A
Practical Discourse on some
Principles of Hymn-Singing
By Robert Bridges
Reprinted from the Journal of
Theological Studies, October, 1899
Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 50 & 51 Broad Street
London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co.
1901
Price, One Shilling, net
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What St. Augustin says of the emotion which
he felt on hearing the music in the Portian basilica
at Milan in the year 386 has always seemed to
me a good illustration of the relativity of musical
expression; I mean how much more its ethical
significance depends on the musical experience of
the hearer, than on any special accomplishment
or intrinsic development of the art. Knowing of
what kind that music must have been and how few
resources of expression it can have had,--being
rudimental in form, without suggestion of harmony,
and in its performance unskilful, its probably nasal
voice-production unmodified by any accompaniment,--one
marvels at his description,
'What tears I shed at Thy hymns and canticles,
how acutely was my soul stirred by the voices and
sweet music of Thy Church! As those voices entered
my ears, truth distilled in my heart, and thence
divine affection welled up in a flood, in tears
o'erflowing, and happy was I in those tears.'
St. Augustin appears to have witnessed the beginnings
of the great music of the Western Church.
It was the year of his baptism when, he tells us,
singing was introduced at Milan to cheer the
Catholics who had shut themselves up in the
basilica with their bishop, to defend him from
the imperial violence:
'It was then instituted that psalms and hymns should
be sung, after the manner of the Eastern Churches,
lest the folk in the weariness of their grief should
altogether lose heart: and from that day to this the
custom has been retained; many, nay, nearly all
Thy flocks, in all regions of the world, following the
example.'
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