Anthems and Service.s for Church Choirs. Nos. 1 to 4.
Numerous arrangements of the compositions of Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso, with fine specimens of our own Cathedral writers, Tallis, Gibbons, Farrant, &e., give this publication a certain distinction amidst the under- takings of the day in favour of genuine ecclesiastical music. The taste inculcated in the models selected is severe—the standard of the ecclesias- tical style undoubtedly true: but in the nineteenth century, the early masters, the Romish musicians especially, live only in the ideal and ab- stract; for the practical purposes of our church service—which must par- take of the onward movement of the age, and towards this object has been continually modified by our musicians—they are a dead letter. These full Services and Anthems, therefore, may be practised with advan- tage in private society for improvement in music, and to form a standard of taste; but in church, Romish arrangements with their Introits and Kyries, savour but too strongly of Puseyism. We can no more revive the age of Palestrina in church music than the spirit and grandeur of ancient ecclesiastical architecture: imitations of the one degenerate into the stiff- ness of the school exercise, while those of the other—as may be seen in nu- merous modern cloisters and Gothic edifices—are in the worst taste of ro- mantic Cockaigne.
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