Spiritual song in the United States
This article describes the past and present of spiritual song and hymn in the North American colonies and the United States .
history
The British colonies in the 17th century
The 1661 edition of the Book of Common Prayer , which was widespread throughout the Empire, and the Anglican tradition of psalm chanting in English had a major impact on congregational chanting in the British colonies in North America. The first book printed in America was the Bay Psalm Book (1640). It was reissued in various ways, some with the familiar melodies of earlier psalteries, and remained in use for over a century as the basis for unanimous congregational chanting in the American colonies.
The North American Colonies in the Early 18th Century, the Singing Masters
The religious culture of the New England colonies was significantly shaped in the 17th century by two groups of religiously motivated emigrants: on the one hand by the Puritans in their discipline and moral rigor, on the other hand by the Baptists with their ideal of the independent community.
The lay preachers of the Baptists countered the deliberate renunciation of a formal church structure by trusting the immediate call of God and personal Bible study. So they achieved a high distribution in the border states and the southern states.
Both groups attached great importance to the singing of the congregation. In the first decades of the 18th century there was controversy about the type of congregation singing : representatives of the usual way practiced a unanimous chant of the whole congregation from orally transmitted melodies. On the other hand, representatives of regular singing demanded polyphonic (mostly four-part) community singing based on sheet music. Although regular singing was intended for the entire community, it often led to a division of the community into singers and non-singers .
Against the background of the requirements of regular singing , singing schools were established in the northeastern states in the early 18th century , initially mostly in the form of traveling singing masters . Singing Masters were often themselves without traditional musical training. They traveled to sparsely populated areas and stayed in one place for a few weeks each to teach the basics of music and the singing of hymns from sheet music. Singing Masters often sold self-compiled textbooks or music books with their own sacred music .
The usual way was maintained until the 19th century, especially in rural areas, where the population often had little reading and writing skills. The lined-out hymnody was often a practice, already common in individual Scottish and English churches : a cantor sang a unison melody line by line, the congregation sang the individual lines at a slow pace (or even without a continuous meter ) with glissandi and improvised Decorations after. The lined-out hymnody was based on metrical psalm rhymes and texts from the British tradition, e.g. B. Texts by Isaac Watts . The musical basis was the melodies of the Metrical Psalter as well as folk music melodies.
The American Colonies after 1730: First Great Awakening and First New England School
Attacked, for example, by Enlightenment ideas , negative reports on the Salem witch trials or spatial isolation, the religious zeal and personal religious commitment of American puritans and congregationalists had steadily declined by the 18th century.
Suggestions from preachers of the English revival movement and emerging methodism led to a revival movement in New England in the 1730s to 1740s . It was comparable to the English model in its ideals and forms of expression, but mainly included Presbyterians , Congregationalists and Baptists . This first American revival is known as the First Great Awakening . Her prominent figures include the Presbyterian Tennent, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) and George Whitefield (1714–1770) , who traveled between Great Britain and America .
Jonathan Edwards was a Congregational preacher, missionary, and theologian from Massachusetts . As a rousing preacher who wanted to go back to the strict Calvinist roots and rekindle the fear of God, he won a large following.
George Whitefield, one of the leading figures in English Methodism, went to America in 1738. As a charismatic preacher, he held public revivals in front of an audience of up to 20,000. His style of preaching was groundbreaking in its drama and emotionality and regularly led to seemingly hysterical tears and mass conversions of his listeners. Through his long journeys through all the American colonies, he became one of the most famous American personalities of his time.
The English hymns of the early 18th century, such as Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley , achieved great popularity in the First Great Awakening . Also influenced by psalm singing and folk music, an independent four-part a cappella music culture emerged, the First New England School . The mixed cast of women and men in each voice is characteristic.
Activities by Baptist and Presbyterian missionaries also resulted in the widespread spread of New England hymns to the south. Singing Masters worked diligently to promote regular singing , and attending a Singing Masters was a social event for a small southern town that required long journeys. The four -part a cappella church song culture achieved high popularity in the rural south. Around 1750, when religious zeal and enthusiasm waned again, regular singing had prevailed over the usual way .
In the second half of the 18th century, the Singing Masters tradition produced a few outstanding early American composers, including William Billings , Supply Belcher, and Daniel Read .
William Billings (1746–1800) is considered the father of American choral and hymn songs. Without conventional musical training, he worked as a singing master and published several extensive collections of four-part choir and church songs, e. B. The New England Psalm Singer (1770) and The Singing Master's Assistant (1778). In addition to homophonic movements, Billings has also composed simple polyphonic choral pieces, for example Fuging Tunes . Billings' phrase Africa is relatively well known - the title seems to be chosen arbitrarily - in which, as is often the case in his songs, there is no clear melody. Africa was u. a. underlaid with a text by Isaac Watts , Billings has composed his own texts for other movements.
1776-1840s: Singing Schools , Shape Note Music and the Second Great Awakening
After the declaration of independence in 1776, population growth and advancing industrialization brought great social changes to the USA. The cities, especially on the northeast coast, experienced rapid growth.
Traveling Singing Masters lost in importance compared to regular, local singing schools and fixed, institutionalized music schools . In the spirit of industrialization , 4-part textbooks and songbooks for use in singing schools were standardized and pedagogically developed. 1801 gave William Smith and William Little with The Easy Instructor the first choir book out, which for the different levels of scale , different music forms used to facilitate the singing of notes. This and numerous subsequent choir books in shape notation quickly became very popular in the northeast, and the sacred Shape Note choir music became very popular.
At the same time as the big cities grew, the recognition of independence by Great Britain (1783) and the acquisition of Louisiana (1804) allowed the spread of American civilization to the far west, where the central government was able to exercise little authority on the border with the wilderness. For many Americans, both developments led to the dissolution of traditional social ties and to growing insecurity.
Connected with this uncertainty and nourished by the secularization of the 18th century and the omnipresent ideas of the Enlightenment , the concern arose in American Protestantism that they had become careless and superficial in religious practice.
So it came, beginning in the 1790s, first in the south and in the sparsely populated old southwest of the USA to a new, interdenominational awakening movement . It found its expression in a newly awakened religious feeling and in numerous public conversion events , the revivals .
One of the main forms of the revival was the camp meeting . This was the name given to religious events lasting several days, often in the open air, which also included overnight stays for hundreds or thousands of participants, often from far away, whites and slaves. Camp meetings were marked by fiery sermons by traveling evangelists from the ranks of Baptists , Methodists and Presbyterians , but also by chants, public confessions, spontaneous ecstatic outbursts and dance. Mass conversions at revivals led to the Methodists becoming the largest religious community in the United States by the 19th century; in the south, the Baptists became the dominant denomination.
In 1801, 25,000 people attended a camp meeting in Kentucky . By the 1820s, the revival had spread across the United States. There was talk of the Second Great Awakening based on the movement in the 1730s-40s . In the cities of New England new denominations and non-denominational societies emerged to proselytize and civilize the West and to promote Christian education.
With the spread of the revival movement by evangelists like Charles Grandison Finney , a theological shift went hand in hand across denominations, which was also reflected in the texts of the sacred songs: the traditional Calvinist doctrine of the double predestination , according to which God irrevocably decided before all times who to The saved and those who were damned increasingly took a back seat to an evangelical - missionary - oriented practice of faith that ultimately presented the grace of God as attainable through every converted person. To make a conscious decision for God, to resist sin, to lead a moral life in personal relationship with Christ and to bear witness to his faith were in the foreground.
Accordingly, the songs of John Wesley and his successors were very popular in the revivals . The poetry of Isaac Watts and John Newton and the songs of John Cennick also achieved widespread circulation. Many of the spiritual songs at the camp meetings, however, were semi-improvised or spontaneously composed of set pieces of familiar texts and melody particles. Secular folk music and black music traditions had a great influence on these songs. This resulted in musically simple, stirring melodies with numerous repetitions, often with a refrain. Examples of such camp meeting songs are Give me that old time religion and Blessed be the name .
The end of the 1840s, when religious enthusiasm declined in large areas of the United States, is generally seen as the end of the Second Great Awakening .
The southern states from the second third of the 19th century: Shape Note Music and Sacred Harp
In many southern churches in the early 19th century the usual way of singing was still in use, often in the form of the lined-out hymnody . With the spread of awakening, however, the Shape Note tradition spread from the north to the rural south, where it achieved great popularity. New songbooks in Shape Notes preserved the spiritual songs of earlier American traditions, such as the homophonic sentences and fuging tunes of Singing Masters such as William Billings and Daniel Read, as well as Camp Meeting Songs . On the other hand, the Shape Note movement also picked up local influences, for example the slow pace and ornamentation techniques of the lined-out hymnody. The migration of Shape Note singing to the south also led to the adoption of folk music elements: In particular, the inhabitants of the Appalachians, largely poor Irish or Scottish settlers and their descendants, influenced the Shape Note tradition with their ballads and folk melodies . For example, a secular melody from this area is assumed for the song Amazing Grace , which was re-texted and set in four voices in the style of the Shape Note tradition.
Different Shape Note systems were created. Many churches in the southern states used hymn books printed in the seven-note system in their services. However, the most widespread use was the Sacred Harp system with its four different note forms.
Sacred Harp music, which is still alive today, goes back to the Shape Note songbook The Sacred Harp , published in 1844 by Benjamin Franklin White and Elisha J. King , of which there have been various new editions. Sacred Harp music is played in church services and at special events, the singings , and is taught at special singing schools . The singers of the four voices stand facing each other in a square, whereby soprano and tenor are usually mixed with male and female voices.
In individual churches, such as the Old Regular Baptists or the Primitive Baptists , the traditional lined-out hymnody remained musically decisive, with text hymn books increasingly being published in the late 19th century instead of a purely oral tradition.
The northern states from the second third of the 19th century: better music movement
Lowell Mason and better music
While the Shape Notes gained great influence in the south, they were soon pushed back in urban New England by a movement that supported the Shape Note tradition and with it the entire genuinely American church music such as lined-out hymnody , the music of the First New England School and the semi-improvised music of the camp meetings as inferior. This better music movement endeavored to establish a new church music based on the standards of European art music.
The leading head of the better music movement was the bank clerk Lowell Mason (1792–1872). Mason had a classical musical education and was initially known as the editor of a successful hymn book, the melodies of which were taken from works by European composers such as Joseph Haydn or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1822). As co-founder of the Boston Academy of Music (1833) and leader of numerous church choirs, Mason fought with great influence for the development of a church music and music school system based on the European-classical model.
Mason wrote over 1,600 hymns, the melodies of which are based on baroque and classical European models. In contrast to the movements of the First New England School , his hymns are consistently set homophonically in simple harmony with simple accompanying voices. Mason requested an organ accompaniment from the community. Exemplary are his melodies Joy to the World ( Joy to the world, your king is coming ), based on a text by Isaac Watts based on a melody by Georg Friedrich Handel , I look at your cross and the late work, for the Night is Coming ( Up, for the night will come ) (1864).
Lowell Mason's collaborators in the better music movement included his brother Timothy Mason and Thomas Hastings (1784–1872). Hastings, composer of the melodies ' Tis Thine alone, almighty name (in use today for the text O buy from the time of grace ) and the late Rock of Ages (1774, Fels des Heils, opened to me ) to a text by Augustus Montague Toplady (1740– 1778) and, worked closely with the evangelist Charles Grandison Finney and supported Lowell Mason in the difficult endeavor not only to reform the music in church services, but also to establish the new hymn in the context of the revival.
Sunday School Songs
American Sunday School saw extraordinary growth in the mid-19th century. While fewer than 100,000 children attended the Sunday School in 1824 , that number rose to 600,000 by 1831 and to 3,250,000 by 1875. At the same time, with the Sunday School Song, a special type of hymn for use in Sunday School was created.
The development of the Sunday School Song was significantly influenced by William Batchelder Bradbury (1816–1868). Initially a music student with Lowell Mason , he became a church musician at various Baptist churches in New York City . He mainly worked with children's choirs, gave music lessons and organized annual children's music festivals.
Bradbury's first collection of songs for children, The Young Choir , was published in 1841 . By 1867 Bradbury had published 59 collections, including many specifically for Sunday School use, around 1861 the Golden Chain collection . Bradbury's best-known Sunday School songs include Jesus Loves Me (1862, lyrics by Anna B. Warner and David Rutherford McGuire ) and He leadeth Me . Bradbury is also the composer of the (later) melodies Oh Bliss of the Purified (1869, text by Francis Bottome , translated by Ernst Heinrich Gebhardt as What happiness is to be redeemed ) and Sweet Hour of Prayer (1873, text by William W. Walford , translated by Ernst Heinrich Gebhardt as How nice is it when in prayer ).
Well-known composer of Sunday School Songs next to Bradbury was George Frederick Root (1820–1895). Root worked as a music school teacher in Boston with Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings . His melodies When He Cometh, when He Cometh (1873, text by William Orcutt Cushing , translated by Ernst Heinrich Gebhardt to Wenn der Heiland, when the Savior appears as king ) and Come to the Savior, Make no Delay (1873, text by the composer, translated by Ernst Heinrich Gebhardt to Come to the Savior, come today , melody also common to the text Der Bräut'gam is coming, o think of his word by Johanna Meyer ). The melodies for Ring the Bells of heaven and Why do you wait are also from Root.
Sunday School Songs are characterized by cheerful, catchy melodies that are clearly structured and usually have a refrain, similar to the Camp Meeting Song . In terms of rhythm , a Sunday School Song is usually composed of just a few, frequently repeated patterns. Typically only the three main functions in major are provided as accompaniment . Echoes of secular melody models were not avoided.
The lyrics of Sunday School Songs are very subjective. In everyday English it is mostly used to describe the heavenly joys, the happiness of living a Christian life, or the love of Christ for the singing.
Gospel Songs: The Gospel Song
Under the influence of increased revival activities in the late 19th century, the style of the Sunday School Song developed from the 1850s / 1860s to the 1870s / 1880s into a new gospel and revival song, simply referred to in English as a gospel song or gospel hymn - however not to be confused with the later Black Gospel or Southern Gospel .
The earliest influences come from the Camp Meeting Song and American folk music, especially the Irish or Scottish-born residents of the Appalachians . The shape note tradition of the mid-19th century also influenced the gospel song.
The central influences of the gospel song, however, come from popular secular music of the mid to late 19th century: Parlor songs by Stephen (Collins) Foster (the songwriter of Oh! Susanna ) and others, the style of popular ballads such as The Battle Hymn of the Republic , rhythm and melody of the music of the American brass bands that were present throughout the northern states during the Civil War (1861–1865).
Negro Spiritual, Black Gospel
With the abolition of slavery in the United States , a new interest in black religious music emerged. Negro Spirituals and Black Gospel achieved worldwide distribution.
20th century
In the second half of the 20th century originated with Contemporary Christian Music ( CCM and) praise and worship ( Praise and Worship Music ) other traditions of popular music influenced spiritual song.