[Christianity Today] 27 Nov 2008--This article originally appeared in the November 23, 1984, issue of Christianity Today.
"We feel overawed by the constellation of mysterious motives prompting Providence to send to our shores, out of all the millions who inhabited Europe, just those few thousand beings who had no music in their souls."
Common misconceptions of the Pilgrims' attitude toward music and toward life in general — such as the one above, made in 1907 by Oscar Sonneck, then music director of the Library of Congress — impoverish our appreciation for their musical legacy. We owe an incalculable debt to these early Americans for their priority on worship in music, their emphasis on music in the home, their integration of secular music as part of a balanced Christian life, and their inauguration of music education in America.
The metrical psalter gave church music back to the English people in the sixteenth century. For over 200 years metrical psalms, not hymns, were sung in English churches. They not only sang metrical psalms in church but gathered in public places to sing them. They sung them as they went about their daily work. The Pilgrims and the Puritans brought the metrical psalm to North America. But they were not the only ones singing them. They were also sung in colonial Virginia. A number of the hymns that we sing today are metrical psalms.We have much for which should be thankful--even in our troubled times. Let us lift up our voices to God this day in a psalm of praise.
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