A general term for music sung in Protestant churches in England and America from the 17th century to the early 19th. Following traditional practices of the Roman Catholic Church, the term was first associated with the chanting of psalms and later with the singing of metrical psalms, but as these were gradually replaced by hymns the term was retained to cover all kinds of music sung by amateur choirs. With the decline of the older type of parish choir in England the term fell into disuse, but it survived in America. It is now the most appropriate term to describe a body of music that, after long neglect, has recently attracted musicological attention.
NICHOLAS TEMPERLEY (I), RICHARD CRAWFORD (II)
Psalmody in England began with the rise of parish church choirs towards the end of the 17th century. It was a type of music specifically designed to allow such choirs to dominate or replace congregational psalm singing. Two categories of psalmody may be sharply distinguished: that of the country parish church without an organ, sung by a predominantly male choir to which instruments were later added; and that of the town church, sung by children accompanied by an organ. Both types were eventually taken up in Dissenting bodies and spread also to America, Scotland and Wales. Country choirs also sang psalmody outside church and often combined to form choral societies, which aspired to the performance of oratorios; smaller groups sang psalmody in the home for recreation. Psalmody of the country type was reformed out of existence during the 19th century as a result of urbanization and various religious movements. Towards the end of the 20th century it was revived by various groups as ‘west gallery music’, because in many churches the choir had sung from the gallery at the west end of the church (see Gallery music).
3. The psalmody of Dissenters.
(ii) The music of country parish choirs.
Psalmody (ii), §I, 1: England: Country parish psalmody
The only kind of church choir heard in England during most of the 17th century was the kind that sang in the royal chapels, in cathedrals and in half a dozen collegiate parish churches. These professional choirs chanted the liturgy and prose psalms, and sang polyphonic anthems and canticle settings with organ accompaniment. In contrast the music of the ordinary parish church consisted of metrical psalms, sung unaccompanied by the whole congregation, led only by a parish clerk who was often incompetent. Over several generations a traditional manner of singing the psalms had grown up which may be described as ‘discordant heterophony’ (see Psalms, metrical, §III, 1(iv)).
Those who began to encourage the formation of parish choirs towards the end of the 17th century had not the remotest idea of imitating cathedral music. Their sole aim was to improve the singing of metrical psalms by training a few people to lead it. The earliest known reference to a ‘choir’ in this sense is found in A New and Easie Method to Learn to Sing by Book, published in 1686. The anonymous compiler said in his preface:
I have added several Psalm Tunes in Three Parts, with Directions how to sing them … This requires somewhat more Skill than the Common Way, yet is easie enough, at least for a select Company of Persons with good Voices, to attain unto. It would therefore be a commendable thing, if Six, Eight, or more, sober young Men that have good Voices, would associate and form themselves into a Quire, seriously and concordantly to sing the Praises of their Creator: A few such in a Congregation (especially if the Clark make one to lead) might in a little time bring into the Church better Singing than is common, and with more variety of good Tunes, as I have known done.
It will be noticed that a male choir only is proposed. The three-part harmonization of psalm tunes (two tenors and bass, with the melody in the top part) had been the invention of John Playford, who also probably had male voices chiefly in mind, though he pointed out that women or children could sing all three parts an octave higher. The Whole Book of Psalmes in Three Parts (1677) was probably the first harmonized psalm book intended primarily for parish church use. Yet Playford, though he may have directed a choir at the Temple Church (not a parish church), where he was clerk, stopped short of actually proposing the formation of a parish choir, perhaps because he was afraid of being accused of ‘popery’. His book sold only 1000 copies in its first 18 years, but when it was reprinted by his son Henry in 1695 it became an immediate success: there were seven editions in seven years for a total sale of at least 14,500 copies. Clearly parish choirs had blossomed between 1677 and 1695.
The rise of the parish choir seems to have been closely associated with the formation of high-church religious societies, which were founded mostly to encourage Christian morality among young men (the first London societies were established in 1678; outside London, the first was at Romney, Kent, in 1692). They met under the direction of the vicar or rector of the parish for prayers, religious discussion and the singing of metrical psalms. Josiah Woodward, one of the leaders of the movement, was convinced that psalm singing and moral self-improvement were mutually conducive, and the societies were called on to lead the services in some churches. The psalm tunes they practised at their private meetings were at first sung from within the congregation, but the societies soon wanted a special place in church (pew or gallery) where they could sing as a body: the earliest recorded instance was at St Nicholas, Liverpool, in 1695. Not unnaturally they also began to sing on their own and to seek more interesting music than plain psalm tunes. Henry Playford was quick to cater for this new demand with his Divine Companion (1701), which was copied by many others, especially in the north of England. It was one thing, however, for the ‘singers’ to sing an anthem before or after service, but when they took over the metrical psalms with new and difficult tunes they ran into opposition from people who clung to their old ways. ‘What terrible outcries do they make … against any alterations; and if their understanding does not help 'em to any arguments against the thing itself, they immediately cry out Popery’ (Chetham, A Book of Psalmody, 1718). Thus in a matter of two decades, choirs that had been first intended to promote the singing of the congregation were now bent on arrogating the music entirely to themselves, and even to imitating cathedral music. They were abetted in these efforts by country singing teachers, who often travelled from village to village training choirs and selling books of their own compiling.
It is hardly surprising that many of the clergy now turned against the parish choirs. Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, thundered in 1724 against
the inviting or encouraging those idle Instructors, who of late years have gone about the several counties to teach tunes uncommon and out of the way (which very often are as ridiculous as they are new; and the consequence of which is, that the greatest part of the congregation being unaccustom’d to them are silenc’d).
In some cases bishops refused to grant faculties for the building of galleries or pews for the singers, or stipulated that ‘some of the singers … do sometimes disperse themselves into the body of the said church for the direction and assistance of such persons as shall have a pious intention of learning to sing’. Positive clerical support for the singers was rare. A musical clergyman was more likely to want to ‘reform’ the singing, as at Aston, Yorkshire, where William Mason ‘taught the blacksmith to sing Marcello’s Psalms like an angel’. At the other extreme, parsons banned the singers altogether or restricted their music; in revenge the choir sometimes moved over in a body to the local Methodist or Dissenting chapel. But the typical Georgian parson’s attitude was one of laissez-faire, and the choir soon became a recognized institution in country churches that had no organ. Indeed, apart from secular folksongs and dances, psalmody was the only communal music enjoyed by most country people in this period.
The heyday of the country choirs was from about 1760 to 1820. A typical group of singers near the beginning of this period was that described by Parson Woodforde at Castle Cary, Somerset, in 1769:
The Singers in the Gallery were, John Coleman, the Baker; Jonathan Croker; Willm Pew Junr.; Thos Penny; Willm Ashford; Hooper the Singing Master; James Lucas; Peter, Mr. Francis’s man; Mr. Mellian’s man James; Farmer Hix’s son; Robert Sweete; and the two young Durnfords.
A broad spectrum of rural society was thus represented, including tradesmen, farm people and domestic servants, many of whom were probably illiterate and learnt their words, at least, by rote. They received no pay from the parish, except perhaps a small gratuity at Christmas or an annual choir feast, but some choirs offered their services at neighbouring parish churches, in which case a payment was often made out of the funds of the host parish. The churchwardens’ accounts at Cardington (Bedfordshire), for example, record in 1779 the purchase of 2½ quarts of beer to reward the Luton singers. Some parish accounts record payments for books for the choir, others for the singing teacher’s fees, but occasionally the vestry refused to make any payments for church music; this might have been because of the strength of nonconformity in the parish, for all ratepayers could vote in a general vestry even if they did not attend the parish church.
The country choirs at first were either entirely unaccompanied, or were supported only by a bass viol (or cello or hybrid instrument of similar compass). Benjamin Hely’s Compleat Violist (1699) tells how to accompany psalm tunes. In the same year Henry Playford published directions for playing the ‘psalterer’, a one-string instrument with frets labelled with letters; he claimed that it was the invention of his father, John Playford. In 1761, in the preface to the fifth edition of The Compleat Psalmodist, John Arnold recommended the bassoon as ‘now in great Request in many Country Churches … as most of the Bass Notes may be played on it, in the Octave below the Bass Voices’; by the end of the 18th century a small band of instrumentalists had become a common addition to the parish choir. At Swalcliffe (Oxfordshire) 66 subscribers contributed to the purchase in 1783 of an oboe, a vox humana and a bassoon; a bass viol was added in 1785. This band played until it was replaced by an organ in the west gallery in 1842. The exact composition of ensembles varied greatly from parish to parish: the bass string instrument or bassoon was almost always present to support the bass; a clarinet often took the ‘counter’ or alto part an octave above pitch, and a flute or violin often doubled the tenors an octave higher, or the sopranos at pitch. In some churches the vicar banished the violin because of its association with tavern revelry. Less frequently may be found oboes, trumpets, serpents, horns, drums and a specially devised instrument called the ‘vamphorn’ through which the player half sang, half blew. Instruments of tenor register are rarely heard of: the tune, sung by the tenors, was doubled (if at all) in the higher octave. Stringed keyboard instruments were also rarely used. From about 1780 some psalmody books contained separate instrumental parts, particularly for ‘symphonies’ (introductions and interludes); but the primary function of the instruments was still to double voices, keeping them together and on pitch. One of the largest country choirs reported was at Winterborne St Martin (Dorset). In 1820 it contained 20 singers, including two ‘counters’; they were supported by two clarinets playing the tune, two for the countertenor, an hautboy for the tenor (which by this time had yielded the tune to the treble voices) and a cello for the bass.
For most of the 18th century the majority of choirs continued to be made up only of men, and hence the basic harmony was tenor and bass, two tenors and bass, or alto, tenor and bass, with the tune in the tenor. An increasing number of psalmody books included treble (soprano) parts as well, but they are frequently inessential to the music or even anomalous, and were apparently not much used. Gradually, however, children and then women were allowed to join the singers, and after a generation of uncertainty the modern soprano, alto, tenor and bass arrangement, with the tune in the soprano, had become widespread by about 1810. Choirs sang metrical psalms and hymns with elaborate tunes, anthems and set-pieces with metrical hymn texts; the more ambitious ones, especially in Yorkshire and the north Midlands, sang settings of the canticles and chanted psalms, and even chanted the whole service. The congregation had to turn round to ‘face the music’ when, as was most common, the choir was in the west gallery at the back of the church. Inevitably, this created a ‘concert hall’ atmosphere, and parsons frequently had to complain of tuning up during prayers or sermon, overlong anthems dwarfing the rest of the service, and other abuses. With the coming of more earnest religion in the Evangelical and Tractarian movements, criticism of parochial psalmody (which had always been present) became more and more insistent, and energetic efforts were made to get rid of it. There were always those, however, who saw virtue in the heartfelt singing of the choirs, however unpolished it might be. Sympathetic descriptions have been left by Thomas Hardy, whose father and grandfather had sung in church choirs, and by George Eliot. John Eden, in a sermon at Bristol in 1822, made an eloquent plea against the growing tendency to disband the singers:
Let it be remembered … that music, harsh, imperfect, and discordant as it may be in a country choir, is nevertheless a source of innocent and rational amusement to the performers; it occupies their hours of leisure; it is a grateful recreation, when the labour of the day is past; it solaces them in affliction; and it sheds an increase of pleasure on their hours of happiness: if this fails to prove its virtue and value, let me add that it keeps them from seeking amusement in the alehouse, and from the long train of evils commonly incident on such a practice.
But the spread of education and urbanization produced an intolerance for this rough music, a desire for a kind of music that would reflect the improved wealth and standing of the congregation. Reforming Evangelicals wanted to restore the singing to the people, while romantic antiquarians and Tractarians wanted to revive the music of the remote past. More and more clergymen were determined to suppress the singers and their psalmody, and the simplest way to do it was to introduce an organ. This was still beyond the means of most villages, however, and a useful compromise was found in the barrel organ – merely a curiosity before 1790, but a normal feature in country churches during the first half of the 19th century. With it came a roll of tunes prepared by trained musicians, usually in London, and so the psalmody of the towns was quickly introduced into the country churches. The seraphine or reed organ was a slightly later development. Sometimes the singers and instrumentalists were permitted to perform along with the new organ or reed organ, but more often they retired at once, realizing that their day had passed. Indeed, few country choirs of the old kind survived after the mid-19th century: the west of England was their last home. The one at Winterborne Abbas (Dorset) continued just long enough to be described by a music historian (F.W. Galpin in 1906 gave a detailed description of its performance ten years before); it was disbanded shortly afterwards. In Cornwall some choirs and bands lasted into the early 20th century. The psalmody that the old choirs had sung usually disappeared with them, and in Victorian times an entirely different kind of parish church music arose, based on the surpliced choir in the chancel, the diocesan festival, Hymns Ancient and Modern, the Cathedral Psalter and Novello’s octavo series of church music.
Psalmody (ii), §I, 1: England: Country parish psalmody
Henry Playford was the first to provide music for country choirs that went beyond simple harmonized psalm tunes. The Divine Companion (1701) was ‘fitted for the use of those who already understand Mr. John Playford’s Psalms in three parts. To be used in Churches or Private Families for their Greater Advancement in Divine Musick’. As well as some new psalm tunes in a lively and up-to-date style, the collection contained hymns and anthems. The hymns, most of them strophic songs for voice and bass, were no doubt for ‘Private Families’. Of the anthems Playford wrote in his preface:
We have, 'tis true, had Anthems long since sung, and continued in our Cathedrals and Chapels … But our Parochial Churches, which are equally dedicated to Gods Glory, and innumerable, in respect of those before mention’d, have been altogether destitute of such necessary assistances to Praise their Maker by … This has made me importunate with my Friends to compile such a set of short and easy Anthems as may be proper for the Places they are designed for, and from such little beginnings in the practice of Musick, endeavour to persuade them into a knowledge of things of a Higher Nature, as Harmonia Sacra, &c.
The 19 anthems are the work of some of the most accomplished professional composers of the day, mostly cathedral musicians: Akeroyde, Church, Clarke, Croft, Robert King, William Turner (ii) and Weldon. In style they are remarkably similar: all are in two or three parts (tenor and bass, or alto, tenor and bass; in either case the tenor part could be sung an octave higher as a treble), simple and short, and entirely homophonic (ex.1). Evidently the composers were writing to instructions from Playford, in a style that was conceived as appropriate for country musicians. There is no doubt that these anthems were used, for every country psalmody collection until 1715 borrowed some anthems from The Divine Companion. John Bishop, another professional, provided further materials in his Sett of New Psalm Tunes (1710), which was ‘design’d for the use of St. Laurence Church in Reading; and are taught by Tho. Batten’. This too was a source for country collections, as were John Church’s Introduction to Psalmody (1723) and William Pearson’s Second Book of the Divine Companion (c1725), a sequel to Playford’s.
At first country musicians merely borrowed materials from their professional models, sometimes simplifying or adapting in the process, but they soon began to produce their own music. The earliest known parochial anthem of country provenance is Hear my pray’r, O Lord from A Book of Psalm Tunes (2/1713) by John and James Green (the Greens were from Wombwell, near Darfield, Yorkshire). The contrast between this anthem, with its unusual harmonies and artless prosody, and those put out by Playford is obvious and striking (ex.2). In some cases there are notable archaisms, such as the organum-like cadence in James Green’s O God my heart is ready (1715) (ex.3). The early anthems follow Playford’s lead in one respect: they are largely homophonic, the only contrasts in texture occurring when one part rests.
Many other country composers followed the Greens in publishing collections that included anthems of their own composition. The West Riding gained an early lead, but in the course of the century every part of England except the extreme north and south-west was represented by at least one local collection. The compilers were generally either singing teachers or booksellers, in some cases both; a few, such as William Knapp of Poole (Dorset), were parish clerks. They can be clearly distinguished from professional musicians and London publishers who from time to time published a book intended to bring country psalmody back into the mainstream of art music: examples of the latter, besides those already mentioned, are Alcock (c1745), Broderip (1749, 1764), Langdon (1774), Billington (1784), Arnold and Callcott (1791), Hellendaal (1793) and Bond (c1791).
The most successful of all country psalmodies, John Chetham’s Book of Psalmody (1718), was perhaps a compromise between the two types. Chetham himself was an educated man, schoolmaster and curate of Skipton (Yorkshire), and there are signs that he had links with the cathedral tradition: his was the first country psalmody book to include ‘chanting-tunes’ that were clearly derived from cathedral chants and set to the canticles – a feature borrowed in many later collections. Chetham’s book went through 11 editions in the 18th century, and was used all over the north of England, particularly at Halifax parish church. There it became so venerated that 19th-century organists were obliged to present their own work in the form of additions or revisions to Chetham’s – as, for instance, in Pohlmann’s National Psalmody, or New Appendix to Houldsworth’s Cheetham’s Psalmody, for Home and Congregational Use, edited by H.J. Gauntlett (Halifax: Pohlmann & Son, 1878).
From the 1720s anthems became longer, more elaborate and in some cases contrapuntal; they grew from two to three, and ultimately to four and even more voices, though the tenor remained clearly the ‘leading’ part. Indeed in many anthems the tenor and bass seem musically satisfying by themselves, more so than with the upper parts added, which suggests that the others may have been more or less optional. The same anthem often appears in drastically altered forms in different books, or the tenor may be nearly identical in two versions, while the other parts are entirely different, perhaps as a result of the oral transmission of the tenor. Some of the anthems from Playford and Bishop became so transformed in several stages that by the later 18th century they had become barely identifiable (ex.1b).
The development of elaborate psalm tunes, though equally characteristic of country psalmody, tended to follow after the development of anthems. One reason for this was that the singers could do as they pleased with the anthem, but in metrical psalms they had to reckon with opposition from both clergy and congregation. Another was that psalm tunes had to be repeated with each verse of the psalm, which hindered any anthem-like elaboration in the setting. One solution was to have an elaborate refrain, repeated with every verse. Only one of the 150 psalms actually has such a refrain – Psalm cxxxvi – and this was, in fact, one of the first to be treated in extended settings with word repetitions. Psalm xxiv.7–10 also has a refrain-like repetition, and this was the text of the first Fuging-tune, in the second edition of Chetham’s Book of Psalmody (1722). This piece, judging by its style and effective structure, was the work of a professional composer. It was very popular and was reprinted (though often in debased form) in many later collections. Apart from these two examples, fuging-tunes are not found before about 1745, though there are increasing numbers of tunes with solos, duets, word repetitions and extended melismas and ornaments.
William East’s collections of about 1750–55 show a new trend. They contain services and anthems ‘as sung in Cathedrals’, including examples by Lawes, Blow, Purcell, Tudway and Maurice Greene as well as some of parochial origin. But they are clearly for local parish church use, being sold by various booksellers at Midland towns ‘and by Mr. John Harrot, teacher of Psalmody at Great Bowden [Leicestershire]’. One, a Collection of Church Musick for the Use of his Schools Waltham Leicestershire, contains a ‘Tribute’ to the author, signed ‘John Stanley’:
Accept
my Friend what Justice makes me do,
And your Harmonick Notes compels me to:
Great Playford’s Works Immortaliz’d his Name,
And Tansur’s stretch’d the blowing Cheeks of Fame;
Green, Barber, Chetham, Smith, &c in thought was best,
Yet all these Worthies are Reviv’d in East …
The development of country psalmody, from Playford to East, is thus clearly outlined. East’s psalm tunes are all ‘in the Fugeing, Syncopating and binding taste’; about half of them are attributed to John Everet, of Grantham, whose own collection was published by East in 1757. They show little concern for the problems of strophic repetition; the first verse only is set to music, word repetitions and overlaps included, and the other verses are left to take care of themselves (ex.4). This ‘extreme’ type of fuging-tune was popular in the remoter country collections in the later 18th century, and was imitated in American psalmody books. More than other elaborate tunes it obscured or vitiated the sense of the words and on these grounds was criticized by such clergymen as John Wesley and such country musicians as John Arnold, who deplored ‘these new-fashioned fuguing Psalm-Tunes’ in the prefaces of his collections. In more ‘moderate’ fuging-tunes, such as those of William Tans’ur, the ‘fuging’ section is in most cases either a repetition of the last line after a full cadence, or an Alleluia or Amen; hence the tune can be sung without it.
Towards the end of the 18th century increasingly strident objections to country psalmody, particularly on the part of Evangelical clergymen, generated a new type of ‘reforming’ psalmody collection, which not only tried to impose professional musical standards but also was designed to re-establish congregational singing in country churches, led but not replaced by a choir. Among these were the collections of Newton (1775), Cecil (1785), William Jones (i) (1789, 1795) and Tattersall (1794), all incumbents of country churches, and Gresham (1797), a church organist and schoolmaster. Comprehensive books of psalms and hymns, intended for both town and country use, also became popular, Miller’s Psalms of David (1790) being the first in a long series which included collections by Benjamin Jacob (1817), Greatorex (c1825) and Hackett (1840). In many parishes the vicar and organist combined to compile a local selection whose music was that of town psalmody (see below). Under Methodist influence, such elaborate music as remained in these collections was often of the set-piece type, settings of metrical psalm or hymn texts in a style derived, or in music actually adapted, from secular and operatic sources. Those few country choirs that survived in Victorian times chiefly sang hymn tunes of the ornate type, until the bands were replaced by the reed organ.
John Arnold, in Church Music Reformed (1765), pointed out that
in the Churches of London and Westminster, which abound chiefly with large Congregations, it is customary for the People, who chiefly sing by the Ear, to follow the Organ …; but, in Churches where there is no Organ, they generally follow the Clerk, who sings the Melody of the Tune … In most Country Churches the Psalms used to be sung formerly much after the same Manner as is now used in the Churches of London, &c … till about half a Century ago, when several Books of Psalmody were printed and published, containing some very good Psalm Tunes and Anthems in four Parts; of which the People in the Country soon became particularly fond.
There is a clear distinction between the two traditions; the London churches generally continued to sing psalm tunes of the old type in the old way. What was true of the churches of London and Westminster was also generally true of the larger provincial town churches, particularly those in cathedral cities, where one of the cathedral musicians was frequently organist. Other large cities, such as Newcastle, Nottingham, Birmingham, Leeds and Bath, had more than one church with an organ, and in general organs became more widespread during the 18th century.
Another factor in many town churches was the presence of the ‘charity children’, also mentioned by Arnold. From early Elizabethan times the statutes of many grammar schools contained a provision for teaching the psalm tunes to the children and taking them to the parish church to lead the singing every Sunday. They wore uniforms, provided by the parish if there was no endowment to clothe them, and they often assembled on either side of the organ in the church’s west gallery, providing a strong if at times rather shrill rendering of the psalm tunes. Thus in town church music, unlike that of the country, the emphasis was on the highest voice. Organ settings also had the tunes in the treble, with interludes and elaborate ‘givings-out’ for playing the tune through (see Psalms, metrical, §III, 1(iv)). Until well into the 18th century the charity children had no special music, but their presence is indicated in such collections as Thomas Wanless’s The Metre Psalm-Tunes … Compos’d for the Use of the Parish-Church of St. Michael’s of Belfrey’s in York (London, 1702), which has settings for soprano, alto, tenor and bass with the tune in the treble. The children of the Bluecoat School sang at this church, where Wanless (organist of York Minster) played the organ.
The phrase ‘town psalmody’ may be properly applied to elaborate music specifically written for the charity children or other choirs. The custom grew up during the 18th century of using the occasion of the annual ‘charity sermon’, at which alms were solicited for the benefit of the school, to display the singing of the children. Charity hymns were specially written for the purpose and set to music for one or two treble parts and figured bass; anthems, with suitably selected texts, were written in similar fashion (ex.5). The first book to contain this kind of music was Pearson’s The Second Book of the Divine Companion (c1725).
About the middle of the 18th century several charities with strong religious connections were founded in London – the Foundling, Lock, and Magdalen hospitals were the most important – and their congregations provided music for their chapels (see London, §I, 5). This music was also treble-dominated, consisting of women’s or children’s voices supported by the organ, and the printed collections of their psalms, hymns, anthems and set-pieces were widely used, first in other private chapels and later in town parish churches. In the 19th century many town churches employed a professional quartet at parish expense; a red velvet curtain was drawn back to reveal the fashionably dressed singers, who then provided a concert of hymns or anthems with organ accompaniment. Other churches had a surpliced choir of men and boys in the chancel. Despite the efforts of both Evangelicals and Tractarians, choirs in most churches continued to replace the congregation more than to lead it, and the music they sang was increasingly modelled on that of the cathedrals, simplified where necessary.
Independent and Presbyterian churches, especially in London and the south of England, were musically conservative during most of the 18th century. Organs were excluded, and the tune supplements to Watts and other collections of psalms and hymns generally contained only tunes of the older type. Gawthorn’s Harmonia perfecta, dedicated ‘to the Gentlemen who support the Friday Lecture in Eastcheap’, continued the Presbyterian psalm-singing movement begun earlier by William Lawrence (see Psalms, metrical, §III, 2(i)). It included four anthems and a metrical ‘Dialogue on Death’, but these were more probably used at the Friday meetings than as an accompaniment to Sunday worship.
The first signs of elaborate psalmody in Dissenting meetings came from the north, shortly after parish churches there had begun to sing anthems. Alverey Jackson led a new movement in Baptist circles in Yorkshire and Lancashire from about 1717. At Rossendale (Lancashire) about 1720, elaborate tunes began to be sung and choirs formed to lead them; bands followed later in the century. The ‘Deighn Layrocks’ (i.e. Larks), the singing society that led this music, became a famous choir which for more than a century was much in demand at local festivals of choral music. Caleb Ashworth, a Baptist minister, began his career at Rossendale and later moved south to the Midlands. His Collection of Tunes (1761) is outwardly similar to parish church psalmody books, and was no doubt partly intended for Anglican use: but it has some differences. The anthems in it are ‘more proper to entertain and improve those who have made some proficiency in the Art of Singing, than to be introduced into public Worship’. The psalm tunes are printed in one key but directed to be sung in another, indicating unaccompanied singing. There are also two selections from Handel oratorios, at this date unheard of in Anglican cathedrals or parish churches. (Newbigging described the effect produced by ‘the weird exultant music of Glad Tidings or the Hallelujah Chorus sung by the majority of the congregation’.) Stephen Addington, an Independent minister, published a similar Collection of Psalm Tunes in 1777 which was many times reprinted. Rippon’s Selection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes (c1792) was even more popular.
The Methodist movement initiated a new style of singing and brought in music originating in the theatre or the concert hall, at first in open-air meetings and eventually in churches and meeting-houses (see Methodist church music. Under John Wesley’s authoritarian rule Methodist meetings excluded organs and elaborate polyphony, and whole congregations were taught to sing in four-part harmony. Thomas Williams wrote in 1789:
The method of singing in the congregations, commonly termed methodistical, has been often charged with levity … But the use of song tunes, and trifling airs, … has almost entirely ceased since they have been supplied with a variety of better compositions, and many of their chapels are remarked for good singing. One custom, which seems to have originated among them, has certainly a very agreeable effect, namely, that of the women singing certain passages by themselves, which are frequently repeated in full chorus.
This innovation was actually first proposed by George Whitefield, leader of the Calvinistic Methodists, in his Selection for the Tabernacle (1753). Methodist practices were soon introduced in other Dissenting bodies, particularly in the north of England, where there was a growing enthusiasm for choral singing. When the spinners and weavers of Lancashire and Yorkshire met with their families for many hours of psalmody, with bands of instruments for accompaniment,
some devoted themselves to oratorios, then composed anthems, and then transferred their talents to Nonconformist meeting-houses. Many old records refer to the innovation, and show how the deacons would tolerate at first only the [string] bass, then admitted a string quartet, and gradually winked at the table-pew or the gallery housing a miscellaneous band.
The connection between choirs (both of parish churches and Dissenting bodies) and oratorio performances is reported in full detail in Millington’s Sketches, relating to the Eccles area but touching on musical activities over a wide area of Lancashire, Yorkshire and the north Midlands. Groups of singers and instrumentalists met in cottages to practise music for church and chapel, and combined for larger monthly meetings to sing Handel, Haydn, and cathedral music by Greene, Nares, Boyce and others; the musicians of several such local societies gathered for a quarterly assembly, even if it meant walking 20 miles with their instruments. It was on such foundations that the provincial festivals, great and small, were built, with professionals from London providing only the principal parts. Even the London oratorios at Covent Garden and Drury Lane frequently had recourse to choirs from Lancashire and Yorkshire, who often knew their Handel better than any in London.
Another area where nonconformity was particularly strong was south-west England. At Wellington (Somerset), the Baptist meeting-house, enlarged in 1765, had a singing gallery opposite the pulpit, in which a large choir performed psalmody, led by a precentor equipped with a pitchpipe. When a new chapel was erected in 1833 provision was made for an ‘orchestra’ as well as a choir: the gallery held about 30 people. The orchestra consisted of a double bass played by John Stradling, grocer; cello by Charles Fry, wool sorter; flutes by William Beall, wool worker, and Thomas Slade, factory foreman and also a deacon of the chapel; violins by W. Stuttaford and James Bragg; serpent by George Viney. The hymns were ‘lined out’ (a practice whereby each line was read out before being sung) by William Horsey, ‘formerly draper and grocer, latterly gentleman’, until the custom lapsed in 1864. In 1870 a reed organ was purchased and the old singing gallery closed.
Psalmody in worship varied greatly in the 19th century: some ministers disapproved of organs and preferred the bands, while others followed the more fashionable move in the high-church direction, introducing organs, and then anthems and chanted psalms. The representative Victorian collection was Allon and Gauntlett’s Congregational Psalmist (1858). It contained hymns with tunes both plain and ornate, including some translated medieval hymns, simple ‘congregational anthems’, and chants, Sanctus settings and sentences. It was adapted for Baptist use in The Baptist Tune-Book (1860). The reed organ or harmonium increasingly replaced the orchestra in chapels and by 1886 Minshall was advocating ‘a return to the old custom of having orchestral instruments used regularly in our services’. In many churches at this date for Sunday morning a simple anthem was chosen, which the congregation joined in; in the evening a more elaborate composition was sung by the choir, ‘such as a chorus and solo from the oratorios’. The spread of Tonic Sol-fa singing classes, and the publication of music in Sol-fa notation, made this congregational participation a possibility.
J. Woodward: An Account of the Rise and Progress of the Religious Societies in the City of London (London, 2/1698, 3/1701)
N. Tate: An Essay for Promoting of Psalmody (London, 1710)
E. Gibson: The Excellent Use of Psalmody (London, 1724)
A. Bedford: The Excellency of Divine Musick (London, 1733)
W. Tans’ur: A New Musical Grammar (London, 1746, 3/1756)
W. Riley: Parochial Music Corrected (London, 1762)
J. Arnold: Preface to Church Music Reformed (London, 1765)
W. Vincent: Considerations on Parochial Music (London, 1787, 2/1790)
E. Miller: Thoughts on the Present Performance of Psalmody in the Established Church of England (London, 1791)
Free Remarks on the Public Psalmody of Dissenters (Hull, 1814)
W. Cole: A View of Modern Psalmody (Colchester, 1819)
J. Eden: Church Music: a Sermon (Bristol, 1822)
D.E. Ford: Observations on Psalmody, by a Composer (London, 1827)
J.A. Latrobe: The Music of the Church (London, 1831)
J. Leech: The Church-Goer: Rural Rides, or Calls at Country Churches (Bristol, 1847–50)
‘Congregational Psalmody’, British Quarterly Review, lxx (1862), 366–94 [review]
T. Newbigging: History of the Forest of Rossendale (London, 1868, 2/1893)
J.S. Curwen: Studies in Worship Music (London, 1880–85, 3/1901)
W. Millington: Sketches of Local Musicians and Musical Societies (Pendlebury, 1884)
E. Minshall: Organs, Organists, and Choirs (London, 1887)
J.S. Curwen: ‘The Old Village Musicians’, Strand Musical Magazine, vi (1897), 137–9
F.W. Galpin: ‘Notes on the Old Church Bands and Village Choirs of the Past Century’, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, xxvi (1905), 172–81; pubd separately (Dorchester, 1905); rev. in The Antiquary, xlii (1906), 101–6
A.L. Humphreys: Materials for the History of the Town and Parish of Wellington in the County of Somerset (London, 1908–14)
G.V. Portus: Caritas Anglicana, or An Historical Enquiry into … Religious … Societies … in England between the Years 1678 and 1740 (London, 1912)
J.W. Legg: English Church Life from the Restoration to the Tractarian Movement (London, 1914)
C.W. Pearce: ‘English Sacred Folk Song of the West Gallery Period (circa 1695–1820)’, PMA, xlviii (1921–2), 1–27
K.H. Macdermott: Sussex Church Music in the Past (Chichester, 1922, 2/1923)
J. Beresford, ed.: The Diary of a Country Parson, the Reverend James Woodforde, i (London, 1924), 92
J.T. Lightwood: Methodist Music in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1927)
W.T. Whitley: Congregational Hymn-Singing (London, 1933)
K.H. Macdermott: The Old Church Gallery Minstrels (London, 1948)
M. Byrne: ‘The Church Band at Swalcliffe’, GSJ, xvii (1964), 89–98
N. Temperley: ‘John Playford and the Metrical Psalms’, JAMS, xxv (1972), 331–78
N. Temperley: ‘Country Psalmody (1685–1830)’, The Music of the English Parish Church (Cambridge, 1979/R), i, 141–203
N. Temperley: ‘The Origins of the Fuging Tune’, RMARC, no.17 (1981), 1–32
B. Rainbow: English Psalmody Prefaces: Popular Methods of Teaching, 1562–1835 (Kilkenny, 1982)
N. Temperley and C.G. Manns: Fuging Tunes in the Eighteenth Century (Detroit, 1983)
D. Hunter: ‘English Country Psalmodists and their Publications, 1700–1760’, JRMA, cxv (1990), 220–39
H. Keyte: ‘The English “Gallery” and American “Primitive” Traditions’, The New Oxford Book of Carols, ed. H. Keyte and A. Parrott (Oxford, 1992), 669–78
N. Temperley: ‘The Lock Hospital Chapel and its Music’, JRMA, cxviii (1993), 44–72
I. Russell, ed.: A Festival of Village Carols (Sheffield, 1994)
N. Temperley: ‘The Hymn Books of the Foundling and Magdalen Hospital Chapels’, Music Publishing & Collecting: Essays in Honor of Donald W. Krummel, ed. D. Hunter (Urbana, IL, 1994), 3–37
R. Woods: Good Singing Still (Ironbridge, 1995)
P. Holman and S. Drage, eds.: A Christmas Celebration: Eleven Carols from Georgian England (London, 1997)
C. Turner, ed.: The Gallery Tradition: Aspects of Georgian Psalmody: Colchester 1995 (Ketton, 1997)
N. Temperley: The Hymn Tune Index (Oxford, 1998)
C. Turner, ed.: Georgian Psalmody 2: The Interaction between Urban and Rural Practice: Clacton-on-Sea 1995 (Corby Glen, 1999)
The following discussion of North American psalmody covers the practice of Protestant vocal music in general, including hymns and anthems, in the two centuries after the English settlement of New England (c1620–1820).
1. Early psalm books, congregations and singing schools.
2. The rise of choirs and musical composition.
Psalmody (ii), §II: North America
When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620 they carried with them Henry Ainsworth’s Book of Psalmes, Englished both in Prose and Metre (Amsterdam, 1612), which included 39 unharmonized tunes. Sternhold and Hopkins’s Whole Booke of Psalmes (London, 1562), later called the ‘Old Version’, also circulated in America during the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as Thomas Ravenscroft’s Whole Booke of Psalmes (London, 1621), containing four-part settings of the British psalm tune repertory for recreational use. To these English publications 17th-century New Englanders added a metrical psalter of their own: The Whole Booke of Psalmes (Cambridge, MA, 1640, 3/1651; published thereafter as The Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs of the Old and New Testament), known as the Bay Psalm Book. The clergymen who compiled it sought fidelity to the holy scriptures. They also favoured simple textual metres, setting almost all of the psalms in common metre (four-line stanzas alternating lines of eight and six syllables, 8:6:8:6), long metre (8:8:8:8) or short metre (6:6:8:6). Before the ninth edition (1698) the Bay Psalm Book was printed without music.
By the early 18th century musical literacy in the American colonies had declined, and psalmody in many congregations was being carried on as an oral practice led by a clerk or ‘precentor’. The technique of ‘lining out’, in which the leader intoned or read the text line by line and the congregation sang back the lines in alternation with the reader, was widespread. The clergy, seeking more control of singing in public worship, reacted. From 1720 polemical tracts began to appear in Boston advocating ‘Regular Singing’ – singing the psalm tunes as they were notated – as opposed to the freely embellished ‘Old Way’ that lining out had promoted. The movement to reform congregational singing led to the formation of ‘singing schools’, instructional sessions teaching the elements of Regular Singing. It also led to the publication of tune books, collections of psalm tunes with instructional prefaces, designed for singing school use. John Tufts’s Introduction to the Art of Singing Psalm-Tunes went through 11 editions between 1721 and 1744; Thomas Walter’s Grounds and Rules of Musick, first issued in 1721, was still in print in the 1760s.
The reform met strong resistance. Many New England worshippers did not share the belief that the ‘Old Way’ of singing was a corruption of psalmody. Sanctioned by use, and gratifying in the freedom it allowed singers, the ‘Old Way’ was set aside only with great reluctance and continued in rural areas throughout the century and later. Yet the appearance of singing schools in many communities began a process of disseminating musical learning whose impact was strong. By 1810 some 350 sacred tune books had been published in America, a sizable majority of them designed for singing school use. Moreover, the singing school, taught by a singing master, offered musically inclined Americans their first chance to earn money in exchange for musical services. Finally, by teaching musical skills, the singing school inspired a wish for a more elaborate kind of music-making than congregational singing could provide. In that wish lie the roots of the New England church choir and the beginnings of American composition.
Psalmody (ii), §II: North America
The origins of the Protestant church choir in colonial America lay in a desire to enhance congregational singing and the singers’ wish to perform. The first seems to have originated with church leaders, the second with the singers themselves. No thorough study of early American choirs has been made, but evidence suggests that most were formed at the singers’ insistence. No meeting-house choirs are known to have existed before 1750, but a number were formed during the 1750s and 60s, and by the 1780s choirs were common.
Typically, choir members were singing school alumni. After a school was held in a town or congregation, scholars sometimes expressed a wish to continue singing as a group. In many towns, ‘the singers’ petitioned to sit together during public worship. That arrangement was recommended, for example, in Boston’s First Church (1758), because ‘skilful Singers, sitting together in some convenient place, would greatly tend to rectify our singing on the Lord’s Day, and would render that part of Divine Worship more agreeable’. It also gave the choir a chance to perform its own music, including elaborate pices of the kind that began to appear in American tune books during the 1760s.
As long as tune books were geared to the needs of beginning singing schools and congreations, there was no reason for them to contain more than a limited repertory. But as choirs sprang up, stylistic uniformity began to give way. Together with the traditional tunes set in block chords, there was a growing tendency towards texture changes, melismas and fuging-tunes with brief imitative sections. This more elaborate style, cultivated by British psalmodists including William Tans’ur, William Knapp and John Arnold, gained favour in the colonies. Collections by these composers and others circulated in America during the 1750s and 60s, and their music began to appear in American tune books. Urania (Philadelphia, 1761), compiled by James Lyon, reflects an increase in the size and range of the printed sacred repertory in the 1760s. With its 198 pages, it dwarfed all earlier American musical publications, and its inclusion of elaborate, modern British music (more than a dozen anthems and set-pieces and several hymn tunes, as well as a selection of psalm tunes), most of it never before published in America, make Lyon’s book a landmark in American psalmody. Two publications by Josiah Flagg, A Collection of the Best Psalm Tunes (Boston, 1764) and Sixteen Anthems (Boston, n.d. [1766]), further established the American tune book as a forum for the publication of ‘modern’ music. Between 1760 and 1770 the printed sacred repertory in the colonies burgeoned far beyond oral command.
The contributions of native composers also increased. Much of the music in American tune books of the 1770s and 80s was still taken from British sources, but more and more of it was composed by Americans who over the next several decades formed what some historians have called ‘the first school of New England composers’. These men were Anglo-Celtic by lineage and Protestant (chiefly Congregational) by religion, born and bred in the towns and villages of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Most were tradesmen who made music in their spare time. Few had any training beyond what they had picked up in singing schools and from British treatises. None were tutored in orthodox European musical grammar. Nevertheless, they composed and published, and saw their music eagerly taken up by their countrymen. The most prominent among them, and the first American psalmodist composer of real consequence, was William Billings, whose New-England Psalm-Singer (Boston, 1770) is another landmark. Published at a time when only a dozen or so American tunes had appeared in print, Billings’s book, made up entirely of his own compositions, increased that figure tenfold. The patriotic overtones of his prefatory remarks (and of some of the texts he set), together with his unabashed confession of inexperience and proclaimed refusal to follow established compositional rules, provided Americans of the Revolutionary era with an example of a self-reliant native composer.
Billings’s example was not ignored. By the end of 1782 compositions by some 20 Americans were in printed circulation. The increase may be traced to two Connecticut collections, Select Harmony (Cheshire, 1778) by Andrew Law and The Chorister’s Companion (New Haven, 1782) by Simeon Jocelin and Amos Doolittle. Like Lyon and Flagg before them, Law and Jocelin were primarily compilers, not composers. Many of the tunes introduced in their books soon became American favourites. The two works also provided a new model for American tune books, for both were eclectic compilations in which British tunes, many of them established favourites, were mixed with American tunes. Later tune books that enjoyed many editions featured a similar combination of European and American music, including The Worcester Collection (Worcester, MA, 1786, 8/1803), Andrew Adgate’s Philadelphia Harmony (Philadelphia, 1789, 12/1811) and The Village Harmony (Exeter, NH, 1795, 17/1821).
The postwar years saw activity increase in all areas of psalmody. Tune book production grew from some 60 issues in the 1780s to more than 220 in the years 1801–10. New England psalmodists carried their work southwards and westwards, teaching and establishing their tune books in New York state, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. By 1810 close to 300 natives or residents of the new republic had published sacred music. And while singing schools and church choirs continued to flourish, more and more singers formed ‘musical societies’ devoted to sacred music-making. Such groups proliferated especially after the war, including the Stoughton Musical Society (Massachusetts, 1786; still in existence), the Urania Musical Society (New York, 1793–8) and Dartmouth College’s Handel Society (Hanover, NH, c1810). The founding of such groups shows the desire of Americans to sing the most challenging and artistic music available to them.
Psalmody (ii), §II: North America
American psalmodists usually composed for four-part chorus, with the melody in the tenor voice. Set in open score, the music seldom calls for instrumental accompaniment. Most American tunes set only one stanza of metrical text. Plain tunes (settings in block chord texture in which the phrase structure reflects the textual metre exactly) are in the majority, although sometimes the composer transcends the metre by repeating or extending certain words. Fuging-tunes contain at least one section of contrapuntal entries that produce text overlap. Set-pieces (through-composed settings of several stanzas of verse) and anthems (through-composed settings of prose texts) round out the American sacred repertory, though forming only a small proportion of it. Billings’s description of the way he composed helps to explain some of the music’s irregularities. In The Continental Harmony (Boston, 1794), he wrote of composing the tenor part, the ‘air’, first, then of adding the other voices in turn. The ‘grand difficulty in composition’, Billings declared, ‘is to preserve the air through each part separately, and yet cause them to harmonize with each other at the same time’.
Stylistic differences among American psalmodists may be observed. Oliver Holden, Samuel Holyoke and Jacob Kimball all knew, and perhaps studied with, the immigrant organist-composer Hans Gram. Their music tends to favour full triads and to move according to the formulae of 18th-century European harmony. If the melodic-harmonic idiom of these men resembles that favoured in the cities, it differs from the idiom of Lewis Edson, Oliver Brownson, Abraham Wood, Justin Morgan and Stephen Jenks. These men were self-taught, spending their lives mostly in New England villages and the countryside, unexposed to cosmopolitan musical learning. The folklike melody and unorthodox harmony found in their music suggests that they worked more by trial and error than precept. Somewhere between these two groups might be placed the music of Billings, Daniel Read and Timothy Swan, each of whom composed a substantial body of music in a melodic-harmonic style of his own. Of the three, Billings was perhaps the least pungent in his harmony and the most given to writing melodies with sweep and momentum, which he often did by sequentially repeating small units of text and music. Read’s harmony and melodic craftsmanship made him especially skilled at plain tunes and short fuging-tunes, in which he wrote some of the most tersely concentrated music of his time. Swan was capable of strikingly expressive responses to images in the text and unexpected melodic and harmonic twists. The varied melodic-harmonic idiom of these three and their contemporaries suggests that, when a close study of the sacred style of 18th-century New England composers is undertaken, stylistic diversity is likely to be one of its chief topics.
Psalmody (ii), §II: North America
From the 1760s onwards, American psalmody evolved without reference to any stylistic standard or ideal. In many tune books from the later years of the century, compositions by New Englanders were mixed into a repertory that ranged from European ‘common tunes’ almost as old as Protestantism itself to British Methodist hymn tunes whose style resembled the italianate solo songs favoured in London drawing rooms and theatres. As cosmopolitan musical taste took hold in the cities during the 1780s and 90s, however, the supposed crudities of Yankee composition began to draw comment. Fuging-tunes were criticized for obscuring the sacred text. The Massachusetts Compiler (Boston, 1795) of Holyoke, Holden and Gram prefaced its assortment of European compositions with a lengthy digest from thoroughbass manuals and instructional treatises describing a cosmopolitan framework for sacred styles. But the tide against home-grown psalmody turned decisively only after 1805, when the New England clergy, in a new effort to gain control over music-making in public worship, weighed in on the side of reform. Choirs and their members were attacked for a secular attitude that put musical rewards above spiritual ones. Viewing psalmody as a practice in which solemnity and edification should predominate, the new reform movement advocated a return to the ‘ancient’ psalm tunes in use before the War of Independence. And it succeeded, discrediting musical elaboration and with it the native composer and the American idiom developed in the 1770s and 80s. This trend led in the 1820s to the formulation by Thomas Hastings, Lowell Mason, and their followers of a strictly circumscribed, devotional musical style for congregations, singing with keyboard accompaniment.
Although the reform movement’s success marked the end of the indigenous New England compositional style as a creative force, it did not consign the music to oblivion. New England tunes survived in shape-note collections published in upstate New York, western Pennsylvania, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the Ohio River valley and, by the 1830s and 40s, in tune books compiled in South Carolina and Georgia. In these outlying areas local traditions of polyphonic hymnody took root, carried by singing schools and tune books, drawing on the work of Billings, Read and other northern psalmodists. Meanwhile, in New England from 1829, when The Stoughton Collection appeared in Boston, the heart of 18th-century Yankee psalmody was periodically reprinted in tune books whose avowed purpose was to keep the older repertory alive. Those collections presented the music in something like its original form, giving pleasure both to oldsters who had grown up with native psalmody and to younger singers who could find value in the long-discredited music of their forefathers.
Psalmody (ii), §II: North America
G. Hood: A History of Music in New England (Boston, 1846/R)
N.D. Gould: Church Music in America (Boston, 1853/R)
F.J. Metcalf: American Writers and Compilers of Sacred Music (New York, 1925/R)
A.P. Britton: Theoretical Introductions in American Tune-Books to 1800 (diss., U. of Michigan, 1949)
G. Chase: America’s Music (New York, 1955, 3/1987)
A.C. Buechner: Yankee Singing Schools and the Golden Age of Choral Music in New England, 1760–1800 (diss., Harvard U., 1960)
I. Lowens: Music and Musicians in Early America (New York, 1964)
R.T. Daniel: The Anthem in New England before 1800 (Evanston, IL, 1966)
R. Stevenson: Protestant Church Music in America (New York, 1966)
R.A. Crawford: Andrew Law, American Psalmodist (Evanston, IL, 1968)
R.G. Appel, ed.: The Music of Bay Psalm Book [9/1698] (Brooklyn, NY, 1975)
D.P. McKay and R. Crawford: William Billings of Boston, Eighteenth-Century Composer (Princeton, NH, 1975)
K.D. Kroeger: The Worcester Collection of Sacred Harmony, and Sacred Music in America, 1786–1803 (diss., Brown U., 1976)
N. Temperley: The Music of the English Parish Church (Cambridge, 1979/R)
L. Inserra and H.W. Hitchcock: The Music of Henry Ainsworth’s Psalter (Brooklyn, NY, 1981)
K. Kroeger: Introduction to The Complete Works of William Billings, i (Boston and Charlottesville, VA, 1981)
N. Temperley: ‘The Old Way of Singing: its Origins and Development’, JAMS, xxxiv (1981), 511–44
R. Crawford and D.W. Krummel: ‘Early American Music Printing and Publishing’, Printing and Society in Early America, ed. W.L. Joyce and others (Worcester, MA, 1983), 186–277
N. Temperley and C.G. Manns: Fuging Tunes in the Eighteenth Century (Detroit, 1983)
R. Crawford, ed.: The Core Repertory of Early American Psalmody, RRAM, xi–xii (1984)
A.P. Britton, I. Lowens and R. Crawford: American Sacred Music Imprints, 1698–1810: a Bibliography (Worcester, MA, 1990)
N. Cooke: American Psalmodists in Contact and Collaboration, 1770–1820 (diss., U. of Michigan, 1990)
R. Crawford: ‘“Ancient Music” and the Europeanizing of American Psalmody, 1800–1810’, A Celebration of American Music: Words and Music in Honor of H. Wiley Hitchcock, ed. R. Crawford, R.A. Lott and C.J. Oja (Ann Arbor, 1990), 225–55
K. Kroeger: Introduction to The Complete Works of William Billings, iv (Boston and Charlottesville, VA, 1990)
K. Kroeger and R. Crawford: Introduction to Daniel Read: Collected Works, RRAM, xxiv (1995)
D.W. Steel: Introduction to Stephen Jenks: Collected Works, RRAM, xviii (1995)
N. Cooke: Introduction to Timothy Swan: Psalmody and Secular Songs, RRAM, xxvi (Madison, WI, 1997)
N. Temperley: The Hymn Tune Index (Oxford, 1998)
