THE NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE. NEW SERIES. APRIL, 1892. VOL. VI. No. 2. SURPLICED BOY CHOIRS IN AMERICA. By S. B. Whitney. HE rapid introduction of boy choirs in our Episcopal churches during the past few years has been so general throughout the country, taking the place of conventional quartet and chorus choir, that reflective musical students have tried to find some cause for it. Ritualism has been assigned by some; while others have ascribed it to the fact that so many of our people spend their summer vacations in England, where the surpliced boy choir is almost universal, especially in the cathedrals and larger parish churches, and we have a tendency to copy English ways. We think that Ritualism has little or nothing to do with this change; for in England the boy choirs are as universally found in churches and cathedrals where there is an utter lack of anything like high ritual in the service, they have been employed for years, and during all this time there has been no appreciable change in the manner of conducting the service. Even in this country, choirs of boys and men, unsurpliced, have been employed in many churches; and at Appleton Chapel at Harvard College a boy choir has been introduced to render the service for the daily prayers and the weekly vesper service, to the great satisfaction of the president, faculty, and the large congregation of students and others who enjoy the services. Certainly, Appleton Chapel would be the last place where any one would expect to find anything in the way of ritualism connected with its services; and so the question arises, in this case as in that of hundreds of churches throughout the country: Why was the boy choir introduced to supplant the quartet and chorus? We think that the reason lies in this fact, that earnest people are more and more demanding distinctive church music, distinctively rendered, distinctive in its form, like the architecture of the building in which it is performed. No one would mistake Cologne Cathedral for a town hall or court house. So no one ought to mistake a church anthem for an opera chorus, or a secular part song. Music written for the church should bear the church stamp. In any case, let it be distinctive, something, the like of which one will not be likely to hear at the opera house or concert hall. There should not enter into sacred music anything of a frivolous character; nor should it suffer from haphazard construction. It demands strict form as alone suited to FROM A PAINTING BY KATE WATKINS, EXHIBITED IN THE BOSTON ART CLUB, 1892. its dignity and gravity. This is not supposing that to be dignified it must be heavy, or to be grave it must be melancholy. We must have strictness of form to set it apart from the lighter uses to which a style less severe is adapted. Technical strictness of form is certainly not any hindrance to grace or sweetness, any more than the bony structure of the human form is to the marvellous beauty of the most illustrious examples, or the severity of mathematical accuracy and strictness of scientific principles to the highest beauty in architecture. This general desire for distinctive church music is a natural outcome, after many years during which suffering congregations have been racked and tortured with church music, so called, of no character whatever; transcriptions of operatic selections; and music written to order for quartet choirs, giving in turn each voice of the quartet a solo, with no pretence to any form of artistic construction, according to the rules and canons of the choral art, followed by the best writers of church music. As a natural result, such compositions are fragmentary in their construction, and entirely unacceptable to the cultivated musical ear. As a reaction from all this, the demand seems to have been, as we have stated, for distinctive church music. As we have no distinctive American school of church music in this country, we naturally turn to the mother country, to England, where a distinctive style of music has prevailed for years. The many cathedrals throughout the country have called for organists and composers of acknowledged ability, to whom the whole religious world is indebted for services and anthems of the very highest order; which, being introduced into our churches, have been the means in many places of driving out the flimsy compositions and so-called sacred music which before prevailed. That there is a distinctive school of church music in England, no one would doubt who has ever frequented the English churches; and we are indebted to it, in a large measure, for the great advance which we have made in the matter of religious music. We trust the time is not cert-room or opera house. In this way we have distinctive church music, distinctively rendered. To this cause, rather than to ritualism or anything else, is due the fact of the introduction of boy choirs so extensively in this country. English church music has gone beyond the bounds of the Episcopal Church, and been taken up by the many other religious bodies, its distinctive merits being at once recognized; we find English anthems and English hymn tunes in the musical publications and hymn-books of Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists. far distant when there will be in this country an American school of church music as well, similar to that which exists in the mother land. Although we have no churches and cathedrals established by the state, in which the merits of original compositions by American composers can be at once recognized; yet the time has come when we should make a beginning in this important field of music. But we have also learned from our English cousins that distinctive church music naturally calls for a distinctive choir to perform it, a choir which one will not be likely to hear the next day in the con The English organist occupies a much more exalted position than that of his brother organist in America. Usually a graduate of some college or university, his position as a musical authority is at once recognized in the town or city where he resides. The cathedral organist often starts as a chorister in the cathedral where he afterwards may have charge of the music, going meanwhile to Oxford or Cambridge, where he pursues his academic and musical studies. may have as a fellow-student, one who, pursuing the theological course, will obtain his doctor's degree, and eventually He eventually becoming deputy-organist, later on pursuing the higher musical studies of musical theory and composition, his final success as a church musician is assured from the start. We have only to cite such men as Stainer, Barnby, Sullivan, and others in proof of what results from the thorough training which English organists receive to fit them for the various positions which they afterwards occupy. In utter contrast to this, the American organist assumes his position oftentimes with little or no training at all worthy of the name. He may have had instruction on the pianoforte, and possibly a few lessons on the organ, but it often happens that he takes up his work with no England to take the position there, and it was suggested that it would be very much to his advantage if he had some other trade, like that of barber, or some similar occupation, to enable him to augment his stipend. Oftentimes in the past persons have been employed as organists who played during the week at theatres and concert halls. Of course, such persons could have no possible sympathy with the religious service, nor any adequate idea of its musical requirements, and it is a matter of little wonder that there has often been a certain antagonism between the two departments of the church, the pulpit and the organ-loft. The occupants of these two positions in |