The United States Sacred Harmony (Amos Pilsbury) 1799

[Paul Setford]

I would like to acquire a facsimile copy of this book. My usual sources for purchase or download have proved unproductive. Any suggestions please.

PS I'm not an academic and am in UK

Regards

Paul Setford

[Wade Kotter]

Paul, as far as I know there is no facsimile available. I suspect I've tried most if not all of the same sources as you and also came up empty. There are, however, edited transcriptions of some of the tunes from this collection at:

https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/The_United_States_Sacred_Harmony_(Amos_Pilsbury)

Most of the transcriptions are by Barry Johnston, who often posts to this group. The copy of this collection indexed for Temperley's Hymn Tune Index is found at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.

https://catalog.mwa.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=343238

There's a microform version of this copy in the Early American Imprints, first series (no. 36119) which is also available online:

https://www.readex.com/products/early-american-imprints-series-i-evans-1639-1800

Unfortunately, this database is very expensive and only available through libraries (unfortunately, the library where I work can't afford it).

Wade

Wade Kotter

South Ogden, UT

"Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord"

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[Gabriel Kastelle]

Great request!

Interesting and important tunebook.

I thought I had my own digital copy through Readex / Early American Imprints / whatever it's called now, however it's accessed, from back when I DID have academic accesses to databases...

...but, in searching files and SD cards &c. just now, I only find extracted pages from Pilsbury from those databases-- for some dumb reason I didn't ever download and keep the whole file. Sorry.

...someone with those accesses and who can look up documents by Evans number &c. may be able to be helpful...  

Meanwhile, I've also tried some other web resources that often help me with such lacunae, and I have also come up dry,

so I will be very interested in others' responses here... 

Thanks all ! 

LA !

-- A. Gabriel K. --

--

[Barry Johnston]

Oh, and by the way, I would like to hear more information about Chesterfield, p. 128 in this book. I have tested this out several times in a Sacred Harp venue, and it is great fun to sing! But I have not been able to find source of either music or words. The music sounds like a British or British-American popular song. So I suggested it to the Revision Committee, but I fully understand it may not be exactly what they're looking for. Nonetheless, I think anyone (not a Sacred Harp purist) that likes to sing sacred four-part harmony will enjoy it.

[Wade Kotter]

Paul, in 1995 David W. Music published an article in American Music titled "Seven "New" Tunes in Amos Pilsbury's United States' Sacred Harmony (1799) and Their Use in Four-Shape Shape-Note Tunebooks of the Southern United States before 1860." It includes transcriptions of all seven of these tunes. It's available through JSTOR:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3052402

JSTOR has three "Alternative access options for independent Researcher". The "Read Online" option is free and allows you to read up to 100 articles online per month (no downloads). The "Subscribe to JPASS" option allows unlimited reading and 10 PDF downloads per month (the monthly option is $19.50 per month, the yearly option is $199/per year). The "Purchase option" is $14 for the article, which allows you to download the individual article PDF now and later.

All of the other tunes in this tunebook were taken from other sources.

Wade

Wade Kotter

South Ogden, UT

"Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord"

[Wade Kotter]

Gabriel, my memory may be suspect but my recollection from when I did have access to Early American Imprints online while doing research at another library, it was only possible to download individual pages one at a time. There was no option to download the entire book in one fell swoop.

Wade

Wade Kotter

South Ogden, UT

"Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord"

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[Barry Johnston]

A very interesting book indeed, and an influential connection between genres (notice where the Preface was written). As suggested by Wade and Gabriel,  I have put my copy (from Evans) on Google drive at

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16UWBcGe-rZQJZIBYtxzyTiy8gTVKJS0u?usp=sharing

I will remove it after a few weeks.

And please read the Karl Kroeger article referenced on the cpdl page cited above.

By the way, there are many editorial mistakes in this book, though it is presented very well for its time. I was going through this book at the same time as another (one of Jacob French's as I recall) that was horribly presented: like, staff lines not parallel! but very, very well edited – not an mistake for a hundred pages or more, and that one I wasn't sure whether it was an error or a deliberately different harmony. The contrast was striking.

On Saturday, September 2, 2023 at 1:40:48 PM UTC-6 Gabriel Kastelle wrote:

[Wade Kotter]

Thanks, Barry!

Wade Kotter

South Ogden, UT

"Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord"

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fasola-discussions/0ff065fa-767d-41bd-b888-d40df3684671n%40googlegroups.com

.

[Barry Johnston]

At Will Fitzgerald's suggestion, the book now appears on Archive.org . Meanwhile, the Karl Kroeger article I mentioned is available at Hathi Trust .

[Robert Vaughn]

Great idea, Barry and Will. Thanks!

Blessings,

Robert Vaughn 

Mount Enterprise, TX

http://baptistsearch.blogspot.com 

Ask for the old paths, where is the good way

http://mtcarmelbaptist.blogspot.com 

For ask now of the days that are past...

http://oldredland.blogspot.com 

Give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land.

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fasola-discussions/a5b4b617-1594-4fc8-b5cf-2a1487b25f9dn%40googlegroups.com

.

[Gabriel Kastelle]

Yes,

awesome news and great work.

Thank you, thank you, Will, Barry, everyone!!

-- A. Gabriel K. --

 Kalapuya Ilihi - "Eugene, OR" 

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[Gabriel Kastelle]

I've scrolled around and found the Karl Kroeger article in question.

It begins on p. 154 of the numbered pages in The Hymn of that year;

in the Hathi upload, 16 needs to be added to page number for the useful web target number in the upload--

--I mean, in the page field, enter 170, and you'll be sent to Kroeger's article beginning in internal p. 154.

:-)

Enjoy!

-- AGK

[Will Fitzgerald]

Also, I just want to say, what a great job Barry did with the metadata.

Publication date 1799

Usage Public Domain Mark 1.0Creative Commons Licensepublicdomain

Topics Tunebooks, Four-part harmony, Early American music, Eighteenth-century music, Sacred Harp

Collection opensource

Language English

Will

On Sep 4, 2023 at 12:58:17 PM, Will Fitzgerald <will.fi...@gmail.com> wrote:

In other words, this is a better link to Karl Krueger’s “A Yankee Tunebook from the Old South: Amos Pilsbury’s THE UNITED STATES SACRED HARMONY”: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013611770&seq=170

Will

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[Will Fitzgerald]

In other words, this is a better link to Karl Krueger’s “A Yankee Tunebook from the Old South: Amos Pilsbury’s THE UNITED STATES SACRED HARMONY”: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013611770&seq=170

Will

On Sep 3, 2023 at 5:23:36 PM, Barry Johnston <bar...@earthlink.net> wrote:

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[Matt Bell]

What do y'all think of Kroeger's dim assessment of Pilsbury's compositional abilities?

Matt Bell

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[Robert Vaughn]

I have never made any assessment of the songs by Pilsbury, so I do not have a strong opinion about it, but to say that I really like the one song I am familiar with in our song book -- MORNING. And that is how I personally I assess a person's songwriting abilities. If I like the song I think they did a job, and if I don't like the song I suppose it doesn't matter how great a songwriter he or she is, in theory.

On a different subject, I think I have only seen mentioned, as to church affiliation, that he was a clerk in the Presbyterian. I recently noticed on his Find-A-Grave memorial what purports to be a transcription from his tombstone at the Bethel United Methodist Church Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina.

“A native of Massachusetts / He served the church as a ____Preacher during the five last years of his life / with much acceptability / And died in full assurance / of a blessed immortality Oct 20, 1812 Aged 40 /”

Unfortunately, there is a missing word that might say “Methodist Preacher,” “Lay Preacher,” or any number of things. However, based on a few newspaper mentions I could find, I believe it is correct that he was a preacher later in life, and probably a Methodist. One advertisement in The Charleston Mercury in 1828 for The Sacred Songster says, “Being a Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the use of Religious Assemblies, but more particularly of the Methodist denomination, by Amos Pilsbury, author of the United States Sacred Harmony.”

Then there is an announcement of his daughter’s marriage in 1830 that calls him “Rev. Amos Pilsbury.” 

“MARRIED, on Sunday evening last, by the Rev. Mr. Brown, Mr. ALEXANDER CRAFTS MACKAY, to Mrs. ANNESS C. O. REYNOLDS, daughter of the late Rev. Amos Pilsbury.”

Also in “Biographical Notice of William Pilsbury, A. B.” in Boston Observer and Religious Intelligencer (January 22, 1835, p. 26) there is this note that also suggests Amos Pilsbury was a Methodist minister:

“* The widow of the late Rev. Amos Pilsbury, later brother of William Pilsbury. This lady resides in Columbia, S. C., but was in Charleston on a visit, where the writer providentially met her, who conducted him to the place of interest; which is the Methodist burying ground in the westerly part of the city, near the monument, erected by the young men of the Methodist society to commemorate the virtues of their deceased ministers.”

If this is not commonly known, I thought it might add a little more breadth to the biographical information on Amos Pilsbury.

Related to the song book, this article is available to read at JSTOR:

“Seven ‘New’ Tunes in Amos Pilsbury’s United States’ Sacred Harmony (1799) and Their Use in Four-Shape Shape-Note Tunebooks of the Southern United States before 1860,” David W. Music, American Music, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 403-447

His glories sing,

Robert Vaughn 

Mount Enterprise, TX

http://baptistsearch.blogspot.com 

Ask for the old paths, where is the good way

http://mtcarmelbaptist.blogspot.com 

For ask now of the days that are past...

http://oldredland.blogspot.com 

Give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land.

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[Karen Willard]

This from page 159 of the Kroeger article probably explains his attitude: "The principal melody in the tenor appears to be accurately notated, but the accompanying counter point contains many parallel unisons, fifths, and octaves, chords without thirds, unexpected inversions of triads, and other harmonic irregularities."  He just wasn't enamoured of the harmony we all love very much 😉

Karen

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[Gabriel Kastelle]

exactly, Karen--

--and these words are so much those of Charles Seeger in his famous 1940 article for The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 483-93.

"Contrapuntal Style in the Three-Voice Shape-Note Hymns"

but I don't notice that appearing in Kroeger's endnotes...

:-)

LA !

-- A. Gabriel K. --

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[Gabriel Kastelle]

;-)

p. 159 of all pages!

[Barry Johnston]

But in the second sentence down, Kroeger says, "The setting, however, does have a certain primitive strength and charm." And later, he praises Pilsbury's melodic composition, "which is rhythmically varied, melodically interesting, and well adapted to the mood and accents of the text. A fondness for the minor mode adds a sense of gravity to his melodies, some of which seem to have been influenced by the folk hymn." Then Kroeger compliments Pilsbury's Massachusetts, "The melodic and rhythmic features of the piece are not only competent but rather imaginative," but goes on to criticize his harmonies. I have to give Kroeger a little break here: he's comparing everything to William Billings and Jacob French. Kroeger's repeated mention of folk hymns might have given David Music inspiration to write on this book a decade later.