Karen Shadle, Ph.D. 2010

Advisor: Phil Vandermeer

Dissertation Title: Singing with Spirit and Understanding: Psalmody as Holistic Practice in Late Eighteenth-Century New England

Find it in the library here.

Dissertation Abstract:

Victory for the Patriots in the Revolutionary War brought more than political independence; it also marked increasing efforts to mold a distinctive culture in many areas of American life, including music. Tunebooks provide a case in point. Those printed in New England during the 1770s and ‘80s were among the first to include large numbers of new compositions by Americans alongside British favorites. Accompanying this shift toward native composition is a shift in the functions and textual themes of the collections. The physical act of singing itself became a central pedagogical and aesthetic focus. Selected and newly-composed tunes drew heavily on Biblical texts that put forth singing as a means of praising God. This obsession with singing influenced a subgenre of more elaborate anthems that addressed techniques of vocal production and the mechanics of fourpart polyphony. These tunes open a window onto broader aspects of New England culture in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary periods. Not merely a means for making music, the singing voice became a powerful symbol, embodying many of the perceived virtues of Colonial life: the voice was universal, utilitarian, natural, God-given, free, portable, and easily honed through hard work. Institutions devoted to cultivating the voice, such as the singing school, underscored its religious and social significance. By examining these songs about singing and the social and religious environment that supported them, I offer a new understanding of American psalmody that demonstrates a remarkable self-reflexivity and illustrates the blurring of the didactic/aesthetic and sacred/secular lines typical of this time period.

Dr. Shadle is currently the Director of the Office of Worship of the Archdiocese of Louisville. She previously worked at Bellarmine University, a Catholic liberal arts school, as Assistant Director of Catholic Worship and Campus Ministry. In 2015, while she was working at Bellarmine, she contributed an interview to the blog Musicology Everywhere, a project of the American Musicological Society’s Committee for Career-Related Issues that explored “careers outside of, overlapping with, adjacent to, and beyond the academy.”