[Of all the many emails and enquiries that come into the museum, by
far the most numerous are about ‘Amazing Grace’. ‘How did it come
to be written?’, ‘Did Newton write the music?’, etc., etc. Consequently
I wrote this piece as a standard answer to all such questions. Most of
these enquiries come from the United States but I hope the following
explanation will be of interest to everyone.]
The Rev. John Newton wrote the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ for the New
Year’s Morning sermon at Olney parish church in 1773. It was based
on the sermon’s text, I Chronicles 17:16-17, ‘Faith’s Review and
Expectation’, and was first published in Olney Hymns (1779). Newton’s
friend and neighbour William Cowper wrote some 67 of the Hymns, the
remainder of the total of 348 being written by Newton himself. They
were mostly intended to illuminate a particular point or sermon during
the weekly Bible meetings which took place in the Great House, Olney.
They were chanted at first and perhaps later sung to a popular tune,
metre allowing.
‘Amazing Grace’ was no exception. In England it was first sung
to the tune ‘Hephzibah’. In New York and the eastern United States
another tune, ‘Loving Lambs’, was possibly used some time in the early
1800s, while from the mid- to late nineteenth century about ten further
tunes were in evidence. In a new book published in 2002, Steve Turner
presents extensive research into the origins of the different melodies
used. Between 1779 and 1807 the hymn was published in four other
collections in addition to the Olney Hymns, three of them American, an
early indication that the hymn resonated more across the Atlantic than
in home territory.
In 1937 George Pullen Jackson wrote, ‘The poem is by Newton but the
source [of the tune] is unknown to the southern compilers.’ The familiar
tune, which we all associate with Newton’s words, was also unknown
in Britain. According to Mr Turner’s researches, two similar tunes were
published in Columbian Harmony (Cincinnati, 1829). One was called
‘Gallaher’, used for a Wesleyan hymn; the other, ‘St Mary’s’, for one
by Isaac Watts. Then in 1830 the tune, now called ‘Harmony Grove’,
was published in Virginia Harmony to the words of ‘There is a Land
of Pure Delight’, another Isaac Watts hymn. The tune was published
again in The Lexington Cabinet (1831), and in The Christian’s Harp
and Genuine Church Music (both 1832) to the words of the Cowper
hymn ‘There is a Fountain Filled with Blood’. Finally in 1835 William
Walker, from South Carolina, polished up the tune, gave it a new name
– ‘New Britain’ – and set Newton’s ‘Amazing Grace’ to it for the first
time. He published it in Southern Harmony, a very successful collection
which sold an estimated 600,000 copies, mainly in the southern states
of America.
In 1844 a compiler, Benjamin Franklin White, published ‘Amazing
Grace’ in Philadelphia to the now established tune ‘New Britain’,
in another popular collection entitled The Sacred Harp. This was
instrumental in spreading the hymn in the northern states. By the
American Civil War it had become very popular in the north and was to
some extent associated with the Union cause, helped by its inclusion in
two hymnals, Hymns for the Camp and The Soldier’s Hymn Book, which
were issued to troops along with the New Testament.
Some say it is an old Scottish tune; others that it is an American
plantation song. It could of course be both: an old Scottish melody taken
to America by emigrants and later adapted. Certainly the geographical
area associated with the source of the tune contained a high percentage
of Scottish immigrants. If the tune does have Scottish roots, why was it
unknown in Scotland at the time? One answer might be that from time
to time, especially during the period of the ‘Highland Clearances’, entire
areas of the Scottish Highlands became depopulated as their inhabitants
moved to the New World. One musicologist, Peter Van der Merwe, has
argued that it is ‘an overwhelmingly Scottish tune’ because it uses the
‘pentatonic (scale) in a specifically Scottish way’ (quoted in Turner,
p.123).
What is certain is that Newton never heard his hymn sung to this
melody. The familiar tune and words were introduced to Britain during
the late nineteenth century. Indeed ‘Amazing Grace’ was not the most
popular of Newton’s hymns, the British preferring ‘Glorious Things of
Thee are Spoken’, sung to Haydn’s tune known as ‘The Austrian Hymn’,
and ‘How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds’.
It is only with the growth of the record industry that the hymn’s
popularity has spread internationally. Two recordings out of so many
should be mentioned in this respect. The first by Judy Collins made the
pop charts in the USA and Britain in 1971, exemplifying the crossover
from gospel and folk music to pop. The second was a recording by
the pipes and drums of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards in 1972. This
recording has led to pipe bands all over the world making the tune their
own, perhaps reinforcing the idea of a Scottish origin for it. Since ‘9/11’
we have heard it played most poignantly by the pipes at funeral and
memorial services for members of the New York Fire Department and
the NYPD.
During the Civil Rights campaign of the 1960s the hymn became
associated with the struggle for equality in the southern states. This is
perhaps ironic for a hymn written by a former ship’s captain in the slave
trade. Later Newton became actively involved in its abolition, was a
friend and colleague of William Wilberforce, and lived to see the trade
abolished in 1807. He would have been gratified that his words should
be associated with the black cause, for he once refused an honorary
Doctorate of Divinity from the University of New Jersey, saying that the
dreary coast of Africa had been his university and that he would never
accept any diploma ‘except from the poor blacks’.
Bibliography
Jackson, George Pullen, Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early America, 1937.
Rouse, Marylynn (ed.), Richard Cecil’s The Life of John Newton, Ross‑shire:
Christian Focus, 2000.
Turner, Steve, Amazing Grace: The Story of America’s Most Beloved Song, New
York: Harper Collins, 2002.
