"A fugue let loose cheers up the place,
With bass and tenor, alto, air,
The parts strike in with measured grace,
And something sweet is everywhere.
"As if some warbling brood should build
Of bits of tunes a singing nest;
Each bringing that with which it thrilled
And weaving it with all the rest."
All public worshippers in the meetings one hundred years ago did not,
however, regard fuguing as "something sweet everywhere," nor did they agree
with Billings and Byles as to its angelic and ecstatic properties. Some
thought it "heartless, tasteless, trivial, and irreverent jargon." Others
thought the tunes were written more for the absurd inflation of the singers
than for the glory of God; and many fully sympathized with the man who
hung two cats over Billings's door to indicate his opinion of Billings's
caterwauling. An old inhabitant of Roxbury remembered that when fuguing
tunes were introduced into his church "they produced a literally fuguing
effect on the older people, who went out of the church as soon as the first
verse was sung." One scandalized and belligerent old clergyman, upon the
Sabbath following the introduction of fuguing into his church, preached
upon the prophecy of Amos, "The songs of the temple shall be turned
into howling," while another took for his text the sixth verse of the
seventeenth chapter of Acts, "Those that have turned the world upside down,
are come hither also." One indignant and disgusted church attendant thus
profanely recorded in church his views:--
"Written out of temper on a Pannel in one of the Pues in Salem Church:--
"Could poor King David but for once
To Salem Church repair;
And hear his Psalms thus warbled out,
Good Lord, how he would swear
"But could St Paul but just pop in,
From higher scenes abstracted,
And hear his Gospel now explained,
By Heavens, he'd run distracted."
These lines were reprinted in the "American Apollo" in 1792.
The repetition of a word or syllable in fuguing often lead to some
ridiculous variations in the meanings of the lines. Thus the words--
"With reverence let the saints appear
And bow before the Lord,"
were forced to be sung, "And bow-wow-wow, And bow-ow-ow," and so on until
bass, treble, alto, counter, and tenor had bow-wowed for about twenty
seconds; yet I doubt if the simple hearts that sung ever saw the absurdity.
It is impossible while speaking of fuguing to pass over an extraordinary
element of the choir called "singing counter." The counter-tenor parts in
European church-music were originally written for boys' voices. From
thence followed the falsetto singing of the part by men; such was also
the "counter" of New England. It was my fortune to hear once in a country
church an aged deacon "sing counter". Reverence for the place and song, and
respect for the singer alike failed to control the irrepressible start
of amazement and smile of amusement with which we greeted the weird and
apparently demented shriek which rose high over the voices of the choir,
but which did not at all disconcert their accustomed ears. Words, however
chosen, would fail in attempting to describe the grotesque and uncanny
sound.
It is very evident, when once choirs of singers were established and
attempts made for congregations to sing the same tune, and to keep
together, and upon the same key, that in some way a decided pitch must be
given to them to start upon. To this end pitch-pipes were brought into the
singers' gallery, and the pitch was given sneakingly and shamefacedly to
the singers. From these pitch-pipes the steps were gradual, but they led,
as the Puritan divines foresaw, to the general introduction of musical
instruments into the meetings.
This seemed to be attacking the very foundations of their church; for the
Puritans in England had, in 1557, expressly declared "concerning singing of
psalms we allow of the people joining with one voice in a plain tune, but
not in tossing the psalms from one side to the other with mingling of
organs." The Round-heads had, in 1664, gone through England destroying the
noble organs in the churches and cathedrals. They tore the pipes from the
organ in Westminster Abbey, shouting, "Hark! how the organs go!" and, "Mark
what musick that is, that is lawful for a Puritan to dance," and they sold
the metal for pots of ale. Only four or five organs were left uninjured in
all England. 'Twas not likely, then, that New England Puritans would take
kindly to any musical instruments. Cotton Mather declared that there was
not a word in the New Testament that authorized the use of such aids to
devotion. The ministers preached often and long on the text from the
prophecy of Amos, "I will not hear the melody of thy viols;" while,
Puritan-fashion, they ignored the other half of the verse, "Take thou away
from me the noise of thy songs." Disparaging comparisons were made with
Nebuchadnezzar's idolatrous concert of cornet, flute, dulcimer, sackbut,
and psaltery; and the ministers, from their overwhelming store of Biblical
knowledge, hurled text after text at the "fiddle-players."
Some of the first pitch-pipes were comical little apple-wood instruments
that looked like mouse-traps, and great pains was taken to conceal them as
they were passed surreptitiously from hand to hand in the choir. I have
seen one which was carefully concealed in a box that had a leather binding
like a book, and which was ostentatiously labelled in large gilt letters
"Holy Bible;" a piece of barefaced and unnecessary deception on the part of
some pious New England deacon or chorister.
Little wooden fifes were also used, and then metal tuning-forks. A canny
Scotchman, who abhorred the thought of all musical instruments anywhere,
managed to have one fling at the pitch-pipe. The pitch had been given but
was much too high, and before the first verse was ended the choir had to
cease singing. The Scotchman stood up and pointed his long finger to the
leader, saying in broad accents of scorn, "Ah, Johnny Smuth, now ye can
have a chance to blaw yer braw whustle agaen." At a similar catastrophe
owing to the mistake of the leader in Medford, old General Brooks rose in
his pew and roared in an irritated voice of command, "Halt! Take another
pitch, Bailey, take another pitch."
In 1713 there was sent to America an English organ, "a pair of organs" it
was called, which had chanced, by being at the manufacturers instead of in
a church, to have escaped the general destruction by the Round-heads. It
was given by Thomas Brattle to the Brattle Street Church in Boston. The
congregation voted to refuse the gift, and it was then sent to King's
Chapel, where it remained unpacked for several months for fear of hostile
demonstrations, but was finally set up and used. In 1740 a Bostonian named
Bromfield made an organ, and it was placed in a meeting-house and used
weekly. In 1794 the church in Newbury obtained an organ, and many
unpleasant and disparaging references were made by clergymen of other
parishes to "our neighbor's box of whistles," "the tooting tub."
Violoncellos, or bass-viols, as they were universally called, were almost
the first musical instruments that were allowed in the New England
churches. They were called, without intentional irreverence, "Lord's
fiddles." Violins were widely opposed, they savored too much of low, tavern
dance-music. After much consultation a satisfactory compromise was agreed
upon by which violins were allowed in many meetings, if the performers
"would play the fiddle wrong end up." Thus did our sanctimonious
grandfathers cajole and persuade themselves that an inverted fiddle was
not a fiddle at all, but a small bass-viol. An old lady, eighty years old,
wrote thus in the middle of this century, of the church of her youth:
"After awhile there was a bass-viol Introduced and brought into meeting and
did not suit the Old people; one Old Gentleman got up, took his hat off
the peg and marched off. Said they had begun fiddling and there would be
dancing soon." Another church-member, in derisive opposition to a clarinet
which had been "voted into the choir," brought into meeting a fish-horn,
which he blew loud and long to the complete rout of the clarinet-player and
the singers. When reproved for this astounding behavior he answered stoutly
that "if one man could blow a horn in the Lord's House on the Sabbath day
he guessed he could too," and he had to be bound over to keep the peace
before the following Sunday. A venerable and hitherto decorous old deacon
of Roxbury not only left the church when the hated bass-viol began its
accompanying notes, but he stood for a long time outside the church door
stridently "caterwauling" at the top of his lungs. When expostulated with
for this unseemly and unchristianlike annoyance he explained that he was
"only mocking the banjo." To such depths of rebellion were stirred the
Puritan instincts of these religious souls.
Many a minister said openly that he would like to walk out of his pulpit
when the obnoxious and hated flutes, violins, bass-viols, and bassoons were
played upon in the singing gallery. One clergyman contemptuously announced
"We will now sing and fiddle the forty-fifth Psalm." Another complained of
the indecorous dress of the fiddle-player. This had reference to the almost
universal custom, in country churches in the summer time, of the bass-viol
player removing his coat and playing "in his shirt sleeves." Others hated
the noisy tuning of the bass-viol while the psalm was being read. Mr.
Brown, of Westerly, sadly deplored that "now we have only catgut and resin
religion."
In 1804 the church in Quincy, being "advanced," granted the singers the
sum of twenty-five dollars to buy a bass-viol to use in meeting, and a few
other churches followed their lead. From the year 1794 till 1829 the
church in Wareham, Massachusetts, was deeply agitated over the question of
"Bass-Viol, or No Bass-Viol." They voted that a bass-viol was "expedient,"
then they voted to expel the hated abomination; then was obtained "Leave
for the Bass Viol to be brought into ye meeting house to be Played On every
other Sabbath & to Play if chosen every Sabbath in the Intermission between
meetings & not to Pitch the Tunes on the Sabbaths that it don't Play" Then,
they tried to bribe the choir for fifty dollars not to use the "bars-vile,"
but being unsuccessful, many members in open rebellion stayed away from
church and were disciplined therefor. Then they voted that the bass-viol
could not be used unless Capt. Gibbs were previously notified (so he and
his family need not come to hear the hated sounds); but at last, after
thirty years, the choir and the "fiddle-player" were triumphant in Wareham
as they were in other towns.
We were well into the present century before any cheerful and also simple
music was heard in our churches; fuguing was more varied and surprising
than cheerful. Of course, it was difficult as well as inappropriate to
suggest pleasing tunes for such words as these:--
"Far in the deep where darkness dwells,
The land of horror and despair,
Justice hath built a dismal hell,
And laid her stores of vengeance there:
"Eternal plagues and heavy chains,
Tormenting racks and fiery coals,
And darts to inflict immortal pains,
Dyed in the blood of damned souls."
But many of the words of the old hymns were smooth, lively, and
encouraging; and the young singers and perhaps the singing-masters craved
new and less sober tunes. Old dance tunes were at first adapted; "Sweet
Anne Page," "Babbling Echo," "Little Pickle" were set to sacred words. The
music of "Few Happy Matches" was sung to the hymn "Lo, on a narrow neck
of land;" and that of "When I was brisk and young" was disguised with
the sacred words of "Let sinners take their course." The jolly old tune,
"Begone dull care," which began,--
"My wife shall dance, and I will sing,
And merrily pass the day."
was strangely appropriated to the solemn words,--
"If this be death, I soon shall be
From every pain and sorrow free,"
and did not seem ill-fitted either.
"Sacred arrangements," "spiritual songs," "sacred airs," soon followed, and
of course demanded singers of capacity and education to sing them. From
this was but a step to a paid quartette, and the struggle over this last
means of improvement and pleasure in church music is of too recent a date
to be more than referred to.
I attended a church service not many years ago in Worcester, where an old
clergyman, the venerable "Father" Allen, of Shrewsbury, then too aged
and feeble to preach, was seated in the front pew of the church. When a
quartette of singers began to render a rather operatic arrangement of a
sacred song he rose, erect and stately, to his full gaunt height, turned
slowly around and glanced reproachfully over the frivolous, backsliding
congregation, wrapped around his spare, lean figure his full cloak
of quilted black silk, took his shovel hat and his cane, and stalked
indignantly and sadly the whole length of the broad central aisle, out
of the church, thus making a last but futile protest against modern
innovations in church music. Many, in whom the Puritan instincts and blood
are still strong, sympathize internally with him in this feeling; and all
novelty-lovers must acknowledge that the sublime simplicity and deep piety
in which the old Puritan psalm-tunes abound, has seldom been attained in
the modern church-songs. Even persons of neither musical knowledge, taste,
nor love, feel the power of such a tune as Old Hundred; and more modern and
more difficult melodies, though they charm with their harmony and novelty,
can never equal it in impressiveness nor in true religious influence.