With What to Sing? Adding Instruments or Going Acapella
“(The organ) is pleasing to almost every one of the society, excepting a few who retain their ancient prejudices, and who had rather hear this pleasing part of devotion performed by a small number of screaming voices, without order or decency, than have any tuned instrument as a help, however harmonious and agreable.” -The moderator of First Church Boston, 1785
“So we find determined efforts to get rid of the Old Way of Singing. The simplest way to abolish it was to install an organ…” -Nicholas Temperley
“There was too much drumming. You know, it’s supposed to be a service of the WORD.” -A UU congregant speaking to me after Sunday morning services.
This evolution from participation to performance has never been linear. A hundred years after the beginnings of the singing school movement our congregation in Concord, MA disbanded its choir in favor of congregational singing. In 1841 they had purchased a fancy new organ meant to provide the kind of accompaniment that could lead the whole congregation in singing together, without the need for a group of specialized singers helping out. Interest in the organ and congregational singing grew and participation in the choir declined, until the choir was disbanded in 1871. The minutes of the Annual Meeting that year noted:
The following complementary votes to the Singers were also passed: Voted that the thanks of the Parish be given to all those Singers who have long and faithfully served us in the choir, and that we cordially invite them to continue with us and help us in our congregational singing.
We’ve touched on some questions of worship music that are long resolved. So let’s venture into the history of one that’s still alive and well. When do musical instruments encourage and strengthen congregational singing and when do they replace it? Do musical instruments deepen the spiritual experience of a service or do they deaden it with shallow performance? Are some instruments “holier than thou,” or at least holier than the others?
In retrospect, it seems inevitable that once conservatives lost the chanting fight to hymns and lost the psalm fight to new lyrics, the prohibition on instruments was soon to go. Billings was the first to seed the idea of using instruments in his travels as the Johnny Appleseed of singing schools. He added instruments tactfully though, first with a simple pitch pipe to tune the chorus, and then with the bass viol. The stringed bass added a respectable few notes down low to keep the singing in tune. First Parish in Bedford, MA still has their 3-stringed bass instrument, purchased sometime between 1810 and 1840. Stephanie Upton of the Carlisle Historical Society said:
Concord, Bedford, and Carlisle all used viols in their services. As early as 1815, the Carlisle March Town Meeting contained a warrant article ‘to see if the town will buy a bass viol to be kept in the Meeting house for the purpose of aiding the singing.
The organ was introduced to our congregations hesitantly at first. The first church organ in New England was installed in King’s Chapel in 1714, long before the pitch pipes and Bass viols became popular, but that doesn’t mean the organ was accepted as liturgically sound. Thomas Brattle left it to the church in his will, but the congregation was so ambivalent about its presence that it sat outside the sanctuary for a long while, before they brought it inside for worship. And once they did, it remained the exception to the rule for decades to come. Historian Barbara Owen writes about the Puritan churches debating instruments and organs for most of the 1700s:
The volume of verbiage expended on this subject is, indeed, rather remarkable. Harvard students wrote papers on it and discussed it at their Commencements; eminent and not-so-eminent divines preached sermons and published tracts on it. Tempers waxed hot on occasions, and stubborn church members marched righteously out of the service when their minister took a position opposite to theirs. In the latter half of the eighteenth century an unidentified English gentleman offered £500 to any Puritan church which would obtain an organ and use it in their worship, but when the Brattle Square Church finally did decide to get an organ late in the century, one of its members, according to tradition, offered to give a sum equal to its price to the poor for the privilege of depositing the organ in Boston Harbor.
Many concerns were religious, arguing that the New Testament didn’t specifically approve instruments for worship. Cotton Mather concluded that God “rejects all He does not command in His worship” and “therefore, in effect, says to us, I will not hear the melody of thy organs.” What’s more interesting to me though, is the differing opinions on whether organs contributed to our stamped out community singing. The organ is just one example of musical instruments in worship, that like choirs, have been a double-edged sword for congregational singing.
While First Parish Concord later installed an organ in order to support congregational singing, not everyone agreed that organs were on Team Participation. Four years before Concord purchased that organ, The Western Christian Advocate (a Methodist paper) published an article in 1837, “Of the Spirit and Truth of Singing:”
Satan is ever watching to insinuate superstition and other foreign elements into the pure and simple worship of God. The organs, bass viols, flutes, and other instruments of music introduced into the public congregation, have of course, as they were designed by the performers, shut the mouths of the greater part of the congregation, so that they have neither part or lot in this portion of divine worship.
As early as 1785, the moderator of First Church Boston named the tension over singing with organ accompaniment, after attending a service in the remodeled meeting house:
This (music) was performed by the best masters in town, and, accompanied with the organ which we have introduced into the meeting, is a most delightful piece of musick, and is a very great help in singing. It is pleasing to almost every one of the society, excepting a few who retain their ancient prejudices, and who had rather hear this pleasing part of devotion performed by a small number of screaming voices, without order or decency, than have any tuned instrument as a help, however harmonious and agreable.’
The Moderator at First Church Boston was likely aware that when the church had solicited funds from its members to purchase this organ, one member donated the requested sum… to pay for the publication of an anti-organ tract.
The early Universalists had different and more varied roots than the Unitarians. Rev. David Johnson explains that “Universalists did not share the Congregational-Calvanist prejudice against non-biblically approved instruments in worship.” As early as 1792, John Murray’s church in Boston purchased an American-made organ. Johnson goes on to say “The Universalists were aggressively and celebratively musical in their worship from the beginning on these shores.”
How different were the Universalists? Well, Universalism co-evolved in different places and times, but one example of early Universalism hints at how far their origins were from the Puritans. Johnson writes about Johannes Kelpius (1673–1708):
Universalist, mystic, musician and hymn writer who settled with his small band of hermits on the Wissahickon in 1694… may have been the first in the americas to own an organ, and to accompany their hymn singing with instrumental music.
The organ, the pitch pipe, and the bass viol were all introduced in many places to support congregational singing and each of them faced resistance from advocates of congregational singing. I love to read these stories of church leaders both denouncing and advocating for organ music and what it means for those singing in the pews. It’s all so similar, almost verbatim to the complaints and appreciations I’ve heard for rock bands on the chancel.
In 2019, a survey of music programs at 468 UU congregations found that while only 25% reported using an organ. Nearly half reported having a band (drums, guitars, etc.) at least some of the time. The purpose of the organ and now the purpose of the rock band, much like the purpose of the choir, are still hanging in the balance between performance and participation. Some do both well and some lean stongly in one direction or another.
It feels too obvious to have to say it, but maybe the important thing for congregational singing isn’t whether we’re using a pitch pipe or rock band, but how we use them.
Once in college I visited an evangelical church in Boston led by a loud amplified band. Not only was I surrounded by other young people who showed at an early hour for a long service on Sunday morning, but all around me I could see community members having a spiritual experience, with their hands in the air and joyfully singing along. I’ve also visited UU congregations where the organ pipes blasted loudly and beautifully through the hymns, while most congregants looked down at their hymnals and mumbled along, as if we were at an organ concert disguised as a hymn sing. At that second congregation, I don’t think going back to bass viol accompaniment or adding a rock band would have made the difference. The difference is whether the music leaders see their job as leading the whole congregation in the music or playing to them. The instruments are powerful, but they are value-neutral. An organ, pitch pipe, rock band, or hand drum for that matter, can all be used to grow a culture of community singing or offer transcendent performance. If we’re lucky, and thoughtful, they can do both.
For more on “With What to Sing,” check out:
- Eighteenth-Century Organs and Organ Building in New England, by Barbara Owen. Link here
- AUUMM Survey Project Final Report, by Jason Shelton. 2019. Link here
- Congregational Singing, “of the spirit and the truth.” Western Christian Advocate. Dec 8, 183. Link here
- A Pilgrimage in Song: Unitarian and Universalist Hymnody: A history of Universalist and Unitarian hymn writers, hymns, and hymn books. by Rev. David A Johnson. 2016.
- Pilgrim’s Pride: A Forgotten New England Bass Lutherie Tradition Reportedly Was Born of a Jackknife and a Couple of Wood locks, by Erin Shrader. 2020. Link here
