ABSTRACT
The year 1856 marks a turning point in the revival of church music, both for ecclesiologists and for the wider movement. Early in that year the Revd S. S. Greatheed wrote a pointed letter to The Ecclesiologist repudiating a recent statement in its pages to the effect that modern composers were incapable of writing true church music. Without reference to the Ecclesiological Society’s views concerning the revival of the other ecclesiastical arts, it is impossible to understand why its leaders not only countenanced but positively encouraged the use of contemporary music in worship during the late 1850s and 1860s. The fact that 1856 was also the year during which the Ecclesiological late Cambridge Camden Society officially shortened its name to simply the ‘Ecclesiological Society’ seems almost symbolic. The Revd H. L. Jenner was dispatched by the Committee of the Ecclesiological Society to observe and review the proceedings.
