Articles by R. Chester Barger
From Medieval Church Music to Modern Hymns
March 1949
Have you ever wondered how long people have been singing hymns such as are common to the modern church service? It is really a complicated story.
For hundreds of years after the founding of the Christian…
MUSIC OF THE MESSAGE: Modern Church Music—No. 3
August 1950
The hymns of Mason, Hastings, and their associates were worshipful and certainly worthy of a place in the church. Yet even they did not meet the needs of the new, aggressively missionary bodies that were forming in America —Baptists,…
MUSIC OF THE MESSAGE: Modern Church Music—No. 2
July 1950
The modern hymn tune is, as we have seen, a composite of all the influences of the past. The Anglicans and other conservatives, with their abiding conception of public service mainly as worship, continued to use the psalm tunes, opposing the…
MUSIC OF THE MESSAGE: The Development of Modern Church Music"
June 1950
A brief study of the development of church music was reported in these columns in March, 1949. That was necessarily brief and incomplete. I have been invited to continue that discussion, giving fuller treatment than was possible at that…