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,'