The following excerpt is drawn from Utile Dulci. Or, A Joco-serious Dialogue, Concerning Regular Singing (1723), a pamphlet by New England minister and music advocate Thomas Symmes. Symmes (1678–1725), a Congregationalist minister in Bradford, Massachusetts, was one of the earliest and strongest proponents of “Regular Singing”—a reform movement in colonial church music that promoted musical literacy and singing schools over oral tradition. In this satirical dialogue, Symmes compiles and dramatizes objections he had encountered from opponents of the reform, not his own views. Though written decades before the invention of shape-notes, these caricatured complaints anticipate the same anxieties about singing-school culture and musical practice that would later shape the American shape-note tradition.
First, Some against the Thing it self, which you’r pleas’d to call a New Way of Singing, and the Consequents of it. And they are these Seven.
(1) That it is a New Way, an Unknown Tongue.
(2) That it is not so Melodious as the Usual Way.
(3) That there are so many Tunes, we shall never have done learning.
(4) That the Practice of it gives Disturbance; Roils & Exasperates men’s Spirits; grieves sundry good People, and causes them to behave themselves indecently & disorderly.
(5) That it is Quakerish & Popish, and introductive of Instrumental Musick.
(6) That the Names given to the Notes are Baudy, yea Blasphemous.*
(7) That it is a Needless way, since their good Fathers that were strangers to it, are got to Heaven without it.
Secondly, Some are against the Persons, that are the Promoters, Admirers & Practitioners of this way. And they are Three.
(1) It’s said to be a Contrivance to get Money.
(2) They spend too much time about learning; they tarry out a Nights Disorderly, and Family-Religion is neglected by the means.
(3) They’r a Company of Young Upstarts that fall in with this way and set it forward: and some of them are Lewd & Loose Persons.
*This is most certainly about the fa sol la solfege.
from:
Utile Dulci. Or, A Joco-serious Dialogue, Concerning Regular Singing
Calculated for a Particular Town, (where It Was Publickly Had, on Friday Oct. 12. 1722.) but May Serve Some Other Places in the Same Climate.
By Thomas Symmes, aka Philomusicus
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