CHAPTER XI
Directing the Church Choir
THE PROBLEMIn taking up the special problems of conducting involved in directing a church choir, we shall first of all need to consider the dual nature of church music—its religio-artistic aspect, and in studying the matter from this standpoint we shall soon discover that most of the difficulties that have encompassed church music in the past can be traced directly or indirectly to a conflict or a lack of balance between these two factors. The churchman has not been sufficiently interested in the art side of church music, while the music director, organist, and singers have all too frequently been not only entirely out of sympathy with the religious work of the church, but have usually been wholly ignorant concerning the purpose and possibilities of music in the church service. The result in most churches at the present time is either that the music is vapid or even offensive from the art standpoint; or else that it emphasizes the purely artistic side so strongly that it entirely fails to perform its function as an integral part of a service whose raison d'être is, of course, to inculcate religious feeling. "The church wishes for worship in music, but not for the worship of music," is said to have been the statement of Father Haberl at the Saint Cecilia Conference in Mainz (1884).[1] And it is indeed a far cry from this demand to the very evident deification of music that exists in many of our modern city churches, with their expensive soloists and their utter failure to cause music to minister as "the
- ↑ Quoted by Curwen on the title page of Studies in Worship Music (second series).
