The art of music, Vol. 04 (of 14)

by Unknown

III

In approaching the history of the New England Puritans one is in danger of making serious mistakes, due to temperamental prejudices and to a misconception of the Puritan attitude toward life. The term Puritan itself is more or less indeterminate, covering all sorts and conditions of men with a wide diversity of views on things spiritual and temporal.[7] There is a very general impression, totally unsupported by historic evidence, that the Puritans frowned intolerantly on every worldly diversion, including music. Many of the zealots did, it is true—in every movement there are extremists—and the general trend of thought was influenced somewhat by their thunderous denunciations of all appearance of frivolity. In such circumstances the average human being, uncertain how far he may safely go, is inclined to avoid the vicinity of danger and seek the haven of a strictly negative attitude toward everything about which may hang the very slightest suspicion of impropriety. We have many instances in history of this same tendency. The early Christians, taking Christ's warning against the world and the flesh in its most extreme literalness, adopted a course for avoiding hell and gaining heaven which, if consistently followed, would soon have left the world barren of any beings from whom the population either of heaven or of hell might be recruited. We are apt, however, to exaggerate the self-denying habits of the Puritans. On many points of conduct and dogma they were fiercely and uncompromisingly intolerant. Their Sabbath observance was strict to the point of absurdity. But in general they were not disposed to deprive the world of innocent pleasure.

The New England Puritans were more or less of a piece with their English brethren, and we have every evidence that the latter tolerated music, even cultivated it with assiduity. Milton's love of music is well known.[8] John Bunyan, a typical lower-class Puritan, speaks of it frequently and appreciatively in the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' 'That musicke in itself is lawfull, usefull and commendable,' says Prynne in his 'Histrio-mastix,' 'no man, no Christian dares deny, since the Scriptures, Fathers and generally all Christian, all Pagan Authors extant do with one consent averre it.' Even the anonymous author of the 'Short Treatise against Stage-Playes' (1625) admits that 'musicke is a cheerful recreation to the minde that hath been blunted with serious meditations.' Not only Cromwell, but many other Parliamentary officers, including Hutchinson, Humphrey, and Taylor, were sincere devotees of the art. Colonel Hutchinson, one of the regicides, 'had a great love to music,' according to the 'Memoirs' of his wife, and often diverted himself with a viol, 'on which he played masterly; he had an exact ear and judgment in other music.' In the retinue of Balustrode Whitelocke, who was sent by Cromwell as ambassador to Queen Christina of Sweden in 1653, were two persons included 'chiefly for music,' besides two trumpeters. Whitelocke himself was 'in his younger days a master and composer of music.' On one occasion, during his stay at the Swedish court, the queen's musicians 'played many lessons of English composition,' and on another occasion, after the ambassador's party had played for her, Christina declared that 'she never heard so good a concert of music and of English songs; and desired Whitelocke, at his return to England, to procure her some.'

Ecclesiastical music was indeed vigorously suppressed, but solely for reasons touching the propriety of its employment in the worship of God. Outside the churches the Puritans showed no particular objection to the art. In fact, the practice of music was common enough among them, if we are to believe the statement of Solomon Eccles, a professional musician, who was successively a Presbyterian, an Independent, a Baptist, and an Antinomian, and always found it easy to make a living by his profession. Notwithstanding the ban on theatres, public operatic performances were inaugurated in London in 1656 and were continued without interference. The publishing of music flourished under the Commonwealth as it never did before in England, and large collections of Ayres, Dialogues, and other pieces remain to us from that period. Such activity in music publishing could have been stimulated only by a corresponding demand, and a demand for printed music could not have co-existed with a neglect of musical practice.[9]

However, we must not jump to the conclusion that the American Puritans were as freely inclined to the practice of music as their brethren across the sea. As a matter of fact, they had no musical life whatsoever. There are some points in the psychology and condition of the New England colonists which may help to explain this seeming anomaly. A large proportion of the people of England were Puritans merely because it was not safe or convenient for them to be anything else, and they changed their moral and theological complexions just as soon as a change in fashion rendered the transformation desirable. Many of the most prominent members of the Parliamentary party were drawn into the movement more through political ambition or democratic ideals than for religious reasons. Cromwell's famous 'Trust in God and keep your powder dry' might well express the mental attitude of more than a few of them. Even among the religious leaders were a goodly number whose only desire was to reform what they considered the ritualistic abuses in the English church of their time and who had not the slightest ambition to suppress the harmless pleasures of life or the ordinary manifestations of human instincts. The New England Puritans, on the other hand, were a select group of people who were driven across an inhospitable ocean to the barren shores of a strange land by the indomitable zeal of their convictions, the stern intractability of their consciences and the adamantine obstinacy of their independence. They were not Puritans merely in externals; they were Puritans to the core. Their view of life was uncompromisingly serious. The world was not to them a place for dalliance; it was a place for work, for the earnest sowing of seeds that might bring forth a harvest of grace and godliness, a harvest worthy to be garnered by the Master into His eternal storehouse. So, however kindly they may have looked upon music, they could not conscientiously have allowed it to engage much of their attention. They could with consistence postpone the gratification of their musical tastes to the next world, where, for all eternity, the practice of music would be their chief occupation. Besides, the life of the first settlers in New England was not such as to encourage any indulgence in unnecessary relaxation. What with the stubborn barrenness of the soil, the ferocity of the Indians, and the extreme inclemency of the climate, they had little opportunity for the cultivation of those gentler arts toward which by taste and temperament they were not, in any case, very strongly inclined.

And, indeed, from such information as we are able to gather on the subject, it would appear that the practice of music, even in its simplest forms, was practically unknown to the New England Puritans before the end of the seventeenth century, though some of the Leyden colonists, according to Winslow, were 'very expert in music.' Out of the forty-odd psalm tunes in use among the Pilgrims only five were generally known to New England congregations a generation later, and, even of these five, no congregation could ever perform one with any approach to unanimity. 'In the latter part of the seventeenth and the commencement of the eighteenth centuries,' says Hood, 'the congregations throughout New England were rarely able to sing more than three or four tunes. The knowledge and use of notes, too, had so long been neglected that the few melodies sung became corrupted until no two individuals sang them alike.' The Rev. Thomas Symmes, in an essay published in 1723, tells us that 'in our congregations we us'd frequently to have some people singing a note or two after the next had done. And you commonly strike the notes not together, but one after another, one being half-way thro' the second note, before his neighbor had done with the first. This is just as melodious to a well-tuned musical ear as Æsop was beautiful to a curious eye.' 'It's strange,' he comments further on, 'that people that are so set against stated forms of prayer should be so fond of singing half a dozen tunes, nay one tune from Sabbath to Sabbath; till everybody nauseates it, that has any relish of singing.' In fact, the reverend gentleman confesses that if anything could drive him to Quakerism or Popery it would be the style of singing in vogue among his co-religionists. John Eliot, son of the Indian apostle, in an essay published in 1725, says that 'often at lectures, and especially at ordinations, where people of many congregations met together, their ways of singing are so different that 'tis not easy to know what tune is sung, and in reality there is none. 'Tis rather jumble and confusion. Altho' they all doubtless intend some tune or other, and, it may be, the same, yet they differ almost as much as if, everyone sung a different tune.' The effect must have been delightful. Samuel Sewall, who was precentor of his church for twenty-four years, makes the following plaintive entry in his diary for February 6, 1715: 'This day I set Windsor tune, and the people at the second going over into Oxford, do what I could.' Under date of February 23, 1718, he writes: 'I set York tune, and the congregation went out of it into St. David's in the very 2nd going over. They did the same three weeks be.' Certainly the vocal efforts of the New England saints must have been excruciating when they moved the Reverend Thomas Walter to declare that the singing of his congregation 'sounded like five hundred different tunes roared out at the same time.' It is almost unbelievable that people of intelligence, as most of the early New Englanders were, should be so utterly callous to ear-splitting discords of that kind, but the testimony of their own pastors puts the matter beyond doubt.

Now much of this extraordinary chaos in the congregational singing of the seventeenth century New England colonists was probably due to the prevailing doubt as to whether singing was, after all, quite proper to the worship of God. Until well into the eighteenth century the propriety of singing psalms in church was a subject of heated controversy. John Cotton published a tract in defense of the custom in 1647 ('Singing of Psalms a Gospel Ordinance'), and, as late as 1723, a number of clergymen published a tract called 'Cases of Conscience about Singing Psalms, briefly considered and resolved,' in which we find the proposition: 'Whether you do believe that singing Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs is an external part of Divine Worship, to be observed in and by the assembly of God's people on the Lord's Days, as well as on other occasional meetings of the Saints, for the worshipping of God....' Those who had taken singing in church as a matter of course, and had made of it such a cacophantic horror as is described by Eliot, Walter, and others, characteristically championed their own style of singing, which they called 'the old way,' and zealously opposed any attempt to sing by rule as a step toward Popery.

But, apart from all differences of opinion upon church singing as such, no people who were in the habit of practising music, even in the most elementary way, could make such a hopeless mess of ensemble singing in unison, when the tunes were so old and familiar and the number of them so limited. Ensemble singing by a mixed gathering of untrained people is likely to be pretty bad in any case, but even among a heterogeneous and untutored crowd there are always a number whose accuracy of ear and intonation suffices to keep the others more or less close to the melody—especially when it is a familiar one. Among New England colonists, however, the ability to sing must have been about as common as the ability to dance on the tight rope. The Rev. Thomas Symmes assures us that he was present 'in a congregation, when singing was for a whole Sabbath omitted, for want of a man able to lead the assembly in singing.' Certainly the good people of that congregation on the whole must not have counted singing among their diversions—if they had any. We have no ground for stating flatly that the New Englanders of the seventeenth century absolutely abstained from singing on all occasions; but if they did sing it was in a most primitive and haphazard fashion.

Instrumental music certainly was taboo to them. As far as we know there was not a musical instrument in New England before the year 1700. If there was, it has shown remarkable ingenuity in escaping detection. Before leaving this world for a better one, the New England colonist was meticulously careful in making out a full and exact inventory of his material possessions. He told in painful detail just how many pots and pans, bolsters, pillows, tables and chairs he had been blessed with and in just what condition he bequeathed them to posterity. Nothing detachable in the house was too small nor of too little value to escape his conscientious enumeration. But of musical instruments the testamentary literature of New England contains no mention. The first suggestion we find of the existence of such a thing is a laconic reference in the diary of the Rev. Joseph Green under date of May 29, 1711: 'I was at Mr. Thomas Brattle's, heard ye organs and saw strange things in a microscope.' We have no means of knowing, unfortunately, what were the musical qualities of Mr. Thomas Brattle's 'organs'; perhaps they were as strange as the things the reverend diarist saw in the microscope. Anyhow, as far as we can discover, they were unique in New England. Perhaps they were the same that Mr. Brattle bequeathed to the Brattle Square Church of Boston in 1713. The congregation of the church did not 'think it proper to use the same in the public worship of God,' and the instrument was consequently given to King's Chapel, where it was introduced in the services, to the consternation, anger and disgust of Dr. Cotton Mather and the greater part of the population of New England. This organ is still preserved for the benefit of the curious, and, though its musical possibilities apparently were limited, it at least marked a precedent which, as we shall see in a later chapter, was followed by good results.

It has been mentioned that most of the New England congregations, at the end of the seventeenth century, knew not more than five psalm-tunes. Those, it is assumed, were the psalms called 'Old Hundred,' 'York,' 'Hackney,' 'Windsor,' and 'Martyrs.' The early Pilgrims, presumably, were more eclectic. They used the volume of tunes compiled by the Rev. Henry Ainsworth, of Amsterdam. The version of Sternhold and Hopkins was used in Ipswich and perhaps elsewhere. In 1640 both the Ainsworth and the Sternhold and Hopkins versions were generally superseded by the 'Bay Psalm Book,' though Ainsworth's psalter was retained by the churches of Salem and Plymouth for some time longer. The 'Bay Psalm Book' was compiled by a number of Colonial clergymen, including Rev. Thomas Weld, Rev. John Eliot, of Roxbury, and Rev. Richard Mather, of Dorchester. It is interesting chiefly as containing some of the quaintest verses ever written. Thus:

'And sayd he would them waste; had not
Moses stood (whom he chose)
'fore him i' the breach: to turn his wrath
lest that he should waste those.'

and again:

'Like as the heart panting doth bray
after the water-brooks,
even in such wise, O God, my soule
after Thee panting looks.'

The settings of the tunes in the New England psalm-books were those of Playford and Ravenscroft, but, as we have seen, the congregations habitually introduced original harmonizations of their own. The general method of singing those psalms was known as 'lining out.' That is to say, the minister or deacon first sang each line, to give the key, and the congregation followed his lead—more or less. The results of this system were often ludicrous. For instance, there is the well-known example, cited by Hood, where the deacon declares cryptically:

'The Lord will come and he will not,'

and follows this up with the perplexing injunction:

'Be silent, but speak out.'

Owing to the efforts of John Cotton and other cultured clergymen the people as a whole soon came to accept singing as proper to divine service, but many decades passed before they could be persuaded that the cultivation of the voice or the use of any outward means to acquire skillfulness in singing was decent or godly. Not to the outward voice, they argued, but to the voice of the heart did God lend ear; and, though their singing was verily as the bellowing of the bulls of Bashan, it mattered not except to the ears of their neighbors, who, in truth, must have been sufficiently calloused to the discord of harsh sounds. This peculiar attitude lasted until well into the eighteenth century. Even as late as 1723 the 'Cases of Conscience,' to which we have referred, contained such questions as:

'Whether you do believe that singing in the worship of God ought to be done skillfully?' and 'whether you do believe that skillfulness in singing may ordinarily be gained in the use of outward means by the blessing of God?' By the efforts of enlightened clergymen like Mather, Symmes, Dwight, Eliot, Walter, and Stoddard the people of New England were finally brought to a realization of the fact that their praise would be just as acceptable to God if offered on the key; but their conversion was a slow and painful process. Two decades of the eighteenth century had passed before they began to pay any attention to the cultivation of church music, and, as we shall see in the next chapter, this awakening interest coincided with the first faint stirrings of a general musical life in the Puritan colonies.

W. D. D.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The sentence quoted opens Frederic Louis Ritter's 'Music in America.' In the next sentence the author admits the prior arrival of the Cavaliers on these shores, but hastens to add that they exercised very little influence on American musical development. 'It is a curious historical fact,' he says, 'that earnest interest in musical matters was first taken by the psalm-singing Puritans.' It is curious. We quote further: 'From the crude form of a barbarously sung, simple psalmody there rose a musical culture in the United States which now excites the admiration of the art-lover, and at the same time justifies the expectation and hope of a realization, at some future epoch, of an American school of music.' Quantum sufficit. Louis C. Elson, in his 'History of American Music,' also tells us that 'the true beginnings of American music ... must be sought in ... the rigid, narrow, and often commonplace psalm-singing of New England.' If these things be so, well may the American composer exclaim in the words of the immortal Sly 'Now, Lord be thanked for my good amends!'

[2] We are leaving out of consideration the Spanish settlement of Florida as well as the French settlement of Quebec, and have in mind only those early colonies which formed the nucleus of the United States.

[3] See Max Seiffert in Vierteljahrschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 1891.

[4] Thomas Morley, 'A Plain and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke,' 1597.

[5] 'The Colonial Era,' in the American History Series, New York, 1892-1902.

[6] See Chapter XI for a further treatment of negro music.

[7] Strictly speaking the Pilgrims who came from Leyden to Plymouth were not Puritans. They were Separatists, and their movement antedated the Puritan movement per se. It would be highly inconvenient, however, in a work of this character to draw constant distinctions between Pilgrims and Puritans and we shall consequently speak of them in general as one.

[8] Cf. Sigmund Spaeth: 'Milton's Knowledge of Music,' New York, 1913.

[9] For a full statement of the Puritan case in respect to music, see Henry Davey: 'History of English Music,' Chap. VII. London, 1895.

CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNINGS OF MUSICAL CULTURE IN AMERICA

Composite elements of American music—New England's musical awakening; early publications of psalm-tunes; reform of church singing—Early concerts in Boston—New York, Philadelphia, the South—The American attitude toward music—The beginnings of American music: Hopkinson, Lyon, Billings and their contemporaries.

The whole history of early musical culture in America—obscure enough at best—is additionally obfuscated by the persistent illusion of American historians that the New England psalm-tunes formed the absolute basis of our musical development. This illusion may be part of the widespread impression that the church has been the exclusive fons et origo of musical art. Thus Ritter: 'Musical culture in America, as in the great musical countries of Europe—Italy, France, Germany—took its starting point from the church.'[10] As a consequence of this view of things we find the early chapters of all existing histories of American music strewn with 'psalm-tunes,' 'church choirs,' and 'clergymen,' as thick as autumn leaves in Vallombrosa. All of which would be perfectly desirable if the importance of these factors in our musical development were apparent. Neither in our popular music nor in works of our serious composers can we trace the influence of New England psalmody, though we can trace the influence of German folk-songs and Scotch reels and Irish jigs and negro tunes and the writings of every European composer, from Bach to Brahms.

We have no desire to belittle the achievements of New England or the magnitude of its part in the history of the country. But—owing perhaps to the fact that literary production in America was for many generations confined almost exclusively to the New England states—we have had imposed on us a habit of thought which is a sort of historical synecdoche—New England being the figurative whole. Of course, it does not make a particle of difference to American music what we may think or say about its parentage. But, as long as history is to be written, it is well that it shall be written with some attempt at a disinterested attitude, and assumptions that the genesis of our music lay in New England or in any other circumscribed locality are entirely ex parte. Most of our composers have been disciples of some recognized European school or eclectic students of several schools. We can point in them to the influence of Bach or Mozart, of Beethoven or Brahms, of Schubert, Mendelssohn or Grieg, of Wagner, Strauss or Debussy, just as we can point to such influences in the writings of every European composer, great or small. The musical inheritance of the American composer is not American; it is universal. For a variety of reasons we have not yet developed a distinctively national school, but, among our younger composers who are unmistakeably American, where are the traces of Puritan psalmody? The ethical influence of Puritanism is still strong in the land; it still colors our literature, art and public life; it even colors our music. But purely æsthetic influence is quite a different thing. Frankly, we believe that the music of colonial New England has had no more influence on our music of to-day than the writings of Cotton Mather have had on the work of O. Henry.

These prefatory remarks are made simply to emphasize the fact that the following sketch of the beginnings of musical culture in New England and elsewhere is intended only as a statement of historical facts and not as an argument for the influence of the New England colonies, or of any other colonies, in the development of American music. Little information is obtainable concerning the musical life of America before the end of the eighteenth century, and in these early chapters we are merely trying to arrive at an approximate estimate of what that musical life may have been, leaving philosophical deductions therefrom to those skilled in the drawing of such. If a predominating amount of space is given to the New England colonies it is chiefly because our available information concerning them is very much fuller than that which we possess concerning the rest of the country.