Congregation v. Choir

P: In Chicago's swank Fourth Presbyterian Church this Easter, worshipers will hear music by Composers Cesar Franck, the late Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sir Edward Bairstow, a widely-recognized English contemporary.

P: In little Martensdale, Iowa (pop. 172), worshipers at St. Paul's Lutheran Church (membership: 170) will hear ten farm boys & girls and the local hardware merchant sing such stirring old favorites as Christ, the Lord, Is Risen Today and Jesus Lives!

The difference between these two Easter programs is a striking illustration of what is going on throughout the U.S. in church music. For the past decade, music directors and organists of big city parishes have been vigorously campaigning to throw out the oldtime Victorian anthems and Gospel hymns and substitute the works of the so-called "pure classicists" like Bach, Palestrina, Victoria and the modern imitators of their polyphonic styles. Most ministers and congregations are either indifferent or hostile to change. Volunteer smalltown choirs, unopposed by professionals, are still enthusiastically flatting their way through the complicated, sentimental standbys. And even in Manhattan--hotbed of the classicist movement--one of the two old hymns that Martensdale will sing will also be heard in 70% of the big city's churches this Easter.

Main reason the ardent purists have not been more successful is that congregations like to sing. Listening to Palestrina, however purely performed, is not the same thing at all. Many a churchgoer has come to feel that the service is already less for the congregation than for the choir, and he resents any fresh attempts to turn his place of worship into what is beginning to look like a mere concert hall.

Prime mover of the drive for classical church music is cherubic, inexhaustible Dr. Clarence Dickinson, 71, director of the School of Sacred Music at Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary. He has written or arranged some 500 anthems and chorales, edits the standard Presbyterian Hymnal, has trained some 300 U.S. church music directors. Now, as chairman of the American Guild of Organists' service committee, he spends his spare time telling organists how to needle the clergy into planning services with good music instead of merely "decorating" them with "soul-saving hymns." Dr. Dickinson pours most of his philosophy into one anecdote: "Once I heard a preacher sermonize on Launch into the Deep. Then the choir stood up and sang Pull for the Shore. You see, it's better to plan your service."

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