Volume 6 — PREFATORY NOTE

The field of choral and church music is so vast and the subject so inclusive that the author has felt the constant pressure of the necessity for sifting and abbreviating and condensing the voluminous material at hand in order not to go far beyond the prescribed limits of this volume. He has resolutely shut his eyes to the allurements of the many by-paths that constantly beckoned away from the historical highway he was appointed to tread; and he has endeavored to keep this object constantly in mind—to trace the development of the forces and tendencies from which have sprung the various musical forms that have gone to make up the literature of choral and church music as century followed century. In this volume, therefore, the great personalities of musical history will receive far less attention than the particular musical forms and art-tendencies that flowed from their, oft-times, combined creative activities.

While a large number of choral and organ works of every class have been analyzed with much detail and a still larger number given definite classification, it is hoped that the historical summaries and the discussions of styles and periods, scattered throughout this volume, will be even more helpful to the reader in enabling him to place any given musical work in its true musical, as well as historical, perspective. It is a matter of some regret that from sheer lack of space several interesting and wholly relevant topics—such as hymnology, contemporaneous church music, the whole relation of music to the present-day church, etc.—must be left untouched. In the chapters on contemporaneous choral music, it was necessary for the same reason to shut out of consideration the whole field of short cantata (for church choirs, and for female and male chorus), though the number of really fine works here is quite amazing. Contemporaneous choral music is fully discussed in three chapters and a large number of works are adequately described, though for obvious reasons critical estimates are in the main impossible from the very propinquity of these works.

Grateful acknowledgment is here made to Mr. Frederick H. Martens and to Mr. Reginald L. McAll for the contribution of the comprehensive chapter on the history of the organ (Chapter XIV), at the end of which their initials will be found; also to Mr. Wilhelm Middelschulte, organist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for many critical suggestions, especially on the organ-works of Bach, Widor and Reger. In this connection the author wishes to give full and grateful recognition to the valuable assistance of his wife in gathering and verifying much historical material.

Rossetter G. Cole.

Chicago, August, 1915.

CHORAL AND CHURCH MUSIC