Note 146 — CHURCH MUSIC.
Reading edition
St. Godric is said to have learned (in a poor school at Durham) many things of which he was before ignorant, "by hearing, reading, and chanting them." In the parochial schools, even from St. Dunstan's time, children of the lower orders were taught grammar and church music. Schools of greater or less pretensions were attached to most parish churches, and the scholars assembled in the porch. Thus, in 1300, we read of children being taught to sing and read in the porch of St. Martin's, Norwich. At Stoke-by-Clare there was, besides the extensive college, a school in which boys were taught "grammar, singing, and good manners." To which answer the pictures in Chaucer of the schools in which children were taught,
"That is to say, to singe and to rede, As small children do in their childhede."
Again:
"As he sate in the scole at his primere, He Alma Redemptoris heard sing," etc.