But he was evidently most solicitous about
the musical part of the service, keeping his eye fixed intently on the
choir, and beating time with much gesticulation and emphasis.
The orchestra was in a small gallery, and presented a most whimsical
grouping of heads, piled one above the other, among which I particularly
noticed that of the village tailor, a pale fellow with a retreating
forehead and chin, who played on the clarionet, and seemed to have blown
his face to a point; and there was another, a short pursy man, stooping
and labouring at a bass viol, so as to show nothing but the top of a
round bald head, like the egg of an ostrich. There were two or three
pretty faces among the female singers, to which the keen air of a frosty
morning had given a bright rosy tint; but the gentlemen choristers had
evidently been chosen, like old Cremona fiddles, more for tone than
looks; and as several had to sing from the same book, there were
clusterings of odd physiognomies, not unlike those groups of cherubs we
sometimes see on country tombstones.
The usual services of the choir were managed tolerably well, the vocal
parts generally lagging a little behind the instrumental, and some
loitering fiddler now and then making up for lost time by travelling
over a passage with prodigious celerity, and clearing more bars than
the keenest fox-hunter to be in at the death. But the great trial was an
anthem that had been prepared and arranged by Master Simon, and on which
he had founded great expectation.
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