Congregationalism is a Protestant Christian denomination found chiefly in English-speaking countries. Its beliefs and practices are derived from the Reformed tradition of Jean Calvin (see Reformed and Presbyterian church music).
4. Organization and expansion after 1800.
5. Music in Britain and the USA since 1800.
NICHOLAS TEMPERLEY
Congregational church, music of the
The theology of early Congregationalists, who were more usually known as Independents or Separatists, differed in no important respect from that of the Church of England (as expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles) or from that of Puritans or Presbyterians. Like the latter, they disliked forms and ceremonies in worship, especially those that had survived from Catholic tradition, and wished for a more complete Reformation.
Their distinctive belief was in the matter of church polity. They insisted that each congregation of true believers should be the master of its own destiny, choosing its minister, controlling admission of members to full communion and deciding on forms of worship. They deferred only to God, and to his laws as revealed in the Bible. They rejected all interference from outside authorities, whether imposed from above, as in the Church of England, or elected by participating ministers, as in the Presbyterian system. This is the meaning of Independency. They shared it with Baptists (see Baptist church music) and Quakers, and with radical groups in Continental Europe, such as the Anabaptists and their Amish and Mennonite descendants (see Amish and Mennonite music. Because they disputed the prevailing notion of a state church and denied the right of the sovereign, parliament or local magistrates to interfere in their religious affairs, they were considered a political threat and were oppressed by government with a severity that was generally withheld from mere Puritans. The association of Congregationalism with democracy and with progressive political movements has been renewed at many stages in its history.
Congregational church, music of the
Sporadic Separatist movements occurred at various times in the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603). The first clearly articulated statement of Congregational beliefs was made by Robert Browne, who organized a congregation in Middelburg, Holland, in 1581, but later returned to England and accepted ordination in the established church. Henry Ainsworth, preferring exile to conformity or execution, joined a group of Brownists at Amsterdam and then became their pastor. He published there, in English, a series of learned and polemic works, including a metrical version of psalms with tunes. Another group, from northern England, emigrated to Leiden in 1609 and chose John Robinson as their pastor. About half of this community eventually formed the ‘Pilgrims’, who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 to found a colony at Plymouth, New England.
The Puritans who established the larger Massachusetts Bay colony in 1629 and its church at Salem were not Separatists but loyal Anglicans who still hoped to reform the Church to their taste (see Anglican and Episcopalian church music, §6). However, they adopted the same order of worship that was practised at Plymouth, and it was not long before they became essentially Congregationalists. The same was true of the later settlements at Hartford, New Haven, and elsewhere. It was only in the colonies that a sustained growth of Congregationalism was possible. The Cambridge Platform of 1648 is a mature statement of its beliefs and polity. In the mother country Independent worship was suppressed until 1689, even under the Long Parliament of 1640–53; persecution was especially severe in 1628–40, 1661–72 and 1685–8. It is unlikely that any music was used at clandestine gatherings during the years of oppression. There was a period of favour in the 1650s, during the ascendancy of Cromwell and the army, when Independent ministers were placed in charge of many parish churches.
A typical Sunday service consisted of opening extempore prayers by the pastor; a metrical psalm, lined out by an elder and sung congregationally without instrumental accompaniment (which was thought to have been condemned in Amos v.23 and Daniel iii.5, 7, 15); a sermon; and concluding prayers and blessing. No bible readings were included and no set prayers – not even the Lord’s Prayer. Another psalm was sung after the Lord’s Supper, which was administered about once a month. So the whole service was spontaneous (and thus open to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) except the psalms. This fact made singing in worship a bone of contention among Independents in the early 17th century.
Psalm singing was defended not for its effect on the singer or listener but on the ground of obedience to God’s command as expressed in biblical texts such as Psalm cxlviii.12 and James v.13. But some believed that it was unlawful to sing a prescribed text. John Smyth, who later seceded from Ainsworth’s congregation to lead the General Baptists, would admit only ‘singing such psalms as the Spirit declares to any person immediately, without book’, a position that obviously ruled out unified singing by a congregation. This extreme was refuted by Ainsworth in 1609; by John Cotton, a leading minister in Massachusetts and one of the editors of the Bay Psalm Book, in 1649; and by Thomas Ford, Independent minister of St Lawrence, Exeter (England), in 1653. Cotton also discussed such matters as whether women and ‘carnal men’ should be allowed to join the singing: in both cases the answer was yes.
In the end the practice of singing psalms was generally adopted by Independents. The Savoy Declaration of 1658 mentions it as one of the ‘parts of religious Worship of God, to be performed in obedience unto God with understanding, faith, reverence, and godly fear’ (Walker, 1893, p.390). At Beccles, Suffolk, singing was newly introduced in 1657, as the following record shows:
It was agreed by the Church that they doe put in practice the ordinance of singing in the publique upon the forenoone and afternoone on the Lord’s daies, and that it be between praier and sermon, and also it was agreed that the New England translation of the Psalmes be made use of by the Church at their times of breaking of bread: and it was agreed that the next Lord’s day seventh night be the day to enter upon the work of singinge in publique.
Ainsworth’s Book of Psalmes (1612) was used by the Leiden-Plymouth community. In the preface Ainsworth stated that as he had found no tunes ‘set of God’, it was appropriate for ‘each people to use the most grave, decent, and comfortable manner of singing that they know’. He provided 40 monophonic tunes, of which all but three came from the English or French metrical psalm books: the French tunes, no doubt, had become known to the exiles in Holland, where they were in regular use in the Dutch Reformed Church. The Salem church also adopted this book. Other New England settlements probably used the Old Version of Sternhold and Hopkins, which was revised in the direction of greater literalness and published as the ‘Bay Psalm Book’ in 1640. There were no tunes until the 9th edition of 1698. (For further details see Psalms, metrical, §V, 2.) Salem changed to the Bay Psalm Book in 1667 and Plymouth did so in 1692, in both cases because the tunes in Ainsworth were too difficult to sing.
Not a single new tune emerges from either American or English Congregationalist sources before 1719. They continued to use tunes developed in Anglican parish churches, chiefly between 1558 and 1621, which included a few of French, German, Welsh or Scottish origin. This is indeed confirmed, on the American side, by the 13 tunes that were eventually printed as a supplement to the Bay Psalm Book in 1698 (see Psalms, metrical, §V, 2(ii), Table 1) and by entries in Samuel Sewall’s diary (see Music, 1990). On the English side, the very same 13 tunes (some differently named), plus two others, comprised the supplement to John Patrick’s Psalms of David, also first printed in 1698: Patrick, though an Anglican, had published a metrical version which was adopted by many Independent congregations (see Psalms, metrical, §III, 2(ii). Only minor changes were made in later editions of either tune supplement (until the 1737 edition of the Bay Psalm Book).
These tunes were sung unaccompanied, and with ‘lining out’ (the reading of each line or pair of lines before it was sung) by a minister or elder. Another official, sometimes termed the precentor, would ‘set the tune’, which involved choosing what tune was to be sung, setting the pitch and leading the congregation. The singing itself was very slow, heterophonous and lacking in rhythmic precision (see Old Way of Singing).
Congregational church, music of the
The 18th century saw a gradual loosening of some of the strict doctrines of Calvinism and a liberalization of Congregational thinking, although every step met with stout resistance. New England had colleges – Harvard (founded 1636) and Yale (1701) – where Congregationalists were free to conduct intellectual inquiry and disputation, though under some pressure to conform to accepted views. In England the Toleration Act (1689) allowed Dissenters to worship in licensed meeting houses (over 2000 licences were granted before 1700). But the universities remained closed to all except Anglicans. Therefore Congregationalists, along with other Dissenters (of whom the most numerous were Presbyterians and Baptists), began to set up their own educational institutions, usually called academies, which became centres for advanced religious ideas.
A product of one of these (at Stoke Newington) was Isaac Watts (1674–1748), who became through his hymns perhaps the most influential Congregationalist in history. He challenged Calvin’s doctrine of eternal damnation and maintained that belief in the Trinity was not essential to salvation. In the matter of singing, he questioned the exclusive and literal use of the psalms as the sources of the metrical texts sung in worship, an idea that could also be traced back to Calvin. It had already been breached in English usage from the 1670s, when some Independent congregations began to sing original hymns.
Watts set out his philosophy in an important Essay published with his hymns in 1707. He ‘believed that Congregational Song should represent not God’s word to us, but our word to God’ (Benson, 1915, p.111), and on this basis he advocated songs that interpreted the scriptures in the light of the Gospel, in a mode that expressed the thoughts and feelings of the singers rather than those of David or any other biblical author. His Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707) and Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719) were quickly accepted in many Congregational meeting-houses in England and, in course of time, in most Christian churches.
Watts generally avoided partisan or controversial language in his hymns, and for practical reasons he wrote in the standard metres, for which tunes were already known. But his use of the first person (singular and plural), of a natural and homely mode of expression that was readily understood, and of images and metaphors that touched the heart, brought an entirely new warmth and spirit to what had become the tedious dryness of the services. To the same purpose, he criticized lining out and the ‘old way’, and urged congregations to stand up while singing.
It is not too much to say that Watts set the style for English hymns of the next two centuries. O God, our help in ages past, When I survey the wondrous cross and Jesus shall reign where’er the sun are as well known as any hymns in the language. Among his immediate Congregationalist successors, Philip Doddridge stands out as the most gifted.
After Watts, singing in worship had a new meaning. It was not merely obedience to God on the part of each individual worshipper but also a corporate expression of devotion; as such it should be couched in language that had aesthetic and emotional appeal. The same ideas were naturally extended to the music. Among Congregationalists in England and in New England, efforts were made to raise the artistic level of singing by instructing some members of each congregation in matters of rhythm, intonation and part-singing.
The model for this was found in the Church of England, where, from the 1680s onwards, religious societies of young men were instructed in psalmody (see Anglican and Episcopalian church music, §5). In the early 1700s a similar society was formed by the Presbyterian Meeting at the King’s Weigh House, Little Eastcheap, London, in which Independents also took part. It employed a singing teacher, William Lawrence, and established a course of lectures, published in 1708. Lawrence’s manuscript collection of tunes was later adapted to Watts’s Psalms, and was published in association with it in 1719. It had 62 tunes for two voices, of which 13 were new (one, ‘Wantage’, was to achieve some popularity). In the following year Simon Browne, pastor of the Independent meeting house at Old Jewry, London, brought out a collection of his own hymns with a supplement of 25 tunes in three parts, of which seven were new: one, ‘Middlesex’ (later named ‘Mear’), became a standard tune in New England. These anonymous tunes are the first known musical compositions of Congregationalist origin, other than the three in Ainsworth (1612).
In New England musical reform came before textual change. Beginning with Thomas Symmes in 1720, a series of well-educated ministers, mostly Harvard graduates, published tracts urging the superiority of ‘singing by note’ or ‘regular singing’ to the inherited oral tradition, which they called the ‘old way’, the ‘usual way’ or the ‘common way’. They appealed to biblical authority, common sense and a mythical decline of singing in New England from the early days of the colonies. The opposition was no doubt widespread but largely inarticulate. A writer in the New England Chronicle (1723) said: ‘I have great jealousy that if we once begin to sing by note, the next thing will be to pray by rote, and then comes Popery’. Because of the independence of each congregation, reform was piecemeal and was long delayed in many places. In Hanover, Massachusetts, the church voted to sing ‘in the new way’ on 7 May 1742.
Practical support came in 1721 from singing tutors produced by two other ministers, John Tufts (of the Second Church at Newbury, VT) and Thomas Walter (of the First Church at Roxbury, MA). Each contained a set of tunes for two or three voices; among these are the first known American compositions, ‘Southwel New’ and ‘100 Psalm New’. Tufts introduced a notational system of letters on the staff, which was both an adaptation of John Day’s of 1569 and a precursor of Little and Smith’s shape-note system of 1801. Both books went into many editions and were undoubtedly used in the singing schools that had been steadily spreading in the colonies of New England since at least 1714. Cotton Mather, a strong supporter, wrote to a friend in London in 1723:
A mighty Spirit came Lately upon abundance of our people, to Reform their singing which was degenerated in our Assemblies to an Irregularity, which made a Jar in the ears of the more curious and skilful singers. Our Ministers generally Encouraged the people, to accomplish themselves for a Regular singing, and a more beautiful Psalmody.
But it was the ‘Great Awakening’, started by Jonathan Edwards, minister of Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1734, that aroused congregations to the need for a warmer language of praise. George Whitefield, who came from England to play a leading part in the revival, introduced many of Watts’s hymns at the meetings, and so they became widely known. It took several decades before they were admitted to the majority of Congregational churches. Again, the principle of Independency was strong, and many debated for years the relative merits of Watts, Tate & Brady’s New Version of Psalms (1696), and the Bay Psalm Book (for details see Benson, 1915, pp.163–8). In some cases a split resulted, and the ‘Separates’ often joined forces with the Baptists. But Watts gained ground inexorably. The height of his hegemony was reached at the turn of the century. Samuel Holyoke in The Columbian Repository (Exeter, NH, 1803) produced nothing less than a complete edition of Watts’s psalms and hymns, each set to a different tune or set-piece harmonized in four parts (729 compositions in all). Most hymn collections until about 1830 were presented as supplements to Watts.
The singing schools supported choirs to lead singing in worship, where, increasingly after 1760, they were often given a gallery or seat that separated them from the congregation. But they also took on an independent existence, especially in America. They naturally looked for ever greater musical challenges, and tunes became more elaborate, introducing solos, duets and, eventually, fugal sections, while anthems, set pieces and canons were also explored. These developments drew freely on English country psalmody of a slightly earlier date (see Anglican and Episcopalian church music, §6). The great flowering of American psalmody from 1770 to about 1810 was focussed on the singing school and the singing society rather than the church (see Psalmody (ii), §II, 2). Plain congregational tunes, led by the tenor voice, were still preferred in churches that had retained a strict Calvinist theology. The gradual trend towards Unitarianism, which had overtaken all but one of Boston’s Congregational churches by 1800, removed the theological objections to choir music in worship. But the anonymous preface to The Salem Collection (1805) asserts that psalm tunes should be simple and goes on to say:
It never could have been intended (as might be erroneously inferred from the general practice in our own country) that the choir of singers alone should perform this part of divine service. Their province originally was … to lead the congregation … And yet how few societies [i.e. churches] do we find, where any but a professed singer is able to follow the choir through the rambling tunes that are now in common use.
This collection contained 84 compositions, all by European composers. And in 1808 John Hubbard declared that the ‘chaos of words’ produced by the ‘common fuge’ had led ‘many respectable clergymen in New England … almost … to omit music in public worship’. Richard Crawford’s Core Repertory (1984) shows that the most favoured tunes were generally the plain ones. Of 13 tunes that had achieved 100 or more American printings by 1810, nine were plain and only four fuging (Joseph Stephenson’s ‘Psalm 34’ and Lewis Edson’s ‘Lenox’, ‘Greenfield’ and ‘Bridgewater’).
In England also, the fuging tune and parochial anthem had attracted some Congregational imitators at mid-century, such as Abraham Milner and Aaron Williams. Later, a more distinctive, treble-based, and floridly melodious style was developed by such compilers as Isaac Smith (composer of ‘Abridge’), Thomas Williams and Stephen Addington. Addington was a Congregational minister, first at Market Harborough (Leicestershire), then at Mile End (Essex), finally at the Minories, London. His Collection of Psalm Tunes for Publick Worship, which went into 15 editions from 1777 to 1815, eventually had 443 tunes in from one to three vocal parts, and is a representative collection of its time. It introduced such enormously popular tunes as John Randall’s ‘Cambridge New’ and Isaac Tucker’s ‘Devizes’. Some are of the ‘Old Methodist’ type (see Methodist church music, §4). Congregationalists in this period followed Methodists not only in accepting the influence of concert and theatre music, but also in making ‘parody’ hymn tunes out of popular and national songs, and out of arias and instrumental melodies by Handel, Haydn, and other famous composers.
Congregational church, music of the
Despite the principle of Independency, representatives of congregations had convened, from the earliest times, in conferences, associations or synods. In Connecticut these had assumed so much authority that by the time of American independence Congregationalism had become virtually a state church. In the course of the 19th century other state associations increased their control over local churches and joined from time to time in national discourse. A permanent National Council was constituted at Oberlin, Ohio, in 1871, although inevitably there were many local secessions. In England a Congregational Union of England and Wales was formed in 1832, but it remained a strictly advisory body; local congregations were more truly Congregational than American ones at this date (Dexter, 1880, p.673).
Congregationalism has tended to associate with political liberalism, opposing slavery and racism and promoting the welfare of the poor and working classes. It has also moved towards liberal theology, gradually discarding the tenets of Calvinism and playing a strong part in the ‘social gospel’ and ecumenical movements. Mergers with other Protestant denominations have produced the United Church of Canada, 1925; the United Church of Christ (USA), 1961; the United Reformed Church (UK), 1972; and the Uniting Church in Australia, 1977.
Congregationalism had been well established in Scotland, Ireland and Wales by the 18th century. In the expansion of the American frontier it fell behind other Protestant denominations because of its organizational weakness. It played relatively little part in the camp meetings of the Second Great Awakening (c1800), but was deeply affected by later urban revivals. In the course of time Congregational churches were established in all the states, although New England tended to retain ideological and cultural leadership.
The London Missionary Society, founded in 1795, was at first interdenominational but was soon dominated by Congregationalists; it was active in spreading the faith among non-European peoples during the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in Africa, India, Madagascar, China, Papua and the South Sea Islands. One of the most remarkable developments was in Tahiti and the Cook Islands, where fuging-tunes introduced by the missionaries were imitated by the indigenous peoples and developed into a type of polyphonic song called a himene (hymn). This became a leading feature of the mission and made the South Sea choirs famous.
The corresponding American organization was the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1810), followed by the American Missionary Association (1845). It has concentrated on Latin America, China and the Near East. For a long time the music of missions tended to consist of Western hymns translated into local languages and sung to the same tunes. The indigenization of worship music, especially in Africa and Polynesia, accelerated during the second half of the 20th century, while any remaining distinctions between Protestant denominations have lost much of their meaning in the Third World.
Congregational church, music of the
British and American Congregationalism have followed similar patterns since the beginning of the 19th century, and the musical links have remained strong. The combination of increasing affluence with declining Calvinism changed the character of the denomination after 1800: it became a church (or in Britain, a chapel) rather than a congregation or meeting. There was a parallel concern for refined musical taste. Organs were introduced in the larger town churches; the opposition had almost faded out by 1840. William Cole, an Independent schoolmaster at Colchester, Essex, wrote in 1819 that most of the disorders of modern psalmody could be remedied by getting an organ; Lowell Mason of Boston, Massachusetts, expressed the same view in 1826. Smaller communities had to manage for a few more decades with a band, barrel organ or (later) harmonium. Choirs of mixed voices increasingly dominated the scene, sometimes reduced to a quartet. Purely congregational singing became a rarity. Lining out, tenor-led harmony, and the fuging tune were criticized out of existence. Set pieces, anthems and Anglican chants (often with metrical texts) became the staple fare of choirs. The older psalmody was replaced, at least in urban churches, by a by-product of European art music that increasingly approximated the style now known as ‘Victorian’.
More in the USA than in Britain, these changes were seen as part of a conscious reform movement, anticipated by those such as Andrew Law and Samuel Holyoke, who had opposed the psalmodists of the Billings-Read-Edson school. At its height it was dominated by Lowell Mason (1792–1872), a Congregationalist by upbringing (see Mason family, (1)). His endeavours as organist, educationist, arranger, and composer were consistently focussed on finding a suitable style for American church music. His guiding principle was that church music should be cultivated and ‘scientific’, but chaste and restrained: he eschewed vulgarity of rhythm, melodic elaboration and advanced chromatic harmony. His models were German rather than English or American. His own hymn tunes, smooth and bland as they are, have been more successful than those of any other American composer (although it should be noted that some tunes often ascribed to Mason were not his own). ‘Missionary Hymn’, ‘Olivet’ and ‘Bethany’ are representative. In the course of a long career he was increasingly concerned to encourage congregations to sing, although he never ceased to believe that they needed an organ and a trained choir to lead them.
The opposing school was represented by Thomas Leavitt’s Christian Lyre (1831), which supported the evangelical revival of Thomas Finney, with lighthearted camp-meeting tunes based on popular music of a kind that Mason deplored. If Leavitt and shape-notes prevailed on the frontier and in rural communities (see Methodist church music, §5), the choir-based music of Mason and his colleagues Thomas Hastings and William Bradbury was all-powerful in the big cities and on the East Coast.
In England, also, choral music prevailed. It was greatly assisted by the singing method of a Congregational minister, John Curwen (1816–80), whose modification of Sarah Glover’s fixed-doh solmization system, known as Tonic Sol-fa, placed the singing of choir music within the reach of any diligent member of a congregation. The result was that in many chapels the congregation almost became a choir, singing in four-part harmony with organ and able to ‘perform’ chants and simple anthems. Curwen himself published a Sabbath Hymn and Tune Book (1859). In London, the Weigh-House Chapel was once more prominent in the improvement of psalmody, as was Union Chapel, Islington (see London §I, 7 (ii) and (iii)). In 1858 Henry Allon and Henry Gauntlett, respectively pastor and organist of Union Chapel, brought out The Congregational Psalmist, a most influential book that was gradually expanded until 1886. Both texts and tunes drew heavily on Anglican and Lutheran sources, and it may be said that the domination of Watts was now at an end.
Meanwhile the Congregational Union had been putting out a series of ‘official’ hymnals. In 1887–8 came the first with tunes, The Congregational Church Hymnal: the musical editors were E.J. Hopkins and Josiah Booth. It had no less than 775 hymns with tunes, 64 anthems, 12 canticle settings and 8 collects, all largely homophonic and designed for congregational singing. It became the standard Congregational book for several decades. One of its most popular pieces, Booth’s ‘Commonwealth’ for the text ‘When wilt thou save thy people?’ (reproduced in Rainbow, 1981, p.160), reinforced Congregationalism’s strong links with the political left. David Lloyd George declared that he had heard it sung ‘with great effect by many thousands and tens of thousands at Liberal gatherings throughout the country’. The Liberal victory in the general election of 1906 is regarded as the height of Nonconformist political power in Britain.
An American movement to restore congregational participation was begun by Henry Ward Beecher, the famous pastor of Plymouth, who wrote in the preface to his Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes (1855): ‘We do not think that Congregational Singing will ever prevail with power, until Pastors of Churches appreciate its importance’. Like Mason, he opposed the ‘quartet choir’ that presided in many city churches. As Benson says (1915, p.474), ‘the hearty singing of [Beecher’s] vast congregation became almost as much of an attraction as his preaching’. It is difficult to know whether they were singing in unison led by harmony of choir and organ, or forming a ‘congregational choir’ in four parts. Somewhere between the two was probably the norm in large Congregational churches in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. Certainly there was enormous enthusiasm for choral music in both Britain and America; it was the heyday of choral festivals, competitions, and massive oratorio performances by combined Anglican and Nonconformist choirs. In London the Free Church Choir Union, founded in 1877 by Ebenezer Minshall, organist of the City Temple, held an annual festival up to World War II.
It was after that war that Congregational hymnody began to move in new directions. As the editors put it in the preface to the 1958 revision of The Pilgrim Hymnal (earlier editions 1904, 1913, 1931), ‘the recent developments in hymnody, in church life, and in world history have made it necessary to plan our work in larger terms’. Similar sentiments guided the editors of Congregational Praise (London, 1953). Erik Routley, its musical editor, was an important influence in both British and American thinking about hymnody. The growing secularization of Anglo-American society made it difficult to maintain efficient choirs, let alone congregational rehearsals. Unison singing with organ has increasingly taken over the music of the services, resulting in hymn tunes specifically designed for the purpose: Vaughan Williams’s ‘Sine Nomine’ (1906) has been the first and best model. Anthems and chants have tended to depart with the choirs, although many American churches still have large choirs and musical staffs. New Church Praise (1975), edited by Routley as a supplement to Congregational Praise, introduced an order of worship for the Lord’s Supper, with newly commissioned musical settings for congregational use. A ‘hymn explosion’ occurred in the 1970s, more especially in Britain: two of the leading writers, Brian Wren and Fred Kaan, are United Reformed Church ministers.
The union of the Congregational Church with other bodies (as detailed in §5 above) has tended to dilute further the specific historical tradition discussed in this article. The music of the new hymnbooks, such as Rejoice and Sing (London, 1991), comes from a wider range of sources than ever before, including urban popular, commercial folk, and non-Western music. The newly composed tunes are often self-consciously ‘user-friendly’ and unchallenging. In the hymn texts, gender-specific and archaic wording has frequently been replaced.
The most radical effort in this direction is The New Century Hymnal (1995) of the United Church of Christ (USA), where all masculine names and pronouns for God, Jesus or the worshippers have been eliminated (the one exception is ‘Lord’, restored after protest by the General Synod), archaic language has been ruthlessly excised, and attempts have been made to avoid all politically sensitive topics. The music is also notably progressive, in the American context. Young (1997) commends the editors for ‘carefully selecting and presenting the finest and most inclusive repertory of African-American, Spanish-language, Native American, Asian American, global and Third World song to appear in any mainline hymnal’. Despite the denomination’s sincere efforts at inclusivity, many black Americans find that the Congregationalist tradition of restrained and formal singing does not suit their cultural habits of more uninhibited participation (see Aghahowa, 1996).
Congregational church, music of the
GroveA (‘United Church of Christ, music of the’; A.C. Ronander)
H. Ainsworth: A Defence of the Holy Scriptures, Worship and Ministerie Used in the Christian Churches Separated from Antichrist (Amsterdam, 1609)
H. Ainsworth: Preface, The Book of Psalmes: Englished both in Prose and Metre (Amsterdam, 1612)
T. Lechford: Plaine Dealing, or Newes from New-England (London, 1642/R)
J. Cotton: Singing of Psalmes a Gospel-Ordinance (London, 1647)
A Platform of Church Discipline: Gathered out of the Word of God, and Agreed upon by the Elders and Messengers of the Churches Assembled in the Synod at Cambridge in New England (Cambridge, MA, 1648); repr. in Walker (1893), 194–237
T. Ford: Singing of Psalms the Duty of Christians under the New Testament, or A Vindication of that Gospel-Ordinance (London, 1653)
J. Clapham: A Short and Full Vindication of … Singing of Psalms (London, 1656)
A Declaration of the Faith and Order Owned and Practised in the Congregational Churches in England: Agreed upon and Consented unto by their Elders and Messengers in their Meeting at the Savoy, October 12. 1658 (London, 1658); repr. in Walker (1893), 354–408
E. Hitchin: Scripture Proof for Singing of Scripture Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs (London, 1696)
I. Watts: ‘A Short Essay toward the Improvement of Psalmody’, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (London, 1707), 233–76
Practical Discourses of Singing in the Worship of God: Preach’d at the Friday Lecture in Eastcheap, by Several Ministers (London, 1708)
T. Symmes: The Reasonableness of Regular Singing, or Singing by Note (Boston, 1720)
C. Mather: The Accomplished Singer (Boston, 1721)
T. Walter: The Grounds and Rules of Musick Explained (Boston, 1721)
J. Tufts: An Introduction to the Art of Singing Psalm-Tunes (Boston, 3/1723) [1st edn, 1721, not extant]
N. Chauncey: Regular Singing Defended (New London, CT, 1728)
Z. Adams: The Nature, Pleasure and Advantages of Church Music: a Sermon (Boston, 1771)
D. Taylor: A Dissertation on Singing in the Worship of God (London, 1786)
E. Williams and J. Boden: Preface, A Collection of above Six Hundred Hymns (London, 1799–1800)
‘A Short Introduction to Psalmody’, The Salem Collection of Classical Sacred Musick (Salem, MA, 1805), vii–x
J. Hubbard: An Essay on Music (Boston, 1808)
W. Cole: A View of Modern Psalmody (Colchester, 1819)
T. Hastings: A Dissertation on Musical Taste (Albany, NY, 1822/R, 2/1853/R)
L. Mason: Address on Church Music (Boston, 1826)
D.E. Ford: Observations on Psalmody, by a Composer (London, 1827)
S. Gilman: Memoirs of a New England Village Choir [that of Atkinson, NH] (Boston, 1829)
L. Mason and G.J. Webb: Cantica laudis, or The American Book of Church Music (New York, 1850), 2–3, 295
T. Binney: The Service of Song in the House of the Lord (London, 1853)
N.D. Gould: Church Music in America (Boston, 1853/R)
‘Congregational Psalmody’, British Quarterly Review, xxxvi (1862), 366–94
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