MUSI C.
THE TEMPLE CHURCH.
IT is true of music, as of other arts and amenities of life, that some of our greatest treasures meet with scant recognition.
The things that we have always with us provoke the least enthusiasm ; or, though the appreciation of them may be deep and genuine, perhaps for that very reason those who feel it abstain from proclaiming it from the housetops. This fastidious- ness may be due in part to selfishness or the dog-in-the-manger feeling. But it may be inspired by the sincere conviction that popularity and publicity may tend to vulgarization. A true lover of Nature will think several times before he publishes his discovery of some beautiful but unfrequented spot within reach of the enterprise of estate developers. Rescue comes in a number of different ways: sometimes from isolation, some- times from the ineradicable commercialism which only consents to value highly what you have to pay highly to see or hear. And it must be admitted that there are certain privileges. in the world of art which are only accessible to people with means. The cost of production in the case of opera. and our great provincial Musical Festivals automatically rules out the vast majority of the public. Tenors who receive. £600 a night are luxuries beyond the resources of people who. earn £6 a week—except through the medium of the gramo- phone; and the pilgrims who annually flock to Bayreuth from all quartets of the globe are less than ever notable for the. frugality of their habits or the simplicity of their dress.. Orchestral music has, happily, been brought more generally. within the reach of the masses of late years, but it is still a. long way from competing on equal terms with the picture, theatres in the oxce of .cheapnese. And when we talk of
competing, we are reminded of the splendid work which is done by the Competitive Musical Festivals in the way of enabling the working classes to bear, and to take part in the per- formance of the best a cappedia music. At the same time it must be remembered that to listen to choirs like those trained by Mrs. Bourne, of Barrow, or Mr. Whitaker, of Blackpool—to mention only two of the most famous of the scores of fine choirs now flourishing in the Midlands and the North of England—is a privilege which Londoners can rarely enjoy without a considerable journey.
But if the Londoner has to travel to Birmingham or Morecambe to hear the finest unaccompanied secular choral music, he has to go no farther than the Temple Church to bear church music of the finest quality sung and played with superlative skill and perfect taste. To say this to those who know is like knocking in an open door; but there are a great many people who do not realize what privileges are to be had for the asking—partly because they are not discussed in the Press or treated to the full-throated eulogies lavished on music-hall singers and dancers; partly, perhaps mainly, because a man cannot be in two places at once, and the week- end habit is not compatible with attendance at a London church. Such people do not know what they miss, if indeed they are not incapable of knowing. For the services at the Temple Church are wonderfully attuned to the surround- ings and the associations and traditions of the spot. The congregation is probably the moat intellectual in London, and there is a. larger proportion of men than at any other church. The study of the Law is often supposed to encourage a mundane, metallic, and secularist temper, but here in the heart of its domain is a constant testimony to the abiding appeal of things spiritual. And it would be idle to deny that this appeal is powerfully reinforced by the beauty of the music heard at the Temple services. To begin with, there is a wonderful organ—in which modern science and ancient cunning are so happily blended that the soul of three centuries speaks from its keys. Then there is an admirable choir. Lastly, there is an organist who is not only a consummate musician and a composer of rare and subtle distinction, but a peculiarly inspiring choir-trainer, with wide scholarship, un- erring taste, and unfaltering in his maintenance of the highest standards. There may be a finer organ than the Temple Church organ, or a choir in which the voices are individually more beautiful, and Dr. Walford Davies may easily be eclipsed in mere virtuosity by other organists. But the totality of the impression-left by the Temple Church service on its musical aide is quite unique. The danger that besets a fine organist in command of a highly trained choir is to exalt the music from an ancillary to a predominant position. The organ itself is a tempting medium for display, and the repertory of modern church music contains a great many compositions which are florid, sentimental, and theatrical in character. Such music is never heard in the Temple Church. Dr. Walford Davies is at once a purist and an eclectic. The music given last Sunday is a fair index to his methods of selection. The anthem was Bach's wonderful motet, "I wrestle and pray." The Te _Deana was sung to a noble version by Byrd, one of the greatest of the Elizabethans ; the Lord's Prayer was given in the austere yet beautiful setting of Marbeck, Byrd's contemporary, a theologian as well as a musician, who narrowly escaped burning in the Marian persecutions when he was organist at St. George's, Windsor. Of the manner in which these were sung it is enough to say that it might have disarmed the heartiest sup- porter of congregational singing. The only terms on which such a one can be expected to delegate his active participation in the singing of psalms, hymns, and responses are these —that his representatives should not merely be good musicians, but that they should show reverence and understanding. There is no greater test of these qualities than in the chant- ing of psalms, and the supreme excellence of the Temple choir is nowhere more conspicuously illustrated. Last Sunday the appointed psalm for morning prayer was the 107th, "O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is gracious; and His mercy endured' for ever," in which there occurs four times (at verses 8, 15, id, and 31) the refrain, "0 that men would therefore praise the Lord for His goodness and declare the wonders that He death for the children of men!" The chant to which it was sung is - a simple but beautiful one by Dr. Walford Davies, who has slightly -varied
the refrain verse so as to suggest an access of thanksgiving, and the effect of this recurrent climax, where the curve of the phrase is heightened, is extraordinarily impressive. Dr. Davies, we may add, does not adopt the method of chanting at a uniform rapid rate, which degenerates into something like " patter " with some excellent choirs. The normal pace taken at the Temple is neither fast nor slow, but dictated by the requirements of intelligent recitation, and it is varied at moments of climax or emphasis in consonance with the prin- ciples which govern all rational speech. That is the true method, and its efficacy is enhanced by the care taken to secure a pure and articulate enunciation of the words. This can only be done by intelligent practice and preparation, but here there is no sense of studied effort or conscious labouring after effect. The result is entirely natural and unaffected— a result which can only be attained by a fine and inspir- ing intelligence working on sympathetic and sensitive material. Lastly, Dr. Walford Davies's treatment of his accompaniment is a model for organists—restrained, yet suggestive, and avoiding monotony without any lapses into irrelevant bravura.
Those who knew and loved the late Canon Ainger need no reminder to keep green the memory of that gentle yet radiant spirit. But it is worth recalling, for the benefit of those who take good things for granted, that he was responsible for the happy choice of a successor to Dr. Hopkins as organist in 1898; that the intimate friendship with Dr. Walford Davies which resulted, as Miss Sichel tells us in her Memoir, cheered Ainger more than anything else in his later years; and that by his keen and enthusiastic interest in music he encouraged and co-operated in the raising of the Temple services to that level of dignity and beauty so worthily maintained under the
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