April 1929
173
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Lowell Mason and Hymn Tunes B y P rof . J ohn B issell T rowbridge Director Music Department, Bible Institute o f Los Angeles
OWELL MASON was born at Medfield, Mas sachusetts, during the third year of Washing ton’s administration. The United States and the future musician began their careers together. The former faced basic problems of govern ment and development of vast resources; the latter, being possessed of an intense love for music, began early to realize the great dearth of musical advantages in America. The new Republic had at the helm of its “Ship of State” men who had vision and initiative in applying means to the desired end; Lowell Mason saw a musical need and went about the business of meeting that need, in his earnest, sincere, methodical way. The need for music in American public schools was great, but the prejudice, even in Boston, was intense in opposing the introduction of music as a part of the curric ulum. Lowell Mason and William C. Woodbridge were able to overcome this prejudice, and by persistent and self-sacrificing demonstration started a great movement. But we can only mention in passing this important bit of American music history, to illustrate Mason’s tenacity of purpose. Lowell Mason has been given the title of “The Father of American Church Music” and it is in this phase of his work that we are particularly interested. Establishing music in the public schools would affect future church choirs and congregations—but he sought also to bring immediate aid to churches struggling in their services with the old Psalm tunes or the worse “fuguing tunes,” even as Watts, more than a century before, had brought aid to the English Nonconformists by giving them a new and better version of the Psalms. When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock they brought with them the Ainsworth version of the Psalms. This was practically their only medium of praise, and in using it in their simple and sincere services they droned through : their metrical Psalms and paraphrases with vigor and persistency. But they were not fully satisfied with it or agreed among themselves regarding its use, and Yankee independence and aggressiveness began early to assert itself, for a committee of Congregationalists pre pared a new version of the Psalms and published it in 1640 as The Bay Psalm-Book. This, with its subsequent editions, continued to be used more or less until the time of the Revolution. The old version (Sternhold and Hop kins) was used in some places, especially in Episcopal churches. The later version of Tate and Brady was brought over also, and these furnished most of the churches with praise material until Watts’ Psalms came out early in the eighteenth century. But the musical side of Psalmody as practiced during this period was the ludicrous and pitiable part of church music, viewed from this distance. There were few organs, aild the bass viol was the common instrument used in churches for accompanying the congregation in Psalm singing. In many churches there was a prejudice against the use of any instrument in church. Another matter that Was a great handicap was the custom of “lining out,” that grew up owing to the scarcity of books. The clerk or pre centor would read a line and then “raise” the tune and
lead the congregation in singing it. Another line would be read and sung—and so on, line by line. The music was thus chopped into fragments and the words were more or less disconnected. “In fact it not infrequently happened that a congregation became ‘sidetracked’ and ended with a tune other than the one ‘pitched’ at the start.” Another handicap was the prevailing ignorance in musical matters. In his book, “The Grounds and Rules of Music Explained” (Boston, 1721), Mr. Thomas Walter, A.M., says the effect of singing in church as practiced then was “like five hundred different tunes roared out at the same time,” that singers were often a word or two apart and that the singing was done in such a drawling manner that he himself had to breathe twice in one note. But conditions were gradually changing during the eighteenth century. Watts’ Hymns were published in 1707 and his “Psalms of David Imitated” in 1719, and these, together with the Wesleyan Hymns, in use in Eng land and America, brought a demand for something brighter than the dreary old Psalm tunes. And yet these old tunes and the old versions of the Psalms held on tenaciously. John Adams visited New York in 1774, and, compar ing the Psalmody practiced in a Presbyterian church with that he was used to in New England, said it was “in the ‘old way,’ as we call it—all the drawling, quavering dis cord in the world.” Visiting chapel in Princeton a week later, he observes that “the scholars sing as badly as the Presbyterians of New York.” If you look through your copy of J. Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans,” you will find a word picture of the Colonial Psalm-tune teacher and precentor of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the odd character of David Gamut. He represents the musical system of the time. He was the champion of the lugubrious, tupqgj that created the problems faced and mastered by Lowell Mason. His was the “system” that, for two centuries, blocked the path of progress—though most of the men who practiced the “art” were earnest, God-fearing men. The last notable representative of this race of teachers was William Billings, born in Boston in 1746, living until 1800. He posed as a reformer, and surely his work was an innovation and he himself a most colorful individual. A tanner by trade, one-eyed, possessing a stentorian voice that is said to have drowned out all others, he was self- taught (therefore, “instructed by a very ignorant person” ) and the champion of the " fuguing tune.” His music was very popular during the Revolution and every fifer in the army played his tune “Chester,” and. the soldiers memorized the words, “Let tyrants shake their iron rod.” His “Lamentation over Boston” beginning, “By the rivers of;, Watertown we sat down and wept,” was a strange Bible paraphrase with a real “local color.” Both his words and tunes stirred the loyal patriotic hearts in the army and home circle. But he “started something” that Lowell Mason had to correct when the reaction came. Regarding his favorite style of composition Billings wrote : “It has twenty times the power of the old slow tunes, each part straining for mastery and victory, the
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