The Simple Gifts
of
Shaker Music in America
This illustrated three part article was written
by Shaker music scholar, Roger Lee Hall,
and is available at no charge for educational use.
If you use any of the information,
please give credit to the author of this article and
also this website: American Music Preservation.com
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Part One: "In Yonder Valley" - The 18th Century
The Shakers (or The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing) originated in the area around Manchester, England
during the mid-18th century. Here is the gravestone of their most important spiritual leader in Watervleit , New York:
A False Identification
This picture circulating on the Web claims to be Mother Ann Lee...
That is FALSE.
The picture is NOT Mother Ann Lee but instead is Eldress Anna White (1831-1910) at Mount Lebanon, New York.
Please help correct this
error if you notice it on the web or in print.
Mother Ann Lee
left England with eight other Believers, including her husband Abraham and her brother William,
and they arrived in New York City on 6 August 1774. This important journey was celebrated in later Shaker hymns and songs.
One of the earliest and most important accounts was told in Elder Richard McNemar's powerful ballad hymn
titled simply, "Mother." It was published in 1813 in the first Shaker hymnal, Millennial Praises, which contained only texts and no music. The tune was included in the Shaker music series in the The Shaker Messenger Magazine in 1983, edited by Roger Hall. There were sixteen verses to this hymn beginning with this one:
Let names and sects and parties
Accost my ears no more,
My ever blessed Mother,
Forever I'll adore:
Appointed by kind heaven,
My Savior to reveal,
Her doctrine is confirmed
With an eternal seal.
Sister Mildred Barker introduced this ballad hymn in 1974 at a Sabbathday Lake conference
celebrating the bicentennial of the Shakers arrival in America. She began at the sixth verse:
At Manchester, in England,
This blessed fire began,
And like a flame in stubble,
From house to house it ran:
A few at first receiv'd it,
And did their lusts forsake;
And soon their inward power
Brought on a mighty shake.
This ballad hymn was edited by Roger Hall and published in The Shaker Messenger magazine in 1983.
It was later included on the CD and accompanying songbook titled,
Love is Little: A Sampling of Shaker Spirituals
Here is a hymn written about that historic event:
"On the Landing of Mother Ann in America"
words and tune by an unknown Shaker member
at North Union, Ohio in 1860.
This ballad hymn is about Mother Ann's arrival in New York City on 6 August 1774.
Here is the first verse of this hymn:
O hail this happy day welcome day.
When blessed Mother Ann
First landed in America,
With her devoted band.
How did the wilderness resound
With Angel's songs of praise
When they on Columbia's ground
The gospel standard raise'd.
Chorus:
Again let the forest loudly resound
Dear Children of Mother,
Her beautiful
way our Spirits have found,
Surpassing all others.
Copies of the sheet music for the two above hymns are available by email.
To send your
request -- click here
The first Shaker settlement was located at Niskayuna (later Watervliet), New York in 1776.
However, their first organized community was at New Lebanon (later called Mount Lebanon), New York in 1787.
Besides New York, the Shakers had communities or settlements in other states as well:
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana,
Georgia and Florida.
Early Shaker Songs
The first Shaker tunes in America were written during the 1780s mostly by their church leaders (or "Gospel Parents") who had emigrated from England: Mother Ann Lee; her brother, Father William Lee; and Father James Whittaker. All three wrote songs.
The earliest known Shaker songs were composed without any text and sung with just syllables, which is similar to a song tradition from England and Scotland known as "mouth music."
"Mother Ann's Song" from 1783,
has been recorded on the "My Shaker Home" CD. To listen to this song -- click here.
Here is that song along with several others by Father William Lee (one beginning "We um vam"),
and a funeral song for Joseph Jewett sung by Father James Whittaker. All the tunes
written in Shaker alphabet music notation...
A Song of Redemption - 1783
Over two centuries ago, one of the most difficult times during the missionary travels of Mother Ann between 1781 and 1783 ocurred at Harvard and Shirley in Massachusetts.
It was there that an angry mobs rose up against the Shakers and brutally attacked them. Here is a vivid description from the Shakers' own history titled, Shakerism: Its Meaning and Message (1904), by Anna White and Leila S. Taylor:
The year 1783 seems to surpass all previous years of this wonderful life in the frequency, cruelty and intensity of the warfare of evil. Father James [Whittaker] was tied to a tree [in Harvard] and scourged until the ground was wet with his blood. Father William [Lee] requested that he take his whipping on his knees, and this was granted, but Father James, freed from the tree to which he had been tied, leaped upon Father William, thus shielding his brother by means of his own lacerated back. At this time Mother Ann and Hannah Kendall were standing in the garden at Shirley, seven miles away, and Mother Ann exclaimed, "The Elders are in great tribulation. I hear Elder William's soul cry to Heaven"! The mob at length retired, leaving their victims to care for themselves. Kneeling, they rejoiced and prayed, and to Father James was given a new song, which he sang upon his knees, his bruised and bleeding form just from the hands of his inhuman persecutors...
On returning to Shirley, his brethren and sisters wept at sight of his mangled and discolored back which was beaten to a jelly. Mother Ann looked on them with pitying eyes, and said: "This is the life of the Gospel, for without suffering there is no redemption. Where there is no persecution nor suffering there is no Gospel, no ceasing from sin. All souls that will be made perfect must go through mortification, tribulation and suffering."
From The Happy Journey: Thirty-five Shaker Spirituals (1982)
Compiled and edited by Roger L. Hall
(Courtesy: Fruitlands Museums, Harvard, Massachusetts)
Years later a marble shaft was erected near the spot [shown in the above photo], and it became the custom for any Shaker who passed by that place of the whipping in Harvard, to place a stone in remembrance of that day when Father James Whittaker and Father William Lee were beaten.
This dramatic story deserves to be retold in a play or a film for its depiction of the severe persecution suffered and yet the unbending faith held by
the early Shaker leaders.
As Mother Ann said: "without suffering there is no redemption."
First Shaker song with words and music - 1787
The first known Shaker song complete with words and music was, "Father Jame's Song (aka:
In Yonder Valley)," written by Father James Whittaker (1751-1787)
and performed on the Love is Little CD.
This song is shown here in
Shaker letteral (or alphabet) music notation...
Shaker manuscript journal
(Courtesy: American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts)
Dance songs were also popular during in the early years from the 1780s to the 1820s and were usually without text, sung with vocables.
Examples are: "Square Order Shuffle" and "Quick Step Manner"
[both recorded on the CD, Love is Little ].
Reference material:
For a list of recommended Shaker music books -- click here
See the list of CDs with Shaker music -- click here
Read more about Shaker music history with bonus music examples and concert videos
on this computer disc:
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"Invitation To Zion" - A Shaker Music Guide
Go to Part Two: 19th Century Shaker Music >>
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