vii

PREFACE.

he begs to record the result of his own experience. This he does with the confident assurance that many of his brethren can re- echo his statement as the result of their own. The flippant, complex, and operatic tunes which, alas! still prevail in too many of our Churches, once prevailed in his own. Some of them were quite impracticable to all but trained ears, by their high pitch, broken rhythm, and interminable ap­poggiaturas. Consequently the singing of the Con­gregation was partial, irregular, fitful, and impulsive. They sung out only when in the humour, and not un­frequently the people in one part of the Church were a full bar behind those in another. The Compiler sought to remedy the evil by gently and unobtrusively substituting the noble melodies which were composed when psalmody was best understood and most exten­sively practised. At first they were pronounced heavy and unattractive, and so would the Old Hundredth be pronounced by many modern congregations, if intro­duced for the first time. He persevered, notwith­standing, quietly yet firmly. Shortly, prejudices began to recede. The people gradually got hold of the tunes; the poor could sing them, and they are now sung with a vigour of voice and purpose which is most refresh­ing, whilst those who were loudest in their condemn­ation have become loudest in their praise. It is in­deed quite exhilarating to mark the revolution which the public mind is undergoing in their favour. The spurious, crude, irreverent, inartistic productions which have so long occupied the room of their elder brethren, the rightful heirs to the people's confidence and at­tachment, are rapidly losing the position which they have so unjustly usurped, and probably within twenty years we shall have to celebrate their entire extrusion from the sanctuary. Possibly the number of tunes in this collection( 160) may be thought too great, yet it is considerably below that in constant use in Germany, and amongst many dissenting congregations in our

*" Church music," says Dr. Crotch," should contain nothing which recommends itself for its novelty, or reminds us of what is heard at the parade, the concert, and the theatre."