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The following article is an investigation into shape-note
singing which was formulated in colonial New England. The Bidwell House
Museum anticipates sponsorship of a shape-note concert to highlight the
2008 season. Reverend Adonijah Bidwell's parsonage is a fitting venue
for songs of praise, hope and redemption sung in full voice with
shape-notes as guidelines. (Print this
article as a PDF) |
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Re-imagining
Tyringham-Monterey's first minister's church services offers an
opportunity to research the role music played in communal gatherings in
18th century Berkshire towns. Reverend Adonijah Bidwell knew well the
psalmist's directive "to sing a new song unto the Lord" (Ps. 98:1) but
four generations after the first English migration to New England, the
type of music allowed in church services was a subject of controversy
for ministers and town leaders. |
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Smithsonian Folkways has put sound clips of several songs
on a web site
Put "sacred harp" into the search box. |
In their attempt to
establish a church state, the Puritan Fathers weighed that which was
considered secular with that which they knew to be sacred. Most types of
music were considered common, if not profane and prohibited from church
services. Yet, as in all things in the New World, the tie with the
Mother Country was formidable. The Puritans brought Henry Ainsworth's
Book of Psalms with them across the Atlantic; it was prepared by
Ainsworth in 1612 for separatists who fled from England to Holland.
These psalms were sung in church services to about six tunes which
followed the "parodying" principle; that is, the same tune could be
ascribed to many psalms. The first book published in America was The Bay
Psalm Book of 1640 and then The Whole Book of Psalms which contained no
tunes at all. This meant that the congregation had to rely on memory for
any church singing. The ninth edition of twenty, published in 1696 was
the first to appear with tunes; the last edition was published in 1762
and it is likely that Reverend Bidwell used it in his services. Tunes
were simple and most often performed by rote (reminiscing) and by
improvisation. Women probably were not allowed to sing with men
according to music historian, Grace D. Yerbury.
In 1713, a few years before Bidwell was born in Hartford, Reverend
Cotton Mather complained that the young were corrupted by "foolish songs
and ballads." In Boston sailors were fiercely derided when they tried to
sing and dance around a Maypole. The records of the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay indicate serious resistance to any music and merriment
but people sang anyway and the seamen's songs of battles and marches
were set to music and published in London from 1675 through 1780. If New
England ways of living and of worship were directly linked to the Mother
Country, it is worthwhile to review the English and continental
experience of music in worship which had evolved to lofty heights in
several centuries.
Church music may have started when Rome's greatest 6th century
missionary, Augustine, arrived in the old Kingdom of Kent in 597 AD
armed with faith and song. He taught Scripture to the native English by
plainsong which had its antecedents in the synagogue. It is wondrous to
think of a young Aramaic -speaking, Jewish male, Jesus, singing sacred
Hebraic texts in the temple. Chanting the scrolls was a useful and
important tradition because biblical writing was devoid of punctuation
and voice inflection carried meaning and emphasis.
Plainsong was codified in the monasteries by Pope Gregory the Great and
like the Gothic edifices of the later Middle Ages, it was meant to lift
hearts, minds and voices to Heaven. Simple line melody of plainsong was
changed when harmony was introduced in 1240 in England's Canterbury
Cathedral with a rendition of a 13th century Easter motet. John Holbert's Psalms for Praise and Worship describes Gregorian chant with
its light psalm tones or melodies--which are selected in contemporary
times for renditions of a particular psalm according to mood and rhythm.
Monasteries dotted the British Isles and the continent; monks heard
their voices resonate in great and sacred spaces. Often it would take
multiple notes to sing the "A" in a Great Amen–it was angelic, heavenly
and proscribed. The common man could not be expected to follow chanting
in church services. When Henry VIII tried to break the power of the
monasteries, one edict he pronounced was that at church services there
could be only one note sung per syllable. This edict was an omen of the
sound of protestant church music; everyone was expected to sing and they
did.
By the 17th century in Europe, great choirs were specializing in music
that ordinary people could not follow. Royalty commissioned the great
works of composers such as Haydn, Handel and Purcell and these were
performed not for the common folk but for the nobility. The organ was
introduced in the middle of the 16th century. However, Oliver Cromwell's
England took a major turn away from high brow church music. Cromwell's
Parliament believed only unaccompanied song could be heard in church and
the organ was banned in English churches. In was in this context that
Puritans made their way to New England and from this state of mind, we
can better understand the prohibition on anything that smacked of high
church, Anglican or Catholic services.
By the 18th century in England, English composers were influential both
in Europe and in New England in Protestant worship. Isaac Watts and
John
and Charles Wesley were convinced of the strategy of making liturgy
simple through rhyme. Their hymns spread enthusiastically in country
chapels under the principle that music belonged to the people and that
they should be encouraged to sing in church services. By 1747 morning
services included "lining out", that is, a parish clerk led every part
of the service and psalms were recited or sung as he directed. There
were, in addition, many amateur musicians in country villages and they
began to accompany the singing. The Wesleys even brought British folk
and popular tunes into the hymnals by exchanging secular words for
religious words. Other leaders of insurgent Protestantism repudiated the
priestly dominance of the Catholic services which were conducted in
Latin and rallied their congregations to sing in the vernacular.
It is in this atmosphere that in Massachusetts, there was controversy in
the first half of the 18th century--the exact time that young Mr.
Bidwell was training to be a minister. some ministers believed that
singing by notes was a signal of impiety. What could be worse is that it
would lead to the use of instruments in church. One Massachusetts town
gave the congregation an organ in 1735 and the congregation refused it.
Cromwell's ban on organs in England was short-lived but the attitude was
re-played in New England until the resurgence of Anglicanism in the
urban areas and the secularization of Puritanism which occurred in the
second half of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century.
The first instruction book on singing was called The Art of Singing
Psalms by Reverend John Tufts, minister of Newburyport in the 1720's.
The first shape-note system was developed by William Little and
William
Smith in 1748 under the title Easy Instructor: or a new method of
teaching sacred harmony. At first it was vigorously opposed in its birth
place of New England. It was, however, responsible for a movement that
grew quickly as shape-note singing schools developed; these were early
America's most significant musical institution offering a brief course
in musical sight reading and choral reading and using tunebooks with
instructions, exercises and sacred choral music.
In New England a four-note system of music developed that we now refer
to as shape-note singing. The four shapes used as note heads were a
triangle, an oval, a square and a diamond; these represented the four
syllables of the diatonic major scale which they knew as Faw, sol, law,
faw, sol, law, mi, faw. The pitch of each note corresponds to its shape,
independent of lines and spaces on the musical staff. The notes for
soprano and alto are placed on the top staff and for tenor and bass on
the lower staff. No one knows who authored the system but it is possible
to trace its popularity.
The Great Awakening in the mid 18th century is the specific reason for
the popularity of shape-note music. The emotional revivalism that swept
Massachusetts and other Protestant colonies in the second half of the
18th century is the exact time frame for the preaching of Reverend Adonijah Bidwell.
It was at this time that a body of religious songs was written,
published and sold by educated tunesmiths according to William Lynwood Montell
in his book Singing The Glory Down. Montell maintains "these new
compositions attempted to eliminate the practice of singing hymns in a
slow monotonous voice." At first they were sung by ear and memory but
eventually the shape-note tunes were transcribed and published in
collections of psalm tunes adapted for worship, revivals, prayer
meetings and family worship. It was considered a great improvement over
the "old" system of lining out--where the deacon read out a line of text
and the congregation responded.
In the "new" system, students learned to sing music composed in three
and four parts; the singing school acted as a primary means of teaching
and disseminating music in New England during the 18th century. Most of
the songs were imported from England but by the end of the 18th century,
New England tunesmiths were copying the English poet, Isaac Watts and
wrote pieces not only for worship but for artistic expression. A four
part homophonic setting of psalms and fuging tunes was favored. In both,
the tenor line holds the tune but the three other voices hold strong and
independent melodies. Congregations who sang the psalms and other sacred
music in shape-note style were the transitions needed to consider the
introduction of other formalities in church services, e.g., church
choirs.
By the early 19th century, shape-note singing was over in New England.
However, the "singing school" movement spread to the South and was
thriving well into the 20th century. Marsha Genensky's forward to
the CD recording entitled American Angels says that the four-note system
expanded to a seven-note system by the 1840's and songs continued to be
sung at camp meetings and evangelical religious gatherings. The
recording alluded to is a collection of anonymous Anglo-American
spiritual vocalized songs (2003 Harmonia Mundi, USA) and the tradition
is carried on because it brings about a feeling of community. The songs
are about grace, conversion, the difficulties of life on earth and the
rewards to look forward to in the hereafter. The great
ethnomusicologist, Alan Lomax, visited a congregation in Fyffe, Alabama
who were still using a song book called The Sacred Harp in the 1950's,
a compendium of 573 shape-note tunes. He said, "All participants
displayed confidence in their natural voices. The atmosphere was totally
democratic...here, I thought, is a choral style made for a nation of
individualists."
Most of the peculiar characteristics of shape-note singing date back to
the New England composers and the ministers who allowed it in their
services. |
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Article first published in the Bidwell House Museum 2007 Newsletter
Print as PDF |
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