I have indicated in a former chapter something of our needs as regards the musical education of children. The problem before me now is how to persuade American men and women into active coöperation in making music. It is obvious that there is only one way of doing this, and that is by singing. Only an infinitesimal number of people can play musical instruments, but nearly everybody can sing. To play requires constant practice. Singing in groups does not. In their right estate every man and every woman should sing.
Now my urgent appeal for singing does not mean that every village, town, or city should turn itself bodily into a huge singing society. Some people will sing better than others and will enjoy it more, or have more time for it. But there are constant opportunities for large groups of people to sing—in church, on Memorial Day, at Christmas time, at patriotic gatherings, or at dedications. Nothing is more striking on such occasions than the total lack of any means of spontaneously expressing that which lies in the consciousness of all, and which cannot be delegated. What a splendid expression of devotion, of commemoration, of dedication, of sacred love for those who died in our Civil War would a thousand voices be, raised up as one in a great, eternal, memorial hymn! What do we do? We hire a brass band to be patriotic, devout, and commemorative for us. This inevitably tends to dull our patriotism and our devotion. To live they must spring forth in some sort of personal expression. In a village I know well, this custom mars an otherwise deeply impressive observance of Memorial Day. The “taps” at the soldiers’ graves in their silent resting places, the sounds of minute guns booming, the long procession of townspeople, the calling of the roll of the small company of soldiers who marched away from that village green half a century ago, with only an occasional feeble “Here” from the handful of survivors, the lowering of the flag on the green with all heads uncovered, all eyes straining upward—these make the ceremony fine and memorable. It needs to complete it only some active expression on the part of every one such as singing would provide.
“I know not at what point of their course, or for how long, but it was from the column nearest him, which is to be the first line, that the King heard, borne on the winds amid their field music, as they marched there, the sound of Psalms—many-voiced melody of a church hymn, well known to him; which had broken out, band accompanying, among those otherwise silent men.” So relates Carlyle, in “Frederick the Great,” of the march of Frederick and his army before the battle of Leuthen. “With men like these, don’t you think I shall have victory this day?” says Frederick. Is not such singing a wonderful thing? Those soldiers, with a common dedication to duty, and a common disdain of death, send up to some dimly sensed Heaven, from the very depths of their being, a song. How otherwise could they express the thoughts and feelings that must have been clamoring for utterance in their sturdy breasts? Their bodies were marching to battle. What of their souls? Shall the very spirit of them slumber on their way to death?
And we? We watch from afar; we are dumb; we look on this profoundly moving ceremony, this simple pageant, and utter nothing of what we feel and what we are. Why do we not sing? Is it not partly because of that self-consciousness which hangs about us like a pall, and partly because we were never made to like singing well enough to pursue it? The former difficulty we could overcome easily enough if the right opportunity continually offered itself. The latter, too, would disappear as occasion arose when we could sing something worth singing. “The Star-Spangled Banner” is a candle-snuffer on the flame of patriotic feeling; never was there an air more unsuited to its purpose. Since we have almost no indigenous national melodies, why should we not sing the old songs, chorals, and hymns that have survived all sorts of national changes and belong to every people? The tune for “America” is not an American tune, neither is it English. It originated in Saxony. There is no nationalism to stand in the way of such music, because it speaks elementally and universally. There are scores of fine melodies which we could well use.
The one place where singing might be fostered is in church. But where the worshipers are asked to sing a hymn pitched too high for them, or one that moves too quickly, or is full of unfamiliar and difficult progressions in both melody and harmony, what other result can be expected than poor singing and the gradual abandonment of all music to a paid choir? The real purpose of the hymn tune has been lost. It was intended to serve the needs of all the people, and to do this it must be simple in both melody and harmony, and within the range Of every man, woman, and child in the congregation. The sturdy old hymns and chorals of our forefathers were so. Nothing is finer in church music than good unison singing in which every one takes part. No skilled choir singing can ever take its place.
Even the manner of singing hymns has changed. Many of them are raced through at a pace which leaves one half the congregation behind, and totally eclipses the other half! In many of the old hymn tunes there is a pause at the end of each line, during which the members of the congregation had a reasonable chance to take breath. Even these pauses have often been eliminated, thus destroying the sense of the music and giving a colder shoulder still to the musical and devotional aspirations of the congregation. (If space permitted I should like to dwell here on the genesis of some of these old tunes. They were deeply embedded in the common life of our remote forefathers, and had no taint of self-consciousness in them. Springing from the soil, they survived all changes of dogma and custom. And they will survive. We shall come back to them when we have survived our present attack of prettiness.)
The decline in hymn-singing is evident enough. Save in churches where the liturgy restrains the ambitions of the choir, almost anything is possible; and even under that restraint there is a constant tendency toward display. What is the office of church music? Is it to astonish or delight the congregation? Is it to supply them with a sacred concert or fine singing? To take their minds off the situation in which they find themselves? To ease the effect of a dull sermon, or obliterate the effect of a good one? To serve as a bait to catch the unwary non-church-goer, or as a means of retaining the waverer within the fold? Or is it to induce devotion and religious feeling, to keep the moment sacred and without intrusion? If the choir is to sing alone, why should we accept from it display pieces, or arrangements from secular music, or silly “sacred” songs overburdened with lush sentiment, or anthems of a certain fluent type composed by anybody who can put a lot of notes together in agreeable sequence? Why should we tolerate the solo in operatic style, or contemptible solo quartette music, suitable (and hardly that) for the end of a commercial “banquet”? Is there, then, no reality behind church music? Is it merely any music set to sacred words? He who has ever studied any art knows that this cannot be true. The finest church music—of which Palestrina and Bach are the greatest exponents—is based on something more than a casual association with sacred words. In the Protestant churches of our cities the music is very largely derived from modern English sources, and I count this an obstacle to our progress. Beginning with the last half of the nineteenth century, English church music has been dominated by a school of composers whose music is charming, or pretty, or melodious, or what-you-will, but is not either profound or devout. Nearly all our organists are, musically, of English descent, but they treat their forefathers with but scant respect. There is no difficulty whatever in procuring good music for choirs. There is a supply suitable for solo singing or chorus, for small choir or large, to be purchased at any music shop. There are a dozen fine composers whose music is never heard in most American churches; composers such as Palestrina, Vittoria, and others of the great period of church music; or Bach, or Gibbons, Byrd, and Purcell, whose music is in the true idiom, an idiom now almost entirely lost; or John Goss, Samuel Wesley, and Thomas Attwood in the early part of the nineteenth century, before the decadence had fairly begun. The earliest of this music is written for voices unaccompanied, and is therefore too difficult for any but a highly trained choir; but there are plenty of simple anthems with organ accompaniment by the early English composers named above, and there are a certain number of Bach’s motets suitable for choirs of moderate ability.
Let me mention “O Thou, the central orb,” by Gibbons, as an example of a fine anthem in the old style, and “Oh, Saviour of the World,” by Goss, as an example of the simpler and later type. These are beautiful, simple, and dignified anthems suitable for city or country choir. If the city choirmaster will give over for a time trying to provide the congregation with brilliant music which is chiefly notable for its extravagance of technique and its striking effects, his listeners will, perhaps, be able to revert to that state of quiet devotion which the rest of the service has induced. Many choir directors would doubtless like to use simpler and more devotional music, but are hindered from doing so because they feel upon them the weight of the opinion and taste of the congregation, and perhaps of the preacher. Everybody, regardless of his qualifications for doing so, feels at liberty to criticize the music he hears in church.
Social and musical clubs for women exist in great numbers all over the United States. They are often useful in practical ways, but their contact with artistic matters is, on the contrary, often ineffectual. They offer their members continual sips at different springs, but no deep draught at one. The average member of a women’s club, if she is to be helped in anything, must be helped from the position in which she then is; and this is particularly true of music. But she is torn out of her natural environment and asked to listen to a recital of, say, modern French music, not one note of which answers to her intelligence or her feelings. The passion for the last thing in music without any knowledge of the first is fatal to any one. And when one considers the enormous membership in clubs for women in this country, one can but wish that more effort were made to help the individual to progress simply and naturally step by step. It is not to be expected that the average woman, whose time is very likely occupied with domestic cares, should make an extended study of music; but it is possible to give her a chance to hear a few simple, good compositions, and to hear them several times during a season, so that she may learn to understand them. The more experienced and more advanced members of women’s clubs are apt to dominate in these matters and to forget the needs of the others, and there is certain to be a few rare souls who dwell entirely in the rarefied atmosphere of the very latest music, and who look down on the common ignorance of the mass. Some women’s clubs purvey only the performance of great players or singers, and pride themselves on their lists of celebrities, all too forgetful of those delicately adjusted scales which demand equal weight in kind. If a women’s club in a small town (or in a large one, for that matter) should abjure for the moment pianoforte and vocal recitals of the latest music, and should proceed to devote a little time to singing, in unison, some fine old songs in which every one could take part, a fair start would be made. I am not attempting to belittle the musical capabilities of these clubs, nor am I decrying expert performances; I am merely speaking for the average woman who has had little opportunity for musical education or musical experience, and who is usually left far behind as club programmes run, yet who is capable of understanding music if it be brought to her in the proper manner. Ask her to sing with you and she is brought into the fold instead of straying blindly outside. Every meeting of a women’s club (why qualify?—of any club, save, perhaps, a burglar’s, where silence would be desirable) should begin with a hearty song. Step by step—not a violent leap to a dizzy height; we cannot become musical by the force of our aspiration even though it be quite sincere; nature unrelentingly exacts of us that same slow growth which she herself makes. There is no to-morrow.
If all the people in a community expressed themselves at appropriate times and seasons by singing, it would naturally follow that a goodly number of them would form themselves into a singing society. This society would satisfy the desire of the community to hear such music as can be performed only after considerable practice. I cannot emphasize too strongly the connection between the community and the singing society. The latter should be the answer to the community’s desire, and not be a spectacle—if I may mix my metaphors to that extent.