12 Higgins ⦁ Anglo-American Psalmody an art and gradually surpassed the bounds of [parish] psalmody,” and a piece such as “Creation” represented this short and fleeting moment in American church music.75 Example 3: Billings, “Creation” from The Continental Harmony (1794), mm. 42–60.76 Ironically, a divided musical culture began to emerge around the time that Pilsbury published The United States Sacred Harmony, and a new sound centered on the oratorios of Handel and the psalm began to emerge, causing yet another worship war that would last long after the 1790s.77 This may have been due to the resurgence in the idea of music as art, as “by 1810, the American religious establishment…had adopted an ideology that favored solemn, dignified, and even bland music from European sources,” disregarding the work of composers of the previous decades.78 In the United Kingdom, psalmody also shifted to a galant style, as William Tattersall’s Improved Psalmody (1794) included tunes written by Franz Joseph Haydn.79 The Classical era style would later dominate hymnody in the 1800s.80 Though this style of psalmody would never truly fade away from church music, its impact on middle-class 75 Steel and Hulan, 44. 76 Billings, The Continental Harmony, 54. 77 Cooke, xvi. 78 Steel and Hulan, 45. 79 Tattersall, Improved Psalmody, 96, 119, 176, 211, 252, 300. 80 Macdougall, 148–149.
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