OUR CHURCH MUSIC.

Auckland Star, Volume VII, Issue 1974, 7 June 1876, Page 2

OUR CHURCH MUSIC.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.)

Sir,—Quiet Church of England going people who read your paper of yesterday, when they got to the end of the effusion signed "Disgust," will have generally thought, "Whatever ails the unfortunate man who wrote that letter headed ' Our Church Music.'" There are people who, as they go through the world, always look as if they felt a bad smell. It does seem as if some had a like affliction in respect of the effect on their ears of the musio they hear. Of this latter small unhappy section of the community, " Disgust" aspires to be a subaltern officer, but he, among his other mistakes, has made a great one when he chose the honored name of Mendelsaohn for his captain. There have been great geniuses who. were cross-grained and cantankerous, but in this, as in other respects, Mendel-sohn differed from " Disgust." I have looked more or less carefully into a great variety of hymn tune books, but I never ~aw one yet in which there could not be found abundant material for unfavorable criticism by those who approach them in a fault finding spirit.1 What the musical taste, ability, or learning of '' Disgust" may be as compared with the compilers of the New Zealand Hymnal,, of course we cannot do morejthan guess at, until we know his real name ; but as a large proportion of our church-goers have long a-SO-cia.ed t'.e music of that compilation with devotional words which they like (if I may. not even use a stronger wordj, "Disgust would have shown more common sense and better taste had he toned down his individual asperities before attacking what is bound up with the affections of many of his neighbours.—l am, &o, Anti Disgust. 7