The church music we know and love now as part of the Baroque and Classical periods has largely originated from great cathedrals and higher institutions, but as today we have our pop adaptations of church music (such as memory verses put to rap), so the ordinary parishes then had their own different music for the masses. So, today’s blog is on Anglican Church music in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
The Anglican Church
The Church of England was established at the time of Henry VIII when he sought a divorce from Catherine of Aragon and the Pope did not allow it. Henry set himself up as supreme head of the Church of England in 1534, and aside from a brief and bloody return to Catholicism with Mary I the monarch has been the head of this church. Since that time the Anglican Church has largely been based on compromise on a large range of beliefs, in order for everyone to behave uniformly, which strikes me as a bit of an oxymoron.
The parish music
With such a background it is not surprising that the music of the following centuries greatly varies from parish to parish, and was subject to a great amount of change over time as popular opinion altered. In the 1800s, church singing wasn’t authorised and was considered illegal, but because congregations approved it churches did it anyway. This was aided by the fact that rubrics (the documents defining what church was and wasn’t) talked in lengths about how the church was to look, but remained silent on how it was to sound. Therefore parishes could pick and choose what suited them.
What it sounded like:
Due to many of these congregations being illiterate, there is little documentation of how hymns developed or altered as it tended to be an oral tradition, passing from generation to generation and becoming slower and slower as a consequence of younger generations not knowing the words or tunes properly, which explains how slowly our congregation sings ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,’ composed in 1707.
Also, it is important to note that not everyone, in fact, no one in the country could afford to have Handel compose songs for their parish. Town musicians were little more than self-taught, but took it upon themselves to arrange music for the congregation, which resulted in tunes reminiscent to my year 11 attempts at arrangement. Parallel fifths and octaves, unresolved clashes... Since no music theory rules had been taught to them, this brought about rather jarring (but nonetheless enthusiastic) versions of music that had been popular in the towns, but didn't survive in memory quite as one would have hoped. Here is a clip of ‘Hark the Herald Sing’ as an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E07b1WaJyQ
What is music in churches for?
While we know that singing is an integral part of a church service in any part of the world, it is good to look at the reasons why. Various sources from the bible give instruction that singing is part of worship, for example Colossians 3:16, and also the entire book of Psalms is dedicated to singing as part of worshipping God. Singing often comes from an overflow of emotions, such as joy or sadness, and as Nicholas Temperley notes music can “move men’s spirits”. Therefore the role of music in church is to direct thoughts and heats to God in response to what he has done, which is what the Church of England has been doing for the past 200 years, and will probably continue to do for the next 200 years, albeit with a more tuneful ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’.
Further readings:
Scholes, Percy, et al. "Anglican parish church music." The Oxford Companion to Music. Ed. Alison Latham. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e288>.
Nicholas Temperley, Music of the English Parish Church, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). pp.1-4
