Lining Out - History

History

The practice of lined-out psalmody was first documented in England by the Westminster Assembly, which prescribed it in 1644, though only for those congregations with an insufficient number of literate members or printed psalters. It became however the norm in English Dissenting churches of all levels, and American ones as well, even after psalters became more readily available.

Lining out became prevalent in the 17th century both in Great Britain and America, gradually developing a distinctive style characterized by a slow, drawn-out heterophonic and often profusely ornamented melody, while a clerk or precentor (song leader) chanted the text line by line before it was sung by the congregation. Though attacked by musical reformers as uncouth, it has survived to the present among some communities and contexts, including the Gaelic psalmody on Lewis, the Old Regular Baptists of the southern Appalachians (U.S.A.) and for informal worship in many African American congregations.

The tide turned against lining out in England and New England in the first quarter of the 18th century, with greater literacy, improved availability of texts such as New Version of the Psalms of David (1696) by Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, and more widely available and better-printed tune collections. Influential clerics in England and America disliked the ragged nature of the singing that resulted as the congregation struggled to remember both the tune and the words from the lining out.

Lining out was in most places replaced by "regular singing," in which either the congregation knew a small number of tunes like Old 100th that could be fitted to many different texts in standard meters such as Common Meter, or a tunebook was used along with a word book. There began to be "singing societies" of young men who met one evening a week to rehearse. As time went on, a section of the church was allocated for these trained voices to sit together as a choir, and churches voted to end the lining out system. We have a vivid picture of the transition in Worcester, Massachusetts:

The History of Worcester gives an interesting account of the final scene which ensued on the abolition of the "lining out" system, and the introduction of the choir. On Aug, 5, 1779, it was voted, "That the singers sit in the front seats of the gallery, and that those gentlemen who have hitherto sat in the front seats in said gallery, have a right to sit in the front and second seat below. and that said singers have said seats appropriated to said use. Voted, that said singers be requested to take said seats and carry on the singing in public worship. Voted, that the mode of singing in the congregation here be without reading the psalms line by line to be sung.
The Sabbath after the adoption of these votes, after the hymn had been read by the minister, the aged and venerable Deacon Chamberlain, unwilling to desert the custom of his fathers, rose and read the first line, according to the usual practice. The singers, prepared to carry the alteration into effect, proceeded without pausing at the conclusion. The white-haired officer of the church, with the full power of his voice, read on till the louder notes of the collected body overpowered the attempt to resist the progress of improvement, and the deacon, deeply mortified at the triumph of musical reformation, seized his hat, and retired from the meeting house in tears. His conduct was censured by the church, and he was for a time deprived of its communion for absenting himself from the public services of the Sabbath.

— Granville L. Howe and William Smythe Babcock Mathews, "A Hundred Years of Music in America: An Account of Musical Effort in America", (G.L. Howe, Chicago,1889).

Lining out persisted much longer in some churches in the American South, either through theological conservatism or through the recurrence of the conditions of lack of books and literacy, and in some places is still practiced today. In African American churches this practice became known as "Dr. Watts Hymn Singing," a historical irony given Watts' disapproval of the practice.