Sounding Hymns
Many
hymns composed in the nineteenth century were not sung; rather, they were
spoken out loud. In some congregations any form of music-making, especially
singing, was considered immoral, and the recitation of hymns provided a way
around these moral codes. With the publication of hundreds of pamphlets,
treatises and books on poetry recitation, elocution, the physiology of the
voice, and hints on public speaking, reciters of hymns had a plethora of resources
to drawn on to produce an aesthetically satisfying tone and rhetorical affect. These
recordings, are of hymns composed by Malcolm Quin (1854–1945) for his
positivist Church in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne established from 1878 to 1905. PI: Paul Watt
(Monash University). This site is not yet live.
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