Tunes by Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings in Southern United States Shape-Note Tune Books of the Early Nineteenth Century

Abstract

During the nineteenth century a reform movement arose in church music, culminating in the work of Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings. The chief targets of the reformers were rural shape-note folk hymnody and New England psalmody. Despite the low opinion of folk hymnody held by Mason, Hastings, and their allies, the compilers of shape-note volumes in the southern United States made frequent use of tunes by the reformers themselves. The present article catalogs the works by Mason and Hastings that are found in these collections, noting particularly which books were the first to reprint the pieces, which items were published most often, and how the music was attributed. The sources from which the compilers probably drew the tunes are traced, and the genealogy of several pieces is described in detail to illustrate the different approaches to the music taken by southern compilers. The question of why the shape-note compilers were interested in the reform tunes in the first place is also discussed.