I Think It Best For Every Composer To Be His Own Carver

Sermon by James W. Crawford

On William Billings

November 24, 1996

There is an old ecclesiastical cliché that the devil makes way into the church through the choir. It is not a new cliché. Indeed, our forebears in this very congregation who sang the Psalms each Sunday morning out of the Bay Psalm Book bore this truth in their souls. They realized, as one modern commentator remarks, that "music has always been a significant force in Christian worship, but precisely because of its impact upon emotions its role has been the subject of recurrent and unresolved conflict. The emotive power of music is double-edged, as likely to set Christians against each other as to unite them in praise of God."

In 1640 the compilers of the Bay Psalm Book recognized this fact, and recast it in religious terms. They assigned musical quarrels directly to splintering, divisive, demonic influence. Their very first words in the preface of the Psalm Book anticipate the bitter musical disputes that blew apart New England congregations, wreaked havoc in the general culture and made an explosive impact on the development of American musical life for the next two centuries. Listen to these first words of the Bay Psalm Book's preface--not incidentally, the first English book published in the colonies, of which there are eleven extant copies, two owned by this church:

The singing of Psalms, though it breath(e) forth nothing but holy harmony, and melody: yet such is the subtlety of the enemie, and the enmity of our nature against the Lord and his wayes, that our hearts can finde matter of discord in this harmony, and crotchets of division in this holy melody.

Well, this morning I want to introduce you to one of the most significant and vital participants in the ominous wars over church music. His name was William Billings. William Billings stepped into the church music clashes during the late 18th century when, in the judgment of critics, ministers and congregants alike, Psalm singing had fallen into a deplorable and pitiful state. New England individualism, when exercised in church, made racket and chaos of psalm singing. The problem? Everyone sang for themselves. Each person chose a tune, picked a rhythm, set a key and shouted out the psalm in self interpreted, robust, high decibel volume. The meetinghouse sounded like a chicken coop. "Where there is no rule," wrote one stricken churchgoer,

Where there is no rule, Men's fancies, (by which they are governed) are various; some affect a quavering flourish on one note and others upon another which, because they are ignorant of true musick and melody, they account a grace to the tune; and while some affect a quicker motion, others affect a slower and drawl out their note beyond all reason; hence in congregations ensue jarrs and discords, which make the singing rather resemble howling.

Now let's face it: In matters of taste, "one person's howling may be another person's serenade," but in one attempt to order this cacophony, some congregations decided to "line out" the psalm. They chose a cantor who would recite or sing a verse and the congregation would respond antiphonally: verse one from the cantor; followed by verse one from the congregation.

But this lining-out method proved no more satisfactory. Staunch resistance erupted. One opponent described the process as "praising God by piece-meal." And worse, the cantors sang wretchedly. Accusations ran rampant. As one discontented psalm-singer expostulates, the cantors "began on notes too high or too low and most too long." "They would not let well enough alone," protests another, sick to death of what he calls added "crotchets and quavers and semi-quavers and demi-semi quavers to every tune." Their voices, complained still another, "tittered up and down. . . miserably tortured and twisted. . . " compelling one dissident psalm-singer to complain in exasperation, "In the country, tempi were inclined to be so slow that I myself have twice in one note paused to take a breath." And finally, one furious antagonist of this method of lining-out the psalms captured the true anarchy and catastrophe of it all when he drew up an exaggerated charge against an imaginary deacon which could never have made its point unless congregations had experienced the shrieking and caterwauling of the real thing. He wrote, "I am creditably informed that a certain gentlewoman miscarry'd at the ungrateful and yelling noise of a Deacon in reading the first line of a Psalm; and methinks if there were not other argument against the practice (unless there were an absolute necessity for it) the consideration of its being a procurer of abortion might prevail with us to lay it aside."

So: enter William Billings into this chaos, this anarchy, this cacophony, this dissonance, this discord: William Billings, born in Boston in1746 with serious physical disabilities that pained and limited him all his life. His father died when he was 14, leaving his family impoverished and humiliated. His mother died when he was l8, and he became the breadwinner for his family as a tanner of leather. But that is minor detail. The real story lies elsewhere. William Billings, tanner, triggered a revolutionary impact on American Musical culture. His first public appearance as a church musician appeared in the Boston Gazette of October 2, 1769 with the following notice: "John Barry and William Billings begs leave to inform the publick, that they propose to open a singing school this night, near the Old South Meeting-house, where any person inclining to sing may be attended upon at said school with Fidelity and Dispatch."

The Singing School! In order to control the chaotic nature of congregational Psalm singing, our ancestors founded singing schools, "...teaching the fundamentals of vocal performance. Tone production, note-reading and ensemble singing" headed the curriculum.

And the music taught in those singing schools was not so much the classic tunes of the psalms, unwritten, and screeched out in a free-for-all or belted out and butchered by a cantor and congregations--classic tunes similar to those sung harmoniously and orderly earlier this morning in the preludes by our choir from the classic Ainsworth Psalter. No, the music of the Singing Schools consisted of scores of new tunes by Americans written down, transcribed and printed--tunes both for the Psalter, as well as for a wider variety of biblical texts. Our choir sang one of those new tunes just a few minutes ago, using the text Larry Bowers read to us from the saga of the Exodus depicting Moses at the Red Sea cleaving the waters.

 And here is the beauty part: the person who assembled the widest variety of texts, the composer who put the most notes and harmonies on paper for uniform and ordered singing was our Old South Singing School master, William Billings. In 1770 at the age of 24 he published his first tunebook, The New England Psalm-Singer. And what a breakthrough in religious and secular musical culture it heralded! As one commentator remarks, "It would be difficult to find another single publication in the history of American music--in the history of Western music for that matter--whose priority in its tradition is more conspicuous than that of the Billings collection." With its one hundred twenty-eight original compositions, the Psalm-Singer increased the number of Psalm tunes composed by Americans ten-fold. "This unique collection was the first published compilation of entirely American music; moreover it was the first tunebook produced by a single American composer."

The music for its time and purpose proved dazzling. Somehow, Billings broke all the rules then in vogue for American composers. His preface asserts, "I don't think myself confined to any Rule for Composition laid down by any that went before me. . . Indeed, I think it best for every composer to be his own carver. . ." And carve, shape, mold he did: wonderful tunes named for his beloved New England: AMHERST, BOSTON, BRATTLE STREET, DEERFIELD, DORCHESTER, NEW SOUTH, OLD SOUTH, SUFFOLK, HOLLIS STREET, FRAMINGHAM, CHESTER.

I have included in your bulletins this morning the frontispiece from that seminal American work. It was engraved by Paul Revere and apparently illustrates the performance of the canon surrounding the picture itself, with six male voices and Billings himself seated at the left. You see the singers pounding the table to sustain the rhythm and pointing to the notes in the shared books to keep their places. The lack of women and children is not at all indicative of the intent of the music written and performed from the New England Psalm-Singer. In addition, the picture is not of singing in church, but at an inn or parlor. Psalm singing with these new tunes became a social as well as a religious function. As one later historian remarks, "out of the dark age" of American music, William Billings "roused up a musical spirit that moved all New England. . ."

And friends, the musical Spirit William Billings roused put some zip not only in the Psalms, but he put some bite into patriotic polemics. Let's look at it this way. On the back wall over here on your left you will find a monument to one of the Deacons of this church, Samuel Adams. Adams was not only a prime mover of the American revolution, he possessed, according to his cousin John "an exquisite ear for music and a charming voice, when he pleased to exert it." Edward Everett tells us "Samuel Adams' only relaxation from the business and cares of life was in the indulgence of a taste for sacred music, for which he was qualified by the possession of a melodious voice and of a soul solemnly impressed with religious sentiment." Historical evidence indicates Samuel Adams and William Billings were fellow church members and genial friends. And, furthermore, Adams' fiery patriotism made itself felt in Billings' tunes and texts. Billings biographers believe he ran many of his texts past the revolutionary Adams before he published them.

In your bulletins, for instance, you will find the text to one of Billings grand anthems, the "Lament Over Boston," authored by Billings during the British siege of this city in l775-l776. It is a paraphrase of Psalm 137 we sang earlier this morning--a fierce, patriotic Billings text Adams no doubt reviewed.

 And talk about Billings as Massachusetts patriot: in just a moment we will sing one of William Billings' most popular compositions, CHESTER, its tune upbeat and its text patently traitorous--a text, writes one mid-nineteenth century observer, "learned by every choir, and in every family, and by every child, and sung in the house and by-the-way, like popular songs of the present day, (Chester) perhaps did more to inspire the spirit of freedom than any one thing that occurred at that critical (revolutionary) moment."

 Well, there is much more, of course, to the story, hundreds of compositions, four more collections, the fury of church members feeling their freedom constrained and fighting to sing the psalms every-which-way just like the old days, and yes, the triumph and tragedy of an artist who died impoverished and anonymously as well as the vitriolic reaction to Billings in the early l9th century, illustrating that menacing conviction of our New England forebears about the demonic forces musical tastes can unleash.

 Friends, this morning we welcome back into our midst after 200 years, William Billings: cultural revolutionary, patriotic polemicist, liturgical iconoclast, who, were he with us today, might assemble a new compilation of tunes and texts, anthems and spiritual songs and exhort us as he did in his first climactic collection, The New England Psalm Singer, "Are any merry? Let them sing Psalms."