A late 19th-century term for the sacred music performed in rural English churches and chapels during the 18th and early 19th centuries. It is so called because the singers and instrumentalists often occupied the gallery, usually at the west end. The unsatisfactory state of congregational singing by the late 17th century, particularly in provincial parish churches, resulted in the formation of amateur, initially male, choirs. Unfortunately, their increasing skill and desire for more elaborate music silenced the very congregations they were supposed to encourage.
Country churches usually lacked organs, but singers needed support in order to maintain pitch in complex music. From the mid-18th century singers began to be accompanied, at first by a bass instrument and later by a small band. The most common instruments used were bassoons, cellos, clarinets, flutes and violins, but the size and instrumentation of bands varied according to availability. At first the instruments merely doubled the voices, often playing the upper parts an octave higher. Later, short symphonies were added, sometimes with designated instrumentation, especially in more sophisticated music such as that by Joseph Key.
The repertory consisted primarily of metrical psalms and anthems; fuging-tunes were particularly popular in the mid-18th century (see Fuging-tune). Itinerant singing teachers, such as Michael Beesly and William Tans'ur, sold their own collections of psalmody, borrowing freely from each other. However the prohibitive cost of printed books meant that many country musicians made their own manuscript compilations. Most gallery composers were amateurs, and while some, such as John Chetham, may have been conventionally trained, others, such as William Knapp, probably learnt their skills from fellow psalmodists. Lack of formal technique resulted in an idiosyncratic, occasionally archaic style. The early repertory in particular was still based on the Renaissance concept of linear composition, with a tendency for open 5ths and false relations. Although this music may break theoretical rules, using unexpected dissonances and consecutive 5ths and octaves, it can show great originality, with inventive word-painting and strong melodic lines. Another characteristic is the dominance of the tenor voice. The number of parts varied, but throughout the 18th century the tenor carried the tune, often doubled an octave higher by treble voices.
Gallery music was regarded as a financially and artistically viable genre by professional composers, including John Alcock (elder and younger), Capel Bond, William Hayes the elder and Samuel Webbe the elder, who produced psalmody books ‘for the use of country choirs’. Its demise was caused partly by the increased urbanisation of the Industrial Revolution, and partly by demands for a more polite and formal style of worship, culminating in the Oxford Movement and the eventual introduction of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861). Some ‘improved’ tunes still exist in modern hymn books, and, despite the growing use of harmoniums and organs, a few bands survived until the end of the 19th century.
A parallel development occurred in the music of nonconformist churches, where organs were generally excluded and bands tended to be introduced later and to remain in use longer than in Anglican churches. Northern Methodist composers, such as James Leach of Rochdale and later John Fawcett of Bolton, developed characterstic florid repeating tunes with contrasting dynamic passages sung by treble voices in thirds, and produced orchestrated set-pieces for Sunday school and church anniversaries. The Methodists, in particular, regarded full congregational involvement as a vital element of worship, and often fitted their hymns to secular operatic and popular melodies.
English gallery music has links with American psalmody and with the present Sheffield carolling tradition. However it was generally forgotten and condemned, except in a few nostalgic publications, and, more recently, in Nicholas Temperley's definitive work. A West Gallery Music Association, concerned with the revival of this music, was formed in England in 1990.
See also Psalmody (ii); for illustration see Psalms, metrical, fig.5.
J.S. Curwen: Studies in Worship Music (London, 1880–85, 3/1901)
F.W. Galpin: ‘The Village Church Band’, Musical News, v (1893), 31–2, 56–8
C.W. Pearce: ‘English Sacred Folk Song of the West Gallery Period (c.1695–1820)’, PMA, xlviii (1921), 1–27
K.H. MacDermott: Sussex Church Music in the Past (Chichester, 1922)
D. MacArthur: ‘Old Village Church Music’, MT, lxiv (1923), 264–6
N. Boston: ‘Music of the 18th-Century Village Church’, Archaeological Journal, xcix (1943), 53–66
K.H. MacDermott: The Old Church Gallery Minstrels (London, 1948)
N. Temperley: The Music of the English Parish Church (Cambridge, 1979)
V. Gammon: ‘“Babylonian Performances”: the Rise and Suppression of Popular Church Music, 1660–1870’, Popular Culture and Class Conflict, 1590–1914, ed. E. and S. Yeo (Brighton, 1981), 62–88
D. Hunter: ‘English Country Psalmodists and their Publications’, JRMA, cxv (1990), 220–39
H. Keyte and A. Parrott, eds.: The New Oxford Book of Christmas Carols (Oxford, 1992), appx 3
S. Weston: The Instrumentation and Music of the Church Choir-Band in Eastern England, with Particular Reference to Northamptonshire, during the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (diss., U. of Leicester, 1995)
R. Woods: Good Singing Still: a Handbook on West Gallery Music (Telford, 1995)
Gallery music website (West Gallery Music Association; S. Glover) 〈www.sgpublishing.co.uk/gm/gm.html〉 [sources for gallery music history and church band history and music]
SALLY DRAGE