In spite of the present more healthful condition of German Evangelical music as compared with the feebleness and indefiniteness of the early part of the nineteenth century, there is little assurance of the restoration of this branch of art to the position which it held in the national life two hundred years ago. In the strict sense writers of the school of Spitta are correct in asserting that a Protestant church music no longer exists. “It must be denied that an independent branch of the tonal art is to be found which has its home only in the Church, which contains life and the capacity for development in itself, and in whose sphere the creative artist seeks his ideals.”[76] On the other hand, a hopeful sign has appeared in recent German musical history in the foundation of the New Bach Society, with headquarters at Leipsic, in 1900. The task assumed by this society, which includes a large number of the most eminent musicians of Germany, is that of making Bach’s choral works better known, and especially of reintroducing them into their old place in the worship of the Evangelical churches. The success of such an effort would doubtless be fraught with important consequences, and perhaps inaugurate a new era in the history of German church music. CHAPTER X THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND The musical productions that have emanated from the Church of England possess no such independent interest as works of art as those which so richly adorn the Catholic and the German Evangelical systems. With the exception of the naturalized Händel (whose few occasional anthems, Te Deums, and miscellaneous church pieces give him an incidental place in the roll of English ecclesiastical musicians), there is no name to be found in connection with the English cathedral service that compares in lustre with those that give such renown to the religious song of Italy and Germany. Yet in spite of this mediocrity of achievement, the music of the Anglican Church has won an honorable historic position, not only by reason of the creditable average of excellence which it has maintained for three hundred years, but still more through its close identification with those fierce conflicts over dogma, ritual, polity, and the relation of the Church to the individual which have given such a singular interest to English ecclesiastical history. Methods of musical expression have been almost as hotly contested as vital matters of doctrine and authority, and the result has been that the English people look upon their national religious song with a respect such as, perhaps, no other school of church music receives in its own home. The value and purpose of music in worship, and the manner of performance most conducive to edification, have been for centuries the subjects of such serious discussion that the problems propounded by the history of English church music are of perennial interest.