Hatfield

From an eighteenth-century manuscript preserved at the public library of Newburyport, Massachusetts. This setting was praised by the American Vocalist’s compiler D.H. Mansfield, a man who fought the genteel, “reforming” style, as one of the best of the old tunes: “Hatfield..will make them weep, while modern compositions produce little or no effect.”

Invocation

We tend to think of early American hymnody as first of all, worship music and secondly, primarily intended for the delectation of the performers themselves. Both notions are only partially true; these songs had (and many still have) a human context that complements their religious aspect. Singing schools and singing conventions after all, were (and are) social gatherings with a spiritual dimension, rather than formal worship services. Furthermore, the concept of public performance for an audience is also present in the aesthetic of Billings’ time, as the words to this charming piece point out.

The Pilgrims

Many early spirituals develop the notion of a difficult spiritual journey or pilgrimage. Our setting is from The Revivalist,a key source of early American camp-meeting songs. This evocative text was also sung by early nineteenth century black congregations, perhaps to this tune, perhaps to another one now lost.

Ballon

This kind of penitential text is very prominent in the eighteenth-century repertoire; like the poem, the craggy, archaic musal setting avoids “easy” solutions.

Richmond

Like so many settings by Boston tanner and composer William Billings, this one evokes both the biblical Song of Solomon and the ethos of the Elizabethan lovesong.

Harvest Hymn

The harvest of souls at the last judgement is another frequently-utilised theme of early American sacred song. This tune, in a setting by Vermont’s Jeremiah Ingalls, is possibly derived from a secular “Harvest Home” tune of a type prevalent in England, and emulated by Henry Purcell in his King Arthur.

Calvary

Pessimistic, minor-keyed pieces of this sort were part and parcel of the musical ethos in colonial America. They were occasionally reprinted in nineteenth century songbooks as “old folks’ music,” before being nearly buried at centuries’ end by a flood of major-key, keyboard-derived gospel songs. Fortunately, Calvary and other precious pieces by Reed, Billings, and other early New Englanders still live on in the southern Sacred Harp tradition.

Pennsylvania

The Vermont tavernkeeper Jeremiah Ingalls is best known for his folk-like settings of strophic spiritual songs, among the first of their kind in America. This intense, madrigalesque snapshot of the Day of Judgement shows his native musical power in another vein, that of the fuguing tune.

While Angels strike

The gapped minor scale and the wide interval skips derive from English and Scottish folksong. Is there also a hint of black musical style in this #E6DDCC spiritual? Both races were in attendance at the camp meetings where songs like this were created and sung.

Cusseta

The five-note, plagal melody makes a beautiful fit with the moving text. This setting is sometimes sung at Sacred Harp memorial services.

Confidence

An early and delightful example of the optimistic, major-key style that came to predominate in “popular” church music. Contemporary audiences immediately recognise this idiom as “American.”

Something new

The excellent tune exists in a quick-tempo, Southern shape-note version, and also in a contemplative, close-harmony setting from the North; it is this latter one that we perform here.

The young convert

Much of the early American repertoire has a strange-yet-somehow-familiar “feel” to modern ears. This energetic setting by Ingalls recalls the Millerite hymn “The Midnight Cry” (adapted as well by the Shakers, and still in print in The Sacred Harp. –this latter version recorded by the Boston Camerata on An American Christmas, Erato) But a “psychoanalysis” of The young convert reveals an even more surprising connection — delving down into nearly every American’s childhood memories, we discover a relationship between this spiritual and the nursery song Old Macdonald had a farm.

Bruce’s address — Scots wha ha’e ye

Both the sacred text and its music derive from the well-known and warlike Scottish song; the Scots text in the version by Robert Burns.

Saw ye my hero — Crucifixion

Widely known as a “Negro spiritual” (and popularised as such by the great American contralto Marian Anderson) this is in fact a secular Scottish tune, Where are the joys, adapted as a political elegy to George Washington, and re- adapted yet again to a sacred text. “Why should the devil have all the good tunes?” queried Martin Luther some generations and an ocean removed from these examples; but he was surely thinking of cases like this.

Farewell ye green fields — Greenfield

This very popular English song of the late eighteenth century remained current in the U.S. well into early twentieth century. It also gave birth to a number of religious imitations. This one, about Joseph and his brethren, comes from a Pennsyvania Mennonite book in shape notes; both the German and English texts we sing here are present in that source.

Prince William’s March — The Paralytic

The Paralytic is a “miracle” ballad whose tune derives from an eighteenth century English march popular in colonial America.

The three Gypsies — Christian Race

This tune, of English origin, is related to several American spiritual songs. Besides its folk-derived melody, Christian Race is remarkable for its very “archaic” two-voice setting; the stark cadential intervals of fifths and octaves may recall to some listeners the early polyphony of twelfth-century Limoges, France.

Liberty

The model, of course, is Rule Brittania by Thomas Arne (1710-1778). The song’s title, Liberty, and the content of the poetry, evoke the text of Arne’s original: “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.”

Ontario

The theme of pilgrimage once again evoked in both the German and English texts, which are printed side-by-side in the original source. foursquare phrase structure and full cadential stops recall the Germanic roots of much American Mennnonite hymnody.

Scotland

This tune, perhaps a Scottish folksong, appears in a number of songbooks from the pre-Civil War period.

Warren

“Doctor Watts is now in Heaven,” said Shaker leader Ann Lee, referring to the English minister Isaac Watts (1674-1748), author of this hymn text, and countless others as well. We perform William Billings’ energetic setting in responsory fashion, with each strophe of the tune “lined out” in unison before it is echoed in partsong.

Weeping Pilgrim

Thanks to the film industry, the image of the Lonesome Cowboy has become an American archetype, familiar to the point of caricature (e.g. the French cartoon Lucky Luke). This astonishing piece from The Sacred Harp brings a spiritual, and intensely moving dimension to that worldly metaphor. At the passage “I weep and I mourn and I move slowly on,” the author or arranger makes unusual (in this context) and very effective requests for both a meter change and a soft dynamic.