Spurgeon on music in worship

An apt remark by P. Andrew Sandlin:

Church leaders: if your praise band plays songs 90% of your congregation can't sing easily or enthusiastically, you don't have a church music program; you have a musical performance program. Let me urge you to start a church music program.

prompted Noah Goedker to respond with a remark by Charles Spurgeon:

O sweet singer of Israel, remember that the song is not for your glory, but for the honour of the Lord, who inhabiteth the praises of Israel; therefore, select not anthems and tunes in which your skilfulness will be manifest, but such as will aid the people to magnify the Lord with their thanksgivings.

Goedker cited the quotation from the June 1, 1870, edition of The Sword and the Trowel, Spurgeon's monthly magazine. (Direct link to the PDF of all issues from 1870.) Here is the complete essay:

How shall we Sing?

COULD we rule the service of song in the house of the Lord, we should, we fear, come into conflict with the prejudices and beliefs of many most excellent men, and bring a hornet's nest about our ears. Although we have neither the will nor the power to become reformer of sacred music, we should like to whisper a few things into the ear of some of our Jeduthuns or Asaphs, who happen to be "chief musicians" in country towns or rural villages. We will suppose the following words to be our private communication :--

O sweet singer of Israel, remember that the song is not for your glory, but for the honour of the Lord, who inhabited the praises of Israel; therefore, select not anthems and tunes in which your skilfulness will be manifest, but such as will aid the people to magnify the Lord with their thanksgivings. The people come together- not to see you as a songster, but to praise the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Remember also, that you are not set to sing for yourself only, but to be a leader of others, many of whom know nothing of music; therefore, choose such tunes as can be learned and followed by all, that none in the assembly may be compelled to be silent while the Lord is extolled. Why should so much as one be defrauded of his part through you? Simple airs are the best, and the most sublime; very few of the more intricate tunes are really musical. Your twists, and fugues, and repetitions, and rattlings up and down the scale, are mostly barbarous noise-makings, fitter for Babel than Bethel. If you and your choir wish to show off your excellent voices, you can meet at home for that purpose, but the Sabbath and the church of God must not be desecrated to so poor an end.

True praise is heart work. Like smoking incense, it rises from the glowing coals of devout affection. Essentially, it is not a thing of sound: sound is associated with it very properly for most weighty reasons, but still the essence and life of praise lie not in the voice, but in the soul. Your business in the congregation is to give to spiritual praise a suitable embodiment in harmonious notes. Take care that you do not depress what you should labour to express. Select a tune in accordance with the spirit of the psalm or hymn, and make your style of singing suitable to the words before you. Flippantly to lead all tunes to the same time, tone, and emphasis, is an abomination; and to pick tunes at random is little less than criminal. You mock God and injure the devotions of his people if you carelessly offer to the Lord that which has cost you no thought, no care, no exercise of judgment. You can help the pious heart to wing its way to heaven upon a well-selected harmony; and you can, on the other hand, vex the godly ear by inappropriate or unmelodious airs, adapted rather to distract and dishearten, than to encourage intelligent praise.

The Time is a very primary consideration, but it is too often treated as a matter of no consequence. Large bodies move slowly, and hence the tendency to drawl out tunes in numerous assemblies. We have heard the notes prolonged till the music has been literally swamped, drenched, drowned in long sweeps and waves of monotonous sound. On the other hand, we cannot endure to hear psalms and solemn hymns treated as jigs, and dashed through at a gallop. Solemnity often calls for long-drawn harmony, and joy as frequently demands leaping notes of bounding delight. Be wise enough to strike the fitting pace each time, and by your vigorous leadership inspire the congregation to follow en masse.

May we in the very gentlest whisper beg you to think very much of God, much of the singing, and extremely little of yourself. The best sermon is that in which the theme absorbs the preacher and hearers, and leaves no one either time or desire to think about the speaker; so in the best congregational singing, the leader is forgotten because he is too successful in his leadership to be noticed as a solitary person. The head leads the body, but it is not parted from it, nor is it spoken of separately; the best leadership stands in the same position. If your voice becomes too noticeable, rest assured that you are but a beginner in your art.

One of your great objects should be to induce all the congregation to join in the singing. Your minister should help you in this, and his exhortations and example will be a great assistance to you; but still as the Lord's servant in the department of sacred song you must not rely on others, but put forth your own exertions. Not only ought all the worshippers to sing, but each one should sing praises with understanding, and as David says, "play skilfully" unto the Lord. This cannot be effected except by instructing the people in public psalmody. Is it not your duty to institute classes for young and old? Might you not thus most effectually serve the church, and please the Lord? The method of Mr. Curwen, and the use of his Sol-fa Notation, will much aid you in breaking ground, and you can in after years either keep to the new method, or turn to the old notation as may seem best to you. Thousands have learned to sing who were hopelessly silent until the sol-fa system was set on foot. The institution of singers, as a separate order is an evil, a growing evil, and ought to be abated and abolished; and the instruction of the entire congregation is the readiest, surest, and most scriptural mode of curing it. A band of godless men and women will often instal themselves in a conspicuous part of the chapel, and monopolise the singing to the grief of the pastor, the injury of the church, and the scandal of public worship; or else one man, with a miserable voice, will drag a miserable few after him in a successful attempt to make psalms and hymns hideous, or dolorous. Teach the lads and lasses, and their seniors, to run up and down the Sol-fa Modulator, and drill them in a few good, solid, thoroughly musical tunes, and you, O sons of Asaph, shall earn to yourself a good degree.

C. H. SPURGEON.

Many churches today have discarded their hymnals, or never had them, in favor of words projected on a screen. Congregants are expected to sing along with worship leaders who emulate the singers on "American Idol" or "The Voice." Men with low voices have three unpleasant options: sing the melody two octaves down, try to make up a harmony part from the bass line (if he has a good enough ear to pick it out), or not sing at all.

But about two centuries ago, evangelical church leaders thought it was important to engage the entire congregation in worship through singing. Churches replaced lyrics-only hymnbooks, commissioning hymnals with music and lyrics harmonized in four parts to accommodate the full range of singing voices. The Curwin sol-fa method taught millions to sing and brought to life the great choral tradition of Wales:

The Englishman, the Reverend John Curwen (1816-1880), adapted his tonic sol-fa method of teaching vocal music from Sarah Glover (1785-1867), of Norwich, Norfolk. Curwen initially employed this technique to teach hymn singing to his Sunday School children, but such was its widespread success that by 1891, some two-and-a-half million people across Britain were being taught in this way. According to Idris Lewis in his book 'Cerddoriaeth yng Nghymru' (Music in Wales) (1945), the great revival of choral singing in Wales during the 1880s and 1890s would not have happened without the growth of sol-fa. For those unable to read musical notation, this system was a breakthrough, and amongst those individuals who promoted the method in Wales were John Roberts (Ieuan Gwyllt) and Eleazar Roberts. Weekly classes were organised to teach hymns, anthems and famous choral works, and in chapels, especially, singing standards were transformed.

A friend who grew up in the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) tells me that the denomination had traveling singing instructors who went from church to church to teach laypeople to sing hymns in harmony. My wife's grandfather led singing in the Primitive Baptist congregation at Little Flock, Arkansas, where he would "line out" the songs -- singing each line with the congregation singing in reply, using shape-note hymnals (a different form of the Sol-Fa method) for harmonies.

G. K. Chesterton's gate ought to apply: Until we understand why our forefathers in the faith put so much effort into providing congregations with printed hymns in four-part harmony, we ought not discard them for lyrics on a screen. Spurgeon's essay gives us some clues. I have skimmed through a couple of Curwen's books and find it interesting that he does not bother to motivate the reader to teach the congregation to sing harmony; Curwen takes it for granted.