But we must go back and travel with you the rocky road,—“Music in America.”
Pilgrims and Puritans
The Pilgrims and Puritans who reached our “stern and rock-bound coast” early in the 17th century did not approve of music, except for the singing of five hymn tunes! The first book printed in America was the Bay Psalm Book (1640) at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its heading was:
“The Psalmes in Metre: Faithfully translated for the Use, Edification, and comfort of the Saints in publick and private, especially in New England.”
“Spiritual Songs” were not at first included, but later about fifty English hymn tunes, sung in unison were used. It went into many editions, found its way to England and Scotland, and was preferred by many to all others.
Music was forbidden as a trade in New England and a dancing master was fined for trying to start a class. The early settlers thought “to sing man’s melody is only a vain show of art” and objected to tunes because “they are inspired”! So the Puritans were forbidden to invent new tunes. You can understand that an art could not easily flourish in such stony ground.
Mr. Oscar G. Sonneck, an authority on the history of American music, says in his book, Early Concert-life in America: “The Puritans, the Pilgrims, the Irish, the Dutch, the Germans, the Swedes, the Cavaliers of Maryland and Virginia and the Huguenots of the South may have been zealots, adventurers, beggars, spendthrifts, fugitives from justice, convicts, but barbarians they certainly were not.... Possibly, or even probably, music was at an extremely low ebb, but this would neither prove that the early settlers were hopelessly unmusical nor that they lacked interest in the art of ‘sweet conchord.’... What inducements had a handful of people, spread over so vast an area, struggling for an existence, surrounded by virgin forests, fighting the Redman, and quarreling amongst themselves, to offer to musicians? We may rest assured that even Geoffrey Stafford, ‘lute and fiddle maker’ by trade and ruffian by instinct, would have preferred more lucrative climes and gracefully declined the patronage of musical Governor Fletcher had he not been deported in 1691 to Massachusetts by order of his Majesty King William, along with a batch of two hundred other Anglo-Saxon convicts.
“There were no musicians by trade, ... and as the early settlers were not unlike other human beings in having voices, we may take it for granted that they used them not only in church, but at home, in the fields, in the taverns, exactly as they would have done in Europe and for the same kind of music as far as their memory or their supply of books carried them. That the latter, generally speaking, cannot have been very large, goes without saying.... Instruments were to be found in the homes of the wealthy merchants of the North and in the homes of the still more pleasure seeking planters of the South. Indeed, there can be little doubt that the nearest approach to a musical atmosphere ... was to be found in the South rather than in the North. Still, we might call the period until about 1720 the primitive period in our musical history.
“After 1720 we notice a steadily growing number of musicians who sought their fortunes in the Colonies, an increasing desire for organs, flutes, guitars, violins, harpsichords, the establishment of ‘singing-schools,’ an improvement in church music, the signs of a budding music trade from ruled music paper to sonatas and concertos, the advent of music engravers, publishers and manufacturers of instruments, the tentative efforts to give English opera a home in America, the introduction of public concerts, in short the beginnings of what may properly be termed the formative period in our musical history, running from 1720 until about 1800.”
The first organ in America came from London in 1713 for the Episcopal Church of Boston, but it remained unpacked for seven months, as many objected to an organ at divine services. The fate of music hung in the balance with the Puritans but fortunately it won out.