32 PART 1 | FROM COLONIZATION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR
As it happened, singing schools proved more than instructional gather-
ings; they were also social occasions, providing a rare chance for young men
and women to mingle. Supporters praised schools for offering “innocent and
profi table recreation” that would help young people do something useful during
t he lon g w i nter even i n g s a nd wea n t hem aw ay f rom “ id le, fo ol i sh, yea, per n iciou s
songs and ballads.” In the view of others, however, schools encouraged young
people to be “too light, profane and airy,” and to stay out late. Indeed, many who
opposed Regular Singing saw it as a secular intrusion into a sacred realm.
Through the agency of singing schools, Regular Singing helped foster musical
literacy and independent taste. By the 1760s these schools had spread widely in the
colonies. By then, too, another organization was taking root: the meeting-house
choir, formed not at the prompting of clergy or congregation but by the singers
themselves. Choirs brought new energ y and musical diversity to the meeting
house, but almost from the moment of their appearance they also became tar-
gets of complaint: some parishioners found choir members’ behavior secular and
obnoxious. The youthfulness of choir members—many were in their teens and
early twenties—may have had some infl uence on how older parishioners viewed
their desire to sit, not with their families in the pews, but together as a group in
the rear balcony, or gallery. Moreover, along with choirs came the gradual intro-
duction of musical instruments into the meeting house—fi rst the bass viol, or
cello, to double the bass voices discreetly and help keep all the singers on pitch,
and eventually fi ddles, fl utes, and other instruments, not playing independent
instrumental parts but merely doubling the voices. Such a gallery orchestra
compounded the growing distinction between choir and congregation.
As early as 1764 an observer described one Boston church choir as “a set
of geniuses who stick themselves up in a gallery” and think that they have a
right to do all the singing themselves, excluding the congregation. Eager to
show off their skill as musicians, they considered the hymns sung by the con-
gregation far too simple, favoring tunes that were more modern, elaborate,
and worldly. They would, complained the writer, often perform “a light, airy,
jiggish tune better adapted to a country dance” than to “chanting forth the
praises of the King of Kings.” Here, then, choir and congregation competed
instead of complementing each other. The Boston choir confirmed the fear
that once musical display won a toehold in the worship service, it would take
its own course with little regard for the religious framework in which it had
flowered in the first place.A PHILADELPHIA TUNEBOOK
Given the long history of singing in New England meeting houses, it may seem
strange that the fi rst tunebook to address the needs of both congregation and
choir was published in Philadelphia. That collection, titled Urania, or A Choice
Collection of Psalm-Tunes, Anthems, and Hymns, was compiled in 1761 by James
Lyon, a Presbyterian born in Newark, New Jersey, and a recent graduate of the
College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). This sacred tunebook was
far more ambitious than any that forty years of Regular Singing in Boston had
inspired.
Philadelphia was the largest city in the English-speaking colonies, a dynamic
settlement that grew steadily larger, unlike Boston, whose population remainedchoirs and congregations172028_01_018-043_r2_mr.indd 32 23/01/13 9:50 AM