English Church Music
The Singing Church. By C. Henry Phillips. (Faber and Faber. 21s.) THE music' of the Church in England is the one branch of the art in which, despite momentary lapses, our musicians have consistently excelled. This may well be not only because Englishmen have always proved good choristers and the people at large enjoy com- munal singing, but also because Church music serves a clear, intelligible purpose. But although both in the congregational music of the parish church and the more exalted choir music of the cathedral, we can boast of a rich heritage, there have been times and places when that wealth has been ignored by the men in authority: It was after a visit to St. Paul's that Dvorak, referring to the chanting of the psalms, expressed his surprise at the reiteration of one brief tune—and such a bad tune at that. One suspects that this was one of the times and places when ignorance of our heritage was unfortunately paramount.
It is to counter this ignorance ih those responsible for the conduct of our Church Services that Dr. Phillips has written his book. It is based upon lectures delivered by himself and others at the College of St. Nicholas, Chislehurst, where he was for some time Sub- Warden. He has produced a remarkably stimulating outline of the history of Church Music in England which ought to be in the hands of every parish priest and every dean of a cathedral. It will also be read with benefit by most organists and choirmasters, whose knowledge of their own sphere of musical history is not always as wide as it should be.
To the more general reader the book will appeal on account of its clear exposition of the problems confronting the church musician and of the manner in which they have been solved by composers during the past five hundred years. Dr. Phillips writes in a com- pressed and aphoristic style, which gives the reader plenty to think about for himself. His terseness is due to no lack of information, but to a determination to distil the essence of a great deal of learning for the benefit of his readers. So he manages to compress into less than a page all the essentials of the results of the impact of foreign influences represented by Mendelssohn and Gounod upon our music in the nineteenth century, and to describe in pithy terms the characteristics of the resulting style. His exposition of the development of the organ is no less masterly, and organists, who apply all the modern devices of the instrument to the music -Of composers like Purcell, who, having neither swell nor pedals at their command, relied on contrasts of tone, will do well to remark his
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