A choral setting of a religious or moral text in English, generally designed for liturgical performance. See also National anthems.
JOHN HARPER (I, 1), PETER LE HURAY/JOHN HARPER (I, 2–6), RALPH T. DANIEL/JOHN K. OGASAPIAN (II)
6. History c1890 to the present.
In the Middle Ages the term derived from and was synonymous with Antiphon. After the Reformation the term denotes a polyphonic setting of a sacred English text, normally sung by the choir after the collects at Matins and Evensong; the text is freely chosen, most often from the Bible (especially the psalms) or from the Book of Common Prayer. The connection between Latin antiphon sung within the Office and English anthem sung as an appendage to Matins or Evensong is found in the Commemoration, Memoiral or Suffrage in which the antiphon was the most important musical element. In the medieval liturgy a Commemoration, Memorial or Suffrage was often appended to the main Office (e.g. Lauds or Vespers); this observance normally consisted of Benedictus or Magnificat antiphon, versicle and response, and collect – effectively a truncated Office commemorating an intention additional to the main Office (e.g. the saints, the dead, or a saint remembered on that day but not taking precedence in the main Office; see LU, 260–61, 273–7 for Roman Catholic equivalents). In the 15th and early 16th centuries popular devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary was such that a Commemoration was sung at least daily and often at a specified place in the church – Lady Chapel, Lady altar, or statue of the Virgin – by a designated group of singers (e.g. choristers with their master in a cathedral, Lady Chapel choir in a monastery, choristers and chaplains in a collegiate foundation). This took place most often in the later afternoon, after Vespers or Compline, as a distinct ceremony. In some institutions the Lady antiphon was sung with elaborate polyphony and became the focus of the ceremony; modern scholars (following Harrison) have coined the term ‘votive antiphon’. Many texts were specially written, and a substantial repertory of musical settings survives (e.g. the Eton Choirbook).
In the 1540s the opposition to what was perceived as superstitious devotion to the saints, together with the promotion of comprehensibility in worship and the desire among reformers for scriptural authority, resulted in the replacement of the Lady antiphon; in 1548 the Royal Injunctions for Lincoln Cathedral required that
They shall from henceforth sing or say no anthems of our Lady or other Saints, but only of our Lord, and them not in Latin; but choosing out the best and most sounding to Christian religion they shall turn the same into English, setting thereunto a plain and distinct note for every syllable one: they shall sing them and none other. And after them read the collect for the preservation of the King’s Majesty and the magistrates, which is contained and set forth in the English suffrage.
The adaptation of an existing practice is evident in this injunction, which though specific to Lincoln is indicative of a wider trend. Under the terms of the First Act of Uniformity (January 1549) English replaced Latin as the principal language of the English Church. The new liturgical book, the Book of Common Prayer, contains few rubics relating to music in the first version (1549); there are fewer still in the second version (1552) which has formed the basis of all subsequent issues of the book. There is no reference to the anthem in the pre-Commonwealth prayer books, but the Wanley Partbooks (GB-Ob Mus.Sch.E.420–22, c1546–8; ed. in RRMR, xcix–ci, 1995), an early source of English service music, include ‘antems’ – settings of sacred texts, some taken from the Henrician Primers. The Elizabethan Injunctions (1559), based substantially on those of Edward VI (1548), add specific guidance on music in cathedrals and other churches with choirs:
Item, because in divers collegiate and also some parish churches heretofore there hath been livings appointed for the maintenance of men and children to use singing in the church … that the same so remain. And that there be a modest and distinct song, so used in all parts of the Common Prayers in the Church, that the same may be as plainly understanded, as if it were without singing. And yet, nevertheless, it may be permitted, that in the beginning, or in the end of Common Prayers, either at morning or evening, there may be sung an hymn, or such-like song, to the praise of Almighty God, in the best sort of melody and music that may be conveniently devised, having respect that the sentence [sense] of the hymn may be understanded and perceived.
There is careful distinction between the ‘modest and distinct song’ of the service and the ‘best sort of melody and music’ of the ‘hymn, or such-like song’. The avoidance of the term ‘anthem’ may represent caution because of its association with Latin antiphons, and specifically those addressed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, used during the restoration of the Latin Rite under Mary I. The first published collection of English service music, John Day’s Certaine Notes (London, 1560), uses ‘anthem’ and ‘prayer’ synonymously. By the beginning of the 17th century the term was well established, and widely used in both printed and manuscript collections to define a polyphonic composition set to an English text generally of the composer’s choosing and deriving from the Bible, the Prayer Book, or from a work of a religious or moral character. Such works are found in both liturgical and domestic sources; this indicates the overlap of religious observance in church and in the home, and is a reminder that choral polyphony was sung in fewer than 60 ecclesiastical institutions at this time. After the Restoration the anthem was increasingly regarded as a composition appropriate only to a church service or religious ceremony. Although by 1600 the anthem had become one of the principal musical forms of English choral service, only in 1662 was the anthem rubric added to the Book of Common Prayer after the third collect at Matins and Evensong: ‘In Quires [i.e. choral foundations] and Places where they sing, here followeth the Anthem’.
Knowledge of the early history of the English anthem derives from a handful of imperfect sources, of which the most important are the Wanley and Lunley Partbooks (GB-Ob Mus.Sch.E.420–22, c1546–8; ed. in RRMR, xcix–ci, 1995, and Lbl Roy.App.74–6, c1549; ed. in RRMR, lxv, 1985) and John Day’s Certaine Notes. The provenance of the Wanley and Lumley books is not known, but there are good reasons for believing that both may have been designed for small choirs, the first more likely for a parish church, the second for a private chapel. The preponderance of music for men’s voices in the Wanley Partbooks and the absence of communion music in the Lumley books lend support to this supposition. Most of the anthems in the three sources are based on texts from the Bible, English primers, metrical psalters and from the Prayer Book. The composers are for the most part anonymous; the named composers include Caustun, Heath, Robert Johnson (i), Mundy, Okeland, Sheppard, Tallis, Tye and Whitbroke. Tallis’s Hear the voice and prayer, Sheppard’s Submit yourselves, Mundy’s He that hath my commandments and the anonymous Rejoice in the Lord well represent the style of the early anthem. The four-part textures are predominantly imitative in a regular note-against-note counterpoint typical of the simpler Netherlandish motet of the early 16th century (ex.1). Attempts at word-painting are few, the characteristic mood being of measured solemnity. The simplicity of these anthems is attributable in part to the concern, often expressed at that time, to develop an idiom that would ensure the maximum clarity of diction while at the same time allowing for some interesting variation in musical textures. Although the liturgical reformation undoubtedly acted as a catalyst in the process of change from luxuriant melisma to syllabic, note-against-note counterpoint, the new musical techniques came from abroad, and from countries that had not yet been touched by Protestant ideologies. Some anthems are Latin motets adapted to English texts (contrafacta), among them Tallis’s Arise, O Lord and With all our hearts (both from Salvator mundi); others make use of the form of the English partsong (ABB), including Tallis’s If ye love me, O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit and Purge me, O Lord; Tallis’s I call and cry also exists as a Latin motet (O sacrum convivium) and an instrumental fantasia.
Easily the most significant development of the period was the creation of the ‘verse’ style, in which verses for solo voices and instrumental accompaniment (normally organ) alternated with passages for full choir. The basic principle may indeed have emerged in about 1550, for there is what appears to be an embryonic verse anthem in the Wanley Partbooks: an anonymous setting of Now let the congregation. The first verse of this metrical psalm seems to have been scored for a solo alto, the verse then being repeated in a harmonized version for all the voices. As Thomas Sternhold pointed out in the preface to his Certayne Psalmes (London, 1549; 19 psalms with no musical settings), metrical psalms were frequently sung at the time by a soloist, to a simple instrumental accompaniment. The first substantial verse compositions, however, date from the 1560s and early 1570s. Two of the very earliest are Richard Farrant’s When as we sat in Babylon (reconstructed in Le HurayMR) and William Mundy’s Ah, helpless wretch (see le Huray, The Treasury, ii, 1965, p.28). These, like nearly all pre-Restoration verse anthems, open with a brief introduction for organ, after which follows a verse for a solo voice or voices supported by a fully independent instrumental accompaniment. This leads into the first chorus where the instrumental part(s) do no more than double the voices. The full section comes to a close, and the anthem continues with as many verse/chorus pairs as the text demands. In some anthems the text of the verse is reworked in the succeeding chorus, and in certain anthems (notably those by Weelkes and Gibbons) musical ideas are repeated and developed. Most full and verse anthems, however, are through-composed.
The verse anthem has its roots not only in the early metrical psalm but also in the Elizabethan Consort song, and in the Elizabethan choirboy play. Most consort songs dating from c1550–80 are scored for a solo boy with an accompaniment of three or four viols. Some were written for the choirboy plays performed with music which were fashionable at that time. The dramatic productions presented by the boys of the Chapel Royal were especially popular during Richard Farrant’s term of office as Master of the Choristers, and it is perhaps significant that the earliest extant verse anthems are by composers closely associated with the Chapel Royal, including Farrant himself. Some of Byrd’s consort songs suggest possible links between the consort song and the early verse anthem: Lord, to thee I make my moan has a short closing phrase of some three bars that is repeated; in at least one of the manuscript sources words have been added to the supporting instrumental lines at the repetition, to make a very elementary verse-chorus structure.
The advantages of the new style must soon have been obvious, for by the turn of the century (judging by the extant repertory) composers were writing rather more verse anthems than full anthems. The verse style obviously saved a good deal of rehearsal time; it was potentially a most colourful medium, and musicians found that words tended to be more audible (and more moving) when sung by solo voices against an instrumental background than when sung chorally. In domestic situations anthems with instrumental ensemble were most probably accompanied by viols; in the Chapel Royal, and some cathedrals and collegiate chapels, cornett and sackbut players were engaged, especially during the reign of Charles I, at least on important feast days.
Byrd’s fine Easter anthem for two solo boys, five-part choir and viols, Christ rising again, well illustrates the new verse anthem at its best (Songs of Sundrie Natures, London, 1589). Compared with Tallis’s setting of the same text its impact is subjectively dramatic; the words are ‘presented’ to the listener with admirable clarity and its moods are ‘represented’ with great originality and power (ex.2). Byrd may not have been the first to develop the new verse style but he was certainly the first to reveal its very considerable potential. Well over a dozen of his verse anthems are still extant. His full anthems, which far outnumber them, also reveal a close concern for the spirit of the text. The most substantial of these are of considerable proportions. Sing joyfully, for six-part choir, is a particularly imaginative composition, with a well-planned cadential scheme: Byrd published most of his settings of English texts in his three great English anthologies of ‘psalms’ and ‘songs’ (1588, 1589, 1611); many of these were intended for devotional use in the home rather than in the liturgy.
The most distinguished of Byrd’s younger contemporaries was perhaps Thomas Morley, whose setting of Out of the deep for solo alto, five-part choir and organ, is one of the most moving verse anthems of the entire period. Morley indeed conceived it to be the musician’s task ‘to draw the hearer as it were in chains of gold by the ears to the consideration of holy things’. Of Morley’s immediate contemporaries the most important were the Chapel Royal musicians Nathaniel Giles and Edmund Hooper, who both wrote much for the English rites, mostly in verse form. Other comparatively minor composers included John Mundy, the two John Hiltons, John Holmes, Matthew Jeffreys, John Milton (father of the poet) and William (?or Thomas) Wilkinson.
The next generation, of which Orlando Gibbons, Tomkins and Weelkes are the principal representatives, sought to give even greater dramatic impact to the anthem; they used more vivid contrasts of texture, developed a widening range of harmonic and melodic rhythms, and they began to seek out ways of integrating the total structure of an anthem by means of motivic recapitulation and redevelopment. Weelkes approached the anthem from a madrigalian standpoint, and it is no accident perhaps that his most effective anthems are in the full style. The full anthems Alleluia, I heard a voice, Gloria in excelsis Deo and Hosanna to the Son of David reach the highest levels of inspiration, and of the verse anthems, Give ear, O Lord is of the highest formal and musical interest. Gibbons, most of whose anthems are in the verse style, was equally forward-looking. He was particularly successful in conveying the declamatory shape of a text: This is the record of John, Glorious and powerful God and especially See, the Word is incarnate all owe much in this respect to Morley, and are some of the most remarkable verse anthems of the pre-Restoration period. His full anthems are less demonstrative but mature, accomplished essays in polyphony, among them Almighty and everlasting God, Hosanna to the son of David, O Lord, in thy wrath, and the celebratory eight-part O clap your hands. Tomkins was a particularly prolific composer, with an unusually keen ear for vocal colour, and a feeling for imitative polyphony. In matters of structure and style, however, he was comparatively conservative, although there are one or two exceptional anthems such as the chromatic Know ye not, written for Prince Henry’s funeral in 1613, and the very moving anthem or ‘sacred madrigal’, When David heard. A profusion of minor composers continued to work the established idioms of the full and verse anthem. Some, like Amner, Batten, Michael East, Nicholson, William Smith and Ward, produced worthwhile music that still merits a hearing. Others, such as Cranford, Fido, Hinde, Thomas Holmes, the Lugges, Palmer, Portman, Stonard, Giles and John Tomkins, Warwick, Wilson and the Woodsons, are now primarily of historical interest.
Although the decani/cantoris disposition of the Anglican choir was well suited to the exploitation of polychoral effects, English composers in the 16th and 17th centuries showed little interest in these possibilities. Even in so extensive a work as Tomkins’s 12-part O praise the Lord, spatial considerations play very little part in the overall disposition of voices. Nor indeed did English composers show a great interest in the innovations of the stile nuovo. One or two Chapel Royal composers did graft italianate mannerisms on to a basically English idiom with some success, notably William Child, William and Henry Lawes and Walter Porter. Child’s Turn thou us contains some very italianate turns of phrase for the solo voices, and the harmonic idiom is unusually tonal, as are also the harmonies of the full anthems O God, wherefore art thou absent (Treasury, ii, 1965, p.248) and Bow down thine ear. Porter, a pupil of Monteverdi, was the most obviously italianate composer in London before the Civil War, so much so that his many anthems failed to gain a foothold outside the Chapel Royal. If the verse anthem O, Praise the Lord (Treasury, ii, 1965, p.232) is typical of his general style it is easy to see why this was so, for the solo lines are full of melisma and ornament, and extremely difficult to sing. George Jeffreys’s style is somewhat akin to Porter’s. His church music dates from considerably later, however, and is unlikely to have influenced the mainstream development of the English anthem.
After a break of some 15 years during the period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, choral services were resumed in 1660. To judge from James Clifford’s wordbook of anthems, The Divine Services and Anthems (1663, enlarged 2/1664), a great deal of pre-Restoration music had been recovered and was forming the bulk of the daily repertory. At the Chapel Royal Henry Cooke and Matthew Locke were writing anthems in a wholly new style for performance at the Sunday and festal services, when the king was present. Textures in their anthems are basically homophonic, the harmonic idiom is tonal rather than modal, and the structure is less an alternation of verses and choruses than a succession of contrasting verses, interspersed with an occasional chorus, often of a somewhat perfunctory kind. Both composers had been abroad during the Commonwealth, and the influence of French and Italian styles is very evident in their work.
A further step away from the pre-Restoration style was taken in 1662, when the king’s enlarged violin band was introduced to the Chapel Royal to play symphonies and ritornellos between the verses of the anthem, a practice that continued regularly until 1688 and after that sporadically on special occasions. Locke’s Be thou exalted Lord represents an early example of an occasional ‘orchestral’ anthem and is also one of the grandest, being scored for three four-part choirs with soloists, five-part string band, a consort of viols and two theorbos. Some Chapel Royal anthems still made use of the wind ensemble as in pre-Commonwealth times, including Locke’s I will hear what the Lord God will say, accounting for some angular instrumental writing. Of Purcell’s other elder contemporaries, Pelham Humfrey wrote orchestral anthems which are much less angular than Locke’s, the French influence being much in evidence. Blow had already written much when Purcell came of age, and was still active some ten years after Purcell’s death. His style is most akin to Locke’s, although it has a greater sense of harmonic direction, as for instance in the powerful orchestral anthem for the 1685 coronation, God spake sometime in visions. Of all Restoration composers, Blow was the most prolific.
The Restoration period is often spoken of as the ‘Purcellian’ period, however, for Purcell synthesized and developed all that was most successful in the work of his predecessors. His full anthem Hear my prayer, O God (the opening section of a larger work never completed) represents a moving continuation of the 16th-century polyphonic style: his early verse anthem, Let mine eyes run down with tears is richly harmonic in Blow’s best manner (ex.3); and the orchestral anthems, of which Rejoice in the Lord, My heart is inditing and They that go down to the sea (ex.4) are particularly effective examples, owe much to Locke and Humfrey.
At no time before or since the Restoration was the Chapel Royal so central to the history of English cathedral music, for every composer of standing was connected with it in some way or other. After the accession of James II (a Catholic convert) in 1685, however, the Chapel Royal steadily lost its pre-eminence, and patronage of Anglican church music declined. During the 18th century the opera house and the concert hall were of greater interest to the musical public. Although much agreeable church music was composed, little of it was of great spiritual depth.
Handel’s Anglican music comprises a set of 11 anthems for the Duke of Chandos, the last and in many ways the grandest of the Restoration orchestral anthems (1716–18), and some ten other occasional anthems. Of Purcell’s younger contemporaries, William Croft achieved some eminence. Other minor figures include Aldrich, Jeremiah Clarke, Robert Creighton, James Hawkins and Roseingrave. Of the many English composers of the early 18th century Greene and Boyce deserve some attention. Greene’s indebtedness to Handel has perhaps been overstressed. His most effective full anthems look back to the time of Gibbons – his O clap your hands is akin to Gibbons’s setting of the same text in strength and dignity; his most original verse anthems, notably Lord, let me know mine end, also have a personal stamp. Although no anthem by Boyce quite measures up to Greene’s best work, verse anthems such as O where shall wisdom be found? and I have surely built thee an house are creditable extensions of the Restoration tradition. Other minor figures include John Alcock, Thomas Kempton, Thomas Kelway, James Kent, James Nares and John Travers.
The period from 1770 to 1817 was described by Foster as a ‘trackless desert’. It was the period of adaptations and arrangements, in which some editors dismembered the compositions of English and foreign composers, replacing the original texts with incongruously chosen passages from the Bible. Nevertheless, Jonathan Battishill and Samuel Wesley will continue to be remembered for some effective anthems. Of Battishill’s anthems, O Lord look down has a contrapuntal and harmonic strength that places it in the highest class (ex.5). Samuel Wesley was largely responsible for bringing the music of J.S. Bach before the English public, and the best of his own anthems and motets reflect the influence of Bach both in the scale of their design and in the strength of their melodic lines. The impressive motets Exultate Deo and In exitu Israel, especially, foreshadow later developments, and are of considerable intrinsic musical interest. Among Wesley’s contemporaries, Thomas Attwood, John Clarke-Whitfeld, Benjamin and Robert Cooke, William Crotch, Thomas Ebdon and Thomas Norris deserve mention.
The nadir of the English anthem, and of English cathedral music generally, was reached during the early years of the 19th century. The daily services were performed in a perfunctory and incompetent manner; the average repertory was small and representative of only the simplest 18th- and early 19th-century composition. As S.S. Wesley remarked (A Few Words on Cathedral Music, 1849), no cathedral in the country possessed ‘a musical force competent to embody and give effect to the evident intentions of the Church with regard to music’. The foundations of the Victorian revival, however, were being laid at this time. Maria Hackett (1783–1874) and S.S. Wesley led vigorous campaigns, the former to improve working conditions and the latter to raise levels of musical competence in cathedral establishments. Scholars such as John Jebb, Frederick Oakley and Thomas Helmore sought to restore to the musical part of public worship the same propriety and dignity that was being sought in other fields by leaders of the Oxford Movement and the Cambridge Camden Society. Among composers active at the time were Sterndale Bennett, J.B. Dykes, G.T. Elvey, John Goss, F.A.G. Ouseley, R.L. Pearsall, Henry T. Smart, T.A. Walmisley and S.S. Wesley. Of these S.S. Wesley is unquestionably pre-eminent. Many of his best anthems (composed between 1830 and 1850) were published in a collected edition of 1853, and several are of considerable proportions, lasting between 15 and 20 minutes, The wilderness and the solitary place, O Lord, thou art my God, Let us lift up our heart, Blessed be the God and Father (ex.6) and Ascribe unto the Lord are particularly memorable. Like Mendelssohn’s Hear my prayer (1844) these anthems clearly show the influence of contemporary oratorio: the organ accompaniments are conceived in more orchestral terms than had formerly been the case, a trend that was greatly assisted by the introduction of pedals and easily manipulated stop-change mechanisms. Wesley’s use of clearly differentiated recitative and aria styles and his imaginative harmonic vocabulary point to the awareness of developments well beyond the confines of the cathedral organ loft. None of his immediate contemporaries was in any way his equal, and many of the younger composers, including Joseph Barnby, G.M. Garrett, Stainer and Sullivan, fell too easily under the saccharine influence of Spohr, Gounod and Mendelssohn himself.
The two names most commonly associated with the English musical renaissance are those of Parry and Stanford. Stanford was particularly influential in the field of church music. He condemned the practice, common in his younger days, of adapting as anthems compositions that had been ‘imported from sources, foreign in more senses than one, foreign to our buildings, to our services and to our tastes’ (‘The choice of Music in Church Choirs’, The official Report of the Church Congress … , 1899). He was greatly concerned to further a ‘genuinely English’ school of composition, and paid a generous tribute to the Wesleys and to ‘their influence upon the modern renaissance in England, of which they were as undoubtedly as they were unconsciously the forerunners’. While Stanford’s own church music reflects his lively interest in contemporary music abroad, it is unmistakably English in style and structure. The anthem The Lord is my Shepherd well illustrates the composer’s concern to integrate large-scale forms by means of motivic development. It also contains many imaginative harmonic turns of phrase, as indeed do all his most memorable anthems, not least being the three splendid motets Coelos ascendit hodie, Justorum animae and Beati quorum via (ex.7), written for the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge.
During this time of renaissance, a multitude of minor craftsmen, nearly all of them church musicians, produced well-wrought, if generally unremarkable, music for the Anglican rites, including Edward Bairstow (whose fine Let all mortal flesh keep silence will long be remembered), Ernest Bullock, Darke, Dyson, Harris, Basil Harwood, C.S. Lang, Moeran, Sydney Nicholson, Thiman and Wood.
Few major English composers since the 1920s, however, have written much of significance for the Anglican rites; Vaughan Williams’s greatest contribution in this field is his imposing Mass in G Minor, which far outweighs the few incidental ‘anthems’ that he wrote. John Ireland’s Greater love hath no man was his only essay in this form. Berkeley wrote anthems of distinction for a number of special events. Isolated compositions of an anthem-like character suggest what might have been achieved had there been more effective communication between the organ loft and the outside world, notably Holst’s setting of The Evening-Watch, Bax’s motets This worldes joie and Mater ora filium, Walton’s The Twelve and Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb. None of these, however, is practicable for daily use.
The work of 20th-century scholars in publishing editions of anthems by composers from the Reformation to the 18th century has added to the repertory so that choirmasters may now draw on the best Anglican music from all periods; the demand for new works in the form is therefore relatively small. Though less striking than his settings of canticles, Howells’s anthems include the early partsong-like carol-anthem Here is the little door, the accompanied Like as the hart, and the late, unaccompanied eight-part Take him, earth, for cherishing. Post-1945 musical complexity and technical demands were ill-suited to the ethos or practicalities of Anglican church music; in setting sacred texts Leighton, Mathias and Richard Rodney Bennett adopted idioms informed by Bartók and later Stravinsky. After 1970 Jonathan Harvey and John Tavener achieved a significant and welcome revaluation of the spiritual nature and musical style of the anthem. Harvey’s work follows on from late modernist complexity but adopts the medieval practice of composing outwards from the tenor, exemplified in Come, Holy Ghost (1986) based on the plainchant hymn. Tavener’s conversion to the Greek Orthodox Church brought together the innocence of his early vocal music (e.g. The Lamb) and the incantation and rich textures of the Orthodox tradition, imbuing an intrinsically simple post-modern idiom with considerable spiritual power; Song for Athene (1994) has received worldwide attention as a result of its use at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales (1997).
See also Service.
The American anthem originated in the late 18th century. Its models were the English anthems which had begun to appear in American publications about the middle of the 18th century and in the collections of church music brought by immigrants or imported from England. The most important of those collections were William Tans’ur’s The Royal Melody Compleat (1754–5) and Aaron Williams’s The Universal Psalmodist (1763). Two Americans, Josiah Flagg of Boston and Daniel Bayley of Newburyport, Massachusetts, were most influential in introducing the anthem into the New World. Flagg issued Sixteen Anthems in 1766, and Bayley was responsible for printing and distributing Tans’ur’s collection as well as his own New Universal Harmony (1773), which contained 20 anthems by seven English composers including John Arnold, William Knapp, Joseph Stephenson and Aaron Williams. He also published John Stickney’s The Gentleman and Lady’s Musical Companion (1774), the largest collection of English anthems compiled in America during the 18th century. English composer-musicians such as William Tuckey and William Selby were also influential when they emigrated to the Colonies and established themselves as leaders of the musical communities in New York and Boston.
Generally, these English anthems, composed for rural Anglican parishes or nonconformist congregations, were short unaccompanied works for four-part mixed chorus with occasional brief solos. Each line of the text, usually a paraphrase of verses from the Psalms, served as the basis of an independent section, most of which were chordal with only short insertions of imitative polyphony.
After independence was established, works by native composers quickly outnumbered the English models in American publications. The centre of anthem composition during the 18th century was New England, where the pioneer was William Billings. 47 of his anthems appeared in his several collections of church music beginning with The New-England Psalm-Singer (1770) and ending with The Continental Harmony (1794). Other leading composers of anthems in New England were Jacob French, Daniel Read, Jacob Kimball and Oliver Holden. While the earliest efforts of American anthem composers were understandably primitive, though not without a certain charm of naivety, those of the second generation were equal in musical technique to their English models, which, in turn, were predictably inferior to the products of the cathedral and collegiate composers trained in the polyphonic tradition.
Outside the mainstream were the Germanic immigrants, most notably the Moravians (see Moravians, music of the) who settled in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Chief among them were Christian Gregor, Johannes Herbst, John Antes and J.F. Peter; their works, unlike the English models, featured combinations of voices and instruments. Their anthems appeared in several 19th-century American collections but, unfortunately, were mostly confined to their isolated communities.
In general, the English anthem continued to be the standard for Americans during the first half of the 19th century, after the model of such British immigrants as George K. Jackson in Boston, Benjamin Carr in Philadelphia, and later Edward Hodges in New York. Although Lowell Mason's first publication The Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music (1882), contained a number of congregational hymn and psalm tunes adapted from continental operatic and instrumental works, in keeping with Mason's objective of elevating Americans' musical taste, all but one of the 13 anthems and set-pieces for choir and figured bass or a simple keyboard accompaniment in the collection were by English church musicians of the period, among them Martin Madan, Samuel Arnold and James Kent. The Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collection went through 22 editions over the next 17 years and exerted a strong influence on American church music well into the 1850s.
Subsequent compilations by Mason and such contemporaries as George Webb, Nathaniel Gould, Thomas Hastings and William Bradbury included some anthems by American composers. In general, these were simple pieces, imitating the English model. Their overall texture was chordal and hymn-like with some contrasting of chorus and smaller ensembles. For the most part, however, American church choirs of the era sang imported music, including English anthems (some from as early as the 16th century), some continental motets or mass movements with texts translated or adapted, oratorio movements, and settings of sacred texts to music from the operatic and orchestral repertories.
During the second half of the 19th century the European influence on American anthems was intensified because a large number of American composers spent time studying in Europe, especially in Germany. At the same time numerous anthems by local composers were published, either singly or in collections or magazines, simply because the form was functional and demand was great. Edmund Lorenz’s The Choir Leader followed the pattern of Novello’s Musical Times in issuing a monthly publication containing anthems suitable for a volunteer choir. Most of these works were as undistinguished and undemanding as many of their English counterparts of the period, although some anthems by Americans trained in Europe were musically admirable and suitable primarily for the professional quartet choirs then popular.
The two most influential anthem composers in America around the turn of the century were Dudley Buck and his younger contemporary Horatio Parker, both of whom had studied in Europe. Although Buck took a dim view of professional quartet choirs, his anthem style, with its lyrical melodies and colourful harmonies, was admirably suited to that kind of ensemble. His 55 published anthems were a mainstay of most Protestant church choirs' repertories well into the 20th century; indeed, through much of that period Buck's anthems were performed with a frequency exceeded only by those of the English composer Joseph Barnby.
Parker's anthems were more difficult and more sophisticated than Buck's and accordingly achieved nowhere near their popularity and widespread use. Nevertheless his work compares favourably with that of such English contemporaries as Stanford and Parry. Parker's melodic material is not as immediately engaging as Buck's; rather, his anthems' effect grows out of their strong diatonic harmony and excellent counterpoint juxtaposed against dramatic choral unison passages. A more popular composer of Parker's generation was Buck's pupil Harry Rowe Shelley, whose anthems are similar to his teacher's, although he was clearly less gifted than Buck. When he chose, Buck could and did write effective counterpoint; Shelley generally avoided contrapuntal textures, relying instead for effect on engaging melodies and dramatic harmonies.
Large numbers of anthems continued to be published in America after 1900. Most of the pieces lacked noteworthy merit; however, a number of composers did write distinctive and original anthems during the first half of the 20th century, among them Everett Titcomb, F. Melius Christiansen, Leo Sowerby, Clarence Dickinson, and two British immigrants, Tertius Noble and the naturalized Canadian Healey Willan.
The anthems of both Noble and Willan are typically English, with strong diatonic harmonies, full-textured organ accompaniments, and the use of choral unison for contrast. Many of Willan's most effective anthems are based on hymn tunes. Titcomb's anthems, by contrast, generally lacked the professional polish of Willan and Noble, but their clear diatonic harmony and uncomplicated melodies made them especially effective for choirs of limited proficiency, and they thus gained wide use. Many of Dickinson's most distinctive anthems are based on European folktunes. His style, like Titcomb's, usually consisted of a simple and engaging melody over clear diatonic harmonies, making his music practical for choirs of limited skill. Sowerby's idiom was the most advanced of the group, and distinctively American. He placed elegant, often asymmetric, melodies over modal and chromatic harmonies, sometimes approaching in flavour the popular music idioms of his time, but always with subtlety and sensitivity.
In the late 20th century, the flow of anthems from numerous publishers continued unabated. As in earlier times, most of the pieces were of indifferent quality. During the 1960s and 70s popular musical idioms made distinct inroads in American as well as English church music, and numerous anthems with elements of folk, country and even rock style continue to be issued. Few if any of these have established themselves as staples of the choral repertory. Rather, the prevailing style in the century's last decades, to be seen in the anthems of such major figures as Daniel Pinkham, Alan Hovhaness, Lee Hoiby, David Hurd and Alec Wyton, each with his own distinctive idiom, can be characterized as clear textual declamation combined with expressive pictorialism.
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