music treats it as something without significance--harmless to
be sure, yet somehow indispensable.

Others look upon church music as padding to fill up time
in what is designated as "the opening exercises." For such,
the first part of the service--the part in which music has its
chief place--is a preliminary section, not one in which music
is employed directly and profoundly for religious purpose.
Rather, it is used to effect a general emotional warming up.
Not infrequently congregational and choir music is introduced
in the service and placed in alteration with clerical parts in
order to give diversity to the proceedings and offset a tedious-
ness which the exercises might otherwise have. For such as
hold this view church music, especially choir music, is likely
to be, as Lowell Mason once put it, "a kind of interlude in
religious worship."

Then there is the laissez-faire treatment. Church music is
taken to be a trifling matter, or it may be a thorny matter in
which it is wise not to become entangled. In either case there
is no clear and generally recognized ideal as to its proper
function. Hopelessly confused and endlessly perplexing, church
music is felt to be not susceptible to or perhaps worthy of
serious concern, and is given over to those who are willing to
engage in it. Instead of being purposefully and intelligently
directed by the church as a corporate religious body, music is
left to drift and shift for itself.

In contrast to those who hold church music in low esteem
and treat it with indifference, there are others who cultivate it
zealously, enthusiastically, and even at times extravagantly. By
many it is considered chiefly as an attraction, popular musical
appeal being largely the criterion. It is, in fact, treated as
belonging rather more to the field of church advertising than
strictly to that of religious worship. To attract attendance,
special musical programs are arranged, more or less popular and
sometimes even of semi-secular character, intended to"brighten"
the services and to please the assembled auditors. Such
music is likely to have little religious relevancy and to give to

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