Cathedral Chants of the Sirteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries. Edited
by EDWARD F. RIMBAULT, LLD., F.S.A.
The collection before us extends from Thum to COOKE, DAVY, and WESLEY; and comprises all the most memorable contributions to this branch of the Church Service, which choirmen, organists, ecclesiastics, and noble amateurs have furnished, drawn out into a fair score of four parts, with preliminary directions for chanting and a slight biographical reference to each of the composers. It is a very complete work, either as a manual for congregations, or for the private use of families who have the good taste to cultivate cathedral harmony. This, too, has the advantage of being the true musical expression of the Reformed Protestant Church ; and it does not, like the unison-chant with its grand though characteristically Romish monotony, open a door through musical sentiment to a change in theology. It has always been our opinion that if due care be bestowed on the best compositions for the English Church, it need seek no solemnity from a neighbouring one Dr. RIPPON and the lively Dissenters, with our most unmusical clergy, . have created a diversion in favour of the Romanists : but we trust that better times are at hand, when the importance of music as a branch of sacred service will be more duly considered, and what in it is vicious and in bad taste corrected.
The getting-up of this volume is in the antique style which has pre- vailed so much of late in church-books ; and raises appropriate associa- tions with the records of the past—storied windows and illuminated manuscripts.
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