Early American Church Music

When the Pilgrims came to America, they were searching for freedom in all aspects of religion, including worship music. As the colonists began to become accustomed to America and to a new way of life, they also began creating new traditions. In the field of music, the colonists adapted European traditions to fit colonial needs and preferences, but this adaptation was met with much opposition. In response to the liberty churches had been taking with psalm singing, including "Lining Out" and the "Usual Way" of singing, several church leaders began a crusade to recreate order in musical worship by instituting the "Regular Way" of singing as a church standard.

The tradition of "Lining Out" began in England and Scotland during the early part of Elizabeth's reign. It was developed to allow illiterate people to participate in congregational singing or because the parish churches did not have enough psalm books for everyone. In New England, the practice of "Lining Out" was disdained at first and did not begin until the last decade of the seventeenth century, when musicianship was deteriorating and congregations did not have adequate supplies of the new Bay Psalm Book. "A small congregation of literate folk like the earliest colonists in Massachusetts Bay could easily read psalms from the Bay Psalm Book and sing them to tunes made familiar by long use; but as the great migration brought many less literate people to the colonies, the ability so to read and sing declined beyond the capacity of printed notes to save it" (Sablosky 8). "Lining Out" began out of necessity in the colonies, as the congregations became increasingly less literate, literally and musically.

In "Lining Out," the leader reads the text before it is sung, often line by line before the congregation sings; thus the time needed to sing a psalm is almost doubled. As the colonists' musical abilities declined, the leader also began to sing the tune for the congregation. This practice gradually transformed the psalm tunes because the leaders who "Lined Out" the melody would often modify the melody at will. Thus, perverted versions of the originals developed.

Eventually, the colonists did not know the true melodies because of corruption of the tunes in the "Lining Out" process and because of the tradition that became known as the "Usual Way." The "Usual Way" of singing was an oral tradition by which psalm tunes were learned. The tunes were changed gradually as they were passed down from generation to generation until they were corrupted versions of the original tunes-with embellishments or modifications that cause them to sound more like song tunes than psalmody (Stevenson 22). "[T]he few tunes in use were sung differently and . . . were often tortured beyond recognition by the addition of extemporized grace notes in which no two singers agreed" (Fisher 4). Although the people respected the "Usual Way" and wanted to continue this tradition, a group of clergymen had different plans for the future of church music.

These clergymen, mostly Harvard College graduates, wanted to reform worship music by removing what they saw as adulteration of the pure psalm tune form. They believed the "Usual Way" to be abhorrent to God and to people with refined tastes. These reformers, including Thomas Symmes, Cotton Mather, Nathaniel Chauncey and Thomas Walter, called for a return to written tradition rather than oral tradition-or reading from musical notation rather than singing by ear. This tradition is called "Regular Singing." In an effort to promote their viewpoint, these men wrote pamphlets and essays, gave sermons pleading for "Regular Singing" and began to set up singing schools.

In his pamphlet entitled The Reasonableness of Regular Singing or, Singing by Note,Thomas Symmes outlines why he believes "Regular Singing" is preferred by God over the "Usual Way." First, he says that "Regular Singing" is the oldest form of singing in New England and was instituted by the ancient church. Next, he extols the beauty of singing by note because it produces a beautiful melody and harmony that cannot be replicated by the "Usual Way." Since God is the "GOD of Order" (Hamm 37), according to Symmes, singing by note is more pleasing to God than the disorder of changing the music at will. Lastly, he noted that singing by note requires skill, which "is most agreeable to the General Instructions which we have in Scripture" (Hamm 37). The last argument stresses that singing by note is Biblical, which was probably crucial in causing reform in the cities.

Singing schools were also established to help promote singing by note. "The singing school was the institution through which music literacy was promulgated" (Hamm 39). As early as 1714, one such institution was being held in Boston. These groups would often be led by a clergy member and would meet two or three times a week for about two hours. The congregation members learned the fundamentals of reading music in these meetings so that singing in church would be more orderly and thus more pleasing to God.

While the people were initially opposed to the idea of returning to "Regular Singing," the people in the cities eventually accepted that God preferred this type of singing. But the people in small towns and rural areas were much less accepting of the reform; they cherished their traditions and did not want to change. It was only through education that the city people began to learn to sing by note, and it took much longer for the instruction to spread to rural areas. The need for church music reform and the institution of singing schools led to the development of the first music instruction books written and printed in America¹ and eventually led to the first school of American composers. Without these changes, the field of American music today would be dramatically altered.

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1 The following were created because of the institution of singing schools.

Tufts, John. An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm Tunes. 1721.
First American music textbook. Collection of English psalm tunes. Contains preface that explains his new musical notation method using letters rather than notes and fundamentals of music.

Walter, Thomas. The Grounds and Rules of Music Explained. 1721.
Contains many psalm tunes with accompaniment.

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Bibliography

Chase, Gilbert. America's Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Fisher, William Arms. One Hundred and Fifty Years of Music Publishing in the United States. Boston: Oliver Ditson Company, Inc., 1933.

Foote, Henry Wilder. Three Centuries of American Hymnody. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1940.

Hamm, Charles. Music in the New World. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1983.

Hitchcock, H. Wiley. Music in the United States. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1988.

Reynolds, William and Milburn Price. A Survey of Christian Hymnody. Carol Stream, Illinois: Hope Publishing Company, 1987.

Sablosky, Irving. American Music. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969.

Scholes, Percy A. The Puritans and Music in England and New England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.

Stevenson, Robert. ProtestantChurch Music in America: A Short Survey of Men and Movements from 1564 to the Present. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1966.