IV. AN EXPERIMENT
I live in a town of some six thousand inhabitants which about answers to the description given near the beginning of this article. There was a singing society in the place about thirty years ago, but since then there has been little choral singing. Two years ago I asked some thirty people to come together to practice choral singing. I then stated that I should like to train them if they would agree to two conditions: first, that we should sing none but the very best music, and second, that our concerts should be free to the townspeople. These conditions were at once agreed to and we started rehearsing. We found it possible to get the use of the largest church containing a good organ, and we found four people who played the violin and two the violoncello. Our little orchestra finally grew until we had some eight or ten string players. We borrowed kettledrums and one of our enthusiasts learned to play them.
We have given three concerts, at each of which the church was more than filled—it seats about six hundred people. Our programmes have contained Brahms’s “Schicksalslied” (Song of Fate) and parts of his “Requiem,” Bach’s motet, “I Wrestle and Pray,” arias from the “St. Matthew Passion,” and similar compositions. Our soloists have been members of our chorus, with little previous experience of such music as we have been singing, but with a profound sensibility to it brought about by continued practice of it. The townspeople who have come to hear our music have given certain evidence of a fact which I have for many years known to be true, namely, that when people have a chance to know thoroughly a great composition it invariably secures their complete allegiance. We have therefore repeated our performance of these various works, sometimes singing one piece twice in the same concert. We have given, for example, the “Schicksalslied” three times in two years, and both singers and audience are completely won over to it.
Our singing society is supported by the payment of fifty cents each by any individual who cares to subscribe. We give two open concerts a year, at which six hundred people hear the finest choral music at a total annual expense of about seventy-five dollars. Every one connected with the project gives his or her services free. Our concerts take place on Sunday afternoons. At the last one I tried an interesting experiment. Bach’s motet, “I Wrestle and Pray,” is based, as is common in his choral pieces, on a chorale which is sung by the sopranos in unison, with florid counterpoints in the other parts. At the end the chorale is given in its original form, so that the congregation may join in the singing of it. It was a simple matter for us to get six hundred copies of this chorale reproduced by mimeograph, and these were distributed in the pews. The result was almost electrifying to one who had heard the feeble church singing of feebler hymns in our churches. The second time the motet was sung—we performed it at the beginning and at the end of this concert—nearly every one joined in and the echoes rolled as they had never rolled before in that church. Why? These very same people send up feeble, timid, disorganized, slightly out-of-tune sounds every Sunday morning in their various churches. Has a miracle happened that they are lustily singing together? Not at all. They have merely been offered an opportunity to do what they are all quite capable of doing, namely, singing a hymn suited to them. This chorale has a range of but five tones—from f to c; it is largely diatonic, proceeding step by step of the scale, and it is noble and inspiring. How often had such an opportunity been presented to them before? Why not?
The members of our chorus are such people as one would find in most American towns of the same size. Perhaps we are more than usually fortunate in our solo singers and our orchestra. I believe the chief reason why a project like this might be difficult in many places is because it might not be possible to find a leader who cared more for Bach and Brahms than for lesser composers. The technical problem is not extreme, but the leader must have unbounded belief in the best music and tolerate nothing less. The moment this latter condition lapses, choral singing will lapse—as it would deserve to do.
There are many small communities where choral concerts on a large scale are occasionally given. Great effort and great expense are not spared. Several hundred voices, a hired orchestra, and hired soloists make the event notable. But the music performed is of such a character that no one wants to hear it again; neither the singers who practice it nor the audience who listen to it are moved or uplifted. There have even been systematic efforts in some middle western states to establish community singing. The effect of such efforts depends there, as here, on the kind of music which people are asked to sing, for this is the heart of the whole matter. No advance in music, or in anything else, can be expected without constant striving for the very best. And it is quite within bounds to say that most of these efforts are nullified by lack of a really high standard. Finally, let me say that a concert of good music by a local choral society is, to the people of any community, immensely more valuable than a paid musical demonstration by performers from abroad which costs five times as much money.
V. MUSIC AS A SOCIAL FORCE
Leaving this actual experience and its effects on the community, let us ask ourselves what this singing means to the individuals who do it. In the first place, it makes articulate something within them which never finds expression in words or acts. In the second place, it permits them to create beauty instead of standing outside it. Or, to speak still more definitely, it not only gives them an intimate familiarity with some great compositions, but it accustoms them to the technique by means of which music expresses itself. They learn to make melodic lines, to add a tone which changes the whole character of a chord; they learn how themes are disposed in relation to one another; they come into intimate contact with the actual materials of the art by handling them. This, we do not need to say, is the key to the knowledge and understanding of anything. You cannot understand life, or love, or hate, or objects, or ideas, until you have dealt in them yourself. Singing has the profound psychological advantage of giving active issue to that love of beauty which is usually entirely passive.
The artist has two functions: he draws, or paints, or models; he uses language or sounds. This comprises his technique. But he also possesses imaginative perception. Now, nothing is more certain than that our understanding of what he does must be in kind. We learn to understand his technique by actual experience of it. So, also, we learn to enter into the higher qualities of his art by the exercise of the same faculties which he uses. Our feelings, our minds, and our imaginations must take a reflection from him as in a mirror. If the glass is blurred or the angle of reflection distorted we cannot see the image in its perfection. The light comes from we know not where.
Let any reader of these words ask himself if the statement they contain of the qualities of music and of our relation to it could not with equal force be applied to his own business or occupation. Is not his understanding of that business or occupation based on these two essentials: first, familiarity with its methods and materials, and, second, some conception of the real meaning, significance, and possibility that lie behind its outward appearance and manifestation?