A Singing Sunday-School
Lifeless singing means, usually, a dead Sunday-school. Many a
superintendent might greatly increase the vigor of his school by
getting a little snap into the music. Different ways of singing will
not of themselves solve the problem, but they will go far toward it.
Here are a few methods which will add to the singing the variety that
is the spice of it as well as of nearly everything else.
Try reading the song in concert before it is sung. It would puzzle most
even of us older folks to tell, after we have sung a hymn, what is in
it. Concert reading brings out unsuspected beauties of thought, and the
hymn will be sung afterward with fresh zest and with fuller
intelligence. The superintendent may vary this plan by reading the
stanzas alternately with the school, or the girls may alternate with the
boys. Occasionally get a single scholar to read the hymn before the
school, or, what is far better, to commit it to memory and recite it.
Indeed, memory hymns, to be committed to memory by the entire school,
and sung without the book, will prove very popular. Select songs that
are worth learning for their words as well as for their music,--a
thing which, alas! cannot be said of all our Sunday-school songs. One
memory hymn a month might possibly be achieved, and your children will
rapidly grow independent of hymn-books, as their grandsires were.
They may like to vote upon a school hymn for the entire year, and
learn it in this way,--one that shall serve as a sort of rallying song
throughout the twelvemonth. The various classes, too, may be
encouraged to select their own class songs, and to practise them at
their class socials. Then, once in a while, the entire school may
listen while one or two classes sing their class hymns.
It would do no harm, either, for the superintendent occasionally to bind
the children's interest to the singing by asking them to call for their
favorites, that the school may sing them. This privilege may be granted
to the classes or scholars that have the best record in attendance.
It will add interest to the singing if bits of pleasant information
are sometimes given about the authors of our familiar songs. At the
opening of the session, for instance, tell something about the blind
hymn-writer, Fanny Crosby, and then let all the songs sung that day be
by her; or tell a little about Miss Havergal's beautiful life, or give
a few bright anecdotes about Dr. S. F. Smith, and then use nothing
but their hymns. Some such book as Hezekiah Butterworth's "Story of
the Hymns" (New York: The American Tract Society. $1.75), or
Duffield's "English Hymns: Their Authors and History" (New York: The
Funk & Wagnalls Co. $3), will afford a plentiful supply of
biographical material. Once in a while get one of the scholars to read
one of these hymn anecdotes, or to tell it in his own words.
Prayer songs--there are many most beautiful ones--may be used as
prayers, all heads being bowed while they are sung softly; or they may
be read in the same way.
Antiphonal songs are easily arranged. Choose two classes of good
singers in distant parts of the room, and let one sing the verses and
the other the chorus of some suitable song. A hymn arranged in the
form of question and answer, such as "Watchman, tell us of the night,"
or "Art thou weary, art thou languid?" is very effective when sung in
this way, or when read in dialogue, the superintendent taking the
questions and the school the answers.
Other dispositions may be made, for the sake of variety. Get the girls
to sing the stanzas, and the boys the choruses, or the girls to sing
one verse, and the boys the next, all uniting on the choruses; or, let
the school to the right of the center alternate in singing with the
school to the left. Send a company of singers into another room, with
closed doors, and have them sing the chorus as an echo, very softly.
Get the teachers to sing the stanzas of some song, while the whole
school sings the refrain.
Solos are good once in a while, especially if you make the school the
chorus for them. A quartette of picked singers may be introduced very
delightfully on occasion, especially if their selection is germane to
the lesson topic, and, best of all, if the quartette is chosen from
the scholars themselves. The primary department will hugely enjoy
singing one of their songs to the main school, and the older scholars
will enjoy it quite as heartily.
Possibly a Sunday-school choir might be organized to advantage, the
strong singers from among the more mature scholars being banded
together to practice new music and lead the singing. School orchestras
have been very useful in many churches, the boys being proud to serve
the school with violin and cornet.
Most useful, however, in adding zest to the singing, are the simple
changes and variations that shrewdly call attention to the old by
putting it in a new place, or "putting it" in a new way. For instance,
you might call fresh attention to a beautiful song by bidding all sing
it without their books, while you "line it out" earnestly and brightly.
You might preface a hymn with a sentence or two telling why you think it
just the hymn to sing in connection with the day's lesson. You might
piece together several verses from different songs, and ask the school
to sing them in immediate succession, without prelude or interlude,
noting the connection and progress of the thought. You might stimulate
the scholars in this and that corner by asking now one class and now
another to consider themselves the leaders in the song next to be sung.
You might have occasional "new-hymn" days, in which will be sung no song
ever tried by the school. You might even steal ten minutes, on very rare
occasions, for song services, carefully planned so as to bear
effectively on the lesson for the day. The ways are almost endless
whereby a music-loving, child-loving superintendent can introduce his
two loves to each other.
A few more general suggestions. First, to the organist or pianist. Why
do you think it necessary to hammer out an entire piece of music
before you let the fidgety children sing it? They already know every
note of it, and are not interested in your performance; nor is any one
else. They can find the place quite as quickly as you can. Except in
the case of new songs, do let us off with the chord, and we'll
canonize you as a model of self-restraint and good sense.
Then to the precentor, or whoever is responsible for the time you
keep. Why is it so slow? I never could see why hymns should be sung so
drawlingly as to make it quite impossible to grasp their thought. Time
yourself in singing your next hymn, then read aloud the same hymn,
forcing yourself to occupy the same time, and you will see why it is
that our singing leaves our minds quite absolute blanks. This grievous
fault must be remedied with the children if the singing of hymns is
ever to be, to the average grown-up, an intellectual and spiritual as
well as a physical occupation.
And, to the same end, why is it that your school can sing readily, even
without the book, the first two or three stanzas of so many songs, while
every stanza beyond is an unknown land to them? It is because, owing
chiefly to the slowness of our ordinary singing, we seldom compass the
whole of a hymn. At the close of a well-written hymn is the climax, the
thought up to which the whole has led, which binds it all together. Our
songs, if they are to get hold upon our minds and lives, must be sung
beyond their prelude, sung straight through.
_To get hold of minds and lives_,--that must be the end sought by all
our singing.