Mexborough and Swinton Times June 15, 1928
Choir Festival At Swinton.
The head of the great procession of choristers passing into the Swinton Churchyard for the Wath Rural Deanery Choirs Festival last Saturday.
Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Monday 11 June 1928
Elaborate Church Music.
Archdeacon on Work For Choir Alone.
“It is the right and proper thing that from time to time the choir in very remotest country parish should sing the best kind music to the glory of God; the most elaborate music can simple enough.”
Archdeacon of Sheffield made the above statement to over 500 choir boys and men who attended the choir festival of the Deanery in Swinton Parish Church on Saturday. Choirs and Vicars from Wath, Swinton, Mexborough, Wombwell and other parishes in the deanery attended the service, which was conducted by the Vicar of Swinton, the Rev. T. G. Rogers. “If any of you went to the 1300th celebrations York last year.” said the Archdeacon, “you must have realised that a service full of ceremonial and adorned with the highest art of man with beautiful music could a thing of the utmost solemnity and great joy. The trouble is that when you come home you must try to to the service as it was done at York, having most elaborate music; you will select hymns so that the congregation shall not butt in. Sometime you try to things which are not suitable to the place where you live.
“I hope the day will come when there will be clearer division between the music which only choir shall sing, the music that only the congregation shall sing, and the music they will both sing. I sometimes think the congregations very exacting. They want join in everything. Yet it is quite unreasonable to expect those men who give their time in the choir not wish, for the good of their choral singing, for some of the best music such as have heard to-night. “
The Archdeacon then uttered the passage quoted above; Continuing, he said that the elaborate kind of music was the kind which the choir should sing alone. In the singing of vesicles and responses the choir and congregation should sing together. He did not think they would ever get psalm singing right in the churches until they restored the Gregorian modes. He did not think they would ever see a revival of the plain song. There was nothing Popish about the plain song as many people seemed to think; it was just a question of the most appropriate way. If they listened to a man singing or humming his work was a plain song usually.
In conclusion the Archdeacon said: “I am inclined to believe that the choir should entirely silent in the singing of hymns. The congregation is not trained to sing in harmony. Some of them sing in a tenor, some kind a bass, and some of them do a terrible thing which they call seconds. The Lord deliver us from the seconds.”