e say all
that I have to say, or have space to say, about the rhythm of hymn-tunes;
confining my remarks generally to the proper dignified rhythms.

In all modern musical grammars it is stated that there are virtually only
two kinds of time. The time-beat goes either by twos or some multiple of
two, or by threes or some multiple of three, and the accent recurs at
regular intervals of time, and is marked by dividing off the music into
bars of equal length. Nothing is more important for a beginner to learn,
and yet from the point of view of rhythm nothing could be more
inadequate. _Rhythm is infinite._ These regular times are no doubt the
most important fundamental entities of it, and may even lie
undiscoverably at the root of all varieties of rhythm whatsoever, and
further they may be the only possible or permissible rhythms for a modern
composer to use, but yet the absolute dominion which they now enjoy over
all music lies rather in their practical necessity and convenience (since
it is only by attending to them that the elaboration of modern harmonic
music is possible), than in the undesirability (in itself) or unmusical
character of melody which ignores them. In the matter of hymn-melodies an
unbarred rhythm has very decided advantages over a barred rhythm. In the
former the melody has its own way, and dances at liberty with the voice
and sense; in barred time it has its accents squared out beforehand, and
makes steadily for its predetermined beat, plumping down, as one may say,
on the first note of every bar whether it will or no. Sing to any one a
Plain-song melody, _Ad coenam Agni_ for instance, once or twice, and then
Croft's 148th Psalm[12]. Croft will be undeniably fine and impressive,
but he provokes a smile: his tune is like a diagram beside a flower.

Now in this matter of rhythm our hymn-book compilers, since the
seventeenth century, have done us a vast injury. They have reduced all
hymns to the common times. Their procedure was, I suppose, dictated by
some argument such as this: 'The people must have what they can
understand: they only understand the simple two and three time: _ergo_ we
must reduce all the tunes to these measures.' Or again, 'It will be
easier for them to have all the tunes as much alike as possible:
therefore let us make them all alike, and write them all in equal
minims.'

Both these ideas are absolutely wrong. A hymn-tune, which they hastily
assume to be the commonest and lowest form o