A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing. Bridges Robert
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us take this latter question first, and inquire what emotions it is usual, proper, or possible to express by congregational singing of hymns. William Law, in his Serious Call, has an interesting, I may say amusing, chapter on the duty of all to sing, whether they have any turn or inclination for it or no. All should sing, he says, even though they dislike doing so; and I think that what he affirms of private devotion applies with greater force to public worship. It should satisfy the most ardent advocate of congregational singing, and it goes certainly to the root of the matter.
'It is so right and beneficial to devotion, has so much effect upon our hearts, that it may be insisted on as a common rule for all persons; … for singing is as much the proper use of a psalm as devout supplication is the proper use of a form of prayer: and a psalm only read is very much like a prayer that is only looked over.... If you were to tell a person that has such a song, that he need not sing it, that it was sufficient to peruse it, he would wonder what you meant, … as if you were to tell him that he should only look at his food, to see whether it was good, but need not eat it.... You will perhaps say that singing is a particular talent, that belongs only to particular people, and that you have neither voice nor ear for music.
'If you had said that singing is a general talent, and that people differ in that as they do in all other things, you had said something much truer.
'For how vastly people differ in the talent of thinking, which is not only common to all men, but seems to be the very essence of human nature: … yet no one desires to be excused from thought because he has not this talent in any fine degree....
'If a person were to forbear praying because he had an odd tone in his voice, he would have as good an excuse as he that forbears from singing psalms because he has but little management of his voice....
'These songs make a sense (of) delight in God they awaken holy devotion: they teach how to ask: they kindle a holy flame....
'Singing is the natural effect of JOY in the heart, … and it is also the natural means of raising EMOTIONS OF JOY in the mind: such JOY AND THANKFULNESS to God as is the highest perfection of a divine and holy life.'
Now though I cannot feel the force of all Law's arguments nor easily bring myself to believe that a person who dislikes singing, and has no ear for music, will readily find any comfortable assistance to his private devotion from making efforts to hit off the notes of the scale; yet I feel that Law's position is in the main sound, and that he has correctly specified the emotion most proper to that kind of uncultured singing which he describes: and though congregational psalm-singing necessarily involves a greater musical capacity than that assumed in Law's extreme case, and may therefore have a wider field, yet we may begin by laying down that JOY, PRAISE, and THANKSGIVING give us the first main head of what is proper to be expressed, and we may extend this head by adding ADORATION and perhaps the involved emotions of AWE and PEACE and even the attitude of CONTEMPLATION.
In such a subject as the classification of emotions as they may be expressed by music of one kind or another, it is plainly impossible to make any definite tabulation with which all would agree. The very names of the emotions will, to different minds, call up different associations of feeling. If any agreement could be arrived at, it would be at the expense of distinction; and all that I can expect is to have my distinctions understood, and in the main agreed with. And as I am most ready to grant to the reader his right to a different opinion on any detail, I beg of him the same toleration, and that he will rather try to follow my meaning than dwell on discrepancies which may be due to a fault of expression, or to a difference of meaning which he and I may attach to the same word.
With this apology in preamble, I will attempt to make some classification of emotions as they seem to me to be the possible basis for musical expression in congregational singing.
We have already one class: I would add a second, to include all the hymns which exhibit the simple attitude of PRAYER.
A third class I would put under the head of FAITH. Examples of this class will no doubt often cross with those of the first class, but they will specify themselves as CELEBRATIONS of events of various COMMEMORATION, introducing a distinct form, namely NARRATION, which is a very proper and effective form for general praise.
Also this section will include all the hymns of BROTHERHOOD and FELLOWSHIP, and of SPIRITUAL CONFLICT, with the correlative invitatory and exhortatory songs, as modified by what will be said later.
Also, lastly, under this same head of Faith, the DOCTRINAL hymns, and professions of creed whether sectarian or otherwise, which, if the definition be taken widely, make a large and popular class, well exemplified by the German hymns of the Reformation, or by those of our Wesleyan revival; strong with the united feeling of a small body, asserting itself in the face of opposition: concerning which we will not speak further, except to recall the fact that this kind of enthusiasm was not absent from the causes which first introduced hymns into the Western Church.
I believe that this is a pretty full list of all the attitudes of mind that can be properly expressed by congregational singing; and if we turn to other emotions which are made the subject of church hymns, we shall, I think, see that they are all of them liable to suffer damage by being entrusted to the rough handling of general vociferation.
Such will be all hymns of DIVINE AFFECTION and YEARNING; all LAMENTS and CONSOLATIONS; all descriptions of spiritual conditions which imply personal experience and feeling, as ABASEMENT, HUMILIATION, CONTRITION, REPENTANCE, RESIGNATION, SELF-DEVOTION, CONVICTION, and SATISFACTION.
Here I feel that many readers will be inclined to dissent from what I say, and as I shall not again recur to Law, I should like, in order to show my meaning, to call up his extreme example of an unmusical person singing in private devotion. If one pictures such a case as he supposes, is it not clear, whether one imagines oneself the actor or the unwilling auditor, that while such an exhibition of joy might perhaps pass, yet a similar incompetent attempt to express any of the last-named emotions would be only ridiculous? But between this single worshipper and the congregation the incompetence seems to me only a question of degree; while in the far more considerable respect of the sincerity of the feeling in the hearts of those expressing it, Law's singer has every advantage; indeed no objection on this score can be raised to him. But now suppose for a moment that he has not the emotion at heart corresponding to his attempt at song, and I think the differentiation of motives for congregational singing will seem justifiable.
All these last-named emotions,–which I have taken from congregational hymn-books,–and I suppose there may be more of them,–call for delicacy of treatment. A Lamentation, for instance, which might seem at first sight as if it would gain force by volume, will, if it is realistic or clumsy, become unmanly, almost so as to be ridiculous, and certainly depressing to the spirit rather than purifying. In fact while many of the subjects require beautiful expression, they are also more properly used when offered as inspiring ideals; and to assume them to be of common attainment or experience is to degrade them from their supreme sanctity. But in thus ruling them unfit for general singing one must distinguish large miscellaneous congregations from small united bodies, in which a more intimate emotion may be natural: and as there is no exact line of distinction here, so there is no objection to the occasional and partial intrusion of some of these more intimate subjects into congregational hymns.
To this first question then, as to what emotions are fit to be expressed by congregational music, the answer appears to be that the more general the singing, the more general and simple should be the emotion and that the universally fitting themes are those of simple praise, prayer, or faith: and we might inquire whether one fault of our modern hymn-books may not be their attempt to supply congregational music to unfitting themes.
To the next question, Whose emotion is this congregational music to excite or heighten? the answer is plain: It is the average man, or one rather below the average, the uneducated, as St. Augustin says the weaker, mind and that in England is, at least artistically, a narrow mind and a vulgar being. And it may of course be alleged that the music in our hymn-books which is intolerable to the more sensitive minds was not put there for them, but would justify itself in its supposed fitness for the lower classes. 'What use,' the pastor would say to one who, on the ground of tradition advocated the employment of the old plain-song