Music and Friends: Or, Pleasant Recollections of a Dilettante

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

536-541

text excerpt

As there was service in the evening [at Haarlem Cathedral] I was contented to hear it in the common psalmody, and a most glorious effect it produced. The cathedral is the largest in Holland, much higher than Westminster Abbey, and of great length. I placed myself at the eastern end, and upon the organist giving out the tune I became paralysed with astonishment. A stop called the Vox humana led the congregation, which so predominated over the double diapasons, that it seemed like the voice of a monster issuing from this mountain of sounds. The roulades or flourishes introduced between the lines could only be compared to the rolling...of the surges upon the seashore. The service, like that at Rotterdam, is rigidly puritanical, in which two or three thousand coarse voices unite in singing the tune ; the whole ceremony being of a rude and republican cast.

excerpt from 'Music and Friends: Or, Pleasant Recollections of a Dilettante' pp. 536-541 (147 words)

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