History of Christianity II
Reflection Paper 2
Kenneth Langer
The Intersection of Music and Worship in New England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
In this paper, I want to explore the role of music in religion primarily of the Puritans in New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I want to keep the focus somewhat limited to keep to the restrictions of the paper. I am interested in this subject because I was a church music director and teacher for many years and because of my studies as a Unitarian Universalist seminarian. Additionally, I am a resident of the Boston area. There is a direct line of the music from the Puritans of New England to the traditions of modern Unitarian Universalism as Koester explains, “In the United States, Unitarianism split off from Congregationalism to become a sort of free-thinking grandchild of Puritanism.”1
In 1628 the Puritans arrived in America and brought with them an attitude about music and art that was based on their Calvinistic theology. That attitude has affected the role of the arts in many American denominations even up to the present day. Essentially, they avoided artistic works and presentations that were too ornate and, as they did with their religious beliefs, sought to refine them to a mode of simplicity and directness. “Frowning upon luxurious indulgences that diverted men from the spiritual purposes and goals of life, American Puritans, like their English counterparts, were generally not receptive to the fine arts of painting and sculpture. They opposed religious art—particularly attempts to give divinity (God, Christ, or angels) a corporeal representation—considering such art as idolatrous and a transgression of the second commandment.”2 Though many of the Puritan meeting houses held little in the way of fanciful art, music was still included–though only in the form of metrical psalms.
As the Puritans crossed the Atlantic they left behind a wide variety of artistic forms growing in popularity in England. At the same time that they were establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the English people enjoyed music in the forms of lively polyphonic madrigals and carols as well as instrumental ayres and the performances of masques. All these were abandoned by the Puritans but their music was not completely left behind–especially in the Puritan form of worship. The power of music to move congregants and to underline the message of the service could not be ignored. Indeed, as MacCulloch writes, “Music was the secret weapon of popular reformation.”3 But the crossover from religious music to secular music was clearly drawn in the early days of the Puritan formation. “When those who espoused the Puritan religious views came to America, conditions were not conducive to the growth of music as a form of entertainment.”4
When the Puritans first arrived they brought with them the Ainsworth Psalter. This collection of the Psalms of David was adapted from the Genevan Psalter published in 1565. The Ainsworth Psalter was published in Amsterdam in 1612.
The Ainsworth Psalter
Other arrivals of Puritans also brought collections of music. Most notable was the Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter published in London in 1562. These two psalters were eventually deemed inappropriate for the developing American Puritan form of worship so they published their own work known as the Bay Psalm Book in 1640. This work eventually became the New England Psalm Book.5 It was “a metrical version of the Old Testament Book of Psalms, compiled by a group of New England ministers to provide psalms faithful to the biblical text for singing in public worship.”6
The Bay Psalm Book
These were not actually collections of music as are hymn books of the present day. These books contained lined-out versions of the psalms that were meant to be sung to tunes already familiar to the congregants from their knowledge of English tune books. The performance of these psalms “relied heavily on oral tradition. That was especially true of the musical part of psalmody, for most psalm and hymn books printed in America carried only texts without tunes. Through most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was generally assumed that congregations knew the psalm tunes by heart.”7
The performance was accomplished through a process known as ‘lining out’ in which “a deacon or clerk announced which tune would be sung (usually from a choice of only four or five melodies) and then read out each line [of the psalm] before it was sung.”8
The first psalm music to be published in America came in the ninth edition of the New England Psalm Book published in 1698. These works enjoyed popularity into the beginning of the eighteenth century but in cosmopolitan places like the growing city of Boston worshipers gradually came to want more interesting music. In 1714, John Tufts published the very successful collection entitled A Very Plain and Easy Introduction to the Art of Singing Psalm Tunes. The music in that collection “went beyond the unaccompanied monotony of no harmony to a singing by written note and with harmony, accompaniment and more lightness of heart.”9
Tufts Hymnal
Whether it was the addition of new parts to the music or simply the lack of a tradition of musical learning is unclear but in the early part of the eighteenth century, the singing of psalms yielded a sound that was difficult for some to bear. “As memories of church music in England grew dimmer and fewer and fewer churchgoers could read the music printed in increasingly scarce music books, American music became dramatically different—and worse—in comparison to that of England. Especially among the rugged individualists of New England, everyone seemed to sing a different tune and sometimes slipped from one melody to another while paying no attention to tempo.”10
The solution was to institute singing schools to develop better-trained singers but there was resistance to developing professionals in singing and disputes broke out in many meetinghouses.11 The first New England school designed to train people in psalm-singing opened in Boston in 1714. Though Puritan Boston became a center of musical learning, the Anglicans had actually been the first to offer such classes in Maryland in 1699 and in Virginia in 171012 but it was in Boston that some of the newest musical offerings would emerge. In 1770, self-taught composer William Billings, a member of the New England School, published “The New-England Psalm-Singer, a collection of 126 of his own sacred pieces, with a frontispiece by Paul Revere. Billings thus becomes the first American composer to issue a whole collection of his own music.”13 In that collection Billings introduced the concept of the ‘fuguing tune’. The fuguing tune was first introduced to America through the psalm book of James Lyon entitled Urania that contained English works as well as new tunes making it “the earliest instance of identified new compositions published by an American composer.”14 The fuguing tune alternated between sections of block chords with the melody in the tenor and the fuguing section where the voices enter in turn to create a contrapuntal effect.15
A Fuguing Tune
The desire to include harmony and cross the lines between sacred and secular music came about in Boston through the work of Josiah Flagg. His collection “contained an astounding one hundred and sixteen tunes and two anthems that included a wide variety of music from traditional church music to the secular and military marches. The majority of the vocal music was written in four-part harmony.”16
By the end of the eighteenth century, trained singers began to fill the churches and requested that they be allowed to sit together and perform the music they had learned. In 1754, the West Church in Boston designated special singer’s seats in the church. Within a few short years, twenty-three more churches in Boston had done the same.17 With more trained singers in a designated place within the church the stage was set to hearken back to the musical techniques and traditions of Europe. The amalgamation of early colonial music with influence from European classical styles and the influx of immigrants and slaves eventually developed into distinctly American styles of music.
NOTES
1 Koester, Nancy. Introduction to the History of Christianity in the United States. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015. Pg. 50.
2 Miller, Lillian. “The Puritan Portrait: Its Function in Old and New England” from The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol. 63 (online). https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/1761
3 MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity. New York: Penguin Books, 2009. Pg. 638.
4 “Western Music Comes to America: The Early Years–The Colonial Influence.” from The Roots of American Music - an online journal published by ParlorSongs.com. http://parlorsongs.com/issues/2012-7/thismonth/17thcenturyamericanmusic.php.
5 “1600-1754: Music” from Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/1600-1754-music.
6 Crawford, Richard. A Historian’s Introduction To Early American Music. From americanantiquarian.org, Pg. 264. https://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44539323.pdf.
7 Crawford, pg. 277.
8 1600-1754: Music.
9 “Western Music Comes to America”.
10 1600-1754: Music.
11 Crawford, pg. 265.
12 1600-1754: Music.
13 Crawford, pg. 266.
14 Crawford, pg. 266.
15 “Fuguing Tune: Hymnody.” Encyclopedia Britannica (0nline). https://www.britannica.com/topic/fuging-tune
16 “Western Music Comes to America.”
17 Crawford, pg. 264.