Music and the Wesleys (review)

Three generations of Wesleys helped shape musical and religious life in England. As composers, performers, and pioneers, they molded Methodism as a venue for musical excellence while promoting sacred as well as secular art music. As musical figures, however, the Wesleys remain obscure. Perhaps this is because they operated largely in opposition to their country's principal denomination, apart from its leading musical institutions, and outside of its capital city.

In a compelling collection of essays entitled Music and the Wesleys, editors Nicholas Temperley and Stephen Banfield reassert the Wesleys' place within music history. They draw together disparate essays in a vision of the Wesleys' musical, religious, literary, intellectual, and even entrepreneurial pursuits and influence across two countries and as many centuries. In short, they guide an exploration of John, both Charleses and two Samuels. (They also introduce, thankfully, a means to distinguish among dramatis personae surnamed Wesley.) And while they wield an editorial hand that is at times heavy—a point to which I will return—their handiwork is a welcome contribution to the modest yet persistent Wesley corpus. It is certain to benefit students and scholars interested in the many dimensions of Wesley studies as well as the wealth of first-rate music and music-making outside of England's foremost religious and musical institutions.

The conference "Music, Cultural History and the Wesleys" held at the University of Bristol in 2007 prompted this book, though Music and the Wesleys is not, strictly speaking, its proceedings. According to Temperley and Banfield, "the [book's] emphasis has shifted in the direction of greater concentration on music" (p. vii). As a result, five commissioned essays supplement eleven papers delivered at the conference. Additionally, John Nightingale's "Catalogue of Compositions by Charles Wesley the Younger" is tucked away in an appendix, further expanding the scope of the volume as a reference tool. Of its sixteen chapters, the first eight appear under the heading "Music and Methodism," and consider the eldest generation of well-known Wesleys; that is, brothers John and Charles. The two younger generations—Charles' sons (Charles the younger and Samuel) and grandson (Samuel Sebastian)—occupy the second half of the volume, "The Wesley Musicians."

In spite of its title, "Music and Methodism" is oriented less toward music per se than hymnology, print history, and the developmental stages of Methodism. These Wesleys were not inclined strongly toward music. Nevertheless, John advocated impassioned corporate singing: "Sing lustily and with a good courage," he once wrote. Charles fueled his brother's injunction, supplying thousands of hymn texts. In "Psalms and Hymns and Hymns and Sacred Poems: Two Strands of Wesleyan Hymn Collections," Robin A. Leaver considers hymnals produced by John and Charles. Of these, A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780) and A Collection of Psalms and Hymns for the Lord's Day (1784) were most influential. They were not used strictly as intended, however. Lord's Day hymns enjoyed extensive use Monday through Saturday. Such off-label use veiled their separate functions: Collection of Hymns for personal use and at public meetings and Hymns for the Lord's Day within the service. With this distinction restored, Leaver provides a fuller picture of Methodism as it emerged as an autonomous denomination from its birthplace within the Church of England.

Of the early Wesleyan hymnals, Hymns on the Lord's Supper (1745) is among the best known. In the essay "Eucharistic Piety in American Methodist Hymnody (1786-1889)," Geoffrey C. Moore tracks Lord's Supper hymns into the three largest American Methodist denominations of the nineteenth century. His observation of texts and tunes as they were preserved, abandoned, and restored reveals disregard for Wesleyan theology, especially as it concerns the Eucharist, among American Methodist communities even as they sustained John's call for vigorous congregational singing.

Essays concerned with Wesleys more familiar in musical circles appear in the second half of the volume. In...