LETTER LIV.
Dear Charles,—You are absolutely provoking! and
with what assurance you cry out “Ohe! jam satis!”—and
then go on and request my “notions on choirs!”
Charles!—what have I done, that you should deliberately,
and of malice aforethought, try to lure me with so many
complimentary words into that discord? Why wish me to
hear the buzz when that hornet's nest is waked about my
ears? Can you not rest in solitary discomfort? And must
the open mouths of your singers be set to concert pitch—or
a little higher—against “that insufferable and meddlesome
Carlton?”
Where was prudence or kindness when you intimated to
the amiable young folks in the gallery at the last meeting,
that you intended to ask the advice of your friend at Kaleidaville?
Was it not certain the Misses Perte and the young
Bases would call us—“insufferable?”
But, reverend sir, I humbly conceive you clergy have
small right to complain. The many evils of irreligious
choirs were told and prophesied a hundred times; and many
a church, otherwise prospering, had been sadly injured by
such an unchristian committee installed to do singing—a
kind of labor-saving machinery for idle Christians below.
True, you have had more science, and taste, and entertainment!
but such advantages are not to be considered an
equivalent for the abomination of a trifling, giggling, note-inditing,
whisper-loving company of irreverent young choristers.
“How do I know all this?” say you.—In many ways:
among others I have been in choirs myself:—and spite of
the presence of a clergyman there with us, and of two
church officers in addition—the gay and mirth loving young
folks would have their amusement! Nor could we all look
them down—they were past such rebuke.
Rather, by far, would I recall the solitary clerk who in
former days rose in his desk under the pulpit, and not only
set the tune for the people, but set the people themselves so
a-going that hundreds of voices, and “with the heart” in
them, would, in unity, pour forth a hymn of praise that
would wake and move the very soul of the worshippers.
Yet these moderns talk of our discord in those times!
Discord, indeed!—we might retort, and tell of what it is more
likely many most loud in their abuse of congregational singing
are ignorant—a deep melody of the interior heart that
was an acceptable song in the ears of God! But, sir, we
did not make discord, even in the sense of polished and scientific
moderns. Our plain old tunes were so known, and,
from long habit, so natural to us, that without any shuffling
parade of note books, we could sing, and we did sing in tune
and time; and, in most long established congregations, and
especially where the clerk had a singing-school during the
whole year, the combined melody was wonderfully rich,
solemn, and spiritualizing. And why not? Had people no
voice, no ear in former days? And how could we make
discord with tunes so easy, so familiar, so solemn as were
ours? I have heard as much discord and as bad time in
most choirs as were heard among Christians. And even
organs, flutes, and bass-viols are sometimes rebellious, and
do the worship contrary to the rules in all books from—I
forget where—down to the Boston Academy's.
Even in the most favored churches, where perhaps, singers
are all that can be wished morally, intellectually, and
musically, sometimes, we fear the singing is prone to become
a mere entertainment, rather than a devotion;—the error
being in the system and not in the persons.
But, Charles, I do not wholly condemn choir singing.
Perhaps it might be made a more profitable means of leading
our devotions than the former way. Certainly an entire
congregation could be trained, by judicious management, to
sing with a choir as we once sang with a precentor or clerk.
This, indeed, is the case with some of our choirs and congregations
in Kaleidaville, especially the * * * *;
although there is room for improvement in * * *
When you get out of your existing trouble, which by
the way will plague you and your church officers no little—
then, never—no—NEVER,—allow your choir to be composed
of irreligious people, and particularly of young ones. If
they should not, as is more commonly the case, destroy your
peace, and threaten temporary ruin to your church, it does
strike me as a gross absurdity, and as something not very
far off from impiety. What! a company of wicked and irreverent
young men and women a committee to praise God
on behalf of believers!
No!—give me, in preference, a hand-organ, and work it
by a crank. Both contrivances are machines equally destitute
of grace and a devotional spirit; but the one does not
laugh at me while it does the job, and the other does—adding
insult to injury.
Use this opinion, Charles, if it can avail you any thing.
I have looked in the face of too many angry men, to be very
greatly moved by the pouting and sneering of your ill-bred
young folks.
