CONGREGATIONAL SONG IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA
The revised liturgy and musical service of the Church of England had not
been long in operation when they encountered adversaries far more bitter
and formidable than the Catholics. The Puritans, who strove to effect a
radical overturning in ecclesiastical affairs, to reduce worship to a
prosaic simplicity, and also to set up a more democratic form of church
government, violently assailed the established Church as half papist. The
contest between the antagonistic principles, Ritualism _vs._ Puritanism,
Anglicanism _vs._ Presbyterianism, broke out under Elizabeth, but was
repressed by her strong hand only to increase under the weaker James I.,
and to culminate with the overthrow of Charles I. and the temporary
triumph of Puritanism.
The antipathy of the Puritan party to everything formal, ceremonial, and
artistic in worship was powerfully promoted, if not originally instigated
by John Calvin, the chief fountain-head of the Puritan doctrine and
polity. The extraordinary personal ascendency of Calvin was shown not
only in the adoption of his theological system by so large a section of
the Protestant world, but also in the fact that his opinions concerning
the ideal and method of public worship were treated with almost equal
reverence, and in many localities have held sway down to the present
time. Conscious, perhaps to excess, of certain harmful tendencies in
ritualism, he proclaimed that everything formal and artistic in worship
was an offence to God; he clung to this belief with characteristic
tenacity and enforced it upon all the congregations under his rule.
Instruments of music and trained choirs were to him abomination, and the
only musical observance permitted in the sanctuary was the singing by the
congregation of metrical translations of the psalms.
The Geneva psalter had a very singular origin. In 1538 Clement Marot, a
notable poet at the court of Francis I. of France, began for his
amusement to make translations of the psalms into French verse, and had
them set to popular tunes. Marot was not exactly in the odor of sanctity.
The popularization of the Hebrew lyrics was a somewhat remarkable whim on
the part of a writer in whose poetry is reflected the levity of his time
much more than its virtues. As Van Laun says, he was "at once a pedant
and a vagabond, a scholar and a merry-andrew. He translated the
penitential psalms and Ovid's Metamorphoses; he wrote the praises of St.
Christina and sang the triumphs of Cupid." His psalms attained
extraordinary favor at the dissolute court. Each of the royal family and
the courtiers chose a psalm. Prince Henry, who was fond of hunting,
selected "Like as the hart desireth the water brooks." The king's
mistress, Diana of Poitiers, chose the 130th psalm, "Out of the depths
have I cried to thee, O Lord." This fashion was, however, short-lived,
for the theological doctors of the Sorbonne, those keen heresy hunters,
became suspicious that there was some mysterious connection between
Marot's psalms and the detestable Protestant doctrines, and in 1543 the
unfortunate poet fled for safety to Calvin's religious commonwealth at
Geneva. Calvin had already the year before adopted thirty-five of Marot's
psalms for the use of his congregation. Marot, after his arrival at
Geneva, translated twenty more, which were characteristically dedicated
to the ladies of France. Marot died in 1544, and the task of translating
the remaining psalms was committed by Calvin to Theodore de Beza (or
Beze), a man of a different stamp from Marot, who had become a convert to
the reformed doctrines and had been appointed professor of Greek in the
new university at Lusanne. In the year 1552 Beza's work was finished, and
the Geneva psalter, now complete, was set to old French tunes which were
taken, like many of the German chorals, from popular secular songs. The
attribution of certain of these melodies, adopted into modern hymn-books,
to Guillaume Franc and Louis Bourgeois is entirely unauthorized. The most
celebrated of these anonymous tunes is the doxology in long metre, known
in England and America as the Old Hundredth, although it is set in the
Marot-Beza psalter not to the 100th psalm but to the 134th. These psalms
were at first sung in unison, unharmonized, but between 1562 and 1565 the
melodies were set in four-part counterpoint, the melody in the tenor
according to the custom of the day. This was the work of Claude Goudimel,
a Netherlander, one of the foremost musicians of his time, who, coming
under suspicion of sympathy with the Huguenot party, perished in the
massacre on St. Bartholomew's night in 1572.
A visitor to Geneva in 1557 wrote as follows: "A most interesting sight
is offered in the city on the week days, when the hour for the sermon
approaches. As soon as the first sound of the bell is heard all shops are
closed, all conversation ceases, all business is broken off, and from all
sides the people hasten into the nearest meeting-house. There each one
draws from his pocket a small book which contains the psalms with notes,
and out of full hearts, in the native speech, the congregation sings
before and after the sermon. Everyone testifies to me how great
consolation and edification is derived from this custom."
Such was the origin of the Calvinistic psalmody, which holds so prominent
a place in the history of religious culture, not from any artistic value
in its products, but as the chosen and exclusive form of praise employed
for the greater part of two centuries by the Reformed Churches of
Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands, and the Puritan congregations
of England, Scotland, and America. On the poetic side it sufficed for
Calvin, for he said that the psalms are the anatomy of the human heart, a
mirror in which every pious mood of the soul is reflected.
It is a somewhat singular anomaly that the large liberty given to the
Lutheran Christians to express their religious convictions and impulses
in hymns of their own spontaneous production or choosing was denied to
the followers of Calvin. Our magnificent heritage of English hymns was
not founded amid the Reformation struggles, and thus we have no lyrics
freighted with the priceless historic associations which consecrate in
the mind of a German the songs of a Luther and a Gerhardt. Efficacious as
the Calvinistic psalmody has been in many respects, the repression of a
free poetic impulse in the Protestant Churches of Great Britain and
America for so long a period undoubtedly tended to narrow the religious
sympathies, and must be given a certain share of responsibility for the
hardness of temper fostered by the Calvinistic system. The reason given
for the prohibition, _viz._, that only "inspired" words should be used in
the service of praise, betrayed a strange obtuseness to the most urgent
demands of the Christian heart in forbidding the very mention of Christ
and the Gospel message in the song of his Church. In spite of this almost
unaccountable self-denial, if such it was, we may, in the light of
subsequent history, ascribe an appropriateness to the metrical versions
of the psalms of which even Calvin could hardly have been aware. It was
given to Calvinism to furnish a militia which, actuated by a different
principle than the Lutheran repugnance to physical resistance, could meet
political Catholicism in the open field and maintain its rights amid the
shock of arms. In this fleshly warfare it doubtless drew much of its
martial courage from those psalms which were ascribed to a bard who was
himself a military chieftain and an avenger of blood upon his enemies.
The unemotional unison tunes to which these rhymed psalms were set also
satisfied the stern demands of those rigid zealots, who looked upon every
appeal to the aesthetic sensibility in worship as an enticement to
compromise with popery. Before condemning such a position as this we
should take into account the natural effect upon a conscientious and
high-spirited people of the fierce persecution to which they were
subjected, and the hatred which they would inevitably feel toward
everything associated with what was to them corruption and tyranny.
We must, therefore, recognize certain conditions of the time working in
alliance with the authority of Calvin to bring into vogue a conception
and method of public worship absolutely in contradiction to the almost
universal usage of mankind, and nullifying the general conviction, we
might almost say the instinct, in favor of the employment in devotion of
those artistic agencies by which the religious emotion is ordinarily so
strongly moved. For the first time in the history of the Christian
Church, at any rate for the first time upon a conspicuous or extensive
scale, we find a party of religionists abjuring on conscientious grounds
all employment of art in the sanctuary. Beginning in an inevitable and
salutary reaction against the excessive development of the sensuous and
formal, the hostility to everything that may excite the spirit to a
spontaneous joy in beautiful shape and color and sound was exalted into a
universally binding principle. With no reverence for the conception of
historic development and Christian tradition, the supposed simplicity of
the apostolic practice was assumed to be a constraining law upon all
later generations. The Scriptures were taken not only as a rule of faith
and conduct, but also as a law of universal obligation in the matter of
church government and discipline. The expulsion of organs and the
prohibition of choirs was in no way due to a hostility to music in
itself, but was simply a detail of that sweeping revolution which, in the
attempt to level all artificial distinctions and restore the offices of
worship to a simplicity such that they could be understood and
administered by the common people, abolished the good of the ancient
system together with the bad, and stripped religion of those fair
adornments which have been found in the long run efficient to bring her
into sympathy with the inherent human demand for beauty and order.
With regard to the matter of art and established form in public worship
Calvinism was at one with itself, whether in Geneva or Great Britain. A
large number of active Protestants had fled from England at the beginning
of the persecution of Mary, and had taken refuge at Geneva. Here they
came under the direct influence of Calvin, and imbibed his principles in
fullest measure. At the death of Mary these exiles returned, many of them
to become leaders in that section of the Protestant party which clamored
for a complete eradication of ancient habits and observances. No
inspiration was really needed from Calvin, for his democratic and
anti-ritualistic views were in complete accord with the temper of English
Puritanism. The attack was delivered all along the line, and not the
least violent was the outcry against the liturgic music of the
established Church. The notion held by the Puritans concerning a proper
worship music was that of plain unison psalmody. They vigorously
denounced what was known as "curious music," by which was meant
scientific, artistic music, and also the practice of antiphonal chanting
and the use of organs. Just why organs were looked upon with especial
detestation is not obvious. They had played but a very incidental part in
the Catholic service, and it would seem that their efficiency as an aid
to psalm singing should have commended them to Puritan favor. But such
was not the case. Even early in Elizabeth's reign, among certain articles
tending to the further alteration of the liturgy which were presented to
the lower house of Convocation, was one requiring the removal of organs
from the churches, which was lost by only a single vote. It was a
considerable time, however, before the opposition again mustered such
force. Elizabeth never wavered in her determination to maintain the
solemn musical service of her Church. Even this was severe enough as
compared with its later expansion, for the multiplication of harmonized
chants and florid anthems belongs to a later date, and the ancient Plain
Song still included a large part of the service. Neither was Puritanism
in the early stages of the movement by any means an uncompromising enemy
to the graces of art and culture. The Renaissance delight in what is fair
and joyous, its satisfaction in the good things of this world, lingered
long even in Puritan households. The young John Milton, gallant,
accomplished, keenly alive to the charms of poetry and music, was no less
a representative Puritan than when in later years, "fallen on evil days,"
he fulminated against the levities of the time. It was the stress of
party strife, the hardening of the mental and moral fibre that often
follows the denial of the reasonable demands of the conscience, that
drove the Puritan into bigotry and intolerance. Gradually episcopacy and
ritualism became to his mind the mark of the beast. Intent upon knowing
the divine will, he exalted his conception of the dictates of that will
above all human ordinances, until at last his own interpretations of
Scripture, which he made his sole guide in every public and private
relation of life, seemed to him guaranteed by the highest of all
sanctions. He thus became capable of trampling with a serene conscience
upon the rights of those who maintained opinions different from his own.
Fair and just in matters in which questions of doctrine or polity were
not involved, in affairs of religion the Puritan became the type and
embodiment of all that is unyielding and fanatical. Opposition to the use
of the surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, the posture of
kneeling at the Lord's Supper, and antiphonal chanting, expanded into
uncompromising condemnation of the whole ritual. Puritanism and
Presbyterianism became amalgamated, and it only wanted the time and
opportunity to pull down episcopacy and liturgy in a common overthrow.
The antipathy of the Puritans to artistic music and official choirs was,
therefore, less a matter of personal feeling than it was with Calvin. His
thought was more that of the purely religious effect upon the individual
heart; with the Puritan, hatred of cultured church music was simply a
detail in the general animosity which he felt toward an offensive
institution.
The most conspicuous of the agitators during the reign of Elizabeth was
Thomas Cartwright, Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of
Cambridge, who first gained notoriety by means of public lectures read in
1570 against the doctrine and discipline of the established Church. The
coarseness and violence of this man drew upon him the royal censure, and
he was deprived of his fellowship and expelled from the University. His
antipathy was especially aroused by the musical practice of the
established Church, particularly the antiphonal chanting, "tossing the
psalms from one side to the other," to use one of his favorite
expressions. "The devil hath gone about to get it authority," said
Cartwright. "As for organs and curious singing, though they be proper to
popish dens, I mean to cathedral churches, yet some others also must have
them. The queen's chapel and these churches (which should be spectacles
of Christian reformation) are rather patterns to the people of all
superstition."
The attack of Cartwright upon the rites and discipline of the Church of
England, since it expressed the feeling of a strong section of the
Puritan party, could not be left unanswered. The defence was undertaken
by Whitgift and afterward by Richard Hooker, the latter bringing to the
debate such learning, dignity, eloquence, and logic that we may be truly
grateful to the unlovely Cartwright that his diatribe was the occasion of
the enrichment of English literature with so masterly an exposition of
the principles of the Anglican system as the _Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity_.
As regards artistic and liturgic music Hooker's argument is so clear,
persuasive, and complete that all later contestants upon the ritualistic
side have derived their weapons, more or less consciously, from his
armory. After an eloquent eulogy of the power of music over the heart,
Hooker passes on to prove the antiquity of antiphonal chanting by means
of citations from the early Christian fathers, and then proceeds: "But
whosoever were the author, whatsoever the time, whencesoever the example
of beginning this custom in the Church of Christ; sith we are wont to
suspect things only before trial, and afterward either to approve them as
good, or if we find them evil, accordingly to judge of them; their
counsel must needs seem very unseasonable, who advise men now to suspect
that wherewith the world hath had by their own account twelve hundred
years' acquaintance and upwards, enough to take away suspicion and
jealousy. Men know by this time, if ever they will know, whether it be
good or evil which hath been so long retained." The argument of
Cartwright, that all the people have the right to praise God in the
singing of psalms, Hooker does not find a sufficient reason for the
abolition of the choir; he denies the assertion that the people cannot
understand what is being sung, after the antiphonal manner, and then
concludes: "Shall this enforce us to banish a thing which all Christian
churches in the world have received; a thing, which so many ages have
held; a thing which always heretofore the best men and wisest governors
of God's people did think they could never commend enough; a thing which
filleth the mind with comfort and heavenly delight, stirreth up flagrant
desires and affections correspondent unto that which the words contain,
allayeth all kind of base and earthly cogitations, banisheth and driveth
away those evil secret suggestions which our invisible enemy is always
apt to minister, watereth the heart to the end it may fructify, maketh
the virtuous in trouble full of magnanimity and courage, serveth as a
most approved remedy against all doleful and heavy accidents which befall
men in this present life; to conclude, so fitly accordeth with the
apostle's own exhortation, 'Speak to yourselves in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, making melody, and singing to the Lord in your hearts,'
that surely there is more cause to fear lest the want thereof be a maim,
than the use a blemish to the service of God."[80]
The just arguments and fervent appeals of Hooker produced no effect upon
the fanatical opponents of the established Church. Under the exasperating
conditions which produced the Great Rebellion and the substitution of the
Commonwealth for the monarchy, the hatred against everything identified
with ecclesiastical and political oppression became tenfold confirmed;
and upon the triumph of the most extreme democratic and non-conformist
faction, as represented by the army of Cromwell and the "Rump"
Parliament, nothing stood in the way of carrying the iconoclastic purpose
into effect. In 1644 the House of Lords, under the pressure of the
already triumphant opposition, passed an ordinance that the Prayer Book
should no longer be used in any place of public worship. In lieu of the
liturgy a new form of worship was decreed, in which the congregational
singing of metrical psalms was all the music allowed. "It is the duty of
Christians," so the new rule declares, "to praise God publicly by singing
of psalms, together in the congregation and also privately in the family.
In singing of psalms the voice is to be tunably and gravely ordered; but
the chief care is to sing with understanding and with grace in the heart,
making melody unto the Lord. That the whole congregation may join herein,
every one that can read is to have a psalm-book, and all others not
disabled by age or otherwise are to be exhorted to learn to read. But for
the present, where many in the congregation cannot read, it is convenient
that the minister, or some fit person appointed by him and the other
ruling officers, do read the psalm line by line before the singing
thereof."[81]
The rules framed by the commission left the matter of instrumental music
untouched. Perhaps it was considered a work of supererogation to
proscribe it, for if there was anything which the Puritan conscience
supremely abhorred it was an organ. Sir Edward Deering, in his bill for
the abolition of episcopacy, expressed the opinion of the zealots of his
party in the assertion that "one groan in the Spirit is worth the
diapason of all the church music in the world."
As far back as 1586 a pamphlet which had a wide circulation prays that
"all cathedral churches may be put down, where the service of God is
grievously abused by piping with organs, singing, ringing, and trowling
of psalms from one side of the choir to the other, with the squeaking of
chanting choristers, disguised in white surplices; some in corner caps
and silly copes, imitating the fashion and manner of Antichrist the Pope,
that man of sin and child of perdition, with his other rabble of
miscreants and shavelings."
Such diatribes as this were no mere idle vaporing. As soon as the Puritan
army felt its victory secure, these threats were carried out with a
ruthless violence which reminds one of the havoc of the image breakers of
Antwerp in 1566, who, with striking coincidence of temper, preluded their
ravages by the singing of psalms. All reverence for sacred association,
all respect for works of skill and beauty, were lost in the
indiscriminate rage of bigotry. The ancient sanctuaries were invaded by a
vulgar horde, the stained glass windows were broken, ornaments torn down,
sepulchral monuments defaced, libraries were ransacked for ancient
service-books which, when found, were mutilated or burned, organs were
demolished and their fragments scattered. These barbarous excesses had in
fact been directly enjoined by act of Parliament in 1644, and it is not
surprising that the rude soldiery carried out the desires of their
superiors with wantonness and indignity. A few organs, however, escaped
the general destruction, one being rescued by Cromwell, who was a lover
of religious music, and not at all in sympathy with the vandalism of his
followers. Choirs were likewise dispersed, organists, singers, and
composers of the highest ability were deprived of their means of
livelihood, and in many cases reduced to the extreme of destitution. The
beautiful service of the Anglican Church, thus swept away in a single
day, found no successor but the dull droning psalmody of the Puritan
congregations, and only in a private circle in Oxford, indirectly
protected by Cromwell, was the feeble spark of artistic religious music
kept alive.
The reestablishment of the liturgy and the musical service of the Church
of England upon the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 has already been
described. The Puritan congregations clung with tenacity to their
peculiar tenets and usages, prominent among which was their invincible
repugnance to artistic music. Although such opinions could probably not
prevail so extensively among a really musical people, yet this was not
the first nor the last time in history that the art which seems
peculiarly adapted to the promotion of pure devotional feeling has been
disowned as a temptation and a distraction. We find similar instances
among some of the more zealous German Protestants of Luther's time, and
the German Pietists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At many
periods of the Middle Age there were protests against the lengths to
which artistic music had gone in the Church and a demand for the
reduction of the musical service to the simplest elements. Still further
back, among the early Christians, the horror at the abominations of
paganism issued in denunciation of all artistic tendencies in the worship
of the Church. St. Jerome may not inaccurately be called the first great
Puritan. Even St. Augustine was at one time inclined to believe that his
love for the moving songs of the Church was a snare, until, by analysis,
he persuaded himself that it was the sacred words, and not merely the
musical tones, which softened his heart and filled his eyes with tears.
As in all these cases, including that of the Puritans, the sacrifice of
aesthetic pleasure in worship was not merely a reactionary protest
against the excess of ceremonialism and artistic enjoyment. The Puritan
was a precisian. The love of a highly developed and sensuously beautiful
music in worship always implies a certain infusion of mysticism. The
Puritan was no mystic. He demanded hard distinct definition in his pious
expression as he did in his argumentation. The vagueness of musical
utterance, its appeal to indefinable emotion, its effect of submerging
the mind and bearing it away upon a tide of ecstasy were all in exact
contradiction to the Puritan's conviction as to the nature of genuine
edification. These raptures could not harmonize with his gloomy views of
sin, righteousness, and judgment to come. And so we find the most
spiritual of the arts denied admittance to the sanctuary by those who
actually cherished music as a beloved social and domestic companion.
More difficult to understand is the Puritan prohibition of all hymns
except rhymed paraphrases of the psalms. Metrical versions were
substituted for chanted prose versions for the reason, no doubt, that a
congregation, as a rule, cannot sing in perfect unity of cooperation
except in metre and in musical forms in which one note is set to one
syllable. But why the psalms alone? Why suppress the free utterance of
the believers in hymns of faith and hope? In the view of that day the
psalms were directly inspired by the Holy Spirit and contemporary hymns
could not be. We know that a characteristic of the Puritan mind was an
intense, an impassioned reverence for the Holy Scripture, so that all
other forms of human speech seemed trivial and unworthy in comparison.
The fact that the psalms, as the product of the ante-Christian
dispensation, could have no reference to the Christian scheme except by
far-fetched interpretation as symbolic and prophetic, did not escape the
Puritans, but they consoled themselves for the loss in the thought that
the earliest churches, in which they found, or thought they found their
ideal and standard, were confined to a poetic expression similar to their
own. And how far did they feel this to be a loss? Was not the temper of
the typical Puritan, after all, thoroughly impregnated with Hebraism? The
real nature of the spiritual deprivation which this restriction involved
is apparent enough now, for it barred out a gracious influence which
might have corrected some grave faults in the Puritan character, faults
from which their religious descendants to this day continue to suffer.
The rise of an English hymnody corresponding to that of Germany was,
therefore, delayed for more than one hundred and fifty years. English
religious song-books were exclusively psalm-books down to the eighteenth
century. Poetic activity among the non-conformists consisted in
translations of the psalms in metre, or rather versions of the existing
translations in the English Bible, for these sectaries, as a rule, were
not strong in Hebrew. The singular passion in that period for putting
everything into rhyme and metre, which produced such grotesque results as
turning an act of Parliament into couplets, and paraphrasing "Paradise
Lost" in rhymed stanzas in order, as the writer said, "to make Mr. Milton
plain," gave aid and comfort to the peculiar Puritan views. The first
complete metrical version of the psalms was the celebrated edition of
Sternhold and Hopkins, the former a gentleman of the privy chamber to
Edward VI., the latter a clergyman and schoolmaster in Suffolk. This
version, published in 1562, was received with universal satisfaction and
adopted into all the Puritan congregations, maintaining its credit for
full two hundred and thirty years, until it came at last to be considered
as almost equally inspired with the original Hebrew text. So far as
poetic merit is concerned, the term is hardly applicable to the
lucubrations of these honest and prosaic men. As Fuller said, "their
piety was better than their poetry, and they had drunk more of Jordan
than of Helicon." In fact the same comment would apply to all the
subsequent versifiers of the psalms. It would seem that the very nature
of such work precludes all real literary success. The sublime thought and
irregular, vivid diction of the Hebrew poets do not permit themselves to
be parcelled out in the cut and dried patterns of conventional metres.
Once only does Sternhold rise into grandeur--in the two stanzas which
James Russell Lowell so much admired:
The Lord descended from above,
And bowed the heavens most high,
And underneath his feet he cast
The darkness of the sky.
On cherub and on cherubim
Full royally he rode;
And on the wings of all the winds
Came flying all abroad.
The graces of style, however, were not greatly prized by the Puritan
mind. Sternhold and Hopkins held the suffrages of their co-religionists
so long on account of their strict fidelity to the thought of the
original, the ruggedness and genuine force of their expression, and their
employment of the simple homely phraseology of the common people. The
enlightened criticism of the present day sees worth in these qualities,
and assigns to the work of Sternhold and Hopkins higher credit than to
many smoother and more finished versions.
Sternhold and Hopkins partially yielded to Tate and Brady in 1696, and
were still more urgently pushed aside by the version of Watts in 1719.
The numerous versions which have since appeared from time to time were
written purely for literary purposes, or else in a few cases (as, for
example, the psalms of Ainsworth, brought to America by the Pilgrim
Fathers) were granted a temporary and local use in the churches. Glass,
in his _Story of the Psalter_, enumerates one hundred and twenty-three
complete versions, the last being that of Wrangham in 1885. This long
list includes but one author--John Keble--who has attained fame as a poet
outside the annals of hymnology. No other version ever approached in
popularity that of Sternhold and Hopkins, whose work passed through six
hundred and one editions.
Social hymn singing, unlike liturgic choir music, is entirely independent
of contemporary art movements. It flourishes only in periods of popular
religious awakening, and declines when religious enthusiasm ebbs, no
matter what may be going on in professional musical circles. Psalm
singing in the English Reformation period, whatever its aesthetic
shortcomings, was a powerful promoter of zeal in moments of triumph, and
an unfailing source of consolation in adversity. As in the case of the
Lutheran choral, each psalm had its "proper" tune. Many of the melodies
were already associated with tender experiences of home life, and they
became doubly endeared through religious suggestion. "The metrical
psalms," says Curwen, "were Protestant in their origin, and in their use
they exemplified the Protestant principle of allowing every worshiper to
understand and participate in the service. As years went on, the rude
numbers of Sternhold and Hopkins passed into the language of spiritual
experience in a degree only less than the authorized version of the
Bible. They were a liturgy to those who rejected liturgies."[82] It was
their one outlet of poetic religious feeling, and dry and prosaic as both
words and music seem to us now, we must believe, since human nature is
everywhere moved by much the same impulses, that these psalms and tunes
were not to those who used them barren and formal things, and that in the
singing of them there was an undercurrent of rapture which to our minds
it seems almost impossible that they could produce. In every form of
popular expression there is always this invisible aura, like the supposed
imperceptible fluid around an electrified body. There are what we may
call emotionalized reactions, stimulated by social, domestic, or
ancestral associations, producing effects for which the unsympathetic
critic cannot otherwise account.
Even this inspiration at last seemed to fade away. When the one hundred
years' conflict, of alternate ascendency and persecution, came to an end
with the Restoration in 1660, zeal abated with the fires of conflict, and
apathy, formalism, and dulness, the counterparts of lukewarmness and
Pharisaical routine in the established Church, settled down over the
dissenting sects. In the eighteenth century the psalmody of the
Presbyterians, Independents, and Separatists, which had also been adopted
long before in the parochial services of the established Church, declined
into the most contracted and unemotional routine that can be found in the
history of religious song. The practice of "lining out" destroyed every
vestige of musical charm that might otherwise have remained; the number
of tunes in common use grew less and less, in some congregations being
reduced to a bare half-dozen. The conception of individualism, which was
the source of congregational singing in the first place, was carried to
such absurd extremes that the notion extensively prevailed that every
person was privileged to sing the melody in any key or tempo and with any
grotesque embellishment that might be pleasing to himself. These
fantastic abuses especially prevailed in the New England congregations in
the last half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth
centuries, but they were only the ultimate consequences of ideas and
practices which prevailed in the mother country. The early Baptists
forbade singing altogether. The Brownists tried for a short time to act
upon the notion that singing in worship, like prayer, should be
extempore. The practical results may easily be imagined. About the year
1700 it seemed as though the fair genius of sacred song had abandoned the
English and American non-liturgic sects in despair.
Like a sun-burst, opening a brighter era, came the Wesleyan movement, and
in the same period the hymns of Dr. Isaac Watts. Whatever the effect of
the exuberant singing of the Methodist assemblies may have had upon a
cultivated ear, it is certain that the enthusiastic welcome accorded by
the Wesleys to popular music as a proselyting agent, and the latitude
permitted to free invention and adoption of hymns and tunes, gave an
impulse to a purer and nobler style of congregational song which has
never been lost. The sweet and fervent lyrics of Charles and John Wesley
struck a staggering blow at the prestige of the "inspired" psalmody.
Historians of this movement remind us that hymns, heartily sung by a
whole congregation, were unknown as an element in public worship at the
time when the work of the Wesleys and Whitefield began. Watts's hymns
were already written, but had as yet taken no hold upon either dissenters
or churchmen. The example of the Methodists was a revelation of the power
that lies in popular song when inspired by conviction, and as was said of
the early Lutheran choral, so it might be said of the Methodist hymns,
that they won more souls than even the preaching of the evangelists. John
Wesley, in his published directions concerning congregational singing,
enjoined accuracy in notes and time, heartiness, moderation, unanimity,
and spirituality as with the aim of pleasing God rather than one's self.
He strove to bring the new hymns and tunes within the means of the poor,
and yet took pains that the music should be of high quality, and that
nothing vulgar or sensational should obtain currency.
The truly beneficent achievement of the Wesleys in summoning the aid of
the unconfined spirit of poesy in the revival of spiritual life found a
worthy reinforcement in the songs of Isaac Watts (1674-1748). Although
his deficiencies in the matter of poetical technic and his frequent dry,
scholastic, and dogmatic treatment have rendered much the greater part of
his work obsolete, yet a true spiritual and poetic fire burns in many of
his lyrics, and with all necessary abatement his fame seems secure. Such
poems as "High in the Heavens, eternal God," "Before Jehovah's awful
throne," and "When I survey the wondrous cross" are pearls which can
never lose their place in the chaplet of English evangelical hymnody. The
relaxing prejudice against "uninspired" hymns in church worship yielded
to the fervent zeal, the loving faith, the forceful natural utterance of
the lyrics of Watts. In his psalms also, uniting as they did the
characteristic modes of feeling of both the Hebrew and the Christian
conceptions, he made the transition easy, and in both he showed the true
path along which the reviving poetic inspiration of the time must
proceed.
What has come of the impulse imparted by Watts and the Wesleys every
student of Christian literature knows. To give any adequate account of
the movement which has enriched the multitude of modern hymn-books and
sacred anthologies would require a large volume.[83] No more profitable
task could be suggested to one who deems it his highest duty to expand
and deepen his spiritual nature, than to possess his mind of the jewels
of devotional insight and chastened expression which are scattered
through the writings of such poets as Charles Wesley, Cowper, Newton,
Faber, Newman, Lyte, Heber, Bonar, Milman, Keble, Ellerton, Montgomery,
Ray Palmer, Coxe, Whittier, Holmes, the Cary sisters, and others equal or
hardly inferior to these, who have performed immortal service to the
divine cause which they revered by disclosing to the world the infinite
beauty and consolation of the Christian faith. No other nation, not even
the German, can show any parallel to the treasure embedded in English and
American popular religious poetry. This fact is certainly not known to
the majority of church members. The average church-goer never looks into
a hymn-book except when he stands up to sing in the congregation, and
this performance, whatever else it may do for the worshiper, gives him
very little information in regard to the artistic, or even the spiritual
value of the book which he holds in his hand. Let him read his hymn-book
in private, as he reads his Tennyson; and although he will not be
inclined to compare it in point of literary quality with Palgrave's
_Golden Treasury_ or Stedman's _Victorian Anthology_, yet he will
probably be surprised at the number of lyrics whose delicacy, fervor, and
pathos will be to him a revelation of the gracious elements that pervade
the minor religious poetry of the English tongue.
Parallel with the progress of hymnody, and undoubtedly stimulated by it,
has been the development of the hymn-tune and the gradual rise of public
taste in this branch of religious art. The history of the English and
American hymn-tune may easily be traced, for its line is unbroken. Its
sources also are well known, except that the origins of the first
settings of the psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins are in many cases
obscure. Those who first fitted tunes to the metrical psalms borrowed
some of their melodies (the "Old Hundredth" is a conspicuous instance)
from the Huguenot psalter of Marot and Beza, and others probably from
English folk-songs. There were eminent composers in England in the
Reformation period, many of whom lent their services in harmonizing the
tunes found in the early psalters, and also contributed original
melodies. All these ancient tunes were syllabic and diatonic, dignified
and stately in movement, often sombre in coloring, in all these
particulars bearing a striking resemblance to the German choral. Some of
the strongest tunes in the modern hymnals, for example, "Dundee," are
derived from the Scotch and English psalters of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and efforts are being made in some quarters to
bring others of the same source and type into favor with present-day
congregations. This severe diatonic school was succeeded in the
eighteenth century by a taste for the florid and ornate which, in spite
of some contributions of a very beautiful and expressive character, on
the whole marked a decline in favor of the tawdry and sensational. If
this tendency was an indication of an experimenting spirit, its result
was not altogether evil. Earnest and dignified as the old psalm-tunes
were, the Church could not live by them alone. The lighter style was a
transition, and the purer modern school is the outcome of a process which
strives to unite the breadth and dignity of the ancient tunes with the
warmth and color of those of the second period. Together with the
cultivation of the florid style we note a wider range of selection. Many
tunes were taken from secular sources (not in itself a fault, since, as
we have seen, many of the best melodies in the Lutheran and Calvinistic
song-books had a similar origin); and the introduction of Catholic tunes,
such as the peerless "Adeste Fideles" and the "Sicilian hymn," together
with some of the finest German chorals, greatly enriched the English
tune-books.
In comparatively recent times a new phase of progress has manifested
itself in the presence in the later hymnals of a large number of musical
compositions of novel form and coloring, entirely the product of our own
period. These tunes are representative of the present school of Church of
England composers, such as Dykes, Barnby, Smart, Sullivan, Monk, Hopkins,
and many others equally well known, who have contributed a large quantity
of melodies of exceeding beauty, supported by varied and often striking
harmonies, quite unlike the congregational songs of any other nation.
Composed for the noble ceremony of the Anglican Church, these tunes have
made their way into many of the non-liturgic sects, and the value of
their influence in inspiring a love for that which is purest and most
salutary in worship music has been incalculable. Much has been written in
praise of these new Anglican tunes, and a good deal also in depreciation.
Many of them are, it must be confessed, over-sophisticated for the use of
the average congregation, carrying refinements of harmony and rhythm to
such a point that they are more suitable for the choir than for the
congregation. Their real value, taken collectively, can best be estimated
by those who, having once used them, should imagine themselves deprived
of them. The tunes that served the needs of former generations will not
satisfy ours. Dr. Hanslick remarks that there is music of which it may
correctly be said that it once was beautiful. It is doubtless so with
hymn-tunes. Church art can never be kept unaffected by the secular
currents of the time, and those who, in opera house and concert hall, are
thrilled by the impassioned strains of the modern romantic composers,
will inevitably long for something at least remotely analogous in the
songs of the sanctuary. That is to say, the congregational tune must be
appealing, stirring, emotional, as the old music doubtless was to the
people of the old time, but certainly is no longer. This logical demand
the English musicians of the present day and their American followers
assume to gratify--that is, so far as the canons of pure art and
ecclesiastical propriety will allow--and, in spite of the cavils of
purists and reactionaries, their melodies seem to have taken a permanent
place in the affections of the Protestant English-speaking world. The
success of these melodies is due not merely to their abstract musical
beauty, but perhaps still more to the subtle sympathy which their style
exhibits with the present-day tendencies in theology and devotional
experience, which are reflected in the peculiarly joyous and confiding
note of recent hymnody. So far as music has the power to suggest definite
conceptions, there seems to be an apt correspondence between this
fervent, soaring, touching music and the hymns of the faith by which
these melodies were in most instances directly inspired.
So far as there are movements in progress bringing into shape a body of
congregational song which contains features that are likely to prove a
permanent enrichment of the religious anthology, they are more or less
plainly indicated in the hymnals which have been compiled in this country
during the past ten or twelve years. Not that we may look forward to any
sudden outburst of hymn-singing enthusiasm parallel to that which
attended the Lutheran and Wesleyan revivals, for such a musical impulse
is always the accompaniment of some mighty religious awakening, of which
there is now no sign. The significance of these recent hymnals lies
rather in the evidence they give of the growth of higher standards of
taste in religious verse and music, and also of certain changes in
progress in our churches in the prevailing modes of religious thought.
The evident tendency of hymnology, as indicated by the new books, is to
throw less emphasis upon those more mechanical conceptions which gave
such a hard precision to a large portion of the older hymnody. A finer
poetic afflatus has joined with a more penetrating and intimate vision of
the relationship between the divine and the human; and this mental
attitude is reflected in the loving trust, the emotional fervor, and the
more delicate and inward poetic expression which prevail in the new
hymnody. It is inevitable that the theological readjustment, which is so
palpable to every intelligent observer, should color and deflect those
forms of poetic and musical expression which are instinctively chosen as
the utterance of the worshiping people. Every one at all familiar with
the history of religious experience is aware how sensitive popular song
has been as an index of popular feeling. Nowhere is the power of
psychologic suggestion upon the masses more evident than in the domain of
song. Hardly does a revolutionary religious idea, struck from the brains
of a few leading thinkers and reformers, effect a lodgment in the hearts
of any considerable section of the common people, than it is immediately
projected in hymns and melodies. So far as it is no mere scholastic
formula, but possesses the power to kindle an active life in the soul, it
will quickly clothe itself in figurative speech and musical cadence, and
in many cases it will filter itself through this medium until all that is
crude, formal, and speculative is drained away, and what is essential and
fruitful is retained as a permanent spiritual possession.
If we were able to view the present movement in popular religious verse
from a sufficient distance, we should doubtless again find illustration
of this general law. Far less obviously, of course, than in the cases of
the Hussite, Lutheran, and Wesleyan movements, for the changes of our day
are more gradual and placid. I would not imply that the hymns that seem
so much the natural voice of the new tendencies are altogether, or even
in the majority of cases, recent productions. Many of them certainly come
from Watts and Cowper and Newton, and other eighteenth-century men, whose
theology contained many gloomy and obsolete tenets, but whose hearts
often denied their creeds and spontaneously uttered themselves in strains
which every shade of religious conviction may claim as its own. It is
not, therefore, that the new hymnals have been mainly supplied by new
schools of poetry, but the compilers, being men quick to sense the new
devotional demands and also in complete sympathy with them, have made
their selections and expurgations from a somewhat modified motive,
repressing certain phases of thought and emphasizing others, so that
their collections take a wider range, a loftier sweep, and a more joyful,
truly evangelical tone than those of a generation ago. It is more the
inner life of faith which these books so beautifully present, less that
of doctrinal assent and outer conformity.
These recent contributions to the service of praise are not only
interesting in themselves, but even more so, perhaps, as the latest terms
in that long series of popular religious song-books which began with the
independence of the English Church. _The Plymouth Hymnal_ and _In
Excelsis_ are the ripened issue of that movement whose first official
outcome was the quaint psalter of Sternhold and Hopkins; and the contrast
between the old and the new is a striking evidence of the changes which
three and a half centuries have effected in culture and spiritual
emphasis as revealed in popular song. The early lyrics were prepared as a
sort of testimony against formalism and the use of human inventions in
the office of worship; they were the outcome of a striving after
apostolic simplicity, while in their emotional aspects they served for
consolation in trial and persecution, and as a means of stiffening the
resolution in times of conflict. The first true hymns, as distinct from
versified psalms, were designed still more to quicken joy and hope, and
yet at the same time a powerful motive on the part of their authors was
to give instruction in the doctrines of the faith by a means more direct
and persuasive than sermons, and to reinforce the exhortations of
evangelists by an instrument that should be effective in awaking the
consciences of the unregenerate. It is very evident that the hymnals of
our day are pervaded by an intention somewhat different from this, or at
least supplementary to it. The Church, having become stable, and having a
somewhat different mission to perform under the changed conditions of the
time, employs its hymns and tunes not so much as revival machinery, or as
a means for inculcating dogma, as for spiritual nurture. Hymns have
become more subjective, melodies and harmonies more refined and alluring;
the tone has become less stern and militant; the ideas are more universal
and tender, less mechanical and precise; appeal is made more to the
sensibility than to the intellect, and the chief stress is laid upon the
joy and peace that come from believing. It is impossible to avoid
vagueness in attempting so broad a generalization. But one who studies
the new hymn-books, reads the prefaces of their editors, and notes the
character of the hymns that are most used in our churches, will realize
that now, as it has always been in the history of the Church, the guiding
thought and feeling of the time may be traced in popular song, more
faintly but not less inevitably than in the instructions of the pulpit.
When viewed in historic sequence one observes the growing prominence of
the mystical and subjective elements, the fading away of the early
fondness for scholastic definition. Lyric poetry is in its nature
mystical and intuitive, and the hymnody of the future, following the
present tendency in theology to direct the thought to the personal,
historic Christ, and to appropriate his example and message in accordance
with the light which advancing knowledge obtains concerning man's nature,
needs, and destiny, will aim more than ever before to purify and quicken
the higher emotional faculties, and will find a still larger field in
those fundamental convictions which transcend the bounds of creeds, and
which affirm the brotherhood of all sincere seekers after God.