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VIII

AMERICAN SPIRITUALS AND GOSPEL SONGS

I

F a pronouncedly characteristic type of religious music is desired, why not turn to the genuinely

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American" spirituals of the Middle and Southern States, preceding and contemporaneous with the reformation led by Lowell Mason? While the Congregationalists of New England were singing their fugue tunes, minor as well as major, the Methodists, Baptists, United Brethren (not Moravians), and other aggressively missionary denominations in the Middle and Southern States were developing an entirely different type of music. Unfortunately very few of these "spirituals" were ever written out and published, and fewer still have survived the utter transformation of conditions during the last fifty years. Then there has been an attitude of deprecation towards them on the part of the churches like that of educated coloured people towards the Jubilee songs. This attitude is all the more unfortunate because it is everywhere recognized that the melodies that arise among the people and are adopted by them more or less permanently have a vitality and genuineness lacking in more ornate or studied music. Thibaut says, "All the melodies that spring from the people, or are retained by them as favourites, are generally chaste, and simple in nature like a child's." These "spirituals" are genuine "folk-songs" originated and loved by a stratum in our

American social life analogous to the peasants of Europe. The great danger is that nearly all record of a very interesting, if not intrinsically valuable product of the American musical church life will be lost.

The almost amusing result of this obscurity is the credit given to the negro race of the South for this class of music. The Jubilee songs, in so far as they have had their origin among the coloured people, are the direct offspring of the white man's " spiritual." Indeed many of the songs sung by them are "spirituals" borrowed from their white brethren, the rhythmical swing being somewhat emphasized. The themes of Dvorak's American Symphony are not Negro, therefore, but Caucasian, and the result more directly American than Dvorak himself knew. Foster, Hanby, and other popular song writers of the middle of the nineteenth century did not get their inspiration from the slaves, as has been stated on high authority, but from these " spirituals." I have before me a copy of a collection of the words of "spirituals" compiled by William Hanby, the father of B. R. Hanby, the author of "Darling Nellie Gray." The negroes were simply imitators, even in the minor strains that have been pathetically characterized as the cry of the sorrows of their captivity.

The number of these "spirituals" was large. I have one collection of words, published in Philadelphia in 1858, which contains over three hundred choruses alone. Different denominations and states had repertoires of their own, so that I have reason to believe there were thousands of them.

Some preacher or local leader had an inspiration in the furnace heat of a meeting and produced a new chorus that was connected with an old hymn. If it struck fire,

it was carried to the next camp-meeting, or caught up by the itinerant or presiding elder who sang it wherever he went and so it was widely introduced. As it was thus orally transmitted, little changes were often made in the melody until it met the needs of the popular consciousness. It then had its little day of use and finally dropped out, being replaced by a new one.

Speaking subjectively, like a higher critic, I should say that the "spirituals" originated in the old Scotch songs and English ballads brought over by the colonists. Many of them are decidedly Scotch in their absence of the seventh of the scale and the emphasis of the sixth. I am equally certain that later some of them were brought over from England by Methodist immigrants from Asbury onward. But there is nothing Scotch or English in the rhythmical momentum of these old choruses. That is characteristically American. Many of them adopted the tunes and parodied the words of American popular songs. Indeed the introduction to the large collection alluded to above urges "the salutary tendency of an attempt to redeem our best popular airs by adapting them to the songs of Zion." The editor also quotes with approval "the language of an old divine, Why, there are only seven or eight notes to all the tunes in the world, and they all belong to Jesus Christ; so that if the devil wants any fresh ones, he must make them.'"

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Some of these "spirituals" are sacred ballads and were sung by the preachers as solos. An itinerant who could sing solos was assured a double welcome and a double harvest of souls. There were a good many grace notes and slurred passing notes in their solos that it would be difficult to reproduce on a staff. They were frequently narratives of personal experience:

"Ye people, that wonder at me and my ways,
And oft with astonishment on me do gaze,
Come, lend your attention, and I will relate
My past exercises and my present state,"

and so on through eight stanzas.

Another favourite one was entitled "Christ in the Garden." It is a commingling of a description of Gethsemane and of the singer's conversion. The style of the twelve stanzas may be judged from the two which I quote:

"CHRIST IN THE GARDEN.

"While nature was sinking in stillness to rest,
The last beams of daylight shone dim in the west;
O'er fields by the moonlight, my wandering feet
Then led me to muse in some lonely retreat.

"While passing a Garden, I paused then to hear
A voice, faint and plaintive, from one who was there;
The voice of the suff'rer affected my heart,

In agony pleading the poor sinner's part,"

and so on for ten stanzas more. I well remember hearing an old local preacher sing all the twelve stanzas with great earnestness over forty years ago in the foothills of the Alleghanies. I reproduce two tunes to which these words were often sung, but the one I heard was to my boyish ears infinitely more pathetic than these seem to me now. I regret that my memory fails to reproduce it. I remember that it was minor and intensely sad, full of slurrings and quaverings. The melodies here given are characteristic of the major melodies then in use, but are possibly from secular sources, rather than of genuine spiritual" origin.

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I. In the Garden.

4

Arr. by E. S. L.

FINE.

.I.

{

While nature was sinking in

stillness to rest,

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The last beams of day-light shone dim in the west; D.C.-Then led me to muse in some lonely re-treat.

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O'er fields by the moonlight, my wan-der- ing feet

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D.C.

Arr. by E. S. L.

FINE.

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