{"id":1308,"date":"2008-05-06T22:20:48","date_gmt":"2008-05-07T03:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1308"},"modified":"2010-09-27T16:43:45","modified_gmt":"2010-09-27T23:43:45","slug":"universalist-composer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1308","title":{"rendered":"Universalist composer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been looking through some shape-note hymnals, and came across this interesting tidbit in <em>The Norumbega Harmony<\/em>, in the introductory essay by Stephen Marini*:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The greatest musical influence in Maine&#8230; was Supply Belcher&#8230;. Belcher&#8217;s primary successor was Abraham Maxim, a native of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who settled during the 17090s in Turner [Maine], where he taught singing schools and converted to Universalism. Maxim&#8217;s <em>Oriental Harmony<\/em> (1802) and <em>Northern Harmony<\/em> (1805) reflect the [William] Billings-Belcher influence that thoroughly dominated Maine&#8217;s singing school tradition.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Although he is little more than a footnote today, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cyberhymnal.org\/bio\/m\/a\/x\/maxim_a.htm\">Maxim<\/a> (b. 1773 &#8211; d. 1829<a href=\"http:\/\/www.genforum.familytreemaker.com\/maxim\/messages\/1.html\"> Palmyra, Somerset County, Maine<\/a>) must be the earliest North American Universalist composer whose works survive today. <em>The Norumbega Harmony<\/em> contains two compositions by Maxim, settings of hymns by Isaac Watts. Both compositions are fuguing tunes (for the record, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shapenote.net\/berkley\/428.jpg\">Buckfield<\/a>, p. 166 is an L.M. tune; Machais, p. 169, is a P.M. tune), and a quick look reveals that both seem musically interesting. Universalist hymnodists and choirs, take note!<\/p>\n<p>* <em>Stephen Marini is the historian who wrote the ground-breaking <\/em>Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England<em>, a third of which book covered the indigenous Universalism of central New England; thus Marini knows his early New England Universalism. Marini&#8217;s other major scholarly publication is <\/em>Sacred Song in America: Religion, Music, and Public Culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been looking through some shape-note hymnals, and came across this interesting tidbit in The Norumbega Harmony, in the introductory essay by Stephen Marini*: &#8220;The greatest musical influence in Maine&#8230; was Supply Belcher&#8230;. Belcher&#8217;s primary successor was Abraham Maxim, a native of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who settled during the 17090s in Turner [Maine], where he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[131,466,204,549],"class_list":["post-1308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberal-religion","tag-hymns","tag-stephen-marini","tag-universalist-history","tag-william-billings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1308"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7650,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions\/7650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}