PURITANS          

As far as the ones who got the big bad rap, the Puritans, are concerned, J.S. Bach’s is a good case in point.    

“. . . the idea still lingers amongst musicians, and finds expression in the press, that because the English hated elaborate music in church therefore they must have hated music as such.  I would like to remind those who still write in this sense that about sixty years after the Commonwealth ended Bach held a position at a Puritan court yet thoroughly enjoyed himself.  From 1717 to 1723 he lived and worked at the Court of Coethen, which, being not Lutheran but Calvinist, had in its church service only the very simplest music.  The young Prince was a keen musician. . . he organized music in his court in the most active way.  Schweitzer’s opinion of Bach’s experience is - ‘The six years that Bach passed in this small capital were the pleasantest in his whole career.’  Parry thinks that ‘the Coethen period is of pre-eminent importance, and the world owes some recognition to the prince.’. . . For, as we know, absolved from the duty of composing and directing church music, Bach during these six years focused his attention very closely on secular instrumental music - with the result that we possess the First Book of the ‘48’, the French Suites, the Brandenburg Concertos, and other fine things.”³² 

 “The Mayflower ‘Pilgrims’ were Separatists [from the Anglican Church, as well as from other Puritans who wanted to remain in the Anglican Church in order to “purify” it], i.e., ‘Brownists’, and their founder was a keen music-lover.  ‘Browne was very fond of music, and besides being himself ‘a singular good lutenist’ he taught his children to become performers.”³³ 

And the following is more true of churches I have seen today than of the Puritans of whom it was incorrectly ascribing:

“The first century and a half of New England’s history was in many respects a musical wilderness.  The austere character of the Puritans and the Separatist Pilgrims was far from nourishing to such a delicate art as music, for music for its own sake was not tolerated.  Only as an aid to worship [see Schism] was it accepted, and even then only after prolonged controversy and discussion.”  And “The metrical Psalmody . . . was New England’s only music for over a hundred years [Scholes’s emphasis].”³⁴ 

None of the latter just cited could characterize the Puritan attitude and practice.  Of course, there were individuals and small parties, as there are today, who railed against music, who saw music as a threat to religious devotion.  There were local prejudices against certain musical instruments, the violin,³⁵  for example, or the organ, or felt that music was a diabolical art.  There was a striking amount of agreement in the Patristic era that regarded “the ‘flute as the most pernicious of musical instruments’.”³⁶   There were greatly divisive arguments over these matters.  These arguments have been going on so long it seems evident that people do not know what to think, and have just stopped thinking about it anymore.  But, overwhelming evidence presented and discussed in Mr. Scholes’s book, The Puritans and Music, reveals that 

“prejudices against music were not generally true in American Christian history until the “‘Great Awakening and general Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century has intervened.” 

And goes on to show in Chapter XXI, 

“. . . that was the period when these prejudices arose - both in England and in New England [his italics].”³⁷ 

 “When for eleven years the English Puritan party was in absolute power music flourished as, perhaps, never before.  There was a very lavish publication of music and musical works, including the first of the eighteen editions of Playford’s famous English Dancing Master, a collection of popular ballads and other airs arranged for the violin as the accompaniment of country dances.  Opera in England (it was daily opera, too) first began under Puritan rule.

 “These facts are now fairly well known; many more like them will be found in Davey’s History of English Music, Walker’s History of Music in England, Nagel’s Geschichte der Musik in England, and other standard modern works.  Mr. Davey, after exhaustive search, never found any enactment by the English Puritans against music or dancing on week-days.”³⁸ 

It was “Not that [the Puritan] loved Art less, but Religion more.”³⁹   Whatever the early American Puritans were to become later, for reasons of their own protection - the strict theocratic political control, rigid hereditary privilege and authority, uncompromising disregard for religious dissenters, provincial reaction to a burgeoning cosmopolitan nation on its way towards extreme individualism - they cannot be held responsible for America’s traditional indifference to its artists.  Freed of the old world ruling class, and turning away from the kind of social control Puritans exemplified, the American nation, adopting Quaker attitudes, left culture in the arts to the vagaries of marketplace economics, with one exception, beginning for Americans in the late 19th century - European classical music [see SERIOUS MUSIC and elsewhere]. 

Elaborate Music          

Music in a church service should not be very elaborate, as far as congregational singing is concerned.  But also bothersome is to see musicians as part of the service intent merely on doing their own thing, turning an offering into a performance opportunity.  Elaboration,⁴⁰ of course, can be any number of things.  What I am referring to here above and that cited just below, is elaboration  of performance.  I believe that that was one of the things which, in earlier times, could have contributed to a reaction against music in church.  That and, simply, bad music:          

“But now-a-dayes Musicke is growne to such and so great licentiousnesse, that even at the ministration of the holy Sacrament all kinde of wanton and lewde trifling Songs, with piping of Organs, have their place and course.  As for the Divine Service and Common prayer, it is so chaunted and minsed and mangeled of our costly hired, curious, and nice Musitiens. . .  that it may justly seeme not to be a noyse made of men, but rather a bleating of bruite beasts; whiles the Coristers ney descant as it were a sort of Colts; others bellowe, a tenour, as it were a company of oxen: others barke a counter-point, as it were a kennell of Dogs: others rore out a treble like a sort of Buls: others grunt out a base as it were a number of Hogs; so that a foule evill favoured noyse is made, but as for the wordes and sentences and the very matter it selfe, is nothing understanded at all; but the authority and power of judgment is taken away both from the minde and from the eares utterly.”⁴¹ 

A problem is in distinguishing the attitude of devotion - whether self-aggrandizement or praise for the Lord.  The piece of music performed should be given the best a musician can give.  Included in that best is attitude.  Once upon a time, the story goes, a talented, but deaf-mute, acrobat unable throughout his life to join in the assembly of praise in the normal way, performed his acrobatic skills in church one day, before the altar, drawing censure from the congregation for acting so disrespectfully before God.  He was about to be dragged off when (this is a Catholic parable, of course, from my childhood) a statue of the Lord came alive and moved to protect the acrobat, indicating acceptable regard for the man’s offering.  It is a story that has stayed with me throughout my life, and continues to encourage me.  It is one thing to perform skillfully for the Lord; it is another to be performing for the congregation.  Is pleasure in the song or in the purpose of the singing?  I think a proper balance between the two.  Is it not the most enjoyable when we give a thing that itself pleases us?  If the music is dull and we sing it as duty in a desultory or pre-occupied manner, what good is that? 

“Not all Puritans held strict views on church music.  The pamphlet A Preparation to the Psalter (1619), by the Puritan poet, George Wither, has a very sensible discussion of the subject of psalm-singing, in which it appears that Wither is in favour of instruments, since they are mentioned in the book of Revelation.  He cannot, in any case, see any reason why they should not be used, but complains that ‘many organists take over-much liberty and run on too fantastically in their voluntaries’.  This supports Mr. Davey’s view that the Puritan objection to church organs arose largely from the florid playing of the day.  ‘The ordinary use of the organ in the seventeenth century was to add brilliancy to the vocal music sung by the choir, and all possible embellishment by florid runs seems to have been employed.  The Puritans objected to that style of sacred music, and should we object if it were heard now.  The result was a blind rage which led to the destruction of several cathedral organs.’ (Notes and Queries, 6 May, 1899.)⁴² 

I should point out that Mr. Scholes disagrees with Mr. Davey, whom he otherwise liberally quotes throughout his book in support of his own thesis.  I rather agree with Mr. Davey, since, as I wrote above, it accords with my own experience.  Mr. Scholes also notes that 

“Every age, then, has its Puritans - its George Bernard Shaws, who object to music in religious services being made the instrument of ‘a systematic idolatry of sensuousness’."⁴³ 

As well they should.  But well to be kept in mind is that God’s gifts are an ever-flowing stream. 

“What happened to Bach from 1717 to 1723 was much what had happened to musicians and musical people in England from 1649 to 1660.  Cut off from church music activities, they turned to secular music with unusual zest.  The period was nowhere in Europe one of climax in the musical art but one of preparation.”⁴⁴ 

The trouble with so much church music is not where it is so elaborate - there is very little of that in any case - but where it is so condescending - and there is a lot of that. 

Is it not so that music can open us up inside in such a way that we become extraordinarily receptive - both to what is true or to what is false?⁴⁵   A lot has been lost by failing to pick up the tab left unpaid in support of innovators when the aristocracy was overthrown.  There are churches now singing to pre-recorded music purchased from catalogues.  The pastor of one such church would not even listen to the music of living Christian musicians, until certain of the musician's degree of Christianity.  I wondered how he ascertained the degree of Christianity of musicians on the pre-recorded tapes. 

The result of attitudes and measures pursued throughout the history of the American Christian movement is that a great rift exists between the arts community and the Christian community, so that there is virtually no influence on the arts coming from the Christian.  Considering the whelming influence arts have on minds and hearts of people, this is serious and costly, as the greying of congregations will attest. 

Skilled interpretive artists of standard work, of course, can usually count on paid positions being provided for them.  Interpretive artists are re-creators, not creative or originators in the innovative sense.  In a situation unique among modern nations, isolated and ignored, unable to rely on support in the increasingly unmusical secular music industry, his basic needs often unmet, the musically creative innovator stands outside the pale of American Christian concern. 

SERIOUS MUSIC          

Much has been made against extremes in music.  But little, if anything, has been said, for all the technological achievements and conveniences that give us the attendant pollution, resource exhaustion, and over-population, against extremes in science.  But, American upper classes have come to encourage careers in science.           

“The anti-authoritarian ideals of equality and democracy came to America through the hospitable port of Philadelphia.  And the spirit of capitalism, the cult of self-improvement, and the pursuit of  science were of the very essence of American democracy.”⁴⁶

And, as we have seen in real life, America has come to hinge its hopes to science, digging deep into everyone’s pockets to support its research and development, in good times and bad, while music having none of the palpable, practical results of science (except “Hit” songwriting), is held to be a decorative pastime, having also the weight of historical, socio-religious restrictions to bear.  In short, science led toward money and power; not so certain with music. 

“To an even greater extent than in the visual arts, the mores of the American upper class have discouraged professional careers in music.  We have already seen how Owen Wister [see above] gave up his first love, music, for a conventional career in the law.⁴⁷   Stephen Foster, perhaps the nation’s most beloved popular composer, failed to live up to the mercantile values of his Pittsburgh family and eventually died in poverty in Bellevue Hospital in New York City. . . only Francis Hopkinson [of the First Families cited] of Philadelphia has a permanent place in the history of American music.

"Neither the Puritans⁴⁸ nor the Quakers took much stock in secular music; but whereas the Quakers were against all forms of music (pianos were prohibited in Quaker schools well into the twentieth century [see above]), the early Puritans were avid psalm singers, the Bay Song Book (1640) being one of the first books published in the English colonies.”⁴⁹ 

On the other hand:

“Just as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts symbolizes Philadelphia’s long tradition of leadership in painting and sculpture, so the Academy of Music symbolizes the city’s supreme cultural achievement as the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra.  The Academy of Music, an acoustical and aesthetic masterpiece, opened in 1857 and is today the oldest auditorium in the nation still in use in its original form for its original purpose; it has been the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra ever since its first concert there in 1900.”⁵⁰ 

These, of course, were developments to occur later in Philadelphia’s history, having had to overcome resistance typical to the city:

“The great Philadelphia Museum of Art is a monument to the civic leadership of Eli Kirk Price. . .  Eli Kirk Price acknowledged the difficulty of getting things done in Philadelphia and the lack of class cooperation in leadership when shortly before his death he said to a friend, ‘Every inch of this Park has been made a reason for unreasoning opposition at one time or another.  Every stone in that Museum was placed there against someone’s opposition. . .  It would be absurd for me to delay the work that still has to be done to placate the very people who will presently boast of the whole thing.’”⁵¹ 

“‘In no other country in the world,’ according to John H. Mueller ‘has the symphony orchestra won the priority of status accorded to it in the United States.’”⁵²

My point, unwittingly evoked by citations above and by Mr. Mueller’s encomium, is that the success of the symphonies in America (“From the beginning. . . staffed and led by European artists, mostly Germans and Eastern Europeans. . .”⁵³ ) has come at the cost of suppressing the innovative music of its own citizens.

Europeans are proud of the greatness that can be discovered among their own.  Which is the reason they deserve to be admired in that regard.  They are receptive to artistic achievement.  Not so in America, especially among those striving to emulate what they perceive to be the tastes of Europeans they envy.  Americans are receptive to applause and success.  If they really were to be as good as those Europeans they admire, then they would be eagerly searching out their own artists.  They have been indoctrinated to believe that “serious”⁵⁴  music, which is to mean “valuable” music, is only that which comes to America from Europe (or American-made by way of the European form).  The reason for the great symphony halls in America is not the art of music but the social status to be gained by the support given. 

“[the] high status [of the symphony] here has derived largely from Society patronage and financial backing, especially in Boston and Philadelphia.  In general, the older families of more seasoned wealth have tended to support the symphony; the newly affluent and socially ascending have tended to patronize the opera. . . 

“Van Renssalaer had never heard a note of symphony music when he was chosen president of the orchestra.”⁵⁵ 

Thus we see something of the cause in a nation that makes refugees of its own innovative musicians.