CHAPTER XII
PROBLEMS OF CHURCH MUSIC IN AMERICA

In the foregoing sketch of the rise and growth of music in the Western Church no account was taken of a history of church music in America. If by art history we mean a record of progressive changes, significant of a persistent impulse which issues in distinctive styles and schools, the chronicles of ecclesiastical song in this country hardly come within the scope of history. No new forms or methods have arisen on this side of the Atlantic. The styles of composition and the systems of practice which have existed among us have simply been transferred from the older countries across the sea. Every form of church music known in Europe flourishes in America, but there is no native school of religious music, just as there is no American school of secular music. The Puritan colonists brought with them a few meagre volumes of metrical psalms, and a dozen or so of tunes wherewith to sing them in the uncouth fashion which already prevailed in England. They brought also the rigid Calvinistic hostility to everything that is studied and uniform in religious ceremony, and for a century or more they seemed to glory in the distinction of maintaining church song in the most barbarous condition that 395[391] this art has ever suffered since the founding of Christianity. It was not possible that this state of affairs could endure in a community that was constantly advancing in education and in the embellishments of life, and a bitter conflict arose between puritanic tradition and the growing perception of the claims of fitness and beauty. One who would amuse himself with the grotesque controversies which raged around this question among the pious New England colonists, the acrid disputes between the adherents of the “usual way” and the “rulable way” of singing psalmody, the stern resistance to choirs and to organs, and the quaint annals of the country singing-school, may find rich gratification in some of the books of Mrs. Earle, especially The Sabbath in Puritan New England. The work of such reformers as William Billings in the eighteenth century and Lowell Mason in the nineteenth, the first concerts of the Handel and Haydn Society, the influx of the German culture shifting all American music upon new foundations, are all landmarks which show how rapid and thorough has been our advance in musical scholarship and taste, but which also remind us how little of our achievement has been really indigenous.

In spite of the poverty of original invention which forbids us to claim that American church music has in any way contributed to the evolution of the art, there is no epoch in this art’s history which possesses a more vital interest to the American churchman of the present day. We have found amid all the fluctuations of ecclesiastical music, mediaeval and modern, 396[392] Catholic and Protestant, one ever-recurring problem, which is no sooner apparently settled than new conditions arise which force it once more upon the attention of minister and layman. The choice of a style of music which shall most completely answer the needs of worship as the conceptions and methods of public worship vary among different communities and in different epochs, and which at the same time shall not be unworthy of the claims of music as a fine art,—this is the historic dilemma which is still, as ever, a fruitful source of perplexity and discord. The Catholic and Episcopal Churches are less disturbed by this spectre than their non-liturgic brethren. An authoritative ritual carries its laws over upon music also; tradition, thus fortified, holds firm against innovation, and the liturgic and clerical conception of music gives a stability to musical usages which no aberrations of taste can quite unsettle. But in the non-liturgic churches of America one sees only a confusion of purposes, a lack of agreement, an absence of every shade of recognized authority. The only tradition is that of complete freedom of choice. There is no admitted standard of taste; the whole musical service is experimental, subject to the preferences, more or less capricious, of choir-master or music committee. There is no system in the separate societies that may not be overthrown by a change of administration. The choir music is eclectic, drawn indiscriminately from Catholic, German, and English sources; or if it is of American composition it is merely an obvious imitation of one of these three. The congregational music ranges from 397[393] the German choral to the “Gospel song,” or it may, be an alternation of these two incongruous styles. The choir is sometimes a chorus, sometimes a solo quartet; the latter mainly forced to choose its material from “arrangements,” or from works written for chorus. Anon the choir is dismissed and the congregation, led by a precentor with voice or cornet, assumes the whole burden of the office of song. These conditions are sufficient to explain why a distinct school of American church music does not exist and never can exist. The great principle of self-determination in doctrine and ecclesiastical government, which has brought into existence such a multitude of sects, may well be a necessity in a composite and democratic nation, but it is no less certainly a hindrance to the development of a uniform type of religious music.

There would be a much nearer approach to a reconcilement of all these differences, and the cause of church music would be in a far more promising condition, if there were a closer sympathy between the standard of music within the Church and that prevailing in educated society outside. There is certainly a diversity of purpose between church music and secular music, and corresponding distinctions must be preserved in respect to form and expression. A secularized style of church music means decadence. But the vitality of ecclesiastical art has always seemed to depend upon retaining a conscious touch with the large art movements of the world, and church music has certainly never thrived when, in consequence of neglect or complacency, it has been suffered to become 398[394] inferior to its rival. In America there is no such stimulating interaction between the music of the Church and that of the concert hall and the social circle as there has been for centuries in Germany and England. The Church is not the leader in musical culture. We are rapidly becoming a musical nation. When one sees what is going on in the opera houses, concert halls, colleges, conservatories, public schools, and private instruction rooms, contrasting the present situation with that of fifty years ago, the outcome can easily be predicted. But the music of the Church, in spite of gratifying efforts here and there, is not keeping pace with this progress, and the Church must inevitably suffer in certain very important interests if this gap is permitted continually to widen.

There are many causes for this state of affairs, some incidental and avoidable, others lying in the very nature of music itself and the special service which the Church requires of it. Perhaps the chief difficulty in the way of a high artistic development of religious music is the opinion, which prevails widely among the most devout, that music when allied to worship must forego what seems the natural right of all art to produce pleasure as an end in itself, and that it must subordinate itself to the sacred text and employ its persuasive powers solely to enforce divine truth upon the heart,—meaning by divine truth some particular form of religious confession. Whether this view is true or false, whenever it is consistently acted upon, it seems to me, music declines.

Now it is evident that music is less willing than any other art to assume this inferior station. Architecture serves a utilitarian purpose, the pleasure of the eye being supplementary; painting and sculpture may easily become didactic or reduced to the secondary function of ornament. But of all the arts music is the most sensuous (I use the word in its technical psychologic sense), direct, and penetrating in its operation. Music acts with such immediateness and intensity that it seems as though it were impossible for her to be anything but supreme when she puts forth all her energies. We may force her to be dull and commonplace, but that does not meet the difficulty. For it is the very beauty and glory of music which the Church wishes to use, but how shall this be prevented from asserting itself to such an extent that devotion is swept away upon the wings of nervous excitement? Let any one study his sensations when a trained choir pours over him a flood of rapturous harmony, and he will perhaps find it difficult to decide whether it is a devotional uplift or an aesthetic afflatus that has seized him. Is there actually any essential difference between his mental state at this moment and that, for instance, at the close of “Tristan und Isolde”? Any one who tries this experiment upon himself will know at once what is this problem of music in the Church which has puzzled pious men for centuries, and which has entered into every historic movement of church extension or reform.

A little clear thinking on this subject, it seems to me, will convince any one that music alone, in and of itself, never makes people religious. There is no such thing as religious music per se. When music in religious ceremony inspires a distinctly prayerful mood, it does so mainly through associations and accessories. And if this mood is not induced by other causes, music alone can never be relied upon to create it. Music, even the noblest and purest, is not always or necessarily an aid to devotion, and there may even be a snare in what seems at first a devoted ally. The analogy that exists between religious emotion and musical rapture is, after all, only an analogy; aesthetic delight, though it be the most refined, is not worship; the melting tenderness that often follows a sublime instrumental or choral strain is not contrition. Those who speak of all good music as religious do not understand the meaning of the terms they use. For devotion is not a mere vague feeling of longing or transport. It must involve a positive recognition of an object of worship, a reaching up, not to something unknown or inaccessible, but to a God who reveals himself to us, and whom we believe to be cognizant of the sincerity of the worship offered him; it must involve also a sense of humility before an almighty power, a penitence for sin, a desire for pardon and reconciliation, a consciousness of need and dependence, and an active exercise of faith and love. Into such convictions music may come, lending her aid to deepen them, to give them tangible expression, and to enhance the sense of joy and peace which may be their consequence; but to create them is beyond her power.

The office of music is not to suggest concrete images, or even to arouse definite namable sentiments, but rather to intensify ideas and feelings already existing, or to release the mind and put it into that sensitive, expectant state in which conceptions that appeal to the emotion may act unhampered. The more generalized function of music in the sanctuary is to take possession of the prepared and chastened mood which is the antecedent of worship, to separate it from other moods and reminiscences which are not in perfect accord with it, and to establish it in a more complete self-consciousness and a more permanent attitude. This antecedent sense of need and longing for divine communion cannot be aroused by music alone; the enjoyment of abstract musical beauty, however refined and elevating, is not worship, and a musical impression disconnected from any other cannot conduce to the spirit of prayer. It is only when the prayerful impulse already exists as a more or less conscious tendency of the mind, induced by a sense of love and duty, by the associations of the time and place, by the administration of the other portions of the service, or by any agencies which incline the heart of the believer in longing toward the Mercy Seat,—it is only in alliance with such an anticipatory state of mind and the causes that produce it that music fulfils its true office in public worship. It is not enough to depend upon the influence of the words to which the music is set, for they, being simultaneous with the music, do not have time or opportunity to act with full force upon the understanding; since the action of music upon the emotion is more immediate and vivid than that of words upon the intellect, the latter is often unregarded in the stress of musical excitement. However it may be in solo singing, it is 402[398] not possible or even desirable that the words of a chorus should be so distinct as to make the prime impression. Those who demand distinct articulation, as though the religious effect of church song hung solely upon that, do not listen musically. At any rate they see but a little way into the problem, which is concerned not with the effect of words but of tones. The text and music reinforce each other when the words are known to the hearer before the singing begins, aiding thus to bring about the expectancy of which I have spoken, and producing that satisfaction which is felt when musical expression is perceived to be appropriate to its poetic subject.

The spirit of worship, therefore, must be aroused by favoring conditions and means auxiliary to music,—it is then the province of music to direct this spirit toward a more vivid consciousness of its end. The case is with music as Professor Shairp says it is with nature: “If nature is to be the symbol of something higher than itself, to convey intimations of him from whom both nature and the world proceed, man must come to the spectacle with the thought of God already in his heart. He will not get a religion out of the mere sight of nature. If beauty is to lead the soul upward, man must come to the contemplation of it with his moral convictions clear and firm, and with faith in these as connecting him directly with God. Neither morality nor religion will he get out of beauty taken by itself.”

The soundest writers on art maintain that art, taken abstractly, is neither moral nor immoral. It occupies a sphere apart from that of religion or ethics. It may lend its aid to make religious and moral ideas more persuasive; it may, through the touch of pure beauty, overbear material and prosaic interests and help to produce an atmosphere in which spiritual ideas may range without friction, but the mind must first have been made morally sensitive by other than purely artistic means. It is the peculiar gift of music that it affords a speedier and more immediate means of fusion between ideas of sensuous beauty and those of devotional experience than any other of the art sisterhood. It is the indefiniteness of music as compared with painting and sculpture, the intensity of its action as compared with the beauty of architecture and decoration, which gives to it its peculiar power. To this searching force of music, its freedom from reminiscences of actual life or individual experience, is due the prominence that has been assigned to music in the observances of religion in all times and nations. Piety falls into the category of the most profound and absorbing of human emotions—together with such sentiments as patriotism and love of persons—which instinctively utter themselves not in prose but in poetry, not in ordinary unimpassioned speech, but in rhythmic tone. Music is the art most competent to enter into such an ardent and mobile state of mind. The ecstasy aroused in the lover of music by the magic of his art is more nearly analogous than any other producible by art to that mystic rapture described by religious enthusiasts. Worship is disconnected from all the concerns of physical life; it raises the subject into a super-earthly region—it has for the moment nothing to do with 404[400] temporal activities; it is largely spontaneous and unreflective. The absorption of the mind in contemplation, the sense of inward peace which accompanies emancipation from the disturbances of ordinary life, those joyous stirrings of the soul when it seems to catch glimpses of eternal blessedness, have a striking resemblance to phases of musical satisfaction where the analytical faculties are not called into exercise. Hence the readiness with which music combines with these higher experiences. Music in its mystic, indefinable action seems to make the mood of prayer more active, to interpret it to itself, and by something that seems celestial in the harmony to make the mood deeper, stronger, more satisfying than it would be if shut up within the soul and deprived of this means of deliverance. Music also, by virtue of its universal and impersonal quality, furnishes the most efficient means of communication among all the individuals engaged in a common act; the separate personalities are, we might say, dissolved in the general tide of rapture symbolized by the music, and the common sentiment is again enhanced by the consciousness of sympathy between mind and mind to which the music testifies, and which it is so efficient to promote.

The substance of this whole discussion, therefore, is that those who have any dealing with music in the Church must take into account the inherent laws of musical effect. Music is not a representative art; it bears with it an order of impressions untranslatable into those of poetry or painting. To use Walter Pater’s phrase, “it presents no matter of sentiment 405[401] or thought separable from the special form in which it is conveyed to us.” It may, through its peculiar power of stimulating the sensibility and conveying ideas of beauty in the purest, most abstract guise, help to make the mind receptive to serious impressions; but in order to excite a specifically religious feeling it must coöperate with other impressions which act more definitely upon the understanding. The words to which the music is sung, being submerged in the mind of a music-lover by the tide of enchanting sound, are not sufficient for this purpose unless they are known and dwelt upon in advance; and even then they too need reinforcement out of the environment in which the musical service is placed. The singing of the choir must be contrived and felt as a part of the office of prayer. The spirit and direction of the whole service for the day must be unified; the music must be a vital and organic element in this unit. All parts of the service must be controlled by the desire for beauty and fitness. Music, however beautiful, loses something of its effect if its accompaniments are not in harmony with it. This desideratum is doubtless most easily attained in a liturgic service. One great advantage of an ancient and prescribed form is that its components work easily to a common impression, and in course of time the ritual tends to become venerable as well as dignified and beautiful. The non-liturgic method may without difficulty borrow this conception of harmony and elevation, applying it so far as its own customs and rules of public worship allow. How this unity of action in the several factors of a non-liturgic 406[402] service may best be effected is outside the purpose of this book to discuss. The problem is not a difficult one when minister, choir leader, and church members are agreed upon the principle. In every church there are sanctities of time and place; there are common habits of mind induced by a common faith; there are historic traditions,—all contributing to a unity of feeling in the congregation. These may all be cultivated and enhanced by a skilfully contrived service, devised and moulded in recognition of the psychologic law that an art form acts with full power only when the mind is prepared by anticipation and congenial accessories.

This conclusion is, however, very far from being the end of the matter. The most devout intention will not make the church music effective for its ideal end if the aesthetic element is disregarded. There seems to be in many quarters a strange distrust of beauty and skill in musical performance, as if artistic qualities were in some way hostile to devotion. This distrust is a survival of the old Calvinistic fear of everything studied, formal, and externally beautiful in public worship. In other communities the church music is simply neglected, as one of the results of the excessive predominance given to the sermon in the development of Protestantism. It is often deemed sufficient, also, if the church musicians are devout men and women, in forgetfulness of the fact that a musical performance that is irritating to the nerves can never be a help to devotion. These enemies to artistic church music—hostility, indifference, and ignorance—are especially injurious in a country where, as in America, the general 407[403] knowledge and taste in music are rapidly growing. Those churches which, for any reason whatever, keep their musical standard below the level of that which prevails in the educated society around them are not acting for their own advantage, materially or spiritually. President Faunce was right when he told one of the churches of his denomination: “Your music must be kept noble and good. If your children hear Wagner and the other great masters in their schools, they will not be satisfied with ‘Pull for the shore’ in the church.” Those churches, for example, which rely mainly upon the “Gospel Songs” should soberly consider if it is profitable in the long run to maintain a standard of religious melody and verse far below that which prevails in secular music and literature. “The Church is the art school of the common man,” says Professor Riehl; and while it may be answered that it is not the business of the Church to teach art, yet the Church cannot afford to keep its spiritual culture out of harmony with the higher intellectual movements of the age. One whose taste is fed by the poetry of such masters as Milton and Tennyson, by the music of such as Händel and Beethoven, and whose appreciations are sharpened by the best examples of performance in the modern concert hall, cannot drop his taste and critical habit when he enters the church door. The same is true in a modified degree in respect to those who have had less educational advantages. It is a fallacy to assert that the masses of the people are responsive only to that which is trivial and sensational. In any case, what shall be said of a church that is satisfied to leave its votaries upon the same intellectual and spiritual level upon which it finds them?

In all this discussion I have had in mind the steady and more normal work of the Church. Forms of song which, to the musician, lie outside the pale of art may have a legitimate place in seasons of special religious quickening. No one who is acquainted with the history of religious propagation in America will despise the revival hymn, or deny the necessity of the part it has played. But these seasons of spiritual upheaval are temporary and exceptional; they are properly the beginning not the end of the Church’s effort. The revival hymn may be effective in soul-winning, it is inadequate when treated as an element in the larger task of spiritual development.

There is another reason for insistence upon beauty and perfection in all those features of public worship into which art enters—to a devout mind the most imperative of all reasons. This is so forcibly stated by the great Richard Hooker that it will be sufficient to quote his words and leave the matter there. Speaking of the value of noble architecture and adornment in connection with public acts of religion, he goes on to say: “We do thereby give unto God a testimony of our cheerful affection which thinketh nothing too dear to be bestowed about the furniture of his service; as also because it serveth to the world for a witness of his almightiness, whom we outwardly honor with the chiefest of outward things, as being of all things himself incomparably the greatest. To set forth the majesty of kings, his vicegerents in this world, the most gorgeous and rare 409[405] treasures which the world hath, are procured. We think belike that he will accept what the meanest of them would disdain.”⁸⁴⁸⁴Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, book v. chap. 15.

In urging onward the effort after beauty and perfection in church music I have no wish to set up any single style as a model,—in fact, a style competent to serve as a universal model does not exist. There can be no general agreement, for varied conditions demand diverse methods. The Catholic music reformer points to the ancient Gregorian chant and the masterpieces of choral art of the sixteenth century as embodying the ideal which he wishes to assert. The Episcopalian has the Anglican chant and anthem, noble and appropriate in themselves, and consecrated by the associations of three eventful centuries. But the only hereditary possession of the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and other non-liturgic bodies is the crude psalmody of the early Calvinists and Puritans which, unlike the Lutheran choral, has none of the musical potencies out of which a church art can be developed. In these societies there is no common demand or opportunity which, in the absence of a common musical heritage, can call forth any new and distinctive form of ecclesiastical song. They must be borrowers and adapters, not creators. The problem of these churches is the application of existing forms to new conditions—directing the proved powers of music along still higher lines of service in the epoch of promise which is now opening before them.

In this era just upon us, in which new opportunities demand of the Church in America new methods throughout the whole range of its action, music will have a larger part to play than even heretofore. It is of great importance that her service should be employed intelligently. Both ministers and choir leaders should be aware of the nature of the problems which ecclesiastic music presents. They should know something of the experience of the Church in its historic dealings with this question, of the special qualities of the chief forms of church song which have so greatly figured in the past, and of the nature of the effect of music upon the mind both by itself alone and in collusion with other religious influences. How many ministers and choir-masters are well versed in these matters? What are the theological seminaries and musical conservatories doing to disseminate knowledge and conviction on this subject? In the seminaries lectures are given on liturgiology and hymnology; but what are hymns and liturgies without music? And how many candidates for the ministry are prepared to second the efforts of church musicians in musical improvement and reform? I am, of course, aware that in a few of the seminaries of the non-liturgic denominations work in this department of ecclesiology has been effectively begun. In the conservatories organ playing and singing, both solo and chorus, are taught, but usually from the technical side,—the adaptation of music to the spiritual demands of the Church is rarely considered. Every denomination needs a St. Cecilia Society to convince the churches of the spiritual quickening that lies in genuine church music and the mischief in the false, to arouse church members to an understanding of the injury that attends an obvious incongruity between the character of the music and the spirit of prayer which it is the purpose of the established offices of worship to create, and to show how all portions of the service may act in harmony.

The general growth in musical culture, which is so marked a feature of our time, should everywhere be made to contribute to the benefit of the Church. The teaching of music in the public schools should be a means of supplying the churches with efficient chorus singers. The Church must also offer larger inducements to musicians and musical students. Here we touch upon a most vital point. If the Church wants music that is worthy of her dignity, and which will help her to maintain the place she seeks to occupy in modern life, she must pay for it. The reason why so few students of talent are preparing themselves for work in the Church as organists and choir leaders is that the prospect of remuneration is too small to make this special study worth their while. The musical service of the Church is, therefore, in the vast majority of cases, in the hands either of amateurs or of musicians who are devoting themselves through the entire week to work which has nothing to do with the Church. A man who is trained wholly or chiefly as a pianist, and who gives his strength and time for six days to piano study and teaching, or a singer whose energy is mainly expended in private vocal instruction, can contribute little to the higher needs of Church music. It is not his fault; he must seek his income where he can find it. The service of the Church is a side issue, and receives the benefit which any cause must expect when it is given only the remnants of 412[408] interest and energy that are left over from a week’s hard labor. There is a host of young musicians to whom church work is exceedingly attractive. Let the Church magnify the importance of its musical service, and raise its salaries in proportion, and an abundant measure of the rising musical talent and enthusiasm will be ready at its call.

The musical problem of the non-liturgic Church in America is, therefore, not one of creation, but of administration. Whatever the mission of the Church is to be in our national life, the opportunities of its music are not to be less than of old, but greater. It is evident that the notion of conviction of sin and sudden conversion is gradually losing the place which it formerly held in ecclesiastical theory, and is being supplemented, if not supplanted, by the notion of spiritual nurture. The Church is finding its permanent and comprehensive task in alliance with those forces that make for social regeneration; no longer to separate souls from the world and prepare them for a future state of existence, but to work to establish the kingdom of God here on earth; not denying the rights of the wholesome human instincts, but disciplining and refining them for fraternal service. In this broader sphere art, especially music, will be newly commissioned and her benign powers utilized with ever-increasing intelligence. The Church can never recover the old musical leadership which was wrested from her in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the opera, the choral society, and the concert system, but in the twentieth she will find means of coöperating with these institutions for the general welfare.

The council of Carthage in the fourth century laid this injunction upon church singers: “See that what thou singest with thy lips thou believest in thy heart; and what thou believest in thy heart thou dost exemplify in thy life.” This admonition can never lose its authority; back of true church music there must be faith. There comes, however, to supplement this ancient warning, the behest from modern culture that the music of the sanctuary shall adapt itself to the complex and changing conditions of modern life, and while it submits to the pure spirit of worship it shall grow continually in those qualities which make it worthy to be honored by the highest artistic taste. For among the venerable traditions of the Church, sanctioned by the wisdom of her rulers from the time of the fathers until now, is one which bids her cherish the genius of her children, and use the appliances of imagination and skill to add strength and grace to her habitations, beauty, dignity, and fitness to her ordinances of worship.