CHURCH MUSIC | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 20, 1887

CHURCH MUSIC.

MR. AITKEN, the able preacher from London, who conducted evangelical missions last winter in several cities in this country, in giving his impressions of America, has the following description of the singing in a fashionable church:—

“A female contralto voice murmuring inarticulate utterances, sustained by an organ accompaniment, scarcely more audible than would have been the tones of a musical snuff box, heard at equal distance, made me aware that something was happening as I rose from my knees. I knew not what then, and I know not what now! Soon the organ put on a crescendo, and a soprano voice broke in with equally inarticulate utterances which finally culminated in a blood-curdling shriek, a bass and a tenor by this time assisting in the performance, which lasted for about five minutes, and concluded without conveying any single idea to my mind except that I had been listening to very indifferent opera singers, which I afterward found to be the fact.”

The performance of the Venite, he says, occupied eight minutes.

“The large congregation standing meekly while the four distinguished persons in the gallery disported themselves up and down the diatonic and even the chromatic scale. The Gloria was another elaborate operatic anthem; the Te Deum was equally elaborate; the Jubilate much more so; here the four seemed to enjoy their wildest revel.”

Mr. Aitken says: “This description may read like a caricature, but it is really a description of what obtains in a great number of American churches to-day. I have mentioned it to relieve myself of a little indignation against an evil thing which I had thought had died a century ago in conservative England, but which I was mortified to find in a state of full vitality in progressive America.”—Watchman.