They tore the pipes from the
organ in Westminster Abbey, shouting, "Hark! how the organs go!" and, "Mark
what musick that is, that is lawful for a Puritan to dance," and they sold
the metal for pots of ale. Only four or five organs were left uninjured in
all England. 'Twas not likely, then, that New England Puritans would take
kindly to any musical instruments. Cotton Mather declared that there was
not a word in the New Testament that authorized the use of such aids to
devotion. The ministers preached often and long on the text from the
prophecy of Amos, "I will not hear the melody of thy viols;" while,
Puritan-fashion, they ignored the other half of the verse, "Take thou away
from me the noise of thy songs." Disparaging comparisons were made with
Nebuchadnezzar's idolatrous concert of cornet, flute, dulcimer, sackbut,
and psaltery; and the ministers, from their overwhelming store of Biblical
knowledge, hurled text after text at the "fiddle-players."
Some of the first pitch-pipes were comical little apple-wood instruments
that looked like mouse-traps, and great pains was taken to conceal them as
they were passed surreptitiously from hand to hand in the choir. I have
seen one which was carefully concealed in a box that had a leather binding
like a book, and which was ostentatiously labelled in large gilt letters
"Holy Bible;" a piece of barefaced and unnecessary deception on the part of
some pious New England deacon or chorister.
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