Early American Sunday School Tunebooks: Laboratories for Public School Music

Abstract

Early nonsectarian Sunday Schools provided instruction in spelling, reading, writing, and singing in the years prior to the introduction of free, public education in the United States. This study explores the Sunday school as a laboratory for public school music education. Several of the first Sunday school tunebooks included theoretical introductions with elementary instruction in music reading much like the early school songbooks that followed. Three early tunebooks will be considered, E. Osborn’s The Sunday School Music Book (1826), Ezra Barrett’s Sabbath School Psalmody (1828), and Elam Ives, Jr’s American Sunday-School Psalmody (1832). In each case, the various “experiments” introduced in the tunebooks will be discussed. Some of these experiments were rejected in the public schools, but others had lasting importance.