Favorite Songs and Hymns For School and Home, page: 0040

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40	FAVORITE SONGS FOR SCHOOL AND HOME.

Musical Trash.�I wish to express my unfeigned disgust at the flood of musical trash that is annually poured from our music publishing houses in the shape of new tune-books. Every fresh book must contain new and original music. The old tunes must be mangled past recognition, and the compiler must rack his brains to invent new and more dreadful abortions, labeled with astounding names, and called tunes. If all the organists in the country were to meet in con�vention, and then vote on the best and most useful chorals, they would blot out of existence nine-tenths of these tunes, and give us a list of not over one hun�dred congregational tunes of real merit. There are at		least twenty-four hundred pages of new tunes pub�lished every year. Of these how many are worth the paper they are printed upon ? Perhaps a dozen tunes. Taking all the civilized people in the world together, it is found that only one man in a million is a musi�cal composer of real genius. Plenty of people can pick out a tune on the piano. They are not com�posers. We have in the United States a few men, like Zundel and Tuckerman, who can write a choral. The music they give us will live. As for the rest, to the trunk-maker with it! A poor tune-book will make good kindling. To the fire with the rubbish, and let the smoke rise as incense to pure art.�Barnard.

SUMMER DAYS ARE COMING. Spirited.			Charles Jeffreys.