CHOIR TRAINING (CLASSIC REPRINT)

Excerpt from Choir Training1. 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 Churchs 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