Topic: Instrumental Versions
Jack Westrup suggested the Puritan proscription of instrumental church music and the concomitant abolition of official positions for church musicians contributed to an expansion of secular music. [1] Among the new patrons were the merchants who financed colonies and supported Parliament in the Civil War that began in 1640.
They represented a new socio-cultural group that no longer was dependent upon the monarch for its livelihood, and thus began living apart from the court. This was the beginning of what we now call middle-class, private life centered on the home.
Among the instruments they cultivated was the violin. [2] It just then was being perfected by instrument makers in Italy. [3] Prior to this the primary stringed instrument of the court had been the cello-like viola da gamba. [4]
An earlier form of fiddle had been a secondary court instrument. It and its bowing technique had arrived in western Europe from the Levant during the Crusades, where it was adapted by French troubadours, then taken to England during the 1200s. [5] Court musicians who did not flee to the Continent with the family and retinue of Charles I were another group of displaced musicians available as instructors or entertainers to the wealthy.
The third group of musicians who lost employment during the Puritan Commonwealth were those who worked in the theater. Their reputations varied, and many seem to have moved into the taverns where they were banned by Oliver Cromwell for disruptive behavior. [6] This group of more itinerant musicians may have been the ones who spread the violin into the countryside, where it became a folk instrument.
Puritan leaders accepted the separation of private life from the public one symbolized by the church and inn, and only discouraged instrumental music in the latter. When the army took over the royalist schools of Oxford, Cromwell did not have the organ in the chapel at Magdalen College destroyed. Instead, it was transported to his home, [7] where it was played by his private organist. [8] For one of his daughters’ weddings, which were held at a private estate, he was able to hire 48 violins and 50 trumpets. [9] Percy Scholes took that to mean he employed a string orchestra with a "wind band." [10]
Violins had developed in Byzantium [11] from central Asian sources. [12] In the ninth century, Ibn Khurradadhbih observed its lira was similar to the rab b played by Muslims. That instrument moved into Africa where a one-stringed variant was used in the Mali Empire [13] that thrived from 1235 to 1670. [14] Alexander Agordoh said, even today, the one-stringed instrument is used by the Wolof of Sénégal. [15] They were among the earliest taken as slaves to Louisiana and South Carolina. [16]
The suppression of music in private life came with the followers of John Wesley in the nineteenth century, who believed the truly saved person lived like it was the Sabbath every day in every way. They were the ones who objected to secular music.
Charles Lyell reported Methodist missionaries had silenced twenty violins then in use on James Hamilton Couper’s plantation. [17] Couper was one of the Georgian planters who used Islamic slaves as drivers. [18] This was probably but one example of the diffusion of the English fiddle into the hands of African musicians skilled in similar instruments.
The strictures of Methodist and Holiness evangelists did not completely eliminate the fiddle in the South, but they probably were the reason I have not been able to find many fiddle versions of "Kumbaya" or "Come by Here." Regardless of what they might do among friends, fiddlers have not chosen to post versions of a religious song into the public space of YouTube.
The string videos of "Kumbaya" uploaded to YouTube were from the middle-class merchant tradition that developed during the Commonwealth when individuals began playing instruments themselves. In one, Ann Millington played bass while her husband, Stephen Millington, played cello. She studied both veterinary medicine and cello, and continued playing while she was in practice. [19] He studied cello at the University of California, Davis, and California State University, [20] and later organized the Millington Strings to play for weddings and other events. [21]
The Millington Strings played a quintet version of "Kumbaya" in a noontime Wednesday concert sponsored by a Presbyterian church in Sacramento, California, in 2010. Fantasias, in general, were free from some of the conventions of form, but often followed Franz Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasie in which each part was based on the same song. [22]
This one began with a slow, additive movement. The solo violin played the first line, then was joined in unison by the second violin. On the third line the viola played the melody in parallel. Chords only were played in the last phrase of that line and in final line of the verse, when the cello and bass entered.
The second movement was a bit faster with the upper strings playing the melody and the lower ones a bowed rhythm. This was followed by a section where the melody was barely detectable. Then, after a brief pause, the bass and cello took over the melody and the violins and violas plucked the rhythm. They ended in harmony. The piece finished with a fragmented form of the melody, and a final sustained chord.
Performers
Two violins, viola, cello, bass
Credits
African Trad.
by S. H. Millington
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: varied
Basic Structure: single stanza repeated with variations in dynamics, tempo, and orchestration
Notes on Performance
Location: noon concert at Westminster Presbyterian church, Sacramento, California, 15 September 2010. The video camera alternated between the red-carpeted sanctuary where they were playing and one of the stained-glass windows.
Microphones: none
Clothing: the two men and three women wore black slacks and casual shirts.
Notes on Movement
The violin, viola and cello players sat; the bass player stood. It had been thoroughly rehearsed so that no one turned the pages of music on the stand in front of him or her. As a result, the solo violinist began, which set the tempo, and they did not need any obvious signs from a conductor to stay together. The two violins often used the same bow strokes, but sometimes varied.
Notes on Performers
The Millington Strings performance group varied in size, depending on the occasion. The violin and viola players also changed. I do not know who they were in 2010. Stephen Millington played cello and Ann Millington bass.
Westminster Presbyterian was founded in 1866, and must have been affiliated with the Charles Finney faction of the church. It had an organ [23] and seating for more than 600, [24] even though the membership in 1890 was 230. [25] The current church was built in 1927 with an even better organ. [26] The noontime concerts were begun in 2002 by a pastor who had seen similar events in London. The music director, Brad Slocum, thought they were unique because they did not "cling to classical music." [27] Instead,
"Where other programs are often viewed as snobbish, ours has universal appeal. We relish the opportunity to bring all kinds of music to the community and I think we accomplish that objective." [28]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Stephen Millington, 12 March 2011.
End Notes
1. Jack Westrup. "England §1." 6:171-182 in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980. 6:172.
2. Westrup. 6:173.
3. Willi Apel. "Violin." 908-910 in Harvard Dictionary of Music. Edited by Apel. Cambridge: Belnap Press, 1969 edition. 908.
4. Wikipedia. "Fiddle."
5. Mary Remnant. "Fiddle." 6:527-533 in Groves. 6:531.
6. Percy A. Scholes. The Puritans and Music in England and New England. New York: Russell and C Russell, Inc., 1962 edition. 276-77.
7. Scholes. 236. It was returned during the Restoration.
8. Scholes. 5.
9. Scholes. 144
10. Scholes. 145. Scholes was one of the first to document the differences between public and private attitudes toward instrumental music. The book first was published in 1934.
11. Wikipedia. "History of the Violin."
12. Remnant. 6:531.
13. Sterling Stuckey. Slave Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 edition. 21.
14. Wikipedia. "Mali Empire."
15. A. A. Agordoh. Studies in African Music. Ho, Ghana: New Age Publication, 2002 edition. 60.
16. Hugh Thomas. The Slave Trade. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997 paperback edition. 334.
17. Charles Lyell. A Second Visit to the United States. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1849. 1:269-270.
18. Michael A. Gomez. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 76-77.
19. "Musicians" tab. Millington Strings website.
20. Deborah Hand-Cutler. "Fiddlers Crossing Presents The Millington Strings." The Loop, 16 August 2014.
21. "Millington Strings." Sacramento City Voter website.
22. Willi Appel. "Fantasia." 307-308 in Harvard Dictionary.
23. Brad Slocum. "A Rich Music Tradition." Church’s website.
24. Steven M. Avella. Sacramento and the Catholic Church. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2008. 146.
25. Winfield J. Davis. An Illustrated History of Sacramento County, California. Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890. 173.
26. US Department of the Interior. National Register of Historic Places. Registration Form for Westminster Presbyterian Church prepared by Elizabeth Austing. 22 May 2003.
27. Brad Slocum. Quoted by Old Man Foster. "Magic and Majesty." Midtown Monthly website. 22 October 2008.
28. Slocum, Foster.
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