d down to the tones that are hollow and unnatural.

[Sidenote: _Boys' choirs._]

The substitution of boys for women in Episcopal Church choirs has
grown extensively within the last ten years in the United States, very
much to the promotion of aesthetic sentimentality in the congregations,
but without improving the character of worship-music. Boys' voices are
practically limitless in an upward direction, and are naturally clear
and penetrating. Ravishing effects can be produced with them, but it
is false art to use passionless voices in music conceived for the
mature and emotional voices of adults; and very little of the old
English Cathedral music, written for choirs of boys and men, is
preserved in the service lists to-day.

[Sidenote: _Mixed choirs._]

The only satisfactory choirs are the mixed choirs of men and women.
Upon them has devolved the cultivation of artistic choral music in our
public concert-rooms. As we know such choirs now, they are of
comparatively recent origin, and it is a singular commentary upon the
way in which musical history is written, that the fact should have so
long been overlooked that the credit of organizing the first belongs
to the United States. A little reflection will show this fact, which
seems somewhat startling at first blush, to be entirely natural. Large
singing societies are of necessity made up of amateurs, and the want
of professional musicians in America compelled the people to enlist
amateurs at a time when in Europe choral activity rested on the
church, theatre, and institute choristers, who were practically
professionals.

[Sidenote: _Origin of amateur singing societies._]

[Sidenote: _The German record._]

[Sidenote: _American priority._]

[Sidenote: _The American record._]

As the hitherto accepted record stands, the first amateur singing
society was the Singakademie of Berlin, which Carl Friedrich Fasch,
accompanist to the royal flautist, Frederick the Great, called into
existence in 1791. A few dates will show how slow the other cities of
musical Germany were in following Berlin's example. In 1818 there were
only ten amateur choirs in all Germany. Leipsic organized one in 1800,
Stettin in 1800, Muenster in 1804, Dresden in 1807, Potsdam in 1814,
Bremen in 1815, Chemnitz in 1817, Schwaebisch-Hall in 1817, and
Innsbruck in 1818. The Berlin Singakademie is still in existence, but
so also is the Stoughton Musical Society in Stoughton, Mass., which
was founded on