God's condescension to human affairs

Hymn 46

Up to the Lord, that reigns on high,
And views the nations from afar,
Let everlasting praises fly,
And tell how large his bounties are.

He that can shake the worlds he made,
Or with his word, or with his rod,
His goodness, how amazing great!
And what a condescending God!

God, that must stoop to view the skies,
And bow to see what angels do,
Down to our earth he casts his eyes,
And bends his footsteps downwards too.

He overrules all mortal things,
And manages our mean affairs;
On humble souls the King of kings
Bestows his counsels and his cares.

Our sorrows and our tears we pour
Into the bosom of our God;
He hears us in the mournful hour,
And helps us bear the heavy load.

In vain might lofty princes try
Such condescension to perform;
For worms were never raised so high
Above their meanest fellow worm.

O could our thankful hearts devise
A tribute equal to thy grace,
To the third heav'n our songs should rise,
And teach the golden harps thy praise.

Isaac Watts

Taylor on call to preach

From John Taylor's History of Ten Baptist Churches:
"The next winter I travelled to South Carolina, either to live there, or get him to return with me. We returned in the spring, and the church called me forward to preach, at which I have continued for more than fifty years...I have said above I could get no satisfactory answer, as to my call to the ministry. My present impressions are, that the call lies in a good man's motives to the work, and the call of the church. If a christian has preaching talents, and the church says preach, he may go on safely. This is my call, and for no other do I look at present, though in my youth I laboured long for evidences of my call, of which a visionary something would then have satisfied me.

"I have said, a good motive to the work, and the call of the church, is all sufficient as to a man's authority to preach the gospel. By a good motive to the work, I understand, the man's own soul must be converted, for except he is born again, he cannot have a spiritually good motive, and is what Paul designs, by 'the husbandman that laboureth must first be partaker of the fruit.'

"It is this produces a desire in him, after what Paul calls a good work -- this is a feeling sensibibity in him, that 'one man's soul is worth more than all the world,' and while the love of Christ constrains him, he will very gladly, or readily, spend and be spent, for the salvation of his fellow men. All this I felt for many months, to the amount of robbing me both of sleep and food; and adding to that the voice of the church -- but all did not satisfy me, for I was not called as the ancient prophets and apostles were, but to glorify God, and benefit men, is the sole ground of the ministerial motive, and there is no self serving, in all this sacred business -- in all this I have felt conscious for more than half a century.
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"My own belief is, that none properly understands the gospel or voice of the shepherd, but his sheep, or the true christian. Therefore the voice of the church is very essential; in the call to the ministry, the bridegroom is out of the way; what the bride does in his absence, should be valid. The church ought to act under great responsibility, being accountable to the chief shepherd at his return; so help us Lord, that we may all have boldness in the day of judgement [sic]. The instruments of my encouragement, in my early days. I had three gospel fathers, to-wit : William Marshall, the instrument of my first awakening and convertion; James Ireland, the man who baptized me, and under whose pastoral care I lived for some time; and Joseph Reding, under whose care, and with whom I travelled near ten years, before I was a married man; all these men seemed tender towards me, as if I was their natural Son.

"But the greatest instrument of my encouragement after all, was the Bible itself -- there I saw the whole will of God at once; in point of both practice and opinion, what I saw in this heaven born book, I received as the voice of God to me, and was the invaluable guide of my whole man, both in motive and acctions; to this I appeal in all controversy, and by this I expect to be judged at the last day."

Hear what the Lord hath spoken

Hear what God the Lord hath spoken,
"O my people, faint and few,
Comfortless, afflicted, broken,
Fair abodes I build for you:
Themes of heartfelt tribulation
Shall no more perplex your ways;
You shall name your walls, Salvation,
And your gates shall all be praise.

"There, like streams that feed the garden,
Pleasures, without end, shall flow,
For the Lord, your faith rewarding,
All His bounty shall bestow;
Still in undisturbed possession
Peace and righteousness shall reign;
Never shall you feel oppression,
Hear the voice of war again.

"Ye no more your suns descending,
Waning moons no more shall see;
But your griefs forever ending,
Find eternal noon in Me:
God shall rise, and shining o'er you,
Change to day the gloom of night;
He, the Lord, shall be your Glory,
God your everlasting Light."

William Cowper (1731-1800)
Olney Hymns, 1779

Arcadian

arcadian
adjective: Idyllically pastoral: simple, peaceful.
noun: One leading a simple rural life.

"After Arcadia, a region of ancient Greece whose residents were believed to have led quiet, unsophisticated lives of peace and happiness."

chadwickivester

Interesting thoughts by Chadwick Ivester says that LifeWay’s™ Latest Poll Reveals the Redefining of the Role of Pastor.
Lifeway article
Blog on the study

Toward a definition

Below are miscellaneous quotations dealing with the definition of "gospel song"/"gospel hymn". These are materials I gathered in trying to understand what others are saying about "gospel songs" and how they define them. There is a wide variety of usage of the terms.

"In comparison with hymns, which are generally of a statelier measure, the gospel song is expected to have a refrain and often a more syncopated rhythm." -- Wikipedia

"The folk hymn is known by its musical character. The melody, and it is usually assigned to the tenor, is often in one of the ancient modal scales. Certain tones are omitted or less conspicuously employed, giving the impression of a gapped scale of five or six notes." -- American Hymns Old and New, Vol. 2. Albert Christ-Janer. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980, p. 293)

"The gospel hymn was developed to meet the needs of revival and prayer meetings...The mood of the text might be optimistic or pleading; the music was tuneful and easy to grasp. The rudimentary harmonies, the use of the chorus, the varied metric schemes, and the motor rhythms were characteristic. A marchlike movement as in 'Shall We Gather at the River' was especially typical. The device of letting the lower parts echo rhythmically a motive announced by the sopranos became a mannerism which was abused by later writers...The best of the gospel hymns have a direct simplicity which has appealed to singers ever since the appearance of the first gospel hymnals." (He places George F. Root among the earlier composers of the style.) -- American Hymns Old and New, Vol. 2. Albert Christ-Janer. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980, pp. 365-66)

Gospel songs revolve around the seminal three chords: the I, IV, and V chords. The first phrase very often ends on the V chord and the second phrase resolves back to the I-chord. -- Pierce Phillips

In close harmony, the alto and tenor parts largely parallel the melody so that all three parts may be played on a keyboard, while the bass part, though not melodically tied to the soprano, fulfills a harmonic function. This describes the hymn tunes of Mason, Hastings, Bradbury, etc. as well as much early gospel music, especially of the more homophonic variety. -- paraphrase of Warren Steel

"Variety notwithstanding, by the end of the twentieth century there were three main streams of gospel music stylistically, each with various subsets. The oldest is usually called gospel song or gospel hymnody. By the twenty-first century, it might be called traditional gospel, or, more properly, historic gospel, for from it flow the other two streams of black gospel and Southern gospel.

"Traditional gospel grew out of the Northern, urban revival tradition of evangelist Dwight L. Moody and his songleader/soloist Ira D. Sankey in the 1870s, and it remained the dominant musical style of revivalist-oriented churches for more than a century. Its rhythmic, melodic and harmonic structures were rooted in the European tradition of music composition and performance....The music was melodically tuneful, employing eighth notes more often than the slower-feeling quarters. Compound meters, particularly 6/8, were characteristic, producing a lilting quality for which gospel hymnody became famous (as in, for example, "Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine"). The melodic range was designed for congregational song and was therefore limited to that of the untrained voice from about middle C to top-line F. Harmonies were generally primary triads, although secondary triads, borrowed minor chords, and secondary dominants became part of the harmonic vocabulary. The often-published characterization of gospel music employing 'barbershop' harmonies is inaccurate, however.

"Most characteristic of the gospel song was a contagious chorus or refrain that summed up the text's meaning in a succinct and memorable manner. The opening words of the refrain were usually the name of the song, unlike older hymns that were identifed by their opening words. The precedent for these choruses was the secular 'household' or 'parlor' song, composed by Stephen Foster and others. In fact, many of the first generation gospel hymnists such as George F. Root were successful composers of secular music in the verse/chorus mode. p. 293

"Aldine S. Kieffer was perhaps the single most important figure in the birth of Southern gospel music." p. 215, Encyclopedia of American gospel music by W. K. McNeil

"Gospel as a separate musical art form emerged primarily in the South and, as one music historian has argued, stands alongside jazz, blues, and country music as 'the fourth great genre of grass roots music' and 'the fourth major type of southern music'." p. 4, Close harmony: a history of southern gospel by James R. Goff

"12. The 'Gospel' Hymn...It came at last into world prominence with the work of the Evangelist Moody and his musical colleague, Ira D. Sankey, which was actively pursued in the United States and Britain during the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s...widely circulated [in] Songs and Solos...drawing largely on a type of tune that had already become popular in the United States, the type with a lively rhythm and a harmonization consisting of little more than alternations of the three chief chords of the key (tonic, dominant, and subdominant). To this type the American W. B. Bradbury (1816-1868) had been a considerable contributor...When its history comes to be studied it will probably be found that behind Sankey and Moody lies the powerful influence of the American Camp Meeting." -- p. 504, The Oxford Companion to Music by Percy A. Scholes (10th edition revised and edited by John Owen Ward), London: Oxford University Press, 1975

"Musically, the typical gospel song is in a major key, in common (4/4) time, with numerous repeated notes in a melody that is more interesting than the parts that accompany it." p. 288 "Gospel songs of this type often display repetitive rhythmic and melodic features and rudimentary antiphonal and responsorial textures." -- p. 300, A Portion for the Singers, R. Paul Drummond, Christian Baptist Press, 1989

"The gospel song seems to embody all that the old Sacred Harp songs did not: close harmony, the use of accidentals, and in some cases the concentration of melodic interest into a single part." -- p. 153, Public Worship, Private Faith, John Bealle

Styles in the Sacred Harp

There are a number of musical "styles" contained in the Sacred Harp -- early American music, folk hymns, psalm & hymn tunes, fuging tunes, odes & anthems, campmeeting songs, gospel songs, among others. I will record some of my attempt to sort this out in my own mind, which may or may not prove helpful to others. I rely on R. Paul Drummond's exposition and definition of Primitive Baptist song, as well as comments from Dr. Warren Steel. Much of this is left up to wide variations of opinion. What follows is a hodge-podge I've collected.

A Portion for the Singers (Drummond) identifies four broad categories of music found in Primitive Baptist hymnals: Southern Folk Hymns (folk hymns, Sacred Harp, fuging tunes, anthems); Mason-Bradbury Hymns, Gospel Songs (Kieffer/Showalter variety, Sankey/Bliss variety, Stamps/Baxter/Brumley variety), and Traditional Protestant Hymns. This is very similar to what is found in Sacred Harp, with the exception of the Stamps/Baxter/Brumley variety. Attempts to categorize music can be fraught with difficulties. For example, Drummond points to "Ortonville" and "Toplady"/"Rock of Ages" as examples of the problems of such categorizations (A Portion for the Singers, R. Paul Drummond, 1989, p. 18) -- "Ortonville" long since becoming a part of "folk tradition" and "Toplady" being a very traditional Protestant hymn. Yet, because of their origins, both are part of the Mason-Bradbury category of song. There is no reason that some categories cannot overlap, or a some be found in more than one category.

Psalm and hymn tunes (Examples: Old Hundred, Ninety-Third Psalm, Bethel) -- generally short tunes designed for one stanza of metrical hymn.

Folk hymns (Examples: Wondrous Love, New Britain, Pisgah) -- contrafactum of a secular folk song, ballad of religious experience, and camp-meeting spiritual

Campmeeting Songs (Examples: Sweet Morning, Farewell Vain World, The Morning Trumpet)

Campmeeting songs incorporate simple words with "simple tunes and meters [that] required no skill and therefore invited everyone to participate in the service." -- Bernard A. Weisberger, They Gathered at the River, Boston, 1958, p. 148

"The refrain or chorus is perhaps the predominant feature, not always connected with the subject-matter of the stanza, but rather ejaculatory. In some instances such a refrain was merely tacked on to a familiar hymn or an arrangement of one." -- Louis F. Benson, The English Hymn, New York: George H. Dornan Co., 1915, p. 293 (The interrupting refrain is a short phrase interpolated between the lines of the primary text.)

Paul Drummond sees a difference between "a first generation folk hymn" and those later composed "in the style". "Like most attempts at stylistic imitation these pieces tend to exploit clichés and most take on a rather uninspired, pedestrian quality." -- A Portion, p. 252 (In this he implicates a number of early Sacred Harp composers -- including both Rees brothers and Edmund Dumas. I would disagree with his assessment of their "pedestrian quality".)

Fuging tunes (Examples: Stratfield, Ocean, Mount Pleasant) -- usually begins with a homophonic section, in the course of which a definite cadence is reached; a new start is then made in which each individual part makes an entrance in succession, often utilizing some form of imitation; and the final phrase most often ending homophonically. (Irving Lowens and R. Paul Drummond)

Anthems (Examples: Easter Anthem, Rose of Sharon, David's Lamentation) -- "a musical setting for chorus of a non-metrical prose text, sectionalized by changes in tempo, meter, key, texture, and sonority." (John Worst)

Gospel song (Examples: Let Us Sing, Marriage in the Skies, Sweet By and By)

"Musically, the typical gospel song is in a major key, in common (4/4) time, with numerous repeated notes in a melody that is more interesting than the parts that accompany it." -- A Portion, p. 288 "Gospel songs of this type often display repetitive rhythmic and melodic features and rudimentary antiphonal and responsorial textures." -- A Portion, p. 300

"The gospel hymn was developed to meet the needs of revival and prayer meetings...The mood of the text might be optimistic or pleading; the music was tuneful and easy to grasp. The rudimentary harmonies, the use of the chorus, the varied metric schemes, and the motor rhythms were characteristic. A march-like movement as in 'Shall We Gather at the River' was especially typical. The device of letting the lower parts echo rhythmically a motive announced by the sopranos became a mannerism which was abused by later writers...The best of the gospel hymns have a direct simplicity which has appealed to singers ever since the appearance of the first gospel hymnals." (Janer places George F. Root among the earlier composers of the style.) -- Albert Christ-Janer, American Hymns Old and New, Vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980, pp. 365-66

"The melodic range was designed for congregational song and was therefore limited to that of the untrained voice from about middle C to top-line F. Harmonies were generally primary triads, although secondary triads, borrowed minor chords, and secondary dominants became part of the harmonic vocabulary...Most characteristic of the gospel song was a contagious chorus or refrain that summed up the text's meaning in a succinct and memorable manner. -- W. K. McNeil, Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music, p. 293

The gospel song and Mason-Bradbury hymns tend to closer harmony than many of the early American tunes and folk songs. In close harmony, the alto and tenor parts tend to parallel the melody so that all three parts can be played on a keyboard. The bass part is not melodically tied to the soprano, yet fulfils a harmonic function. This describes the hymn tunes of Mason, Hastings, Bradbury, etc. as well as much early gospel music, especially of the more homophonic variety. (Warren Steel)

"The music of the 'Better Music boys' found in the hymnals of Primitive Baptists are typically short, strophic hymn-settings in major keys with limited ranges and easy tessituras." -- A Portion, p. 278 (Drummond gives "Brown" by Wm. Bradbury as an example.)

Methodist theatrical (Examples: Enfield, Dartmouth)

A few songs in the Sacred Harp are described by scholars as the "Methodist-theatrical style” of hymn-tune. These are imitations of those in 18th century British collections like Butts' Harmonia Sacra and Madan's Lock Hospital Collection. (Warren Steel) Someone described these as having "theatrical embellishments and a gallant cadence".

The American Fuging Tune

This conference paper compares and contrasts the American fuging tune with its British predecessors: The American Fuging Tune: ‘Marks of Distinction’ by Maxine Fawcett-Yeske

"...what strikes one as 'distinct' and 'emphatic' about American fuging tunes is the degree to which psalmodists employed certain procedures that were found only in limited usage in the early British prototypes and the innovative ways Americans developed those attributes into significant stylistic features. It is the creative patchwork of contrapuntal alternatives, the harmonic procedures that become refreshingly anachronistic (compared to contemporary developments abroad), and the expressive partnership of word and music wherein the American voice so loudly resounds."

{Added reading: The Sacred Harp: American Shape Note Hymns Cross the Atlantic by Lewis Jones}