“The Tears I Shed at the Songs of Thy Church”: Seventeenth-Century Musical Piety in the English Atlantic World
Abstract This essay reconsiders the role of seventeenth-century psalmody in Puritans' religious lives, drawing on a rich yet little-discussed cache of writings about music from New and Old England to show that, contrary to popular belief, Puritans were deeply invested in the affective power of psalm singing as an expression of personal piety. Importantly, treatises about music circulated transatlantically, thus imbricating psalmody in a broader Atlantic-world discourse about the significance of sacred singing. The essay first examines the nature of Puritans' personal piety, an interior and individual experience of faith and communion with God. Then it delves into the theological justification for singing psalms and the method for selecting tunes. Attuning to the importance of individual affective experience brings about a reevaluation of the significance of early American psalmody's “decline” in the early eighteenth century. By tracing the contours of puritan musical thought on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, this essay also puts forth “Atlantic musicology” as an illuminating approach to early modern music and ultimately challenges the historiographical tendency to view psalmody as the departure point for an exceptional American music history.