Choir Training #255625

1. How can we improve our Choirs? This is one of the most prominent questions at present before the musical and ecclesiastical worlds. The days are long past when there was any question as to the desirability of choirs and musical services. All parties, however great their differences on other matters, now agree that music ought to hold a foremost place in the Services of the Church; and that worship is offered in its highest form in the Choral Service. Admitted that a Choral Service is desirable, it follows that, to be a worthy offering, it must be the best procurable by the means at the disposal of those responsible; nothing less can be acceptable within the Church's walls. How obvious this seems. And yet there is a hardly defined feeling in the minds of some devout people that there are dangers connected with a highly artistic musical Service; a dread that gain in musical culture may mean loss in other directions; that worship may degenerate into a mere, outward formality without true spiritual life: though these same people would probably be shocked at the idea of offering in the House of God anything but the best in other forms of art. Would anyone maintain that a badly painted picture would be more likely to aid devotion than a good one, or that we ought to have feeble architecture, poor sculpture, &c.? No! In all other branches of art, nothing is considered too good for the House of God. Then, if music we are to have, it should be the most artistic, as perfect as it can be made with the material we have to use.