Shaker Music History
Shaker music manuscript
(Courtesy: Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio)
This gift drawing is described in
an article titled,
"The Shaker Leaf Song: Solving a Perplexing Puzzle"
The Shakers are the oldest surviving religious communal society in the United States.
The last active Shaker community is located at Sabbathday Lake, Maine.
Today the Shakers are known primarily for their simple and beautiful furniture.
Yet their music played a longer and more important role in Shaker history.
Contrary to popular belief, all Shaker tunes are not "Traditional" or "Anonymous."
Many of the spirituals are attributed to individual Shaker brethren and sisters.
They also developed their own form of music notation known as the "letteral system." This notation used letters of the alphabet (a-b-c-d-e-f-g-a') rather than conventional notes. It was used as a type of musical shorthand so that tunes could be copied down quickly, and also so their music would be separated from people in the non-Shaker or "World's People."
Examples of this notation are found in
A Guide to Shaker Music - With Music Supplement
Shaker Music
in
America
By RogerLee Hall
Shaker music has had a long and varied history going back
several
centuries.
The 18th Century
The Shakers originated in the area around Manchester, England
during the mid-18th century.
Their most important spiritual leader, Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784),
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.
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 R. 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.
Both this ballad hymn and and a later hymn, "On the Landing of Mother Ann in America," are included on the CD and accompanying songbook titled,
Love is Little: A Sampling of Shaker Spirituals
The important landing of the Shakers in America in 1774 is commemorated each year with a worship service at Sabbathday Lake, Maine (where the few remaining Shakers live) and with programs at various Shaker museums,
such as in Canterbury , New Hampshire
and Pleasant Hill, Kentucky.
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 Mt. Lebanon), New York in 1787.
Besides New York, the Shakers had communities in other states as well: Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana,
Georgia and Florida.
Shaker Songs
The first Shaker songs were composed beginning about 1781 by the 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 in America were composed without any text or with just syllables.
Examples of this early music are: "Mother Ann's Song" from 1783,
recorded on the CD, Love is Little: A Sampling of Shaker Spirituals . This song along with several others by Father William Lee,
and a funeral song for Joseph Jewett sung by Father James Whittaker,
are shown here
written in Shaker letteral notation...
Shaker manuscript volume
(Courtesy: American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts)
Father James's Whipping Song
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 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, 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.
The "new song" mentioned in this description is listed as "Father James's Song"
and recorded on the CD,
Love is Little.
This wordless song was
written on the day of his brutal whipping
on 2 June 1783.
From The Happy Journey: Thirty-five Shaker Spirituals (1982)
(Courtesy: Fruitlands Museums, Harvard, Massachusetts)
Years later a marble shaft was erected near the spot [shown in the 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 Father James and Father William.
This dramatic story deserves to be retold 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."
Attention Filmmakers!
A story treatment for a possible feature film or documentary
about the early years of Shakerism in America
with suggested music is available by request.
Write to: Shaker Story Treatment
First Shaker Song
The first known Shaker song complete with words and music was, "In Yonder Valley," written by Father James Whittaker in 1787 [recorded on the Love is Little CD], written the same year as his passing. This song is shown here in
Shaker letteral notation...
Shaker manuscript volume
(Courtesy: American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts)
Dance songs were also popular during in the early years from the 1780s to the 1820s and were without text, sung with vocables.
Examples are: "Square Order Shuffle" and "Quick Step Manner" [both recorded on the CD, Love is Little ].
More>>
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