Musical letters from Abroad

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

201-2

text excerpt

In the evening, at half past six o’clock, we attended a religious service in the “Cherry street Chapel” (Wesleyan), where a sermon was preached and a collection taken in aid of Sunday schools. The singing was mostly by a chorus of about two hundred children, who sang in two parts, girls singing first, boys second. They sang in tolerably good time and tune, but in no better taste than we have heard some of the children's choruses in America. There was a kind of nasal, or feline quality of tone, which was anything but pleasant. [...] The singing, by children, of music unfit for them, or unadapted to their capacities, is a very common fault; on the present occasion a glee by Callcott was attempted, to sacred words, which had better been omitted; and at the close of the services, after the benediction, the poor children, not knowing what they were about, but led on by those who ought to have known better, made a bold attack on Handel’s Hallelujah. It hardly need be added that the performance came as near to the ridiculous as need be; there was nothing good about it except the intentions of the children; they were innocent through ignorance; but not so with the teachers, for ignorance cannot, in a teacher, excuse such error in judgment and carelessness in execution. 

excerpt from 'Musical letters from abroad' pp. 201-2 (230 words)

1448921338450:

1448921338450