressions; but in order to excite a specifically religious feeling it must coöperate with other impressions which act more definitely upon the understanding. The words to which the music is sung, being submerged in the mind of a music-lover by the tide of enchanting sound, are not sufficient for this purpose unless they are known and dwelt upon in advance; and even then they too need reinforcement out of the environment in which the musical service is placed. The singing of the choir must be contrived and felt as a part of the office of prayer. The spirit and direction of the whole service for the day must be unified; the music must be a vital and organic element in this unit. All parts of the service must be controlled by the desire for beauty and fitness. Music, however beautiful, loses something of its effect if its accompaniments are not in harmony with it. This desideratum is doubtless most easily attained in a liturgic service. One great advantage of an ancient and prescribed form is that its components work easily to a common impression, and in course of time the ritual tends to become venerable as well as dignified and beautiful. The non-liturgic method may without difficulty borrow this conception of harmony and elevation, applying it so far as its own customs and rules of public worship allow. How this unity of action in the several factors of a non-liturgic [402] service may best be effected is outside the purpose of this book to discuss. The problem is not a difficult one when minister, choir leader, and church members are agreed upon the principle. In every church there are sanctities of time and place; there are common habits of mind induced by a common faith; there are historic traditions,—all contributing to a unity of feeling in the congregation. These may all be cultivated and enhanced by a skilfully contrived service, devised and moulded in recognition of the psychologic law that an art form acts with full power only when the mind is prepared by anticipation and congenial accessories.
This conclusion is, however, very far from being the end of the matter. The most devout intention will not make the church music effective for its ideal end if the aesthetic element is disregarded. There seems to be in many quarters a strange distrust of beauty and skill in musical performance, as if artistic qualities were in some way hostile to devotion. This distrust is a survival of the old Calvinistic fear of everything studied, formal, and externally beautiful in public worship. In other communities the church music is simply neglected, as one of the results of the excessive predominance given to the sermon in the development of Protestantism. It is often deemed sufficient, also, if the church musicians are devout men and women, in forgetfulness of the fact that a musical performance that is irritating to the nerves can never be a help to devotion. These enemies to artistic church music—hostility, indifference, and ignorance—are especially injurious in a country where, as in America, the general [403] knowledge and taste in music are rapidly growing. Those churches which, for any reason whatever, keep their musical standard below the level of that which prevails in the educated society around them are not acting for their own advantage, materially or spiritually. President Faunce was right when he told one of the churches of his denomination: “Your music must be kept noble and good. If your children hear Wagner and the other great masters in their schools, they will not be satisfied with ‘Pull for the shore’ in the church.” Those churches, for example, which rely mainly upon the “Gospel Songs” should soberly consider if it is profitable in the long run to maintain a standard of religious melody and verse far below that which prevails in secular music and literature. “The Church is the art school of the common man,” says Professor Riehl; and while it may be answered that it is not the business of the Church to teach art, yet the Church cannot afford to keep its spiritual culture out of harmony with the higher intellectual movements of the age. One whose taste is fed by the poetry of such masters as Milton and Tennyson, by the music of such as Händel and Beethoven, and whose appreciations are sharpened by the best examples of performance in the modern concert hall, cannot drop his taste and critical habit when he enters the church door. The same is true in a modified degree in respect to those who have had less educational advantages. It is a fallacy to assert that the masses of the people are responsive only to that which is trivial and sensational. In any case, what shall be said of a church that is satisfied to leave its votaries upon the same intellectual and spiritual level upon which it finds them?
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In all this discussion I have had in mind the steady and more normal work of the Church. Forms of song which, to the musician, lie outside the pale of art may have a legitimate place in seasons of special religious quickening. No one who is acquainted with the history of religious propagation in America will despise the revival hymn, or deny the necessity of the part it has played. But these seasons of spiritual upheaval are temporary and exceptional; they are properly the beginning not the end of the Church’s effort. The revival hymn may be effective in soul-winning, it is inadequate when treated as an element in the larger task of spiritual development.
There is another reason for insistence upon beauty and perfection in all those features of public worship into which art enters—to a devout mind the most imperative of all reasons. This is so forcibly stated by the great Richard Hooker that it will be sufficient to quote his words and leave the matter there. Speaking of the value of noble architecture and adornment in connection with public acts of religion, he goes on to say: “We do thereby give unto God a testimony of our cheerful affection which thinketh nothing too dear to be bestowed about the furniture of his service; as also because it serveth to the world for a witness of his almightiness, whom we outwardly honor with the chiefest of outward things, as being of all things himself incomparably the greatest. To set forth the majesty of kings, his vicegerents in this world, the most gorgeous and rare [405] treasures which the world hath, are procured. We think belike that he will accept what the meanest of them would disdain.”[84]
In urging onward the effort after beauty and perfection in church music I have no wish to set up any single style as a model,—in fact, a style competent to serve as a universal model does not exist. There can be no general agreement, for varied conditions demand diverse methods. The Catholic music reformer points to the ancient Gregorian chant and the masterpieces of choral art of the sixteenth century as embodying the ideal which he wishes to assert. The Episcopalian has the Anglican chant and anthem, noble and appropriate in themselves, and consecrated by the associations of three eventful centuries. But the only hereditary possession of the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and other non-liturgic bodies is the crude psalmody of the early Calvinists and Puritans which, unlike the Lutheran choral, has none of the musical potencies out of which a church art can be developed. In these societies there is no common demand or opportunity which, in the absence of a common musical heritage, can call forth any new and distinctive form of ecclesiastical song. They must be borrowers and adapters, not creators. The problem of these churches is the application of existing forms to new conditions—directing the proved powers of music along still higher lines of service in the epoch of promise which is now opening before them.
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In this era just upon us, in which new opportunities demand of the Church in America new methods throughout the whole range of its action, music will have a larger part to play than even heretofore. It is of great importance that her service should be employed intelligently. Both ministers and choir leaders should be aware of the nature of the problems which ecclesiastic music presents. They should know something of the experience of the Church in its historic dealings with this question, of the special qualities of the chief forms of church song which have so greatly figured in the past, and of the nature of the effect of music upon the mind both by itself alone and in collusion with other religious influences. How many ministers and choir-masters are well versed in these matters? What are the theological seminaries and musical conservatories doing to disseminate knowledge and conviction on this subject? In the seminaries lectures are given on liturgiology and hymnology; but what are hymns and liturgies without music? And how many candidates for the ministry are prepared to second the efforts of church musicians in musical improvement and reform? I am, of course, aware that in a few of the seminaries of the non-liturgic denominations work in this department of ecclesiology has been effectively begun. In the conservatories organ playing and singing, both solo and chorus, are taught, but usually from the technical side,—the adaptation of music to the spiritual demands of the Church is rarely considered. Every denomination needs a St. Cecilia Society to convince the churches of the spiritual quickening that lies in genuine church music and the mischief in the false, to arouse church members to an understanding of the injury that attends an obvious incongruity between the character of the music and the spirit of prayer which it is the purpose of the established offices of worship to create, and to show how all portions of the service may act in harmony.
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