Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/201

 the repetition of a word, or half-line of verse, was not considered a disgrace to an ecclesiastical choir. The old psalm-tunes, familiar and dear to every true Englishman's heart, often add a wealth of suggestion to incidents and situations. As an inn burns down to the ground, the bewildered chimes of the near-by church "wander through the wayward air of the Old Hundred and Thirteenth" and when the unfortunate Cytherea has been deserted by her Edward, the well-known verses of the First, cause "that sphere-descended maid, Music, friend of Pleasure at other times," to become a positive enemy—racking, bewildering, unrelenting. Turning for illustrations from the earliest novel to the latest, a remarkable passage from Jude the Obscure might be mentioned as an instance of the dramatic use of church-music. It will be remembered that the repentant Jude enters the Cathedral-Church of Cardinal College at Christminster just as the choir intones the second part, In quo corriget, of the 119th Psalm, stirred by the question, "Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way?" A more tragic and a stupendously ironic effect is achieved by the same means later on. After Little Father Time's hanging of himself and of the children of Sue and Jude, the two miserable parents are aroused from the stupor that had succeeded their first shock of horror by the notes of the organ of the College chapel. Jude recognizes the music as the anthem from the Seventy-third Psalm: "Truly God is loving unto Israel."

The substitution of the single organist for the string-choir in rural communities is a theme that runs through much of Hardy's work, but finds its most complete ex-