J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

ounded too closely by early Methodist hymnody; for two reasons. Firstly, John and
Charles seem to have had an ambivalent attitude to many trends in contemporary hymn
tunes, even among the Methodists: the music selected and composed by Martin Madan
or John Frederick Lampe, for example. It seems likely that Charles Wesley intended
many of his hymns—those in unusual metres, especially—for the more restrained
German chorale melodies he came across through his contact with the Moravians.
Secondly, congregational music was not the only kind with which the Wesleys were
familiar. Although he was suspicious of secular music, John Wesley’s diaries speak in
passing of a variety of musical experiences; he was for example much impressed by
Handel’s Messiah; less so by Arne’s Judith. He had lengthy discussions on music with
Johann Christoph Pepusch (by then eccentrically conservative—for him music had
been going downhill since the time of William Byrd), and even wrote a short treatise
on The Power of Music, in 1779. 24 He makes no explicit mention of hymnody
(although it is difficult to read his comments without making inferences about his
attitude toward church music). Influenced by the ideas of Pepusch and by Avison’s
1752 Expression in Music, he comes down heavily on the side of the ancients against
the moderns in this perennial eighteenth-century debate, and shows a curious
resemblance to some of the musical theories of Jean Jacques Rousseau. According to
Samuel, his father Charles had a good ear for music and could play the flute but,
(ironically for the creator of Methodist hymnody) had no great voice and found it
difficult to sing even a simple hymn in tune. His mother Sarah sang and played the
harpsichord, but Olleson characterises their interest in music as being ‘no more than
24 Reproduced in Routley, Wesleys, pp.15-19. See also Olleson, Wesley, p.13. It is not known what
prompted this curious tract. Could it have been the growing celebrity of his gifted nephews? If
Charles was ambivalent about his sons’ musical career (see below), John was emphatically opposed.
Rather than publishing a direct personal attack, however, did this issue prompt him to a characteristic
examination of first principles? Especially in view of his conversations with Pepusch, it is no great
surprise that his treatise comes out strongly in favour of unaccompanied vocal music, against ‘those
modern overtures, voluntaries, or concertos, which consist altogether of artificial sounds without any
words at all’. It should be noted that ‘overtures, voluntaries, or concertos’ formed the bulk of the
programmes at Charles Wesley’s house concerts.
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