A wonderful flashback in today’s Church Times (to which I don’t subscribe, in case you’re worried…)
Church Times – 100 Years Ago: Gramaphone worship
WE KNEW it was bound to come, and at last it is with us. The gramaphone is to supply the place of public worship, according to one of our great daily papers. For the modest sum of £2 one can now buy the records to give us the whole of Morning and Evening Prayer, musically rendered according to the last setting of Spofkins, in D minor, with the priest’s part intoned in the “firm devout tones” of Rev. Canons of the Church. We would here like to make a suggestion to our clerical friends who find the recitation of the daily offices of the Church too great a strain in their devotion and too great a demand upon their time, which is needed for more up-to-date purposes. At 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. they can send the verger to church armed with the eight records needed to “perform” morning or evening service, a gramaphone can be placed on a table in the chancel with a brass flower vase on each side standing upon a cloth varied in colour according to the Church seasons (if necessary); the verger then reverently winds up the machine and without further expense of curate, choir or organist, a fully choral service can be beautifully rendered in thirty-two minutes. We also note in the same enlightened journal that records are to be prepared for the Litany and “anti (sic)-Communion” service — so that these can be taken at home with the family sitting round in a circle in the drawing-room. Later on, a series of four-minute sermons are to be gramaphoned, and hymns are to be obtained at the cost of about 4s. 6d. a record. The same journal announces that these services need not be confined to those of the Church of England only, but that it will be possible to produce those of other denominations. We are very glad to hear it.
Other than learning that there is, clearly, such a verb as ‘to gramaphone’, we can also see that there is nothing new under the sun!
