Let me mention “O Thou, the central orb,” by Gibbons, as an example of a fine anthem in the old style, and “Oh, Saviour of the World,” by Goss, as an example of the simpler and later type. These are beautiful, simple, and dignified anthems suitable for city or country choir. If the city choirmaster will give over for a time trying to provide the congregation with brilliant music which is chiefly notable for its extravagance of technique and its striking effects, his listeners will, perhaps, be able to revert to that state of quiet devotion which the rest of the service has induced. Many choir directors would doubtless like to use simpler and more devotional music, but are hindered from doing so because they feel upon them the weight of the opinion and taste of the congregation, and perhaps of the preacher. Everybody, regardless of his qualifications for doing so, feels at liberty to criticize the music he hears in church.
Social and musical clubs for women exist in great numbers all over the United States. They are often useful in practical ways, but their contact with artistic matters is, on the contrary, often ineffectual. They offer their members continual sips at different springs, but no deep draught at one. The average member of a women’s club, if she is to be helped in anything, must be helped from the position in which she then is; and this is particularly true of music. But she is torn out of her natural environment and asked to listen to a recital of, say, modern French music, not one note of which answers to her intelligence or her feelings. The passion for the last thing in music without any knowledge of the first is fatal to any one. And when one considers the enormous membership in clubs for women in this country, one can but wish that more effort were made to help the individual to progress simply and naturally step by step. It is not to be expected that the average woman, whose time is very likely occupied with domestic cares, should make an extended study of music; but it is possible to give her a chance to hear a few simple, good compositions, and to hear them several times during a season, so that she may learn to understand them. The more experienced and more advanced members of women’s clubs are apt to dominate in these matters and to forget the needs of the others, and there is certain to be a few rare souls who dwell entirely in the rarefied atmosphere of the very latest music, and who look down on the common ignorance of the mass. Some women’s clubs purvey only the performance of great players or singers, and pride themselves on their lists of celebrities, all too forgetful of those delicately adjusted scales which demand equal weight _in kind_. If a women’s club in a small town (or in a large one, for that matter) should abjure for the moment pianoforte and vocal recitals of the latest music, and should proceed to devote a little time to singing, in unison, some fine old songs in which every one could take part, a fair start would be made. I am not attempting to belittle the musical capabilities of these clubs, nor am I decrying expert performances; I am merely speaking for the average woman who has had little opportunity for musical education or musical experience, and who is usually left far behind as club programmes run, yet who is capable of understanding music if it be brought to her in the proper manner. Ask her to sing with you and she is brought into the fold instead of straying blindly outside. Every meeting of a women’s club (why qualify?--of any club, save, perhaps, a burglar’s, where silence would be desirable) should begin with a hearty song. Step by step--not a violent leap to a dizzy height; we cannot become musical by the force of our aspiration even though it be quite sincere; nature unrelentingly exacts of us that same slow growth which she herself makes. There is no to-morrow.
