" STORM OF ORGANS "

By REGINALD GIBBON

WHEN the Germans bombed the Temple they shattered the Temple Church, and utterly obliterated an organ famous as containing much of Father Smith's original work. The Temple Church will arise again, and with it the musical service for which it has been renowned, but the Father Smith diapasons are gone for ever. Ancient men have recollections of Dr. E. J. Hopkins gazing bewhiskeredly forth from the organ-loft upon the assembling con- gregation, presently to seat himself upon the bench to play an opening voluntary. The singing of the choir and the accompaniment provided by the organist were alike robust. Indeed, Victorian organists were light-hearted to make a cheerful noise and to gratify any small boy's appetite for a wealth of fortissimo sound.

The late Dr. M. R. James tells in Eton and King's how Eton boys, his contemporaries, used to rush up to St. George's and sit -hrough the afternoon service. Though he recalls with gratitude anthems which he heard there, he has not much to say of the psalms, except to relate that he copied out the chant-book. Never- theless, it was in his accompaniment to the Psalms that the Vic- torian organist was most ebullient. Any mention of big game would stir him to go in pursuit of it. "The lions roaring after their prey " in the tooth Psalm would evoke the deep thunder of the

thirty-two-foot pedal pipes. Organists who had no thirty-twos and hardly any sixteens used to tread upon two contiguous pedals simul- taneously. The result would shock any lion into silence. When it was required to " grin like a dog and run about the city," a bad stop of the clarinet family became a good substitute for the canine utterance phonetically rendered " grr."

Then there was " Leviathan "—but no ! Leviathan generally went unmarked. Nobody quite knew what manner of creature he was, still less what manner of noise he made. Moreover, the organist would be anxiously wondering how the choir would pro- nounce his name. Like Lord Melbourne with his Cabinet, so the organist with his choir desired that its members should all say or sing the same thing. It was always a gamble that the blacksmith-

bass would knock out a syllable and bring " Leviathan " down to "Levathan." Some psalms relate a theophany with attendant mani-

festations of wind and storm. "He rode upon the cherubims and did fly ; he came flying upon the wings of the wind." Then came into action the swell-organ, rich with those flashing reeds which Mr. Willis so indefatigably produced, while the swell-pedal worked to make a tempestuous crescendo.

Heard have we the Lord awake out of sleep in the 78th Psalm "like a giant refreshed with wine" to a sudden outblaring of big reeds, trombas, tubas and their family. A somewhat startling effect, yet one to be welcomed in consideration of the extremely depressing conditions which had prevailed during the nine preceding verses.

"But," as Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz has declared, "it is ill jesting when our deepest sympathies are awakened." And (in words which are partially the Serjeant's also) it is difficult for the man in the pew to smile with an aching heart. Tolerant though he is, he thinks that the musicians of the Church have become unduly eclectic in their taste. He would not go back to the time when " Bow thine ear" (Byrd) was almost the only specimen of that great mares compositions which survived to be sung, but he thinks that the revival of Byrd and Byrd's eminent contemporaries has now been adequately achieved.

Composers of that period had not got much in the way of organs, and did not think much of what they had. Consequently most of

their music was written for unaccompanied voices. The man in the pew, though he respects unaccompanied singing, asks that the use of it may be restrained. "Desiccated stuff," he says in his moments of self-revelation, and then goes on to reflect that the process of dehydration seems to have included the organists. They love their organs less, their choir-stalls more. They must be for

ever corning down from the organ-loft to sit like Longfellow's

village blacksmith amongst their boys. Doubtless there is advantage gained. Recent years have seen a great advance in the choir- trainer's art. Let it not go too far! We do not ask of church

choirs, or even of cathedral choirs, the virtuosity of the B.B.C. singers. If attained, it might be no good thing, for virtuosity can

be a sign of decadence. The music performed in the services must never be solely a performance. For then it is completely damned. Its own perfection has become its idol. Worshipping itself, it fails in its purpose to aid the worship of God.

Is it vain to ask organists to return to a robustei fashion ? Let them disport themselves in the psalms, whether as birds that sing

amongst the branches or as the floods that clap their hands. Of the

dehydrated style of accompaniment there has been an excess. May one compare it to a Homeric ghost, coming forth to the scent of

warm blood, but failing of strength to lap it ? There was indeed an Oxford organist in years gone by (the ancients tell of him) whose accompaniment of the psalms, audible during the first and second verses, subsequently suppressed itself beyond all hearing, so to remain

until it modestly reappeared at the gloria clothed in the milder diapasons. But he was the one swallow which did not make a summer. Victorian organists- in general were highly favourable to noise. Their organs, becoming ever more powerful, invited full employment. The organists did not shyly refrain.

Winthrop Mackworth Praed discerned his fellow-members of the House of Commons as "Eton boys grown heavy." The eternal

juvenility evinced by men in their corporate assemblages They

go to church, disesteeming themselves, and demanding no exaltation unless it be that which cometh to the humble and meek. They hope that they have left intellectual arrogance outside, and that they come as children, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven with a child's humility. Let church musicians practise a similar abasement. The technique of Pauline preaching was a studied simplicity, though possibly at times the apostle was less simple than he meant to be. At any rate, his intention was to lay aside " excellency of speech," thus denying himself a gift of eloquence which he might have been proud to use. If precentors and organists imitate St. Paul, they will submit to a self-denying ordinance, and agree that they cannot always choose to sing or play exactly that which themselves would prefer. The Church uses their art as a sort of gospel. A gospel must appeal widely to the many, not narrowly to the few.