This blog post is part of a larger series on popular hymn tunes in the public domain. ONE LICENSE also offers a Sacred Sounds podcast where you can learn more about sacred music, old and new. To listen to all episodes of Sacred Sounds, please visit https://media.rss.com/sacredsounds/feed.xml (or please click here).

In this edition, we will take a closer look at HAMBURG, a tune written by a man far more famous as a music teacher than as a composer. Lowell Mason began his musical career by directing several church choirs, and he entered education by serving as the superintendent of an interdenominational Sunday School. Mason believed that it was imperative for Christians to sing properly in order to worship properly, and so his passions for music and catechesis were intertwined. To further his aims, Mason opened singing schools to train young congregation members in musical worship. Eventually, Mason realized that he could expand his influence by training other teachers and choir directors to implement his methods with their own congregations. Mason’s educational achievements culminated in founding the Boston Academy of Music in 1833.

When members of the secular education community in Boston saw Mason’s success in implementing his curriculum, they hired him to do the same for Boston’s public schools. Mason thus became the first person in America hired to teach music in public schools. He dedicated his subsequent career to advocacy for universal music education, and today almost every music teacher in the United States recognizes Mason as the reason the profession exists.

Mason based his educational philosophy on that of Johann Pestalozzi, an Enlightenment philosopher who insisted that all children are born with the capacity to learn and should be given equal access to education. Hence, Mason’s firm belief in the necessity of universal music education. Pestalozzi believed that knowledge and truth exist to be discovered, and the universe’s secrets are simply waiting to be “unlocked” by students of all ages.

Pestalozzi’s methodology centered on “object lessons,” whereby children learn through manipulating objects (tangible or intangible) in the real world. Educators today may refer to object lessons as experiential learning because the goal is to learn by experiencing the lesson’s object directly. Mason’s curriculum stressed “the sound before the sign.” In other words, children were meant to hear, sing, and play a musical “object” before reading and notating that “object.” For example, students should practice singing a C major scale until they have mastered it, and only then should the teacher show students the C major scale written out on the staff. In Mason’s time, insistence on rote learning (“the sound before the sign”) was controversial, but Mason earned respect through the demonstrable success of his students.

Musicians may be most interested in Pestalozzi’s belief in the “three branches” of education: head, hands, and heart. Educating the head encompassed the acquisition of academic knowledge. Educating the hands encompassed the cultivation of physical strength and skills. Educating the heart encompassed the development of sensitivity, insofar as children were meant to cherish the values and sentiments their guardians felt proper. For musicians and artists in other disciplines, this means an aesthetic education is a crucial part of forming a complete human being.

In terms of public worship, Mason wanted to eliminate the practice of “lining,” in which a leader (often a member of the clergy or choir) would sing a single phrase of music, and the congregation would repeat the phrase back. While lining was an effective solution for congregations who did not have enough hymnals for all members or whose membership had low literacy rates, Mason considered lining to be poor musicianship.

Mason also looked down on the “fuguing tunes” prominent in United States worship. A fugue is a type of music where musicians play or sing the same melody, but starting at different times. Most of us probably sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” as a round or canon at some point in our lives; fuguing is just a slightly more complicated version of that. In his diaries and letters, Mason documented his distaste for fuguing tunes and his preference for simple, pleasing melodies reminiscent of European hymnody.

It is this preference for European musical styles over United States musical styles that is perhaps Mason’s most controversial legacy. Mason cultivated an appreciation of European music among his students. He was also a prominent member of the Boston Handel & Haydn Society. In his work for the Handel & Haydn Society, he even edited a compilation of hymns based on classical German melodies after the adaptations published by William Gardiner in his Sacred Melodies (1812, 1815).

HAMBURG is one of the melodies adapted from European models: in this case, a Gregorian chant melody in Vincent Novello’s The Evening Service (1822). HAMBURG retains the original chant’s simplicity of pitch content: the melody’s range covers only a fifth. In solfege terms, the only five notes used are Ti, Do, Re, Mi, and Fa, and the Ti is only used once as a momentary embellishment of the Do that defines the key. The melody is completely diatonic, that is, no sharps or flats are added to the key, so all notes fit neatly within the major scale (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do). Such complete diatonicism facilitates comfort among singers. In the sixteen-measure melody, measures 1-4 and 9-12 are identical, allowing singers another layer of confidence.

HAMBURG lasts a brief sixteen measures, which we can divide evenly into two eight-measure phrases. The first phrase concludes with a “half cadence,” or a type of cadence built on the fifth degree of the scale (the Sol of Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do). Half cadences intentionally feel incomplete. In the global West, our ears are conditioned to expect a melody to end on the first scale degree (the Do of the scale); the fifth scale degree points ahead toward the first scale degree in the same way that the morning star points toward the sun. When we end a phrase on this fifth scale degree, as Mason does in the first phrase of HAMBURG, we create an inherent desire to go on to the next phrase in a search for resolution and closure. The sixteen measures of HAMBURG progress steadily and forcefully toward a satisfying conclusion, when the second phrase ends on the first scale degree.

Metrically, HAMBURG can serve a wide range of texts. Mason sets the rhythm in “long meter,” or 8.8.8.8, four lines of eight syllables each. The eight syllables of each line are divided into four “unstressed → stressed” pairs (poets will recognize the unstressed → pattern as iambic). Long meter is a popular choice for poets, so a great number of hymn texts fit with HAMBURG; one of the most common pairings is Isaac Watts’s “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”

No matter what text you pair with HAMBURG, its accessibility and steadfastness make it a vivid expression of Christ’s triumph. Seek out a long meter text proper to any liturgical occasion, and hear HAMBURG’s strength lend conviction to every utterance of faith.

Featured image background photo, used with permission from Pexels. Photo by: Dariusz Staniszewski https://www.pexels.com/photo/empty-bench-2828827/