Finding Their Voices - Amherst College

Wherefore, although we look far and wide and search on every hand, we shall not
find better songs nor songs better suited to that end than the Psalms of David
which the Holy Spirit made and uttered through him. 175
For Calvin, this was the only music to be allowed in worship. He recognized the
power of music to influence the emotions, just as Luther did, but for him music’s
potential emotional effect needed to be treated with great caution:
There is scarcely anything in this world that can more greatly turn or bend in any
direction the morals of men, as Plato has prudently considered. And in fact we
experience that it has a secret and almost incredible faculty to move hearts in one
way or another. Thus, we must be all the more diligent in regulating it in such a
way that it may be useful and not injurious to us. 176
Calvin’s negative perception of music, particularly of its secular variety,
constituted a dramatic break from the practice of Luther, who had supported the use of
instruments and the singing of any sacred text, even if non-biblical, in full harmony.
Calvin’s suspicion of music was typical among the more conservative Protestants.
Following the teachings of Heinrich Bullinger, the most conservative faction of
Protestantism denied that music had any place in worship, and advocated for its complete
banishment. We are lucky that the majority of colonial Pilgrims tended to follow Calvin
rather than Bullinger.
The Diversity of Early American Religion
Due to the influence of these first devotedly religious settlers, America was, for
the great majority of its existence, overwhelmingly Protestant, and, before the country
saw large-scale immigration from main-land Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, very
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175 John Calvin, The Geneva Psalter (1542), trans. in Leo Treitler and Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in
Music History (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978), 366.
176 John Calvin, “Epistle to the Reader,” Cinquante Pseaumes en francois par Clem. Marot (1543), trans. in
David W. Music, Hymnology: A Collection of Source Readings (Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1996), 66.
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