Music Matters
My great great grandfather was Precentor in a Free Church of Scotland congregation in Dundee. He led unaccompanied psalm-singing - the only music allowed. He used a tuning fork to help him pitch the starting note. He would 'line out' the psalm, singing one line, then the congregation would repeat it and so on. No musical instruments were allowed and no hymns or songs, other than psalms. When my grandmother told me about this when I was a child, I was astonished. I couldn't imagine church without hymns and musical instruments. I thought that no singing apart from the Psalms and no musical instruments was a long time ago and everything is different now. Indeed it is, but not everywhere. A Free Church of Scotland minister in Glasgow has resigned because his denomination recently agreed (November 2010) by a very narrow majority to allow hymn singing and musical instruments in public worship for the first time. His congregation has grown numerically under his car...