An Introduction to America’s Music

72 PART 1 | FROM COLONIZATION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR

Since the Middle Ages, the technique of

solmization, or solfège, which assigns a particular

syllable to each pitch in a scale, has been used

to teach singers how to sing from notation. In

the most common modern form of solmization, a

major scale is sung on seven syllables: do, re, mi,

fa, sol, la, and ti (repeating do at the octave):

&

œ œ œ œ

œ œ œ œ

do re mi fa sol la ti do

In early America, singing masters taught note

reading according to a four-syllable system of

solmization called fasola, in which a major scale

was sung fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, mi (repeating fa at

the octave):

&

œ œ œ œ

œ œ œ œ

fa sol la fa sol la mi fa

Fasola

A CLOSER LOOK

Once singers knew their major and minor scales,

could fi nd the tonic fa and the mi just below it, and

had the intervals between syllables ingrained in

their vocal and aural memories, they were ready to

read music.

Shape notes simplifi ed the reading process by

assigning a different-shaped notehead to each of

the four singing syllables:

&

9 œ^69

œ^6 t^8

fa sol la fa sol la mi fa

Singers who could coordinate shapes with

syllables were spared having to fi gure out which

note to sing.

take the best tunes and calling upon the religious faithful to reclaim them from

Satan:

Strip him of every moving strain,

Of every melting measure;

Music in virtue’s cause retain,

Risk the holy pleasure.

The music to which Ingalls set Wesley’s stanzas is as sprightly as the title of the

borrowed melody suggests: “Merrily Danc’d the Quaker.”

Ingalls’s book was not a success. Perhaps it failed in the marketplace because

it appeared in New England at the very time the ancient music reform was taking

hold, a movement whose spirit could hardly have differed more from the demo-

cratic energ y of folk hy mnody. Yet if folk hy mns were out of step w ith the North’s

prevailing religious mood, they were welcomed in the hinterlands to the south

and west. One of the most familiar and best loved today is New Britain, known

now by the opening words of the text it sets: John Newton’s 1779 hymn “Amazing

Grace.” The pentatonic melody—using only fi ve of the seven notes of the dia-

tonic scale and thus avoiding the half steps—is characteristic of folk tunes from

the British Isles, where it probably originated. As it fi rst appears in the Colum-

bian Harmony (Cincinnati, 1829), New Britain is scored for three voices, omitting

“A m a z i n g G ra c e”

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