When Colleges Sang: The Story of Singing in American College Life

1. College Singing amid the Puritan Culture, 1636–1700

1 College Singing amid the Puritan Culture, 1636–­1700 Puritan Influences, Harvard, and the Culture of Singing There was singing in Ameri­ can colleges. And despite the powerful cultural stereotypes of the Puritan founders as humorless, pleasure-­ hating religious zealots who opposed all forms of human enjoyment, Puritans sang. Seventeenth-­ century Harvard College existed in and was part of a sea of Puritan culture during most of that century, and thus much can be inferred about the nature of Harvard from studying specific elements of Puritan culture, like its music. Harvard was at the same time an instrument of Puritan culture and one of three important institutions (state, church, college) that were the foundation of the Puritan polity. Understanding how singing evolved at seventeenth-­ century Harvard requires us to determine something of the evolving Puritan attitude toward religious and secular uses of music. It also requires us to show how instrumental music may have connected with accepted Puritan standards of religious and social behavior. It leads us to examine the standing of music in Puritan society and whether it flourished or languished during the seventeenth century. It also requires us to probe the general significance of one of the most famous of Puritan publications, the Bay Psalm Book, formally known as The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre, and how it influenced college life. By examining the cultural context of singing in seventeenth-­century Massachusetts , we can infer much about the exchanges between the broader culture of singing as it evolved and the parallel evolution of the culture of singing within Harvard College. Understanding some of the specifics of how and when stu- 6 Chapter 1 dents showed interest in songs and singing (although admittedly the evidence is thin until the end of the century) gives a clearer picture of how college singing began in connection with collegiate functions. Scholars do not always agree on the role and functions that music played in Puritan life. The historian Percy Alfred Scholes refuted conventional wisdom of the somber Puritan, suggesting in his book The Puritans and Music in England and New England (1934) that Puritans actively participated in singing and other mu­ si­ cal activities. Although singing in church held closely to accepted restrictions , outside of church Puritans, he argued, enjoyed the social attractions of music and song. They sang and perhaps even danced.1 Another scholar, Cyclone Covey, took issue with this interpretation. Covey, who generally characterized Scholes as a Puritan apologist, argued that ­Scholes confused Anglican music for Puritan music. Covey was unequivocal. “In the first place,” he wrote, “secular music did not flourish among the Puritans. Not a single musician of any note, whose religion can be verified, in either England or America during the entire colonial period—composer, performer, or music printer—was a Puritan.” Furthermore, he declared that when “judged behavioristically , Calvinism was anathema to music, and music on every level, in church and out.”2 The historian Joyce Irwin acknowledged the differences between Scholes and Covey in her article “The Theology of ‘Regular Singing’” and suggested that the argument about whether Puritans contributed to the decline of music in church through intolerance versus inaction was less clear-­cut than either Covey or Scholes might like to admit.3 Irving Lowens, one of the most influential Ameri­ can music scholars, also agreed that the answer lay somewhere between the extremes and concluded that the Puritan attitude, while allowing for music, provided tight parameters of acceptable behavior. “So long as music was confined to singing the praises of God in the church or at home,” he argued, “the Puritan was one of its most enthusiastic partisans—if its performance conformed to his interpretations of the Scriptures.” As for secular music, Lowens described it as “lawful” and “admitted ,” but Puritans saw it as a dangerous toy with which to meddle.4 Little evidence exists to suggest that people of seventeenth-­century New England objected to music. They definitely disliked the use of elaborate music in the house of the Lord, but they believed there were appropriate times to sing and even to dance. Scholes argued that Puritans, as religious reformers, did not abandon their love of music; they simply focused more on the needs of build­ing College Singing amid the Puritan Culture, 1636–1700 7 a society, thus pushing music and arts to the periphery. As settlers populated the land and solidified government...