Preface
include such beautiful tunes as Dykes' 'Dominus regit me' or Stainer's 'In Memoriam', yet feel that nothing but gain can result from the exclusion of certain other tunes, which are worthy neither of the congregations who sing them, the occasions on which they are sung, nor the composers who wrote them.
The committee believe that many clergymen and organists are now realizing their responsibility in this matter, and will welcome a tune-book in which enervating tunes are reduced to a minimum. The usual argument in favour of bad music is that the fine tunes are doubtless ‘musically correct’, but that the people want ‘something simple’. Now the expression ‘musically correct’ has no meaning; the only ‘correct’ music is that which is beautiful and noble. As for simplicity, what could be simpler than ‘St. Anne’ or ‘The Old Hundredth’, and what could be finer?
It is indeed a moral rather than a musical issue. No doubt it requires a certain effort to tune oneself to the moral atmosphere implied by a fine melody; and it is far easier to dwell in the miasma of the languishing and sentimental hymn tunes which so often disfigure our services. Such poverty of heart may not be uncommon, but at least it should not be encouraged by those who direct the services of the Church; it ought no longer to be true anywhere that the most exalted moments of a church-goers week are associated with music that would not be tolerated in any place of secular entertainment.
There are, however, many who recognize this bad state of things, but are timid about removing old favourites. Those who have this fear should remember that most of our ‘old favourites’ are of very recent growth, dating at the earliest from the year 1861— a very short life for a hymn tune; also that it does not take more than a couple of years to make a tune which congregations like into an ‘old favourite’, and furthermore that it is not by any means necessarily bad music which is popular. The average congregation likes fine melody when it can get it, but it is apt to be undiscriminating, and will often take to bad melody when good is not forthcoming. Is it not worth while making a vigorous effort to-day
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