New England -- Religious life and customs; New England -- Social life and customs -- To 1775; Sunday
Watts's monosyllabic Hymns, which were not universally used in America
until after the Revolution, are too well known and are still too frequently
seen to need more than mention. Within the last century a flood of new
books of psalms of varying merit and existence has poured out upon the New
England churches, and filled the church libraries and church, pews, the
second-hand book shops, the missionary boxes, and the paper-mills.
XV.
The Church Music.
Of all the dismal accompaniments of public worship in the early days of New
England, the music was the most hopelessly forlorn,--not alone from the
confused versifications of the Psalms which were used, but from the
mournful monotony of the few known tunes and the horrible manner in which
those tunes were sung. It was not much better in old England. In 1676
Master Mace wrote of the singing in English churches, "'T is sad to
hear what whining, toling, yelling or shreaking there is in our country
congregations."
A few feeble efforts were made in America at the beginning of the
eighteenth century to attempt to guide the singing. The edition of 1698 of
"The Bay Psalm-Book" had "Some few Directions" regarding the singing added
on the last pages of the book, and simple enough they were in matter if not
in form. They commence, "_First_, observe how many note-compass the
tune is next the place of your first note, and how many notes above and
below that so as you may begin the tune of your first note, as the rest may
be sung in the compass of your and the peoples voices without Squeaking
above or Grumbling below."
This "Squeaking above and Grumbling below" had become far too frequent in
the churches; Judge Sewall writes often with much self-reproach of his
failure in "setting the tune," and also records with pride when he "set the
psalm well." Here is his pathetic record of one of his mistakes: "He spake
to me to set the tune. I intended Windsor and fell into High Dutch, and
then essaying to set another tune went into a Key much to high. So I pray'd
to Mr. White to set it which he did well. Litchfield Tune. The Lord Humble
me and Instruct me that I should be the occasion of any interruption in the
worship of God."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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