Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Calvary: An Oratorio
Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured throne To Him that sits thereon, With saintly shout and solemn jubilee.
If there be truth as well as poetry in this sentiment, then are the musician and the poet de serving of honour in proportion as they labour to accomplish the high and holy purpose to which it points; in proportion as they succeed in carrying the mind out of the walks of every-day life, in order to raise it into a purer element, and breathe into it a profounder and more pious emotion.
There are minds over which no combination of sounds united to kindred words has the power to exercise any in?uence; but I think it impossible for any who are capable of being thus moved to hear such a composition as the present without responding to that powerful appeal which it makes, not to the senses only, but through them to the heart. The truly devotional spirit, the really grateful heart, loves to dedicate those gifts, with which its Maker has especially endowed it, to His glory. The impulse of one is to rear to His honour the stately temple; the inward prompting of another bids him dedicate to His praise the boldest ?ights of poetic inspiration; whilst a third aspires to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness; what He works, and what He su?'ers to be wrought, with high providence in His Church; to sing victorious agonies of Martyrs and Saints, and the deeds and triumphs of His servants.
The last is the end here proposed. I have only to hope that its purpose will be accomplished; and that while it affords to the musician the conviction that the springs of his art are perpetually gushing out afresh, and its waters ever ?owing, it will serve the purpose for which it was especially designed, by awakening the devotion and cherishing the hopes of the Christian.
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