Speranza
D. Scott
Gospel song
The 1870s also see an attempt to broaden the popular appeal of
sacred song for ideological reasons.
This tendency had its origins in the Sunday
School movement and the spread of American religious revivalism, particularly
the second wave of fundamentalism which came after the Civil War.
Before the
Civil War, American sacred songs divide into those sung at the fire and
brimstone camp meetings of the earlier fundamentalist revival, and those with
chaste and popular tunes for family and social worship, as the contents of
Thomas Hastings' edition of "Sacred Songs" published by the American Tract Society
in 1842 are described.
There were, in addition, collections of songs being
published for Sunday School use from the 1830s onward which proved influential.
The need for simplicity and directness in these songs for children was an
important ingredient of the gospel-hymn style.
It was even possible for a
child's hymn to end up as a full-blown drawing-room ballad, as happens in
Britain with Gounod's setting of Mrs C. F. Alexander's hymn for little
children:
'There Is a Green Hill Far Away' in 1871.
Itinerant preacher Dwight L.
Moody (1837—99) led the post-Civil War revivalist movement.
It was pervaded by a
new mood, which to some extent echoed the new mood of blackface minstrelsy.
No
more is the atmosphere one of hellfire and hysteria.
Instead, a mixture of
heavy sentiment and stirring songs of hope prevailed.
The new style can be seen
emerging in hybrid hymns such as 'Oh, You Must Be a Lover of the Lord', a song
popular in revival meetings in the American South and Mid-West.
It links an
Isaac Watts hymn, 'Am I a Soldier of the Cross?', to a rousing camp-style
chorus, the whole set to the same music, with no regard for the crude contrast
in diction:
am I a soldier of the cross?
a follower of the Lamb?
*
shall I fear to own His cause,
Or blush to speak His name?
O you must be
a lover of the Lord,
O you must be a lover of the Lord,
O you must be
a lover of the Lord,
Or you can't go to heaven when you die.
The published
music of 1866 is credited to J.N.S., who almost certainly was an arranger.
It
is common practice for publishers to employ house musicians to arrange gospel
hymns as separate songs with piano accompaniment.
No one knows who the arranger
was of the most famous hybrid hymn, 'Battle Hymn of the Republic'.
When the
sheet music was first published, by Oliver Ditson & Co. of Boston in 1862,
it carried the information that Julia Ward Howe's verses had been 'adapted to
the favourite melody of "Glory, Hallelujah".
In similar fashion to 'Oh, You
Must Be a Lover of the Lord', the poetry is crammed into an unsuitable tune and
punctuated at each stanza's end with a trite, repetitive refrain.
The tune
originally accompanies G. S. Scofield's Methodist hymn 'Say, Brothers, Will You
Meet Us?' (1858), but became widely known as 'John Brown's Body' in 1861.
Songs
move back and forth between sacred and secular versions during this period.
Aother famous song of the Civil War, 'Tramp! 'Tramp! Tramp!' by G. F. Root,
gave its melody to the Sunday School hymn 'Jesus Loves the Little
Children'.
American ballad composers like G. F. Root and J. P. Webster are
now taking an interest in gospel hymns.
The latter's 'Sweet By and By' (words by
S. F. Bennet) almost equals his wartime 'Lorena' in popularity.
"Sweet By And By" was
originally published in The Signet Ring (1868), a collection of hymns, but was
soon made available in a separate sheet-music version.
The first large
collection of gospel hymns was compiled by Ira D. Sankey (1840-1908), who joined
Moody in Chicago in 1870.
"Sacred Songs and Solos" was published by Morgan &
Scott in London in 1873, the year Moody and Sankey made their triumphant tour of
Britain.
In America, Sankey collaborated with another evangelical singer, Philip
Paul Bliss (1838—76), to produce Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs, published in New
York in 1875.
The compositions of Bliss typify the new sentimental style of
gospel song.
One of his first songs (for which, as so often, he wrote both words
and music) was 'If Papa Were Only Ready!', a short solo which he sang
to the accompaniment of an American reed organ.
The song concerns the hopes and
fears of little Willie.
At this time, the name 'Willie' usually proved fatal for
any character in a song, and here is no exception.
The song begins, 'I should
like to die,' said Willie, 'if my papa could die too.'
As well as solos, Bliss
writes fully harmonized hymns, but the songs which are richest in the
characteristics of the new gospel style are those which follow the pattern
common in minstrel shows of solo verse and harmonized refrain.
For example,
'What Shall the Harvest Be?' (words by E. A. Oakley) has many typical features:
-- a melody coloured by sentimental chromaticism and expressive dissonance
-- a
dancelike rhythm; and harmony which embraces the modern vocabulary of the
drawing room (passing diminished sevenths, dominant extensions, and pedals).
A favourite device used in the choral
refrains of gospel songs is that of 'echo voices', usually male voices echoing a
phrase sung by female voices.
In the present song, the soprano moves through the
text at a slower speed than the other voice parts, which might more accurately
be called anticipating voices.
Another characteristic of gospel
style, seen to some extent in this song, is the tendency to favour parallel
movement for the top three voices of a four-part harmonization.
The form of'What
Shall the Harvest Be?' is more expansive than the norm.
It has a twelve-bar
verse and sixteen-bar chorus, rather than eight bars for each.
Besides
the evangelical enthusiasm of their texts, it is just this compactness of
musical form which separates many gospel songs from songs of the minstrel stage,
not the use of anything strikingly different in their melodic, harmonic, or
rhythmic departments.
A comparison of Foster's 'De Camptown Races' and Bliss's
'Look and Live' shows how close together on occasion they could come.
While
being infused with the sentimentality of post-Civil War song, some of the vigour
of pre-Givil War minstrelsy also seems to have passed into gospel music.
This
vigour is apparent in the fondness for questions and exclamations as
titles.
The texts relate to the Bible in three main ways.
First, they may illustrate
and confirm, as happens in 'What Shall the Harvest Be?', which takes as its
departure point 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap' (Galatians
6:7).
Second, they may use a Biblical quotation as a basis for personal confession, as
occurs in 'The Wandering Sheep', which quotes at its head, 'All we like sheep
have gone astray' (Isaiah 53:6), and begins, 'I was a wandering sheep, I did not
love the fold'.
Thirdly, they may offer individual witness to the truth of a Biblical
statement, as does 'The Sands of Time', verse 3 of which testifies to the truth
of the assertion 'Thine eyes shall behold the land that is very far off' (Isaiah
33:17):
Amid the shades ofev'ning,
While sinks life's ling'ring sand,
I
hail the glory dawning
From Immanuel's land.
It was Bliss and Sankey's
desire that their music, and gospel music in general, should reach into every
corner of society.
As mentioned before, this was born of ideological rather than
commercial reasons.
They refused, in fact, to take any personal profit out of
their editing or songwriting.
Revivalism was nothing new to Britain.
The
Primitive Methodist church had its origins in the first English camp meeting
held at Mow Cop on the Staffordshire-Cheshire border by 'Crazy Alonzo' Dow in
1807.
William Booth began holding services in the open air and in tents from
1864 onwards, although he did not create the Whitechapel Church Mission, and
with it
"The Salvation Army", until 1878.
However, Moody and Sankey arrived in
Britain in 1873, a year of industrial crisis.
The middle class nc doubt welcoms
the distraction offered to an increasingly discontent workine class who now had
the electoral franchise and had forced the Liberal government to give full legal
recognition to trade unions just a few years after an attempt to re-enact the
Combination Laws.
But even in the most respectable middle-class quarters a
fervent religious strain was already to be found.
In 1860 Miss Lindsay had a
notable success with her setting of Tennyson's 'Too Late!', which in parts reads
like a revivalist hymn:
Late, late, so late! and dark the night and
chill!
Late, late, so late! But we can enter still!
Too late! too late, ye
cannot enter now,
Too late! too late, ye cannot enter now.
The songs of P.
P. Bliss certainly find their way into middle-class homes in Britain.
Some of
them are published separately in "The Musical Bouquet", in arrangements
by T. Westrop.
In this connection, also, it is worth noting that No. 111 of
Sankey's Sacred Songs and Solos, 'Farewell Hymn', is a divine parody of 'Home,
Sweet Home!'
REFERENCES:
No. 139 of I. D. Sankey, (ed.), Sacred Songs and Solos (London: Morgan &
Scott, 1873).
For information on Lorenzo Dow in England, see Jackson
89-98.
Monday, December 24, 2012
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