Musical Offerings ⦁ 2026 ⦁ Volume 17 ⦁ Number 1 9 Massachusetts, an effort to have a brand new paraphrase of the Psalms culminated in the publishing of The Whole Booke of Psalmes, more commonly known as The Bay Psalm Book, in 1640.56 The ninth edition of this psalm book included the subscripts “f,” “s,” “l,” and “m,” representing the unique, four solmization syllables in Anglo-American Psalmody (fa, sol, la, and mi). These syllables were taken from the medieval era gamut of Guido d’Arrezzo (see Figure 1),57 and were used in tune books such as James Lyon’s Urania (1761), the first publication to include compositions from American composers (Lyon himself and Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence).58 This new American voice would become a key component of the style as it progressed, and it shows that psalmody truly became something more than the music of the antiquated farmer and the elite Renaissance composer, but music to which the common man could have a direct say in its development. This created an incentive for many composers to write music that appealed to regional qualities and distinctives, while others strove to create a continental style that incorporated elements from Britain and America. Figure 1: The Gamut, as illustrated in James Lyon’s Urania (1761).59 Those that were more regional were still concentrated in more rural areas, such as The Cashaway Psalmody of Durham Hills, a late 1760s 56 Macdougall, 31. 57 William Billings, The Continental Harmony, xii. 58 James Lyon, xix. 59 Lyon, I.
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