t voices and often unskilful
readers, and frequently consists largely of giddy young girls, whose
main object in singing in the choir is obviously not based upon their
interest in the spiritual advancement of the community! But we believe
that under the right type of leadership most of these bad conditions
will in time disappear, and that, through the chorus choir, music may
well become a vitalizing force in the life of many a church in which a
revitalizing process is badly needed.

In order to make ourselves perfectly clear, let us summarize at this
point the qualifications especially needed by the conductor of a
volunteer church chorus.

1. He must be a reasonably good musician, possessing not
only familiarity with music in general, but in particular an
intimate knowledge of vocal music, and knowing at least the
fundamentals of voice training.

2. He must understand the purpose of church music, and must
be in sympathy with the religious work of the church.

3. He must be young in spirit, and thus be able to take a
sympathetic attitude toward the members of his choir as
human beings, and particularly as human beings who are still
young, inexperienced, and frequently thoughtless. This
implies, of course, a certain amount of personal magnetism
and this is as necessary in the volunteer choir for holding
the membership together and securing regular attendance as
it is for inspiring them musically.

[Sidenote: THE DANGER OF INDIVIDUALISM]

One of the chief difficulties encountered in more or less all choral
organizations, and especially in the volunteer church choir, is the
tendency on the part of many members to do all they possibly can in
the way of dress, actions, loud singing, and lack of voice blending,
to call attention to themselves as individuals. This not only results
in frequent offense to the eye of the worshiper because of clashing
color combinations (the remedy for which is, of course, some uniform
method of dressing or perhaps a vestment), but what is even more
serious, it often causes a lack of voice blending that seriously
interferes with both the religious and the artistic effect of the
music. For this latter state of affairs there is no remedy except to
learn to listen to individual voices, and when some voice does not
blend with the rest, to let the person who owns it know that he must
either sing very softly or else stop entire