Traveling to Camp

Traveling to Camp

The camp meeting was an innovation of the Second Great Awakening in the United States in the early 19th century. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people would gather “in the wilderness” to listen to preaching, to pray, and to sing what Harper’s Magazine later called “sweet weird melodies.” The meetings could be somber, but they were often boisterous, as people bemoaned their sins, caught the Spirit, or called on God for mercy. Here’s a report from one such meeting in Georgia, in 1807:

Music was an integral part of the meetings. But there were large crowds and so much noise, and no amplification, of course.  Psalms and plain church songs couldn’t compete, and complicated entrances, anthems, and songs with intricate harmonies were out of place. Camp meeting songs needed to thrive in the midst of aural and emotional chaos: songs were less complicated, more emotional, and easy to teach.

The Sacred Harp has many camp meeting songs, and they are in sharp contrast with both the plain church songs and the elaborate fuguing tunes. Look for the “Glory, hallelujahs!” Look for call-and-response patterns, where the response is to sing a specific phrase, or to repeat a phrase from the call.

Take for example, 277 ANTIOCH:

(Call) I know that my Redeemer lives, (Response) Glory, Hallelujah!
(Call) What comfort this sweet sentence gives (Response) Glory, Hallelujah!

(Easy to learn chorus) 
Shout on, pray on, we’re gaining ground,
Glory, hallelujah!
The dead’s alive, and the lost is found,
Glory, hallelujah!

If you were leading this song, you could swap in any common meter hymn you knew:

(Call) Amazing grace, how sweet the sound! (Response) Glory, Hallelujah!
(Call) I once was lost, but now I’m found! (Response) Glory, Hallelujah!

And singing the chorus gives you plenty of time to think of another verse. You could sing this for a long time without stopping. You could probably even make up new lines on the spot, like I”m doing right now:

(Call) Brothers, come and hear the word! Response) Glory, Hallelujah!
(Call) Sisters, praise the risen Lord! Response) Glory, Hallelujah!

You could do that, too, with a little practice.

Notice that the chorus of ANTIOCH has a simple call and response structure; the chorus is easy enough to learn on the third or fourth time through, but everyone can sing “Glory, Hallelujah!” immediately.

It’s interesting to see evidence of poems and songs being put into a camp meeting structure, to fit a popular musical form. That’s what I see in 185 PILGRIM’S FAREWELL. This song shares a common origin with the fuguing tune 208 TRAVELING ON. The text of both songs come from a poem Samuel Crossman written in 1664, in his book of devotional poetry, The Young Mans Meditation—published well over a hundred years before the two songs were published.

Crossman’s original poem has a very different tone. Here are the first two verses:

Farewel poor World! I must be gone,
Thou art no home, no rest for me:
I'll take my staff, and travel on,
Till I a better World may see.

Why art thou loth my heart! oh! why
Do'st thus recoil within my breast?
Grieve not, but say farewel, and fly
Unto the Arke, my Dove! there's rest.

The poet is talking to the world—that is, this life—and then turns his attention to his own heart. He’s looking forward to life after death; he’s flying back to the ark as did Noah’s dove, traveling to “an heav'nly Canaan” as he calls in a later verse. 

The poem doesn’t show up in other books until 1774 in a collection edited by Samson Occom, a Native American minister. A few words are changed along the way (italics indicate changes) conforming in more closely to the text we know:

Farewell vain World, I must be gone,
I have no Home or Stay in Thee;
I'll take my staff, and travel on,
Till I a better World may see.

In 1793, words quite close to those we use in  PILGRIM’S FAREWELL and TRAVELING ON appear in Jacob French’s The Psalmodist’s Companion. 

Farewell dear friends, I must be gone,
I have no home or stay with you;
I’ll take my staff and travel on,
‘Till I a better world can view:

(chorus) Farewell, farewell, farewell,
My loving friends farewell.

In this setting, the text is becoming more and more like a camp meeting song. Two things stand out. First, there is a change from addressing “the world” (meaning the world of the living) to “dear friends.” It changes, I think, from a song about longing for heaven to a song about repentance from living in a worldly manner. Second, there is a catchy chorus; in French’s music, we’re told to sing the three “farewells” soft and slow, but the second line of the chorus loud and quick. French’s tune is the one we use for 185 PILGRIM’S FAREWELL.

French arranged a second version of this song in 1802 in his Harmony of Harmonies with a new line prepended to the 1793 chorus:

I’ll march to Canaan’s land,
I’ll land on Canaan’s shore,
Where pleasures never end,
And troubles come no more.

Farewell, farewell, farewell,
My loving friends farewell.

“Marching to Canaan” is a common theme of camp meeting songs. For a camp meeting song, PILGRIM’S FAREWELL is a little complicated. It's certainly more complicated than 277 ANTIOCH, but its internal repeat (Call: I’ll take my staff and travel on, Response: I’ll take my staff and travel on), the marching cadence and common themes of the new words (“I’ll march to Canaan’s land”), and the soft/loud farewells at the end still make it a good example of this genre, with French’s second version created as the Second Great Awakening was flourishing. His version shows up in Wyeth’s Collection and The Southern Harmony, so it was a natural choice for inclusion in the first edition of The Sacred Harp. 

On the other hand, TRAVELING ON is a fuging¹ tune by S.M. Denson and J.S. James wrote for the 1911 edition of The Sacred Harp, edited by James (it started out on page 508 and was moved to 208 later). It uses just the main text. In the 1911 edition, Denson and James wrote:

“This is a new tune composed for the Fifth Edition of the Sacred Harp of 1911. The words are the same as those found in “Pilgrim's Farewell.” ... It is believed by the composer that the above tune will prove itself worthy of the approbation of the lovers of sacred songs.”

I find it interesting that composers like French were writing music in a style that mimicked an extemporaneous genre. James, famously, wrote and curated music “as far from secular, operatic, rag-time, and jig melodies as is possible,” although, of course, he kept many camp meeting songs in the 1911 edition. Perhaps, in writing TRAVELING ON, he wanted to show a better way. If we judge by how often these songs are led in minuted singings, ANTIOCH is very popular, James’s TRAVELING ON is of middling popularity, and PILGRIM’S FAREWELL is in the bottom ten percent. We still love shouting “Glory, Hallelujah!” We love our fuges, too. We should sing PILGRIM’S FAREWELL a bit more, I think!

Notes

I made extensive use of the Hymnology Archive’s article on “Farewell, poor world! I must be gone” for this article. As usual, they go into even more detail. It has extensive images of the various stages of these songs.

Camp meetings were often integrated, as evidenced in the Georgia camp meeting report above, and Black communities held camp meetings held as well, as the Harper’s article shows. I am very interested in how Black communities shaped camp meeting music overall, but I acknowledge my near total ignorance of this. Tell me more! Perhaps I can write a future essay on this.

As ever, I’m interested in your comments and corrections. I’m grateful to Sam Adioetomo for copy-editing and reviewing earlier drafts. Any error left is my own daftness.

1  Yes, “fuge” and “fuging”. Fuguing is something the Germans do. In this tradition, we use an older English spelling.