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STORIES OF
composed the melody or compiled it from the Roman chants. I fancy, however, that before Le Franc's time the melody was sung to some very amorous words; and it is notorious that the queen of Henry II. used to divert her royal consort by singing her favourite psalm, "Rebuke me not in Thine indignation" to a fashionable jig! Though this psalm does not possess the fervour of "A mighty fortress is our God," it breathes an air of majestic animation that accounts for its popularity in the church ser-vice. Haydn heard it in London sung by a chorus of many thousand voices, and was greatly affected. Berlioz, after hearing it per-formed at St. Paul's Cathedral by some six thousand charity children, wrote: " It would be useless to attempt to give any idea of such a musical effect. It was more powerful, more beautiful, than all the exultant vocal masses you ever heard, in the same proportion that St. Paul's is larger than a village church, and even a hundred times more than that. I may add that this choral, of long notes and of noble character, is sustained by superb harmony, which the organ inundated, without submerging it." For some time it was known as the " Savoy."
It has happened time and again that many an
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