"The waves shall come and the rolling thunder shock Shall beat upon the house that is founded on a rock, And it never shall fall, never, never, never."What the proper English tune is to "I think when I read that sweet story of old" I cannot tell, but I am sure it can never melt my heart as that one in the old "Musical Leaves." with its twistful repetitions of the last line:
"I should like to have been with Him then, I should like to have been with Him then, When He took little children like lambs to His fold, I should like to have been with Him then."I fear we could not sing that without breaking down. As we recall it, we draw an inward fluttering breath, something grips our throats and makes them ache, our eyes blur, and a tear slips down upon the cheek, not of sorrow - God knows not all of sorrow - but if we had it all to live over again, how differently we - oh, well, it's too late now, but still.
Leafing over my little girl's "Arabian Nights" the other day, when I came to the story of "The Enchanted Horse," I found myself humming, "Land ahead! Its fruits are waving." My father used to lead the singing in Sabbath-school, and when he was sol-fa-ing that tune to learn it, I was devouring that story, and was just about at the picture where Prince What's-his-name rises up into the air on the Enchanted Horse, with his true love hanging on behind, and all the multitude below holding their turbans on as they look up and exclaim:
"Well, if that don't beat the Dutch!"
And another tune still excites in me the sullen resentment that it did when I first heard it. In those days, just as a fellow got to the exciting part in "Frank at Don Carlos's Ranch," or whatever the book was, there was kindling to be split, or an armful of wood to be brought in, or a pitcher of water from the well, or "run over to Mrs. Boggs's and ask her if she won't please lend me her fluting-iron," or "run down to Galbraith's and get me a spool of white thread, Number 60, and hurry right back, because then I want you to go over to Serepta Downey's and take her that polonaise pattern she asked me to cut out for her," or - there was always something on hand. So what should one of these composers do - Idon't know what ever possessed the man - but go write a Sabbath-school song with this chorus:
"There'll be something to do, There'll be something to do, There'll be something for children to do:
On that bright shining shore, Where there's joy evermore, There'll be something for children to do."I suppose he thought that would be an inducement!
One of these days America is going to be the musical center of the world. When that day is fully come, and men sit down to write about it, I hope they won't forget to give due credit to the reed organ, Stephen Foster, and the Sabbath-school. The reed organ had a lot to do with musical culture. It is much decried now by people that prefer a piano that hasn't been tuned for four years; but the reed organ will come into its own some day, don't forget. Without it the Sabbath-school could not have been. Anybody that would have a piano in a Sabbath-school ought to be prosecuted.
When music, heavenly maid, was just coming to after that awful lick the Puritans hit her, the first sign of returning life was that people began to tire of the ten or a dozen tunes to which our great-grandfathers droned and snuffled all their hymns. In those days there was raised up a man named Stephen Foster, who "heard in his soul the music of wonderful melodies," and we have been singing them ever since - "'Way Down upon the Swanee Ribber," and "Old Kentucky Home," and "Nellie Gray," and the rest. Then Bradbury and Philip Phillips and many more of them began to write exactly the same kind of tunes for sacred words. They were just the thing for the Sabbath-school, but they were more, much more.
You know that when a fellow gets so he can shave himself without cutting half his lip off, when it takes him half an hour to get the part in his hair to suit him, when he gets in the way of shining his shoes and has a pretty taste in neckties, he doesn't want to bawl the air of a piece like the old stick-in-the-muds up in the Amen corner or in Mr. Parker's class. He wants to sing bass. Air is too high for him anyhow unless he sings it with a hog noise. Oh, you get out! You do, too, know what a "hog noise" is. You want to let on you've always lived in town. Likely story if you never heard anybody in the hog-pasture with a basket of nubbins calling, "Peeg!
Peeg! Boo-eel Booee!" A man's voice breaks into falsetto on the "Boo-ee!" Well, anyhow, such a young man as I am telling you of would be ashamed to sing with a hog noise. He wants to sing bass.
Now the regular hymn-tunes change the bass as often as they change the soprano, and if you go fumbling about for the note, by the time you get it right it is wrong, because the tune has gone on and left you. The Sabbath-school songs had the young man Absalom distinctly in view. They made the bass the same all through the measure, and all the changes were strictly on the do, sol and fa basis. As far as the other notes in the scale were concerned, the young man Absalom need not bother his head with them. With do, sol and fa he could sing through the whole book from cover to cover as good as anybody.
