Music in the Bible and in the True Church
Part I-Music Examined by the Bible
There are three very important questions which we can answer by
scripture. First, is music moral? Yes. Is it a product of man's
behavior and beliefs? Yes. Can we show from the Bible that music is
moral? Yes. If music were amoral and neutral it would not be used in
Heaven as the book of Revelation tells us it will be. The vast
majority of Bible references to the words song, sang, singing, and
music are used to describe songs sung in praise to the Lord, in holy
and uplifting circumstances, songs offered up to the Lord with
heartfelt emotions, songs that are a sweetsmelling savour to God.
Israel made an offering to Joseph, who is a type of Christ in His
first advent, in Genesis 43. In this chapter Benjamin, “son of
sorrow” and “son of my right hand,” who was sent with his brothers
to Egypt during the famine, is also a type of Christ to be revealed
in power when the nation of Israel is restored and converted. Israel
did not know that the man to whom he was making the offering and
sending Benjamin was Joseph in Egypt.
Genesis 43:11 “And their father Israel said unto them, If it must be
so now, do this; take of the best fruits in the land in your
vessels, and carry down the man (who was Joseph) a present, a little
balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds.”
It is an example to us that this offering was made in spite of a
famine in the land. The Hebrew word for Israel's offering, the best
fruits, the “song” of the land, is zimrah. This is the first verse
of five in which the word is found. It is of special significance
then that zimrah also means melody or psalm (a psalm is a melody or
song accompanied by a stringed instrument). This is an example of
polysemy, that is, the same word having more than one meaning; the
meaning depends on the context. Therefore, in Psalms 81:2 we read:
“Take a psalm (zimrah), and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant
harp with the psaltery.” Psalms 98:5 reads: “Sing unto the LORD with
the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm (zimrah).” Isaiah
51:3 is a passage concerning the redemption of Israel: “For the LORD
shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he
will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden
of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving,
and the voice of melody” (zimrah). God in Amos 5:23, in anger,
lamenting and warning through His prophet Amos that Israel is
worshiping idols in unrighteousness, says: “Take thou away from me
the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody (zimrah) of
thy viols.”
A root word related to zimrah is zamar, which may mean either to
prune a vine or to strum a musical instrument with the fingers. This
word is found 45 times in 39 verses. It is another example of
polysemy in Hebrew. Polysemy is also seen often in English and other
languages. For example the word case may mean a matter needing
study, a person being treated by a physician, or an instance or
occurrence, as in case of bad weather. When we say plain we may mean
uncomplicated and simple, open to clear view, unadorned and not
beautiful, or a vast open space of ground, also relatively
unadorned. So we see that polysemic words are identical in spelling
and pronunciation and often also have more or less related meanings.
When David spoke his last words in II Samuel 23:l, he was called the
sweet psalmist of Israel. The Hebrew word for sweet psalmist is
zamiyr, which is related to zimrah and zamar and means metrical
singing accompanied by stringed instruments.
It is a wonderful thought that the word zimrah in all five verses
where it occurs is used in reference to offering, praise,
thanksgiving, and the melody of a psalm. There are parallels in
meaning in these different uses. Offering and sacrifice are parallel
to melody or psalms because both are worship. The relationship
between pruning and psalm singing, zimrah and zimrah, is this:
pruning creates order, beauty, and more fruit in an orchard, just as
Biblical music and worship produces order, beauty, and fruit in our
hearts. The order and beauty are inseparable; each follows from the
other and fruitfulness is a product of them. Israel pruned off the
best fruits, the song of the land, as a gift to Joseph, a type of
Christ. Our songs to the Lord should have Biblical words, Biblical
thoughts and understanding, Biblical instruments and harmony. They
should be joyful noise giving beauty and orderly meaning to our
hearts, which will bring the hand of the LORD upon us just as the
minstrel in II Kings brought the hand of the LORD upon Elisha. Since
music is truly a part of worship, it must be done in righteousness,
separate from the world and the world's idolatrous gods, to be
acceptable to Jehovah.
There are references in the Bible to song that make it clear that
there is both good music and bad music. We see a negative song in
Job's answer to Bildad, who had asked, like modern day mockers, “How
then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is
born of a woman? Job said in Chapter 30:8-10 “they were children of
fools, yea, children of base men: they were viler than the earth.
And now am I their song, yea, I am their byword. They abhor me, they
flee far from me, and spare not to spit in my face.” God gives the
definitive answer to Bildad in the New Testament: man can be
justified by grace through faith.
Psalm 69 is a Messianic passage which speaks of the sufferings of
Christ and verse 12 shows that drunkards reproached the Lord with
song when he was crucified. That song had to be an evil one. Verses
7-12 read: “Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath
covered my face. I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an
alien unto my mother's children. For the zeal of thine house hath
eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are
fallen upon me. When I wept, and chastened my soul with fasting,
that was to my reproach. I made sackcloth also my garment; and I
became a proverb to them. They that sit in the gate speak against
me; and I was the song of the drunkards.”
Ecclesiastes 7:5 speaks of a song sung by fools: “It is better to
hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of
fools.”
Daniel 3:7 speaks of music used in the profane worship of
Nebuchadnezzar. “Therefore at that time, when all the people heard
the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all
kinds of music, all the people, the nations, and the languages, fell
down and worshipped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king
had set up.”
So we see that the Bible marks men by their music, not only by the
type of music but by the attitude and direction of the heart. It
must always have great spiritual significance and must affect its
hearers. In II Kings 3:15-16 it affected Elisha who said: “But now
bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played,
that the hand of the LORD came upon him. And he said, Thus saith the
LORD, Make this valley full of ditches.” Through the music of the
minstrel, which is a type communication in itself, Elisha was
enabled by God to do good for the sake of Jehosephat, King of Judah.
Both music and language were given to man by God. Music itself is a
language, a special form of communication. The word muse, from which
it is derived, speaks of language and thinking. Scripture was meant
to be read and thought about and sung as well. The Hebrew Bible is
song. It was inspired by the Holy Ghost with universal principles of
music composition as well as metrical structure in the words He
gave. It was meant to be sung aloud to plucked-string accompaniment.
Not only the Psalms and songs of the Hebrew Bible are to be sung but
the entire Old Testament.
We know the Masoretic Hebrew text has not only vowel points to
indicate what vowels follow a square consonant, but also accents
called te' amim. These are a system of 19 graphemes that, according
to the late Suzanne Haik-Vantoura, indicate musical notation. In
1976 Haik-Vantoura deciphered the musical meaning of the te' amim
and used them to write what she believes is the musical sound of
over 5000 Old Testament verses. She made her decipherment based on
two assumptions. First, the te`amim are both musical and exegetical,
but the musical function is primary;
second the te`amim and the consonantal text go together and cannot
be separated.
In every case music based on her system was melodic and coherent and
made a proper tune or song. And the nature of the melody in each
case fit with the mood and purpose of each particular passage or
Psalm. The title of the book describing her research is The Music of
the Bible Revealed: The Deciphering of a Millenary Notation. The
work is also described on a web site by John Wheeler,
http://www.rakkav.com/kdhinc/index2.htm. At the bottom of the first
page of this site is a link which will play Psalm 46 as arranged and
recorded by her methods. Here is Genesis 1:1 as it would have
appeared in the Hebrew Masoretic text with vowel points and accents
or te' amim, the square dot soph pasuq at the left to indicate the
end of the verse, reading right to left.
The 19 Hebrew graphemes which are interspersed among the square
consonants and denote musical notation and accents
These 19 “musical accents” are written above and below the Hebrew
consonants. Graphemes under the line of text represent degrees of
the scale. Graphemes above the lines represent melodic ornaments of
one to three notes on the syllables they mark. Their pitch is always
relative to that of the preceding sublinear sign. Some of them
represent more than one musical value each They are interspersed
among the "vowel-points," which likewise are found above and below
the Hebrew consonants. Even Psalm titles and words such as “selah,”
which means “weigh this,” have the accents.
The melodies preserved by the te`amim form a complete system of
music and words. This indicates that the melodies and words were
written by the same authors at the same time and transmitted
together accurately. The musical system was part of the “fence
around the Torah” that kept it free of error. The melodic and
metrical structure of the Hebrew Bible confirms the essential unity
of each of the biblical books. The melodic system fits the harp
tuning and playing techniques of Old Testament times.
The Chief Rabbi of France, Jacob Kaplan, gave his full Rabbinic
authority to Haik-Vantoura's work. He was surprised and disappointed
that other Rabbis did not accept it and essentially turned their
backs on her work. One Rabbi in the United States said that if her
music was not the music of the Temple it should be. But numerous
other Rabbis and Christian Hebrew “scholars,” such as James D. Price
of Tennessee Temple, have rejected it. Some fundamentalists,
including Dr. Noah Hutchings of Southwest Radio Church, have
endorsed it and believe it is a genuine musical rendering of Old
Testament passages.
It is beyond our scope to describe the details of Haik-Vantoura's
deciphering of these musical notes, but one very important
conclusion follows if her research is correct. It is this
consequence which has led to much of the opposition. If she is
right, then it must be that the vowel points and accents go back to
the beginning of the Old Testament and were not invented by the
Tiberian Masoretes in 600 A.D. or by Moses ben Asher in 900 A.D. The
Old Testament could be vocalized and sung from the beginning. David
sang the statutes of the Law in Psalm 119:54 so that the Law also
was in musical form. Psalm 90 shows that Moses was a psalmist long
before David.
Virtually all Old Testament “scholars” who favor the critical text
of the Bible and revisions from it, from Elias Levita in 1527, to
Christian David Ginsburg in 1885, and down to Norman Snaith and
James D. Price today, fervently oppose the idea that the vowel
points are ancient and claim that they were invented by the Tiberian
Masoretes. The Catholic Church has made the same claim since the
reformation. It wished to accuse the reformers of accepting an
orally or traditionally transmitted Jewish tradition from the
Levites and scribes, i.e. a non-pointed consonantal Hebrew text with
no indication for the ordinary person of vowels or vocalization,
while at the same time they rejected the traditions of the hierarchy
of the Roman Church in favor of Sola Scriptura.
Of course the Baptists, who flourished before the beginning of the
Roman Church, followed the principle of Sola Scriptura in deciding
doctrine and practice long before the Reformation. The great Baptist
theologian, Dr. John Gill, in 1767 made a convincing case for the
antiquity of the vowel points and accents in A Dissertation
Concerning the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language, Letters, Vowel
Points, and Accents. He showed from scripture that all the Hebrew
people must have been capable of vocalizing and remembering the
words God gave to them from the beginning, and so they had to have
vowel points to do so. John Moncrief took the same point of view in
1833 in An Essay on the Antiquity and Utility of the Hebrew Vowel
Points.
But if Haik-Vantoura's work had never been done we still would know
from the Scripture that the Hebrew people had a means of vocalizing
and understanding the Bible from the beginning. In Exodus 24 Moses,
after sprinkling the blood on the altar, “took the book of the
covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All
that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.” In Deuteronomy
27 Moses was speaking to all the people of Israel when he said “And
it shall be on the day when ye (2nd person plural, nominative case)
shall pass over Jordan unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth
thee…when ye be gone over Jordan, that ye shall set up these stones,
which I command you (2nd person plural, objective case) this day.”
When they had built the altar which God commanded “thou shalt write
wpon the stones all the words of this law very plainly.” It is not
reasonable that all the people would not have been able to see what
was written very plainly, that is with vowel points and accents. If
the vowels were not present from the beginning, their invention
after two millenia would have been an addition to the word of God;
the Jews would not have allowed it.
The idea that music is neutral and amoral began in Christian
churches in the late 1960's and in the early 1970's during a period
that gave our country a tremendous, decadent uproar from the
Woodstock generation and its music and sinful behavior. Contemporary
music, both secular contemporary and so called contemporary
Christian, also began at that time. And it was related to and
parallel to the great increase in ungodliness. In recent years even
some fundamentalists have said the church needs to sing the world's
contemporary songs to attract crowds, to be more like the world just
to present the gospel.
But that idea raises a second question. What is music for in the
church? It is directed to God above for His praise and glory; it is
not meant to reach out to the world, although the world does have
the opportunity to respond to the music, good or bad, that it hears
from churches. The world also has attempted to put its own music in
churches. We have aready seen, at the beginning of our study that in
Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah, and Amos gifts or offerings to the Lord,
the best fruits, and melody are closely related. That means that
music is for worship by believers. What does the New Testament say
about the use of music? In Ephesians 5:19 we read “Speaking to
yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and
making melody in your heart to the Lord.” That means we speak to
ourselves, fellow believers, in song, but to the world we preach the
Gospel. Preaching the word, not singing, is God's plan for salvation
of sinners and evangelism. Colossians 3:16 says, again speaking to
the church, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all
wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” In
Hebrews 2:12 we read: “Saying, I will declare thy name unto my
brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.”
The believer's music is for worship of God. These verses are not
about evangelism but about the edification and strengthening of the
church, and separating it from the world. They do not admonish us to
join with the world's habits.
In fact, the one place where God's people cannot sing is in Babylon,
in the world. Psalm 137:1-4 “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat
down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps
upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried
us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us
required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How
shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land?” How can we sing
the LORD'S song in a strange, contemporary land which requires of us
a song and mirth for “experience” and entertainment?. There is a
distinct difference between Babylon and the Church. Sinful Babylon
can not worship God with voice or instruments.
Another important reason for music in worship, and this also is for
believers, is to memorize the word of God, to hide it in our hearts
for spiritual warfare. In Deuteronomy 31:19 the Lord commanded Moses
to write a song, the Lord's song, for the children of Israel, not
for their pagan neighbors. “Now therefore write ye this song for
you, and teach it the children of Israel: put it in their mouths,
that this song may be a witness for me against the children of
Israel.” In verses 21 and 22 we read: “And it shall come to pass,
when many evils and troubles are befallen them, that this song shall
testify against them as a witness; for it shall not be forgotten out
of the mouths of their seed: for I know their imagination which they
go about, even now, before I have brought them into the land which I
sware. Moses therefore wrote this song the same day, and taught it
the children of Israel.”
God could have given Moses only words or poetry, but instead gave
him a song to teach as well as to write. If music is neutral God
would not have used it here; God is not neutral about His own
teaching which was given in song. The language of song or poetry is
more easily remembered than prose. You know that all children sing
the alphabet before they say it, and it is the singing of the simple
song with 7 syllables per line which makes that possible.
Another instance of songs being used for memorization of God's word
is seen when David said in Psalms 119:54 “Thy statutes have been my
songs in the house of my pilgrimage.” Memorization is seen in verse
55 “I have remembered thy name, O LORD, in the night, and have kept
thy law.”
There is only one New Testament reference to salvation in close
temporal relation to singing. Paul and Silas sang and prayed at
midnight, and I believe that their songs and prayer, unlike
contemporary music, contained plenty of the Gospel and a prayer for
the salvation of the jailer and the inmates. The singing of Psalms
is mentioned in Acts, and they may well have sung Psalms, but their
purpose in singing and praying was not to get the jailer to join in
with them in singing Psalms. Nor was it to sing the songs the jailer
would have sung. Rather it was the miracle of an earthquake and the
escape of the prisoners and Holy Ghost conviction in the jailer
which made him ask “What must I do to be saved?” They then preached
to him in Acts 16:31 “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou
shalt be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of
the Lord, and to all that were in his house.
The third question is whether we may accompany song with musical
instruments. The Campbellites and Primitives say we can't. Again we
turn to what the Bible has to say. The New Testament has some
important references to instruments. The Old Testament has many, and
the entire Bible speaks of and points to Jesus Christ. There are
many Messianic passages in the Psalms and in the rest or the Old
Testament, which were meant to be sung and were often accompanied by
harps, horns, and tabrets. The very word Psalm means a sacred poem
accompanied by the voice or instrument.
Psalms 6:1 “To the chief Musician on Neginoth upon Sheminith, A
Psalm of David. O LORD, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither
chasten me in thy hot displeasure.” Neginoth means a poem set to
music and played on a stringed instrument. Sheminith means an 8
stringed harp.
Psalms 22, written to the chief musician, is clearly Messianic and
speaks of the Lord Jesus “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken
me?” It continues in verse16: For dogs have compassed me: the
assembly of the wicked have enclosed me: they pierced my hands and
my feet.
17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
In I Chronicles 25:6 we read of horns, harps, cymbals, psalteries
used for services in the house of the LORD: “All these were under
the hands of their father for song in the house of the LORD, with
cymbals, psalteries, and harps, for the service of the house of God,
according to the king's order to Asaph, Jeduthun, and Heman.”
In II Chronicles 7 the Temple had just been completed and fire had
fallen and consumed the burn offering and sacrifices and the glory
of the LORD had filled the temple so that the priests could not
enter. In verse 6 we read: “And the priests waited on their offices:
the Levites also with instruments of musick of the LORD, which David
the king had made to praise the LORD, because his mercy endureth for
ever, when David praised by their ministry; and the priests sounded
trumpets before them, and all Israel stood.” The instruments of
musick are said here to be “of the LORD.”
Musical instruments used before preaching are detailed in I Samuel
10:5 “After that thou shalt come to the hill of God, where is the
garrison of the Philistines: and it shall come to pass, when thou
art come thither to the city, that thou shalt meet a company of
prophets coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a
tabret, and a pipe, and a harp, before them; and they shall
prophesy,” that is they shall preach.
In the New Testament in Ephesians 5:19 we read “Speaking to
yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and
making melody in your heart to the Lord.” The Greek psalmos again
means a sacred poem accompanied with the voice or instrument as it
did in the Old Testament. Making melody in Greek is psallo which
means, to pluck, pull, cause to vibrate by touching, to twang the
strings of a musical instrument so that they vibrate, to play a
stringed instrument, to play the harp. Some say that making melody
in your hearts means to do it silently in your mind. Nonsense! If
that is so then singing must also be in your hearts and silent.
Paul gave the church in I Corinthians 14 specific directions for
worship, what is allowed for edification of believers and what is
not. Verse 6 reads: “Now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with
tongues, what shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either
by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine?
7 And even things without life giving sound, whether pipe or harp,
except they give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known
what is piped or harped?
8 For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare
himself to the battle?
9 So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be
understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak
into the air.
There is an unmistakable connection between music and language and
understanding in verse 15: “What is it then? I will pray with the
spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing
with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also. He
continues in verse 26: “How is it then, brethren? when ye come
together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a
tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be
done unto edifying.” So we see from this passage and from Ephesians
5:19, which speaks of making melody, that instruments, stringed
instruments, were used in the church in Paul's day.
The last book of the New Testament is the Revelation of Jesus Christ
and is certainly written to the church, both on earth and in
eternity. It is not symbolic, but is to be taken literally, just as
is the rest of the Bible. It mentions the use of the harp three
times. The four and twenty elders of Revelation represent both Old
and New Testament saints, and they used harps when they sang the new
song before the Lamb. The 144,000 redemed from the earth also played
the harp before the angels and elders.
Revelation 2:5 And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not:
behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath
prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.
6 And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four
beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been
slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven
Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
7 And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that
sat upon the throne.
8 And when he had taken the book, the four beasts (these are angels)
and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every
one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the
prayers of saints.
9 And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the
book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast
redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue,
and people, and nation;
Revelation 14:1 And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount
Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his
Father's name written in their foreheads.
2 And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and
as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers
harping with their harps:
3 And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before
the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song
but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed
from the earth.
Revelation 15:2-3 “And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with
fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over
his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand
on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. And they sing the song
of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great
and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are
thy ways, thou King of saints.” This could be the song God gave to
Moses in Deuteronomy 31:19
If the use of instruments is worldly God would not speak of them as
being used by His saints in Heaven to sing a new song. They would
not be called “of God.” God does not approve the appearance of evil
on earth and will not allow evil in Heaven. His will is done in
Heaven. Clearly the Bible allows use of instruments in the church.
We should illustrate now some of the instruments used in Bible
times, including the Harp of David. These will show how the
Israelites in Babylonian captivity were able to hang their harps on
the willows, something that could not be done with a modern pedal
harp which has 47 strings and weighs 90 lbs.
A modern reproduction of the Harp of David, made by David Michael in
Hawaii, 11"w. by 22"h. by 2"d., 10 strings. Davidic harps were small
and portable and were often held on the shoulder with a leather
strap, plucked with a pick like a guitar.
http://www.flex.com/~davidhs/harp/
Hebrew coin of 132 A.D. showing a Davidic harp Some of these harps
had a soundboard of leather and were therefore ancestors of the
banjo.
http://www.flex.com/~davidhs/harp/
The ancient Etruscan Harp here and the Hebrew kinnowr date at least
as far back as the first Temple period. Notice the guitar style
construction with floating bridge and the double sound hole.
http://www.flex.com/~davidhs/harp/
Ancient Hebrew Kinnowr or Harp
A Rabbinical prophecy states that the kinnowr will be heard in
Jerusalem before the coming of the Messiah.
http://www.flex.com/~davidhs/harp/
Small, portable Celtic lap harp of the type used in the middle ages,
this one made recently by Jay Witcher, has a hollow box with
soundboard and sound holes. The vibration of the strings is
amplified by the soundboard just as with the Harp of David. It is a
forerunner of the modern pedal harp.
harpdrag@harpanddragon.com
Psaltery
Psalm 33:1 Rejoice in the LORD, O ye righteous: for praise is comely
for the upright.
2 Praise the LORD with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and an
instrument of ten strings.
3 Sing unto him a new song; play skillfully with a loud noise.
http://www.sumerauer.de/early_patches/dokumentation/english/psalter.htm
An autoharp, very much like the psaltery.
http://home.fuse.net/glbaker/lapharp.html
Modern acoustic guitar
Sound is produced by vibration of strings attached to a spruce
soundboard and amplified by the soundboard. The same is true of the
Harp of David, the Psaltery, the Celtic harp, the autoharp, and
themodern pedal harp.
http://www.collingsguitars.com/dreadnoughts-D2H.htm
The modern pedal harp, the latecomer, invented 1810
It also depends on strings attached to a hollow body with a
soundboard, just like all the other stringed instruments. The pedals
change the pitch of the strings in the same way that a capo changes
keys on a guitar, a metal slide changes pitch on a dobro, or a pedal
changes keys on a pedal steel guitar.
The harpsichord grew out of the psaltery and was invented about
1400. It reached its fullest development between 1600 and 1700. The
pianoforte, or loud piano, was invented in 1709, but it did not
become the modern piano until 1823. The organ is mentioned 3 times
in the Old Testament in Genesis and Job, but it was almost certainly
a system of pipes through which air was pumped by bellows, much like
the bagpipe. Organs of this type were known in Europe about 800 A.D.
They were small and portable. The modern organ with keyboard, pedal
and pipes with stops (the stops made it possible to selectively keep
some pipes from sounding) did not come into being until about 1500.
If anyone ever tells you that that the music of the church must be
classical and that the piano and organ are superior to the guitar
and banjo and dobro, remind them of how much closer the guitar is in
construction, volume, tone, expression, and feeling to the Davidic
harp than the piano and organ can ever be. After all, the Davidic
harp was played with a pick with the right hand while the left
damped those strings which were not to be heard at a particular
time, very much as a guitar is played. The KJV translators,
completely faithful to the texts they translated, were familiar with
the Davidic and Celtic harps, the guitar, the psaltery, harpsichord,
and small pipe organs. But they never heard a modern pedal harp or
piano. They never heard Handel's Messiah, which was written in 1742.
If anyone tries to tell you that the guitar or banjo is associated
with the honky tonk, let them know that the piano was used in houses
of ill repute in Memphis in the 1920's at the beginning of the jazz
age. Silent Night was written in 1818 by Franz Gruber on a guitar
and in a church, more than 100 years before the music of Jimmie
Rodgers and 130 years before Hank Williams.
Part II-Early Music in the Roman Church
Pope Gregory I introduced the Gregorian chant to the Catholic Church about 600 ad. Gregorian chant in Catholic ligurgy has:1. No melody and a very restricted range of notes, less than an octave
2. No rhythm or poetic form
3. Is usually sung in minor keys
4. Is sung by the priests or monks only, in the mass, and lay participation was not expected.
Catholics often used hidden choirs in a balcony behind the congregation to produce a mysterious or numinous effect, a form of religion lacking the power thereof.
Part III-Music Among the Baptists
From 1720-1780 psalms predominated in singing and were at first sung in unison without parts or harmony after the fashion of a decree given by John Calvin. Calvin got this idea from Augustine. It was another carry over, along with infant baptism, from the Catholic Church. Many at the Council of Trent in the counter-reformation had opposed harmony in singing in the Mass. In Massachusetts, Cotton Mather, John Cotton, and many other Puritan theologians followed Calvin's practices in the early Psalm tunebooks. Gradually, however, people in the congregation began to add grace note ornamentation to the Psalm singing. Eventually New England composers, such as William Billings, introduced counterpoint to their compositions. In counterpoint several independent melodies sung by different persons are interwoven in such a way as to produce the overall effect of harmony, but a distinctive American harmony with some few dissonances was the result.
Because of the scarcity and cost of books in the early days, only the song leader had one, and he “lined out” the song for the congregation by singing the first line after which the congregation repeated it. But there was too much freedom for improvisation and unauthorized notes sung by various people in the crowd. So the question became which rule would be sung by, what notes and what harmony. How could the members find a note easily and sing it properly with the least training, so that all could participate in the songs. Active participation in worship is a Baptist distinctive. Shaped notes were invented for the purpose of making it possible for large numbers of people to be quickly taught to sing correctly in parts for harmony, to the edification of all. Each note had a different shape and the proper tone or pitch could be recognized by the shape of the note rather than by its position on the lines and spaces.
From the time of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth, about 1600, a primitive shape note scale of 8 notes was adopted, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, ut. A very similar system was standardized in 1879 by Joseph Aitkin of Philadelphia as do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. But for a long time between 1600 and 1879 a simplified system of four shaped notes was used for the 8 note scale fa, sol, la, fa, sol la, mi, fa. John Tufts in 1721 began using letters written above the notes as substitutes for the shaped notes for singing psalm tunes. The letter of each note was the first letter of the note such as m for mi. The ninth edition of the Bay Psalm Book had the initials of the four note symbol printed under the staff. Thomas Walter in 1721 wrote a book, grounds and rule of musick, which made the symbol for fa a right triangle, for sol a circle, for mi a diamond, and for la a rectangle. These same symbols are used today for those notes in our songbook. Shape notes cannot be pentecostal since they were in use 300 years before pentecostals existed. At this time about 1725 singing schools began to be held in communities and churches in New England and the movement here reached its peak about 1775. In 1798 William Little in New York and William Smith in Philadelphia wrote a singing school instruction book, The Easy Instructor, using the four note fa, sol, la, mi system.
Many of the shape note songs from the earliest times were fuging tunes. In a fugue a subject is announced in one voice or part and then developed musically in strict order by the other voices. Row, Row, Row Your Boat, as commonly sung in elementary school and known as a round, is actually a fuging tune. These songs have parts which enter one after the other in a regular fashion in the verse or chorus. Fuging is imitative counterpoint. One of the greatest fuging tunes, Northfield, is a round. This song came from a poem of 1701 by Isaac Watts. It was in common meter, which we will shorly define and illustrate. The tune was written by Jeremiah Ingalls of Boston in 1800. The subtitle to Northfield, which speaks of the second coming of the Lord, came from a portion of John 1:51 “I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open.”
How long, dear Saviour, O how long
Shall this bright hour delay?
Fly swift around, ye wheels of time,
And bring the promised day.
From the third heaven, where God resides,
That holy, happy place,
The new Jerusalem comes down,
Adorned with shining grace.
The God of glory down to men
Removes his blest abode;
Men, the dear object of his grace,
And he the living God.
The first distinctively American psalmodist and hymn writer was William Billings. Born in Boston in 1746, he was a tanner by trade and a friend of Paul Revere and John Adams. In 1778 he published a compilation of about 120 of his own hymns as The New-England Psalm-Singer. Paul Revere engraved the frontispiece to this book, and it showed a leader and a group of six men sitting around a table singing from tunebooks. On the title page appeared the words “never before published.” Several of the songs were fuging tunes. His most famous hymns were Chester, David's Lamentation, and When Jesus Wept. Billings strongly defended the fuging tune and made it an American music form.
After the Revolutionary war singing schools spread to the South via the Shennandoah Valley and the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road and took permanent root here from Southern Ohio and Kentucky to Florida and the deep South. These schools quickly produced a population of people capable of singing parts or harmony by reading shaped notes with very little instruction and this greatly improved the beauty of congregational singing. Men sang the tune and the bass; women sang harmony. Remember that many of the churches were in remote wilderness areas, had no organ or piano, and so had to rely on the human voice for harmony. Usually there was no choir, and everyone joined in the singing. The melodies of many of the old hymn tunes were pentatonic, that is they used only five notes out of a possible 8, do, re, mi, sol, and la. Amazing Grace is like this; many bluegrass songs are also pentatonic. The use of the pentatonic scale is of Celtic or Scottish origin. The singing schools became social as well as religious gatherings. They were predominantly, but not exclusively, Baptist.
About 1800 John Hubbard, professor at Dartmouth College, and Joshua Cushing in Salem, Massachusetts began to favor the European “art songs” of Handel and Bach. Their musical heros were European and Handel was foremost. Hubbard founded the Handel Society at Dartmouth. They advocated that Billings and his fuging tunes be forgotten. They favored a more “scientific” European harmony which had fewer dissonant notes but was much less vigorous and ingenious than early American counterpoint. Hubbard's grandson, John S. Hubbard, was a Unitarian. In the 1830's in Boston the brothers Lowell and Timothy Mason began to oppose the use of shaped notes and advocated round notes. Here the pitch of tone of the note in the scale was found from knowledge of and inspection of the line or space on which the round note appeared. Prolonged musical training was needed to do this. Shaped notes were put down and called dunce notes. Fuging tunes were despised. Lowell Mason had been trained as an organist in an Episcopalian church in Savannah, Georgia. He favored the German art song which used all 8 notes of the scale, was classical in feeling, and had women sing the tune and men the harmony. Timothy Mason travelled to Cincinnati about 1836 and there also began to oppose the use of shaped notes. These men were New School Presbyterians, liberal in doctrine compared to the Baptists. For example, they favored the moral influence theory of the atonement over the orthodox satisfaction theory. A Presbyterian newspaper, The Cincinnati Journal, helped their opposition. The campaign against shape notes was an integral part of the unfortunate triumph of 19th century New England culture, favored by missionaries and “intellectuals” who were influenced by Unitarian Transcendentalism, a culture with beliefs very different from those of 17th and 18th century New England. The success of round notes in Ohio and the Western Reserve in Northeast Ohio was a triumph over a Western frontier culture regarded as inferior by the New Englanders. http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/hymn102400.html. But the South clung to its old familiar shape notes and fuging tunes for another 150 years.
The most widely used shape note books in the South before the War Between the States were the Southern Harmony by William Walker, which came out in 1835 and sold 600,000 copies by 1860, and the Sacred Harp by B. F. White, published in 1844. These men were Baptists, both grew up in Fairforest Baptist Church near Union, SC, and were brothers-in-law. The singers who sang this music, both then and now, did not use the “trained voice” techniques of European opera. Instead they sang simply and without vibrato and strove to avoid calling attention to themselves by vocal techniques.
The words to Amazing Grace or New Britain were written as a poem by John Newton in the 1700's, but it was not a song until about 1831. It was then universally called New Britain, which was the name of the Scottish pentatonic fiddle tune to which it was set. It first appeared in a book called the Virginia Harmony, published in 1831 in Harrisonburg, VA, by James Carrell of Winchester, VA. But many people give credit to William Walker for setting it to music, and it was included in the first editon of the Southern Harmony. Amazing Grace did not appear in any Methodist hymnal until 1940 and was not in any Episcopalian hymnal until 1960. These folks did not want to call themselves wretches, as John Newton, the repentant slave trader who wrote the words, was willing to call himself.
Many of the songs in the Southern Harmony and Sacred Harp were songs of Isaac Watts and were found in Jesse Mercer's book, Mercer's Cluster of Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Mercer was a convert of Abraham Marshall, son of the Separate Baptist, Daniel Marshall, who had come to the Carolinas from Connecticut and who knew Valentine Wightman. Many of the songs used in the camp meetings of the early 1800's were from the Southern Harmony or Sacred Harp. Several of William Billings' famous tunes were included in these books as well as fuging tunes such as “Northfield,” “Montgomery,” “Sherburne,” and “Edom.”
The line of descent of these shape note song books down to our day can easily be traced. Henry Funck, a Mennonite bishop, came to Pennsylvania from Switzerland in 1719 to escape religious persecution. The spread of the Mennonites and shape note singing took the same path as the Separate Baptists down the Philadelphia Wagon Road in the Shennandoah Valley to the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Georgia, so it is not surprising that the two most popular shape note books came from men who had both grown up in a Separate Baptist Church at Union, SC, Fairforest Baptist Church, William Walker and B. F. White.
1. Joseph Funk of Singer's Glen near Harrisonburg in the Valley of Virginia wrote 1815-1850. He was the son of Henry Funk and Barbara Showalter, who in turn was an ancestor of A. J. Showalter. His grandfather was Bishop Henry Funck. In 1847 Joseph Funk established a hand printing press in his log springhouse at Singers Glen which was the first Mennonite printing house in the United States. Funk had great success collecting songbooks, revising sacred melodies, and conducting singing schools. He and his sons started many singing schools in at least eleven counties in Virginia. He compiled a hymnbook which after several editions became the Harmonia Sacra about 1840.
2. Annanias Davison, Harrisonburg, 1815-1850.
3. William Walker and B. F. White, Baptists at Union, SC, who were mentioned above, wrote 1835 to about 1860. William Walker became songleader at the First Baptist Church of Spartanburg, SC.
4. Aldine S. Kieffer, grandson of Funk, was a p-o-w in Union prison camps, and in the 1860's wrote many songs with a colleague named Ephraim Ruebush, who had married Joseph Funk's granddaughter. They established the Virginia Normal Music School.
5. B. C. Unseld of Shennandoah College in Dayton, VA wrote in the 1880's. Kieffer and Unseld wrote the beautiful “Twilight is Falling.”
6. A. J. Showalter published shape note songs in Dalton, GA in the 1890's. He wrote the beloved song, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”
7. James D. Vaughn published many small paper back shape note books from 1900 to 1925. He was trained at the Ruebush-Kieffer Normal School and his style resembled that of Showalter. Vaughan had travelling quartets on the road as early as 1910 to help sell his books, and also put his quartets on radio before 1920. He started the Vaughan School of music in 1911 in Lawrenceburg, TN. In 1921 he started the first Southern based Record Company, “Vaughan Phonograph Records.” Vaughan established the first radio station in the state of Tennessee, WOAN, in 1922, also in Lawrenceburg, to broadcast gospel music. This station was later sold to a Chicago insurance company and became WSM. Country music came along about 1922-25 with Jimmie Rogers and also the Carter family. But the Carter family sang as much gospel as it did the decent, old-time country music. The Grand Ole Opry began in 1927, broadcast over WSM. Country music has been changed over the last 40 years by the same contemporary trends which have infiltrated Southern Gospel music.
8. Adger M. Pace, born in Pelzer, SC, was taught by Vaughn and A. J. Showalter and became an editor and writer for Vaughan.
9. Virgil O. Stamps and J. R. Baxter were taught by Vaughn, and Stamps worked for Vaughan until he formed the Stamps-Baxter publishing company and Stamps-Baxter quartet so familiar to us.
There is also a direct line of descent of shaped note fuging tunes. All use the fugue or imitative counterpoint in stanza or chorus or both. We can easily give a long, but still partial, list of them in chronological order from 1790 to 1940:
Justin Morgan's “Montgomery,” 1790 (words by Isaac Watts)
Jeremiah Ingalls' “Northfield,” Boston,1800
William Billings' “Bear Creek,”1778, “Rose of Sharon,” 1780, “David's Lamentation,” 1800
Stephen Jenks' “Evening Shade,” 1805, words written by the Baptist preacher John Leland
Colton's “Ninety-Fifth,” written 1813 with Isaac Watts' words “When I can read my title clear to mansions in the skies”
Jesse Mercer's “Lord In The Morning” of 1823, from Mercer's Cluster
William Walker's “Jerusalem” of 1832 with Johns Cennick's words “Jesus my all to heav'n is gone, He whom I fix my hopes upon”, and “Alabama” from the Southern Harmony of 1835
John Masengale's “Mount Zion” of 1844, in Georgia, with words from Charles Wesley's “O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing”
E. J. King's “Gospel Trumpet” of 1844, from Mercer's Cluster
B. F. White's “The Enquirer” of 1844 with Isaac Watts' words “I'm not ashamed to own my Lord, Or to defend his cause”
J. T. White's “Edgefield” of 1844 with John Newton's words “How Tedious and Tasteless the Hours”
J. H. Hall's “In The Sweet By and By,” 1850
P. P. Bliss's “It Is Well With My Soul,” 1876
J. E. Rankin's “God Be With You Till We Meet Again,” 1880
Tillit Teddlie's “Heaven Holds All To Me,” 1885, which Preacher Buck Huntley from Middle Fork in NC loved to sing in our day at Tabernacle Baptist Church
A. J. Showalter's “Leaning On The Everlasting Arms,” 1887
D. S. Warner's “I Know My Name Is There,” 1893
James H. Fillmore's “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth” of 1893, with words from Job 19:25
Johnson Oatman and Edwin O Excell's “Count Your Blessings,” 1897
Franklin L. Eilans's “Hold to God's Unchanging Hand,” 1898
W. H. Doane's “Take the Name of Jesus With You,” 1899
John T. Cook's “Whispering Hope,” 1900
James D. Vaughan's “I Feel Like Traveling On,” 1900
C. P. Jones' “Deeper, Deeper In The Love Of Jesus,” 1900
J. E. Thomas' “We Shall Rise,” 1904
C. Austin Miles' (author of In The Garden) “A New Name In Glory,” 1905 and “If Jesus Goes With Me I'll Go,” 1908
James D. Acuff's “Just Over In The Glory Land,” 1906
Charles P. Jones' “Come Unto Me,” 1910
Rev. George Bennard's “The Old Rugged Cross,” 1913
Charles H. Gabriel's “Since Jesus Came Into My Heart,” 1914
Charles M. Alexander's “Wonderful Grace of Jesus,” 1918
Will Ramsey's “He Whispers Sweet Peace To Me,” 1932
and “The Land Of Perfect Day,” 1935
Albert E. Brumley's “I'll Fly Away,” 1932, “Jesus Hold My Hand,” 1933, and “I'll Meet You In The Morning,” 1936
Adger M. Pace (born in Pelzer, SC) “He's My King,” 1936, “I Can Tell You The Time,” 1939, and “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem,” 1940.
“Looking for a City,” “I'm Free Again,” and “He's My King” are all examples of Southern Gospel fuging tunes between 1930 and 1950, the “golden age” of Southern Gospel music. My Dad first heard Looking for a City at Brightwood Baptist Church in Greensboro, NC in 1949 and immediately introduced it to his own church, Pelham Baptist Church.
Part IV-The Biblical Necessity of Poetry in Church Music
The first element of good poetry is versification, that is division into stanzas, often with a refrain following the stanza. The hymns of Isaac Watts were versified. Watts wrote his hymns about a hundred years after the KJV appeared in 1611. I believe that versification in his songs exists because the Bible was versified. Out of respect to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament our song also should be versified. This structure makes both the Bible and hymns easier to memorize.
The second element of poetic structure is found in the system of accents on the syllables in a line. Combination of two or three syllables in the proper way makes a poetic foot.
Trochaic poetry has the accent on the first of two syllables, two syllables constitute one foot.
Iambic poetry has the accent on the second of two syllables in a foot.
Anapestic poetry has feet of three syllables with the accent on the third syllable of the three.
Dactylic poetry has feet of three syllables with the accent on the first syllable.
The third element of good poetry is the combination of poetic feet we have just discussed to give meter, or rhythm, to a line of poetry. These three elements distinguish poetry from prose. Because the Hebrew Bible is metrical, we also should honour it by using metrical structure in our songs. Several types of meter are commonly used.
Common meter, CM, is used in a majority of hymns and is iambic with
8 syllables in first line, or 4 feet, 6 in the second, or 3 feet, 8
again in the third, 6 in the fourth and last line of the stanza, and
so on. The best known example is Amazing Grace. For our purposes we
may simply underline the accented syllable.
A-maz / ing
grace / how sweet / the
sound 8
That saved / a
wretch / like me 6
I once / was
lost / but now / I'm found 8
Was blind / but
now / I see 6
I Am Bound for the Promised Land, All Hail the power of Jesus' Name,
When I Can Read My Title Clear to Mansions in the Skies (95th
Psalm), How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds in a Believer's Ear are
also in common meter. The author of I Am Bound for the Promised Land
was Samuel Stennett, an English Baptist, 1728-1795. His father was
also a Baptist, Joseph Stennett, 1692-1758. Both pastored the same
church. I Am Bound for the Promised Land is in common meter in the
stanzas, but the chorus is anapestic with 3 syllables per foot and
the accent on the third.
Long meter , LM, is also composed of iambic feet. All 4 lines of
each stanza have 8 syllables. Examples are the Doxology and Old
Hundred.
Praise God / From
Whom / All Bless / ings
Flow 8
Praise Him / all
crea / tures here / be-low 8
Praise Him / a-bove / ye
heav'n / ly host 8
Praise Fa / ther,
Son / and Ho / ly
Ghost 8
Short meter , SM, is also iambic with 6 syllables in the first and
second lines, 8 in the third, and 6 again in the fourth line.
Weeping Savior and the 93rd Psalm are examples.
Did Christ / O'er
Sin /ners Weep 6
And shall / our
cheeks / be dry 6
Let floods / of
pen / i-tent / ial
grief 8
Burst forth / from
ev' / ry eye 6
8-7 meter is always trochaic; that is, it has the accent on the
first syllable of two. There are 8 syllables in the first line, 7 in
the second, 8 in the third, 7 in the fourth and so on. Examples are
Holy Manna (Breth-ren
We Have Met to
Wor-ship) and Come Ye Sinners
Poor and Needy, Weak and Wounded, Sick and Sore, and Dr. Isaac
Watts' Cradle Hymn.
Hush my /
child lie / still and /
slum-ber, 8
Ho-ly /
an-gels / guard thy /
bed, 7
Heav'n-ly /
bless-ings / with-out /
num-ber, 8
Gent-ly /
steal-ing / round thy /
head 7
How much better art thou attended 8
Than the Son of God could be 7
When from heaven he descended 8
And became a child like thee 7
Soft and easy is thy cradle, 8
Coarse and hard the Savior lay, 7
When his birthplace was a stable, 8
And his softest bed was hay 7
In William Billings' New-England Psalm-Singer 44 Psalm tunes were
Common Meter, 37 Long Meter, and 24 Short Meter. Carefully written
songs are always truly poetic, good poetry always requires the use
of regular versification and meter and rhyme in order to be easily
memorized. Infants use rhyme and meter in speech to learn to talk
and always respond well to singing. All children learn to
sing the
alphabet to the tune Twinkle, twinkle, little star, 7 syllables in
every line, at about 4 years of age; they do not
say the alphabet
until about age 6. Adults also respond to rhyme and meter in music
or poetry, and this makes it easier for us to remember the words of
the poem or song and sing it at home or work, to hide it in our
hearts. God made us that way. We all remember how Dr. B. R. Lakin
told of his mother sitting on the porch churning and singing “How
Tedious and Tasteless the Hours When Jesus no Longer I See.” And
Preacher Buck Huntley from the North Carolina mountains at Middle
Fork would always, during his sermons, sing the old songs his mother
sang.
In the inspired KJV there are many places where poetic rhythms are
seen. For God / so
loved / the world is an iambic phrase with three
feet, iambic trimeter. The iambic meter is changed in the next line
but soon reappears:
For God / sent
not / his son / in-to / the
world is a line of iambic
pentameter with five feet.
But that / the
world / through him / might
be / sav-ed is another
line of iambic pentameter.
Shakespeare and many classical English poets used iambic pentameter,
line with 5 feet or pairs of syllables, 10 syllables in each line,
with the accent on the second syllable, because it is the most
easily remembered form of poetry and the most beautiful. A great
example of iambic pentameter is Thomas Gray's “Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard” from the 18th century. The first two stanzas or
verses, four lines per stanza, each line iambic pentameter, read:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way
And leaves the world to darkness and to me
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight
And all the world a solemn stillness holds
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds
It takes real thought and craftsmanship and just plain work to write
good poetry such as this, but this kind of effort is not seen in
contemporary poetry and music. Good poetry and good music, the song
of the land from Genesis 43:11, both are like the house in Ephesians
2:21 “In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an
holy temple in the Lord.” A house will have foundation, walls,
windows, several rooms suited for different purposes, and a roof. If
one of these is missing or weak or if one part overpowers another,
then the house is not fitly framed together. So it is with music.
There must be a balance of rhythm or meter, melody, harmony,
theological content, and proper volume, each element appropriate to
the others. There must be structure and poetry in the music; it must
be easy to remember; it must be edifying to believers; the volume
must not overpower the voice of the singers or the ears of the
hearers. In addition the singers must sing to God's glory and avoid
calling attention to themselves by overuse of spectacular vocal
techniques or pretense of any kind. Most importantly the music must
be capable of being remembered and sung by both choir and
congregation at any time and not just in church.
Part V-Present Day Trends
Many years ago my Dad, the late Dr. Harold B. Sightler, wrote a booklet entitled The Phenomena of the Independent Baptist Movement. On the last page he said this of independent Baptist music:
“I appreciate the music program of our church (Tabernacle Baptist) and of the average independent Baptist church. It is lively. It is spiritual. It is informal. I go into some churches where I think the music program is at a low tide. But the average independent church is blessed with talent at the instruments. And the singing is a blessing.
I was in a service not too long ago where they had a group of singers from a college. I had not heard a single one of the songs they sang! Several of the songs were Negro spirituals, and I have no objection to that. One or two were semi-classical, and I don't necessarily object to that. But why didn't they sing 'Amazing Grace?'
I'm glad to be a part of a church that will sing 'Amazing Grace.' I'm glad to be a part of a movement that sings 'Mansion Over the Hilltop.' I am glad we are a part of a movement that is not ashamed to sing 'Give Me That Old Time Religion.'
Our song service is informal, as are those in 95% of the independent Baptist churches. A few have robed choirs and anthems. But 95% of the independent Baptist churches have down-to-earth singing. That is a phenomenon.”
Numerous small country churches in the South still use the old shape note songbooks we grew up with that are friendly to “old time religion.” But the phenomenon of contemporary Christian music has changed things in our ranks since my Dad passed away in September 1995. The extent of the changes none of us could foresee at that time. Contemporary Christian music, if it can be called Christian, lacks meter and rhyme and structure and usually lacks theological content. It emerged in the 1970's. It is based on what might be called free verse without traditional metrical structure. It lacks stanzas and is instead through composed as a single unit from beginning to end. It also often uses what Jesus called vain repetition, that is, one or two lines repeated over and over again throughout the song. Some have rightly called it 7-11 music, 7 words repeated 11 times. If you notice that the words of a song do not properly fit the music it is contemporary. Contemporary music cannot be nearly as easily memorized and sung at home.
My Dad would certainly be surprised and disappointed to hear present day contemporary praise-worship music with its multiplicity of loud instruments and drums, dominating the voices, and its lack of poetry and meter and good theology. I believe he would condemn the use of recorded soundtrack accompaniment to singing, the so-called “canned music.” God grant us the spiritual discernment, courage, and determination to resist these things and get back to the old time singing our Baptist forebears did.
James H. Sightler, M.D.
Sightler Publications
May 15, 2004
