Nevin on Instruments and the Voice
James Dodson
DOES AN INSTRUMENT SUSTAIN THE VOICE.
The use of an instrument in worship is sometimes pleaded for simply as an aid and to sustain the voice in singing. The voice has a tendency, as is well known, to flatten or fall from the pitch, when the singing is continued for some time. But will an instrument sustain it? This is a question of fact, to be tested by experiment. If it does not, the pleading is groundless. In point of fact, the instrument of course retains its pitch, but the voice flattens in spite of the instrument. The result is simply discord, which may become absolutely intolerable. Let the experiment be fairly made with a long piece, calculated to be trying to the voice, in which the compass of the notes is considerable, and the transitions from low to high and high to low great, numerous, and immediate—then, if the result be not as we have said, we are very much mistaken, and the experience of others must be very different from ours.*
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* A very able article appeared in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review for July, 1866, entitled “The Organ question, Pro and Con,” in which the ground indicated above is taken. The writer affects judicial impartiality in giving the opinions and arguments on both sides, very honestly perhaps, without in so many words avowing his own view. The method was most ingeniously adapted to advance the cause of the instrumentalists. That such was the design is manifest, for when the writer comes to the arguments Pro, he uses the appropriating “we” (rather unconsciously perhaps) as he had not done in presenting the arguments Con, and otherwise the reasoning Pro is evidently con amore. In one place he says, “Whether, in point of fact, the use of an instrument really aids the efficient rendering of the service of song, is, indeed, another, and quite a fair question,” but it is a question which he does not make the slightest attempt fairly to discuss, adduce evidence on, or decide one way or the other. He quietly assumes, all through, that it does, but this is begging the question which he was bound especially to settle, since his article is, to a great extent based on the supposition. We have referred to the article the more particularly, because it contains internal evidence of having furnished ideas and arguments to more than one in Ireland of those who have of late been giving their pens some practice on the subject, somewhat after the same rather insinuating method.