Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in PrestonAtticus
History
Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in Preston
Atticus
Preston (Lancashire, England) -- Church history
The music at the chapel is strong, lively, and congregational.
Sometimes there is more cry than wool in it; but taken altogether,
and considering the place, it is creditable. There is neither an
organ, nor a fiddle, nor a musical instrument of any sort that we
have been able to notice, in the place. All is done directly and
without equivocation from the mouth. The members of the choir sit
downstairs, in a square place fronting the pulpit; the young men--in
their quiet moments--looking very pleasantly at the young women, the
older members maintaining a mild equillibrium at the same time, and
all going off stiffly when singing periods arrive. The hymn books
used contain, principally, pieces selected by the celebrated William
Gadsby, and nobody in the chapel need ever be harassed for either
length or variety of spiritual verse. They have above 1,100 hymns to
choose from, and in length these hymns range from three to twenty-
three verses. Whilst inspecting one of the books recently we came to
a hymn of thirteen verses, and thought that wasn't so bad--was
partly long enough for anybody; but we grew suddenly pale on
directly afterwards finding one nearly twice the size--one with
twenty-three mortal verses in it. It is to be hoped the choir and
the congregation will never he called upon to sing right through any
hymn extending to that disheartening and elastic length. We have
heard a chapel choir sing a hymn of twelve verses, and felt ready
for a stimulant afterwards to revive our exhausted energies; if
twenty-three verses had to be fought through at one standing, in our
hearing, we should smile with a musical ghastliness and perish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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