80 PART 1 | FROM COLONIZATION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR
the training of music teachers. Moreover, after midcentury the name Mason
stood not only for Lowell but also for a substantial family enterprise. By the
mid-1850s Mason Brothers publishing, set up by sons Daniel Gregory and
Lowell Jr., was flourishing. And son Henry was a founding partner in Mason
and Hamlin, a firm of reed organ makers established in 1854 that later, in
1883, entered the piano-making business. By looking forward to the musical
needs of a wide range of Americans, Mason and his family prospered.
Lowell Mason’s career traces a path from scarcity to abundance, achieved by
targeting new customers while holding on to older ones; fi rst singing schools
and congregations, then children, adult secular singers, and fi nally teach-
ers were courted as potential users of his books. In the 1830s he broadened the
framework of hymnody to include secular edifi cation, and by the 1850s Mason
commanded a growing business network that he himself had partly invented.
At the same time, as an acute businessman, he was able to modify his product
to accommodate changing customer tastes. In the fi eld of hymnody, that meant
adapting to a new theological climate.MASON AND THE HYMNODY OF NORTHERN REVIVALISM
With the rise of revivalism in the North came a sense that the standard hymns
were no longer enough to speak for new religious sensibilities and their focus on
free grace. As Protestants searched for new hymns, their fi rst step was to shift
the emphasis from an intimidating God to the joy of Christian salvation, substi-
tuting welcome for dread.
Revivalism in the North left a mark on two tunebooks that appeared in 1831:
The Christian Lyre, compiled by Joshua Leavitt, a Congregational minister in New
York City, and Spiritual Songs for Social Worship, compiled by Thomas Hastings and
Lowell Mason. Leavitt’s collection was the fi rst American tunebook to take the
form of a modern hymnal, with music for every hymn and the multi-stanza
texts printed in full with the music. Some of the music was original; the rest
came from a variety of sources—New England psalm tunes, rural folk hymns,
revival songs, and even popular songs such as “Home, Sweet Home” in sacred
makeovers. Leavitt’s book sold in the tens of thousands, and its format and con-
tents were copied by other hymn collections for the next several decades.
In borrowing Leavitt’s format, Hastings and Mason’s Spiritual Songs managed
also to compete with it successfully. The book contained four hundred hymns
and tunes, many of them original, including a number by Hastings and by
Mason. The texts, by Isaac Watts as well as later writers, summarized the main
evangelical themes of the day more fully than any earlier revival hymnal.
Sacred tunebooks, from Lyon’s Urania to The Sacred Harp, were published to
serve singing schools, musical societies, singing conventions, and even meeting-
house choirs, but not worshiping congregations. The oblong shape, instructional
introductions, and varied musical forms (fuging tunes, anthems) separate such
books from hymnals used by congregations. Well into the 1800s, most congrega-
tional hymnals were wordbooks: metrical psalters or hymn collections printed
without music. Some congregations still relied on a small stock of tunes learned
by rote; some turned worship music over to a choir or organist. In either case,
there was no need for tunes in hymnals. Leavitt’s Christian Lyre and Hastings andhymnals172028_03_063-085_r3_ko.indd 80 23/01/13 8:12 PM