Flowers and fruit from the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

POGANUC PEOPLE.

Puritan music.

As there is a place for all things in this great world of ours, so there was in its time and day a place and a style for Puritan music. If there were pathos and power and solemn splendor in the rhythmic movement of the churchly chants, there was a grand, wild freedom and energy of motion in the old “fuguing tunes” of that day that well expressed the heart of a people courageous in combat and unshaken in endurance. The church chant is like the measured motion of the mighty sea in calm weather, but those old fuguing tunes were like that same ocean aroused by stormy winds, when deep calleth unto deep in tempestuous confusion, out of which, at last, is evolved union and harmony. It was a music suggestive of the strife, the commotion, the battle-cries of a transition period of society, struggling onward toward dimly seen ideals of peace and order.