A History of Congregational Singing (Untiarian Universalist) Part Four

Part One: Our Song Leading Roots

Part Two:  What to Sing–Psalms vs. Blasphemy and a Question of Content

Part Three: How to Sing: Chants vs. Hymns and a Question of Form

Part Four: Who Should Sing–Performance versus Participation

Part Five: With What to Sing? Adding Instruments or Going Acapella

Bibliography

Who Should Sing–Performance versus Participation

by Matt Meyer

“Bad singing is forbidden,

and it is bad when unharmonious,

complicated, strange, or confined to a few.”

-Western Christian Advocate, 1837

I recently read the original “Warrant for Parish Meeting” in 1842 for First Parish Cambridge. Every year the agenda included electing officers and other ordinary business, but 1842 seems to have had a particularly controversial agenda item up for vote. The vote was on whether to budget money for “professional singers.” I read nearly 30 letters from parishioners resigning their membership around this time. Just one of them states the reason,

Sir, I am under the necessity of informing you, that I intend to withdraw from the Congregational Society of the 1st Parish in Cambridge and be no longer a member thereof, in case the custom or system of hiring persons as singers in said parish be continued. Yours with respect W. M. Jennison

In 1720 the ministers of Boston began to complain that their congregants were terrible singers. They published a deluge of pamphlets calling for more music education in their congregations and thus launched the “Singing School” movement. Musicians such as Billings led classes on how to read music and sing in parts. As some groups within congregations attended singing schools, they learned to read music together, learned new songs together, and grew their skills together.

The schools were a popular social gathering for young people, but they were also serious business. Billings listed out suggested rules for the Singing Schools, including my favorite one here:

The members should be very punctual in attending at a certain hour or minute, as the master shall direct, under the penalty of small fine, and the master should be delinquent, his fine to be double the sum laid up by the scholars. Said fines to be appropriated to the use of the school, procuring wood…

The singing schools were incredibly popular and taken very seriously by many thousands of participants. We’ve looked at how these groups learned more about music and singing and increasingly led the call for new lyrics and new music. Not every congregant of every church attended a singing school though. So as these singing groups called for change, some other pillars of the community resisted. You can imagine the pain of a deacon who faithfulled led his congregation in lining-out psalms suddenly asked to step aside so the young adults can lead the congregation in a new kind of music. If your congregation has ever tried to settle a complicated fight over worship music with an awkward compromise that left everyone equally unhappy, you might appreciate these notes from the Annual Meeting of First Parish Concord in 1774:

Voted that for ye better and more decent carrying on of public workshop, Deacon Wheeler would lead in ye singing, one half of the time, and ye singers the other half, in ye congregation.

The same conclusion was reached in Braintree, MA fifty years earlier in 1723. The pastor at First Church Boston had suspended seven or eight members for singing with sheet music. A Council of Churches met to address the issue and decided:

By this Council the suspended Brethren are restor’d to Communion, their Suspension declar’d unjust, and the Congregation Order’d to sing by Rule and by Rote alternately, for the Satisfaction of both Parties.

We know these compromises were temporary though. At First Church Boston we can see that evolution of psalm-chanting, to singing by note, and then to a group of trained congregants leading the singing by sitting together. A generation after the rule/rote compromise, First Church records announce:

It being suggested, that a Number of the Brethren, who were skilful Singers, sitting together in some convenient place, would greatly tend to rectify our Singing on the Lord’s day, and render that part of Divine Worship more agreeable, it was Voted that the Committee appoint the Persons and Place. (1758)

Apparently that didn’t work great though, since only three years later the leadership was again looking for solutions to the lack of congregational singing, ‘Voted that the large committee be desired to think of Some method to encourage and revive the Spirit of Singing in this Church.’

Over time though, at many churches the increasingly trained singers increasingly replaced the deacons who for generations had been ‘lining-out’ the psalms by ear. As these music students deepened their practice, they began sitting together in the congregation, so as to better lead the congregation in singing. Eventually some of them wanted to sing pieces that were more complex and not meant for congregational singing at all, so liturgies began to include choral anthems. So the classes that were originally meant to increase the musicality of the whole congregation, in some places formed groups that evolved into choirs who lead the congregational singing, and then those choirs began to sing to the congregation instead of with them. Historian Allen Britton, lays it out like this:

“Thus, although the original agitation for singing-schools was motivated by a desire for better congregational singing, the result of their establishment was a system of training which tended to separate those who received it from those who did not, a system, in fact, which eventually resulted in the growth of choirs.”

Another historian, James McCray, describes how the culture shifted so significantly that even seating arrangements and building architecture changed:

Through diligent rehearsals in the meeting houses, congregational members grew musically proficient and sought special recognition; eventually, people with training sat and performed together in the church’s “gallery,” today called the choir loft.

The origin story of the New England choir explains how the ambiguity of its role in the congregation dates back to its earliest years. These debates about the role of choirs, and along with them, professional singers, raged on through the 1800s and are still with us today.

We’ve settled the question of whether there are lyrics worthy of church beyond the Book of Psalms. We’ve certainly settled the question of whether hymns are allowable in a religious setting. But the question of whether the role of a choir is to lead a congregation in song, or perform to the congregation still sometimes divides us. My own hope is that it’s not too much to invite our choirs and our music professionals to do both.

I spoke with a choir member last year who told me how much she loves the experience of being immersed in the sound of the choir. She said she’s always telling other congregants to join the choir so they can experience that musical immersion. ‘But they always tell me they don’t sing well enough,’ she sighed with exasperation. I suggested that if the role of the choir was to offer an experience of immersive community singing with the congregation, her potential recruits might not need her to describe the experience -they would’ve have felt it already. I had the image of the choir as an ornate castle, full of wonder and transcendence, but with the drawbridge pulled up, so your average congregant can’t get in. A choir that leads the congregation in singing, a choir that encourages singing in the pews, has put down the drawbridge and opened the gates.

Other traditions, when faced with choices on how to foster music programs, have chosen to center participation. As early as 1817, the founders of the AME church laid out their “Doctrines and Discipline” and included “Section XVI: Of the Spirit and Truth of Singing,” which begins with the question, “How shall we guard against formality in singing?”

The shape note tradition built its whole structure around community participation, from the shape of the notes to the shape of the seating. The camp meeting revivalists changed their music to adapt to the crowds of worshippers. Like the ‘peoples’ mic’ at the Occupy protests, they created new technologies for broad music participation. The Mennonites in their congregations and so many Jewish communities in synagogues invested heavily in expertise of participation.

In 1849, a few years after a several dozen parishioners had resigned from First Parish Cambridge because of a controversy over professional singers, The Christian Enquirer (A Unitarian publication) published a column about Congregational Singing:

But it will be said, that music is an art. And can we have that which is too good, too skillful, too exquisite? Should not the best possible talent be enlisted in this delightful portion of the exercises of the sanctuary? And where such high attainments have been made by a choir, at great labor and expense, are their exertions to be stigmatized as inappropriate?

This plausible reasoning will not bear the test of a moment’s examination.

When will the time arrive when all will be able to take part in this soul-stirring and spirit-elevating part of divine worship?

And here’s some hot takes from few years before, in 1837, printed in the Western Christian Advocate (Methodist):

What are here forbidden:

1. New tunes are expressly prohibited, until they are so far learned by the congregation that they can sing them, or follow their leaders.

2. Complicated or difficult pieces of music are forbidden…

3. The use of instrumental music in methodist congregations is a most flagrant infraction on methodist discipline and usage…

4. Singing schools, not under our direction, are not to be encouraged; because singing schools are mostly scenes of vanity, amusement and sin.

5. Bad singing is forbidden, and it is bad when unharmonious, complicated, strange, or confined to a few.

White people in the American colonies who were interested in music, or any art, for that matter, seem to have had the cloud of European culture hanging over them. Early American music was often defined as primitive, always in comparison to the great composers of Europe. Perhaps this is why, when chanting and lining out the psalms wasn’t sounding great on Sunday morning, the answer was to teach more people to read music, sing in four parts, and recreate a version of the European choirs, rather than get better at songleading and community singing.

Our ancestors’ love of music could have led them to develop professionals at participation. We could have invested more directly in congregational singing, instead of segmenting the singing to a smaller group. We could have focused on participation that was broad and skillful. Whiteness, in a way, seems to have blinded them to the examples of so many other traditions of community singing, which in fact surrounded them. They were surrounded by it in the camp meeting revivals, African-American traditions, and even the folk traditions with white, European roots, all of which influenced their music. But despite so many generations making the case for broad participation and so many participatory traditions blossoming around them, too many church leaders could only see a path that led to increased training and professionalization for the few, over the broad participation of many.

Continue to Part #5 here

For more on “Who Should Sing,” check out:

• Letter of Resignation from First Parish Cambridge, 1842. Link here
• Congregational Singing, “of the spirit and the truth.” Western Christian Advocate. Dec 8, 1937. Link here
• Congregational Singing, Christian Inquirer. Nov 8, 1851. Link here
• Congregational Singing: On Singing in Public Worship. Christian Advocate and Journal. Oct 13, 1847. Link here
• Congregational Singing: Deacon Goodman Again. Christian Inquirer. Mar 3, 1849. Link here
• Doctrines and Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. 1817. Link here
• The Evolution of American Choral Music: Roots, Trends, and Composers before the 20th Century, by James McCray. 2011. Link here