One is inclined to regret the displacement2 of these ecclesiastical bandsmen by an isolated3 organist (often at first a barrel-organist) or harmonium player; and despite certain advantages in point of control and accomplishment4 which were, no doubt, secured by installing the single artist, the change has tended to stultify5 the professed6 aims of the clergy7, its direct result being to curtail8 and extinguish the interest of parishioners in church doings. Under the old plan, from half a dozen to ten full-grown players, in addition to the numerous more or less grown-up singers, were officially occupied with the Sunday routine, and concerned in trying their best to make it an artistic9 outcome of the combined musical taste of the congregation. With a musical executive limited, as it mostly is limited now, to the parson’s wife or daughter and the school-children, or to the school-teacher and the children, an important union of interests has disappeared.
The zest10 of these bygone instrumentalists must have been keen and staying to take them, as it did, on foot every Sunday after a toilsome week, through all weathers, to the church, which often lay at a distance from their homes. They usually received so little in payment for their performances that their efforts were really a labour of love. In the parish I had in my mind when writing the present tale, the gratuities11 received yearly by the musicians at Christmas were somewhat as follows: From the manor-house ten shillings and a supper; from the vicar ten shillings; from the farmers five shillings each; from each cottage-household one shilling; amounting altogether to not more than ten shillings a head annually12 — just enough, as an old executant told me, to pay for their fiddle-strings13, repairs, rosin, and music-paper (which they mostly ruled themselves). Their music in those days was all in their own manuscript, copied in the evenings after work, and their music-books were home-bound.
It was customary to inscribe14 a few jigs15, reels, horn-pipes, and ballads16 in the same book, by beginning it at the other end, the insertions being continued from front and back till sacred and secular17 met together in the middle, often with bizarre effect, the words of some of the songs exhibiting that ancient and broad humour which our grandfathers, and possibly grandmothers, took delight in, and is in these days unquotable.
The aforesaid fiddle-strings, rosin, and music-paper were supplied by a pedlar, who travelled exclusively in such wares18 from parish to parish, coming to each village about every six months. Tales are told of the consternation19 once caused among the church fiddlers when, on the occasion of their producing a new Christmas anthem20, he did not come to time, owing to being snowed up on the downs, and the straits they were in through having to make shift with whipcord and twine21 for strings. He was generally a musician himself, and sometimes a composer in a small way, bringing his own new tunes22, and tempting23 each choir24 to adopt them for a consideration. Some of these compositions which now lie before me, with their repetitions of lines, half-lines, and half-words, their fugues and their intermediate symphonies, are good singing still, though they would hardly be admitted into such hymn-books as are popular in the churches of fashionable society at the present time.
August 1896.
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1 supplementary | |
adj.补充的,附加的 | |
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2 displacement | |
n.移置,取代,位移,排水量 | |
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3 isolated | |
adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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4 accomplishment | |
n.完成,成就,(pl.)造诣,技能 | |
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5 stultify | |
v.愚弄;使呆滞 | |
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6 professed | |
公开声称的,伪称的,已立誓信教的 | |
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7 clergy | |
n.[总称]牧师,神职人员 | |
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8 curtail | |
vt.截短,缩短;削减 | |
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9 artistic | |
adj.艺术(家)的,美术(家)的;善于艺术创作的 | |
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10 zest | |
n.乐趣;滋味,风味;兴趣 | |
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11 gratuities | |
n.报酬( gratuity的名词复数 );小账;小费;养老金 | |
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12 annually | |
adv.一年一次,每年 | |
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13 strings | |
n.弦 | |
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14 inscribe | |
v.刻;雕;题写;牢记 | |
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15 jigs | |
n.快步舞(曲)极快地( jig的名词复数 );夹具v.(使)上下急动( jig的第三人称单数 ) | |
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16 ballads | |
民歌,民谣,特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 ); 讴 | |
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17 secular | |
n.牧师,凡人;adj.世俗的,现世的,不朽的 | |
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18 wares | |
n. 货物, 商品 | |
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19 consternation | |
n.大为吃惊,惊骇 | |
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20 anthem | |
n.圣歌,赞美诗,颂歌 | |
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21 twine | |
v.搓,织,编饰;(使)缠绕 | |
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22 tunes | |
n.曲调,曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 );调整;(给收音机、电视等)调谐;使协调 | |
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23 tempting | |
a.诱人的, 吸引人的 | |
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24 choir | |
n.唱诗班,唱诗班的席位,合唱团,舞蹈团;v.合唱 | |
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