Portable Harmony
By REGINALD GIBBON COINING a word to express a natural sound, the choristers speak of their " chatterchism," or use " chattlechism " as an occasional variant. The chatter motif suits the rapidity with which they say their catechism. They put their theology into a presto movement, trusting to speed and momentum for its safety, fearing that if they say it slowly they will get it wrong. Perhaps they have taken example from Ben Gunn, who recalled with some pride that • in his youth as a civil, pious boy, he could " rattle off his cat'chism that fast as you couldn't tell one word from another." Further, when they mention the harmonium which resides in the church, awaiting the rare occasions when somebody wants to use it, they call it the " harmonihum." Here there is onomatopoeic allusion to the debased sound which that instru- ment gives forth. It is as near to being a hum as it is far away from being anything else. Some churches endure with Spartan stoicism the affliction of a " harmonihum." Let them tear it from their heart and have a piano instead. But don't have an " upright." Have the biggest, fattest and heaviest " grand " obtainable. This advice rests upon grounds not musical but practical. Reflect that everybody in the parish is now by way of buying a second-hand car instead of the piano desired by an older ambition and a gentler age. But a house without a piano is a house in which the inhabitants experience at times an aching void. " Let us," they say, " ask the vicar to lend us the church piano." The request is made. And if the vicar be not a man of iron, the piano goes forth to maltreatment, if not to torture, and when it returns it is found to have suffered a constitutional change for the worse. Had that piano been a " grand," it would have abode undisturbed in the church, for a grand piano evinces an almost unsubduable intractability when required to become amenable to transportation. When forming a plural for harmonium, the boys will be content to make it harmoniums or even " harmonihums." The vicar, a Latinist, says harmonia, which no doubt is correct, but it sounds a trifle precious in the mouth of babes, sucklings and common men. Moreover, harmonia suggests itself as a nice name for a girl. Mr. Pecksniff might approve it and add it to Charity and Mercy, " not unholy names, I hope," as a suitable designation for the third daughter which he never had. Fortunately a sodality of harmonia has yet to be formed. One meets with them singly, seldom tribally, an economy of distri- bution at which thankful hearts will not cavil.
For me, when these ears heard a harmonium .playing the obbligato accompaniment to a verse of " The Lost Chord," they were hearing a harmonium for the first time in life. It had been a dull concert for a child who ought to have been in bed. He was hovering in the mood between boredom impatiently suffered and rebellion insolently intended. Then came these novel sounds, strange and sweet, than strawberry- jam sicklier far, arresting attention then, haunting recollection since. A triumph for the harmonium, but one which it has never repeated. Though we may think poorly of the harmonium genus, it has a species to which we willingly raise a respectful hat. This is the portable harmonium. Designed for open-air work, it goes anywhere with a sense of mission that carries it into all manner of strange and unlovely scenes. Itself very small, little more than a rectangular box supported on two skeletonic uprights, it produces more sound than might reasonably be anticipated. To our ear its sound is always the same, but a friend who has a musician's power of imagination will some- times look up from his playing to say, " These are my open diapasons," or, " Here are my big reeds." As to his reeds he will sometimes become detailed in describing them. One gathers that they are not the Hereford reeds that flash and flame, but the Ely sort, white heat and molten metal. He believes what he says and feels what he believes. There appears no limit to a musician's imaginative capacity. While journeying from street to street the portable is carried. Two bearers are needed. Are they carrying a small coffin ? There are always some mistaken spectators who indulge the supposition that we are conducting the funeral of an unbaptised infant. Others deduce from the urgency of our gait that we are walking for a wager. This latter supposition, disappoints and melts away upon arrival at our next stopping-place, when there is seen to be no pa0an of victory, no distribution of rewards. It has to be assumed either that all the competitors have been disqualified or else that everybody has won. It is true that we presently break forth into singing, but the strain of triumph is not conspicuous. In deference to the portable, which does not descend lower than the note which bass-singers call their " low G," we agree to have most of our hymns in the key of G. This concession enables the organist to display the portable in its full depth and sonority of tone. Though Haydn character- ised this key as " gay and sprightly," he did not know it as applied to " Art thou weary, art thou languid ? "
When the spring comes, the portable goes into the fields to take part in a Rogationtide blessing of the crops. An occasion of ceremony. The vicar and choristers are suitably vested.
Before them go the churchwardens bearing their staves of office. , A mixed multitude is in attendance. The organist, remembering that the rapid up-and-down movement of the feet as they work the portable's blowing apparatus is apt to make the boys laugh, imitates King Eglon and covers them.
We sing that sober hymn which speaks of " our Hope when Autumn winds blew wild," or perhaps that long one which mentions " the Pastors of Thy Fold." This turns faces towards the vicar. Miss So-and-So (whose mind is more imprecise than any hymn for an obscure apostle) seeks the epithet to suit his expression. She settles upon " beatific." He is singing for all he is worth, being under the impression—bless him !—that we shall certainly crash if he stops. The rest of us merely say, " Vicar looks to be enjyin' hisself." Whether the stress of the moment be upon drought or humidity, he will yearly be using the same prayer, merely changing the request for moderate rain and showers " into one for such seasonable weather," according as prevailing conditions dictate his choice.
If it is a wet spring, somebody will be holding an umbrella over the organist and the portable, but more over the portable than the organist, because the portable resents getting wet whereas the organist can be easily dried. In a droughty year we shall be praying for rain, preferably with delayed action until we have got the portable and ourselves (notice the order of precedence), safely under cover.
Previous page
