User:Opus33/The origin of the songs in The Sacred Harp

[ xxx This is stalled, basically. But it's clear what I ought to do: grab my copy of The Makers of the Sacred Harp, Steel and Hulan's superb study, and mine it thoroughly. Pretty much everything below represent my efforts before this book was published. ]

The tracing of the history of many Sacred Harp songs is a often quite difficult, and in the past various errors have been made. The appearance of a song in a historical hymnbook naturally permits it to be traced back as far as the hymnbook in question, but often the ultimate origin remains obscure.

Songs from before Billings
The musical tradition printed in the pages of the Sacred Harp first came into bloom in America in 1770 with the publication of the New England composer William Billings's The New England Psalm Singer' (see below). However, there is a number of songs [ xxx I keep finding more ] that are older than Billings's work; most originated in England.

Old Hundred
The oldest song in the Sacred Harp is, evidently, the famous hymn "Old Hundred", (C,D 49 top). It is possibly by Louis Bourgeois and dates to a seminal work of Protestant hymnody, the xxxth edition of the Genevan Psalter, 1551. This work comes from the time when the Reformation leader John Calvin created a system in which the congregation sang exclusively the poetry of the Bible, translated metrically into their own vernacular language. The Sacred Harp version is, of course, in English, and does not use the same harmonization as the Geneva original, but is plainly the same tune. As is usual in Sacred Harp music, the melody is found in the tenor, and not in the treble as the original (for the notes of the original version, see Old Hundredth).

Other pre-Billings tunes are mostly English.


 * 49b	Mear	1720	A Sett of Tunes
 * 28b	Wells	1724	Holdroyd, Israel
 * 84	Amsterdam 1742	Foundery Collection
 * 81b	Cookham	1760	Harmonia Sacra
 * 273	Milford	1760	Stephenson, Joseph
 * 73b	Arlington 1762	Arne, Thomas A.

[ xxx there are more if you include Cooper book dating. Their pre-Billings tunes are: ]


 * Wells	Israel Holdroyd	1724
 * Portuguese Hymn	 From John F. Wade's Cantus Diversi; Alto by W.M. Cooper	1751
 * Arlington	Thomas A. Arne	1762

e.g. they give 1751 for Portuguese hymn


 * Another really old one is "Corley", Denson book 510. Arranged by Richard DeLong from this source:  "John Wilson, 17th century"

Keith Willard has a nice web essay on fasola.org:

The other seven pre-Billings songs come from England, where during the 18th century a robust traditional of rural church music arose, considered the direct ancestor to the New England tradition. cite Temperley; how many of these does he mention?

xxx but not all of these are from the country parish tradition; Arne ? xxx wrote operas, I think...


 * Amsterdam (D. 84). Appears in The Foundery Collection, 1742, [ xxx I think this is an early Methodist hymnal ] and is thus attributed in the 1991 edition.  Graham gives the first American versions as A collection of the Best Psalm Tunes, Boston 1764 or The Grounds and Rules of Musick, 8th ed., Boston 1764.
 * Aylesbury (D. 28 top). Denson edition gives "A book of Psalmody, 1718; Graham says "in this form" first published in James Green, A Book of Psalm-Tunes, 5th ed., London 1724, and gives the first American printing as Thomas Johnston, untitled collection, Boston ca. 1760.
 * Cambridge (D. 287). John Randal (1717-1799). According to Graham (2004, 52) "probable" first appearance is in Stephen Addington, A Collection of Psalm Tunes fo Publick Worship, 6th ed., London 1786.  He gives the first American publication as in Nehemiah Shumway, The American Harmony, 2nd ed., Philadelphia 1801.  The Denson edition gives the song a date of 1790.
 * Mear (D 49 bottom). Irving Lowens traces "Mear" (D 49 bottom) to Simon Browne's Hymns and Spiritual Songs (London, 1720). .  The title page of this hymnal, quoted in The Sacred Harp, reads:  "A / Sett / of / Tunes in 3 Parts / (Mostly New) / Fitted to the following / Hymns / But may be sung to any / others in the same measure / By Several Hands / Frances Hoffman sculp / Sold by Em Mathews at the Bible in Pater Noster Row.", [ xxxx add in what Graham says ]
 * St. Thomas (D. 34b). Aaron Williams.  First published in Thomas Knibb, The Psalm Singer's Help (London, ca. 1769; the Denson edition gives 1770).  First American printing in Andrew Law, Select Harmony, Cheshire, Connecticut, 1778.
 * Silver Street (D. 311). Isaac Smith (1734-1805).  First published in Isaac Smith, A Collecton of Psalm Tunes in Three Parts, London, 1779-1780  First American publication in The Chorister's Companion, 2nd ed., New Haven, 1788.
 * Wells (D 28b). Israel Holdroyd (1702-1753).  First published in Holdroyd's The Spiritual-Man's Companion, London, ca. 1722 (the Denson edition gives 1724).  First American printing in James Lyon's Urania, Philadelphia 1761.
 * Sacred Throne [ xxx check who was Hugh Wilson (1764-1824). ] Denson 569

The first New England School
[ xxx cite the article we have on this, list the composers ] Going through Stephen Jenks (1812), there are 97 songs


 * Bridgewater (D. 276). Lewis Edson. 1782, The Chorister's Companion, or Church Music Revised, New Haven.
 * China (D. 163b). Timothy Swan.  1801, New England Harmony
 * Lenox (D. 40). 1782, The Chorister's Companion, or Church Music Revised, New Haven.
 * Lisbon (D. 467b). The original version was by Daniel Read and appeared in The American Singing Book (New Haven 1785).  Oddly, the original version was a fuging tune in duple time; the current Sacred Harp version is not a fuging tune but an ordinary hymn tune, with the fuging notes compressed into a homonphonic texture; thus the Denson edition describes the work as "arranged from Daniel Read".
 * Windham (D. 38b). Daniel Read.  First appeared in Read's The American Singing Book, New Haven, 1785. [ xxx Graham says that it's in triple time.  Try to find Read's original; SH version is in 4/4. ]

Should something be said about sentimentality?
It does seem that weepy stuff became prominent with the later White editions, though I'm not sure how to say this without violating WP:NOR. But look at these titles:


 * "The Dying Boy" H.S. Reese 1859, Denson book 398
 * "Weeping Mary" J. P. Reese 1859 Denson 408
 * "The Dying Californian", Ball and Drinkard 1859, Deson 410
 * "The Loved Ones" Arr. E. T. Pound 1859. Denson 413

Songs that are not specifically religious
There are more than you might think. The topics are, naturally enough, closely allied to religion: patriotism, temperance, family.


 * "The Loved Ones" Denson 413 is about family
 * "O, Come, Come Away!" is a temperance song

Denson, p. 334

O, Come, Come Away!
Denson, p. 334, attributed to William Houser (Hauser?), Hesperian Harp, 1848. [xxx Look up Cooper]

As Horn (1970, xxx) points out, this is originally the German driking song "Krambambuli". Krambambuli is a kind of bright-red liquor made in Germany. It gave rise to a student drinking song, which got imported to America. Then the temperance folk then adopted it with new (opposite!) words, and this got incorporated into various songbooks and ultimately the SH.

For the song, see German Wikipedia: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krambambuli_%28Getr%C3%A4nk%29, and for the German words (with mp3) see http://www.leonensia.de/lieder.php?id=10

A whole article on its history, by Armin Hadamer: http://www.jstor.org/stable/view/849576?seq=6

Soft Music
This is Denson 323, attributed to B. F. White himself [ xxx look up Cooper page ]. The model is the German son Du, du liegst mir im Herzen, considerably modified.

The Gap
Between 1869 and 1909, only three songs:


 * 445	Passing Away 	1872	Watson, John A.
 * 117	Babylon Is Fallen 1878	Chute, W. E.
 * 55	Sister's Farewell 1905	McLendon, A. J.

This was after B. F. White had died, and no new editions were being prepared.

Songs originating in popular music
Popular music is used here in the sense of music prepared and sold aiming at mass consumption. Popular music has overwhelmingly dominate public tastes since the beginning of the last century, and much contemporary religious music adopts its styles and genres. However, in the heyday of Sacred Harp music composition, the technological means for disseminating popular music were primitive; essentially the printing press and the domestic piano. These prevailed more in the cities than in the rural locales where the Sacred Harp tradition and its predecessors flourished; yet it seems that nevertheless there was some inflow of popular music tunes, reset with religious texts, into the Sacred Harp tradition.

Happy Land
This site:

http://www.madras.fife.sch.uk/archive/articles/TheMadrasCollegeAppendix1.html

offers:

"Andrew Young, who was English master from 1840 to 1853, made a great reputation from a hymn he wrote, a hymn which was to become known throughout the English-speaking world and was to be translated into many foreign languages. A popular drawing-room song of the period had these words:


 * "I've come from a happy land
 * Where care is unknown :
 * I've parted a merry band
 * To make thee mine own.
 * Haste, haste fly with me !
 * Where love's banquet waits for thee,
 * Thine its sweets shall be
 * Thine, thine alone. "

He liked the tune and thought that the words could be turned into something for use in his Sunday school. The result was the hymn "There is a happy land", the melody of which is still called "Indian Love Song".

Can this be tracked down?

See also

Scottish Church Music: Its Composers and Sources By James Love

on Google books; a visiting lady played the tune to Young on the piano.

Further Googling indicates that the words above come from a play by James Planché.

Sweet Home
also on Home! Sweet Home! and its composer, Henry Bishop. This is a nice example of "Southernization" of harmony and style--the SH version is pleasingly much less treacly.

A book noting the incredible popularity of the song (100,000 copies the first year): xxx

The Dying Californian
Appears to be based on a published song of the 1850's: see Google's copy of Folksongs of the Catskills. But the version in Sacred Harp (originating in the third edition of 1859) is not the same tune.

Portuguese Hymn
Long misattributed. See http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/Notes_On_Carols/adeste_fideles.htm

The Denson Edition assigns it no date; Cooper says 1751.

Songs with an origin in classical music
Classical music is the source for a number of songs in the Sacred Harp. These songs typically use the tune of the classical source, but the musical setting is adapted, at least to some degree, to the Sacred Harp style.

[ xxx It's starting to look like there may be scads of these. The two by Pleyel are prominent mainly because the composer's name is acknowledged in the title. And the origin gets obscured because the process of "hymnification" often occurred long before the song was adopted into Sacred Harp. ]

Arlington (C,D 73b)
Originally, this was a minuet, part of the overture to Thomas Arne's opera Artaxerxes. The adaptation to being a hymn tune took place in England. The first appearance in a hymnbook is in Harrison's Sacred Harmony of 1784, and it was shortly thereafter reprinted in America in the Chorister's Companion (1788).

The Denson edition notates the song in 3/2, preserving the original minuet rhythm. The Cooper edition recasts the rhythm into xxx notation, with altered rhythm.

Weeping Savior
According to Horn (1970, 19), the tune was composed by the Ukrainian-Russian composer Dmitry Bortniansky; q.v. for details. The version in The Sacred Harp was prepared by Edmund Dumas in 1869 (1936 ed: 1839); the alto part of the Denson edition was prepared by Seaborn Denson in 1911 (according to the 1936 edition).

A version of Bortniansky's tune may be seen here:. The melody is in the soprano. Dumas clearly modified it considerably, including the refrain in Aramaic in the the last four bars.

Pleyel's Hymn Second
Graham (2004) attributes the melody to "the andante movement of a string quartet in G major published in 1788" by Ignaz Pleyel. It entered hymnody in Arnold and Callicott's Psalms, published in England in 1791 (more available in Graham, which obtain...)

Loving Jesus
Denson p. 361, attributed to "Pietro Guglielmi" 1772, whom investigate.

Sweet Affliction
Denson 145. From the opera Le devin du village by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, according to Horn (1970, 165). See also Denson books description.

Songs of folk origin
These are so hard to verify.


 * "Joyful", Denson 513, is "The Seven Joys of Mary" -- origin? Arranger was B. F. White
 * "The Great Day" Denson 567. Joel Cohen thinks he's spotted the original (see his album mixing Sacred Harp with other genres).  Arranged by J. P. Reese in 1859.