An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 1 | CALVINIST MUSIC IN COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA 29

or chant the psalm, a line at a time, to the congregation, who would sing each

line back in response. Congregations may have begun lining out, as this practice

came to be called, because too few worshipers could read the psalms, buy the

books, or sing the tunes as they were written. Whatever the reason, the custom

won acceptance as the clergy realized that without it there would be no congre-

gational singing at all.

Lining out began, then, as a way of cueing congregation members on the

texts they were to sing. Its impact on psalmody was enormous: fi rst, it greatly

slowed the pace of singing; second, it meant that the repertory was kept small

because tunes had to be chosen from those that the worshipers already knew;

fi nally, the music was entrusted to the leading singers, who did not necessarily

read music themselves. As one observer of the time wrote, a tune might vary

so much from one congregation to the next that “’tis hard to fi nd Two that Sing

[it] exactly alike.” Lining out gave birth to a style in which the singers in a group

freely elaborated a tune as they sang. This style, eventually labeled the Old Way

of singing, won favor with many New England worshipers.

Although lining out eventually disappeared from New England churches,

the practice has continued to the present day among a few extremely conserva-

tive religious groups. A recording from mid-twentieth-century rural Kentucky

demonstrates a vocal practice that resembles the Old Way in some respects,

though we should not assume that it matches exactly the singing of colonial

New England congregations. The text of “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”

(LG 1.3) is not a biblical psalm but a more recent poem written in the style of a

metrical psalm: in other words, a hymn, in this case by the eighteenth-century

Welsh Methodist evangelist William Walker. Written in 1745, it deviates from the

pattern of older metrical psalms in two ways: each stanza has six lines instead

of the customary four, and the meter is trochaic (long-short) instead of iambic

(short-long).

By 1720 some New Englanders were complaining that the Old Way had

departed from the Puritan fathers’ psalmody, which had been governed by

the “rule” of musical notation. The Reverend Thomas Symmes recommended

that Regular Singing (i.e., regu-

lated singing—singing guided by

rules), which carried the authority

of notated music, replace the Old

Way. Yet Symmes understood why

people enjoyed singing as they did.

In the Old Way, worshipers were

able—within limits, of course—to

decorate their praise of God as the

spirit moved them.

The clergy’s objection to the Old

Way of singing inspired a burst of

rhetoric on the subject: sermons,

pamphlets, newspaper accounts, and

Regular Singing meetings. But in this

theological battle, unlike others of

the time, the published words came

from one side only: that of Regular

Singing advocates, chiefl y ministers

LG 1.3

Thomas Symmes on the Old Way of Singing,

1720

S

inging-Books being laid aside, there was no Way to learn; but only

by hearing of Tunes Sung, or by taking the Run of the Tune (as

it is phrased). The Rules of Singing not being taught or learnt, every

one sang as best pleased himself, and every Leading-Singer would

take the Liberty of raising any Note of the Tune, or lowering of it,

as best pleas’d his Ear, and add such Turns and Flourishes as were

greatful to him; and this was done so gradually, as that but few if any

took Notice of it. One Clerk or Chorister would alter the Tunes a little

in his Day, the next, a little in his and so one after another, till in Fifty

or Sixty Years it caus’d a Considerable Alteration.

In their own words

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