Excerpt from The Choral Friend: A Collection of New Church Music, Consisting of Original Anthems and Psalm and Hymn Tunes; Adapted to the Most Common Metres

The peculiar form and limited extent of this work prove that it is not offered in competition with the large and new collections appearing every season. I shall be content to see my labors appreciated by that rapidly increasing number of individuals, choirs, teachers of sacred music, and musical associations, who desire to Obtain genuine new music of a higher order than common, yet eminently fitted for religious worship and for practice. The music offered here is not difficult to read; the greater difficulty consists in understanding and rendering its spirit. Well-educated leaders, such as love song not merely for salary's sake, will welcome, I trust, the advent Of this work. If length of time in preparation be taken as any evidence of excellence, Christian heart-songs may claim some share of worth, for it has required almost a lifetime to compose its contents. The tunes are either the outpourings of a full heart, or were composed to meet keenly felt wants for music suited to certain poetry or to special occasions and the larger proportion have been sung and criticised before their insertion in this book. A limited number of the pieces here presented were many years ago printed under the title of The Choral Friend, and were warmly welcomed by the few musical people whom the small edition could reach, and honored with very flattering notices of the press.

Influenced by the differences Of mode and spirit in which music was conducted in the churches where I have been engaged during the last twenty-four years, the tunes will be found to be of a greater variety than might be expected from one and the same authorship. During my short stay in the First Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, and St. George's (dr. Tyng's) in New York, I composed mainly tunes for quartette singing (ropes, Bainbridge, Clara, Lafon, Morning, Sampson, and some Episcopal music but by far the greater portion, composed during my now nearly eighteen years' connection with Plymouth (rev. H. W. Beecher's) Church, have been written with a view to their use by large Choirs, or perhaps in congregational singing.

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