Editing Amazing Grace (section)

== Dissemination ==

[[File:New Britain Southern Harmony Amazing Grace.jpg|thumb|450px|alt=Original long hymnal with shape note music notation of a tune titled "New Britain" set to Newton's first verse, with four subsequent verses printed below. Underneath is another hymn titled "Cookham".|An 1847 publication of ''[[Southern Harmony]]'', showing the title "New Britain" and [[shape note]] music.]]

More than 60 of Newton and Cowper's hymns were republished in other British hymnals and magazines, but "Amazing Grace" was not, appearing only once in a 1780 hymnal sponsored by the [[Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon|Countess of Huntingdon]]. Scholar [[John D. Julian|John Julian]] commented in his 1892 ''[[A Dictionary of Hymnology]]'' that outside of the United States, the song was unknown and it was "far from being a good example of Newton's finest work".<ref>Julian, p. 55.</ref>{{efn|Only since the 1950s has it gained some popularity in the UK; not until 1964 was it published with the music most commonly associated with it. (Noll and Blumhofer, p. 8)}} Between 1789 and 1799, four variations of Newton's hymn were published in the US in [[Baptist]], [[Dutch Reformed]], and [[Congregationalist]] hymnodies;<ref name="hindmarsh8"/> by 1830 [[Presbyterian]]s and [[Methodist]]s also included Newton's verses in their hymnals.<ref name="hindmarsh10">Noll and Blumhofer, p. 10.</ref><ref>Aitken, pp. 232–233.</ref><!-- Hide information until it can be discussed in 1831 it was published in Winchester, VA. as part of ''The Virginia Harmony'', compiled by Methodist lay preacher [[James P. Carrell]] and Presbyterian elder [[David S. Clayton]].<ref name="Tyranny">Tyranny, Blue" Gene (2011). "[http://www.allmusic.com/work/string-quartet-no-4-amazing-grace-c212682/description String Quartet No. 4 ("Amazing Grace")]", AllMusic.</ref> -->

Although it had its roots in England, "Amazing Grace" became an integral part of the Christian tapestry in the United States. The greatest influences in the 19th century that propelled "Amazing Grace" to spread across the US and become a staple of religious services in many denominations and regions were the [[Second Great Awakening]] and the development of [[shape note]] singing communities. A tremendous religious movement swept the US in the early 19th century, marked by the growth and popularity of churches and religious revivals that got their start on the frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee. Unprecedented gatherings of thousands of people attended [[camp meeting]]s where they came to experience salvation; preaching was fiery and focused on saving the sinner from temptation and backsliding.<ref name="turner115-116">Turner, pp. 115–116.</ref> Religion was stripped of ornament and ceremony, and made as plain and simple as possible; sermons and songs often used repetition to get across to a rural population of poor and mostly uneducated people the necessity of turning away from sin. Witnessing and testifying became an integral component to these meetings, where a congregation member or stranger would rise and recount his turn from a sinful life to one of piety and peace.<ref name="hindmarsh10"/> "Amazing Grace" was one of many hymns that punctuated fervent sermons, although the contemporary style used a refrain, borrowed from other hymns, that employed simplicity and repetition such as:

{{blockquote|<poem>
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

Shout, shout for glory,
Shout, shout aloud for glory;
Brother, sister, mourner,
All shout glory hallelujah.<ref name="turner115-116"/>
</poem>}}

Simultaneously, an unrelated movement of communal singing was established throughout the South and Western states. A format of teaching music to illiterate people appeared in 1800. It used four syllables to distinguish the intervals of the major scale: fa-sol-la-fa-sol-la-mi-fa. Each syllable was associated with a specifically shaped note, and thus the use of books printed in this format became known as shape note singing. The method was simple to learn and teach, and schools were established throughout the South and West. Communities would come together for an entire day of singing in a large building where they sat in four distinct areas surrounding an open space, one member directing the entire gathering. Some groups sang outdoors, on benches set up in a square. Preachers used [[shape note]] music to teach hymns to people on the frontier and to raise the emotion of camp meetings. Most of the music was Christian, but the purpose of communal singing was not primarily spiritual. Communities either could not afford instruments for accompaniment, or rejected their use due to a [[Calvinism|Calvinistic]] sense of simplicity, so the songs were sung [[a cappella]].<ref>Turner, p. 117.</ref>

=== "New Britain" tune ===

[[File:William Walker, American composer.jpg|thumb|right|upright|alt=Grainy portrait of a middle aged white man in a black suit|[[William Walker (composer)|William Walker]], the American composer who first set John Newton's verses to the "New Britain" tune, creating the version of the song known as "Amazing Grace"]]

When originally used in Olney, it is unknown what music, if any, accompanied the verses written by John Newton. Contemporary hymnbooks did not contain music and were simply small books of religious poetry. The first known instance of Newton's lines joined to music was in ''A Companion to the Countess of Huntingdon's Hymns'' (London, 1808), where it is set to the tune "Hephzibah" by English composer [[John Jenkins Husband]].<ref>[http://hymntune.library.uiuc.edu/ The Hymn Tune Index], Search="Hephzibah". University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana Library website. Retrieved 31 December 2010.</ref> Common meter hymns were interchangeable with a variety of tunes; more than twenty musical settings of "Amazing Grace" circulated with varying popularity until 1835, when American composer [[William Walker (composer)|William Walker]] assigned Newton's words to a traditional song named "New Britain". This was an amalgamation of two melodies ("Gallaher" and "St. Mary"), first published in the ''Columbian Harmony'' by Charles H. Spilman and Benjamin Shaw (Cincinnati, 1829). Spilman and Shaw, both students at Kentucky's [[Centre College]], compiled their tunebook both for public worship and revivals, to satisfy "the wants of the Church in her triumphal march". Most of the tunes had been previously published, but "Gallaher" and "St. Mary" had not.<ref>Turner, pp. 120–122.</ref> As neither tune is attributed and both show elements of oral transmission, scholars can only speculate that they are possibly of British origin.<ref>Turner, p. 123.</ref> A manuscript from 1828 by [[Lucius Chapin]], a famous hymn writer of that time, contains a tune very close to "St. Mary", but that does not mean that he wrote it.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.shenandoahharmony.com/2015/did-lucius-chapin-write-the-amazing-grace-tune/|title=Did Lucius Chapin write the Amazing Grace tune?|date=12 May 2015|author=Rachel Wells Hall|access-date=12 May 2015|archive-date=15 May 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150515003810/http://www.shenandoahharmony.com/2015/did-lucius-chapin-write-the-amazing-grace-tune/|url-status=dead}}</ref>

"Amazing Grace", with the words written by Newton and joined with "New Britain", the melody most currently associated with it, appeared for the first time in Walker's shape note tunebook ''[[Southern Harmony]]'' in 1847.<ref name="hindmarsh11">Noll and Blumhofer, p. 11.</ref> It was, according to author Steve Turner, a "marriage made in heaven&nbsp;... The music behind 'amazing' had a sense of awe to it. The music behind 'grace' sounded graceful. There was a rise at the point of confession, as though the author was stepping out into the open and making a bold declaration, but a corresponding fall when admitting his blindness."<ref>Turner, p. 124.</ref> Walker's collection was enormously popular, selling about 600,000 copies all over the US when the total population was just over 20&nbsp;million. Another shape note tunebook named ''[[The Sacred Harp]]'' (1844) by Georgia residents [[Benjamin Franklin White]] and Elisha J. King became widely influential and continues to be used.<ref name="turner126">Turner, p. 126.</ref>

Another verse was first recorded in [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]]'s immensely influential 1852 anti-slavery novel ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]''. Three verses were emblematically sung by Tom in his hour of deepest crisis.<ref>Stowe, p. 417.</ref> He sings the sixth and fifth verses in that order, and Stowe included another verse, not written by Newton, that had been passed down orally in African-American communities for at least 50 years. It was one of between 50 and 70 verses of a song titled "Jerusalem, My Happy Home", which was first published in a 1790 book called ''A Collection of Sacred Ballads'':

{{blockquote|<poem>
When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise,
Than when we first begun.<ref>Aitken, p. 235.</ref><ref>Watson, p. 216.</ref>
</poem>}}

{{listen
| filename = Amazing Grace_-_Sacred Harp Singing Society.ogg
| title = Shape note version of "Amazing Grace" recorded by Alan and John Lomax in Birmingham, Alabama, 1942
| description = This version also includes Newton's sixth verse, which is uncommon in recordings. This recording was made for the ''American Folklife Center '' and is in the [[U.S. Library of Congress]]
}}

"Amazing Grace" came to be an emblem of a Christian movement and a symbol of the US itself as the country was involved in a great political experiment, attempting to employ democracy as a means of government. Shape-note singing communities, with all the members sitting around an open center, each song employing a different song leader, illustrated this in practice. Simultaneously, the US began to expand westward into previously unexplored territory that was often wilderness. The "dangers, toils, and snares" of Newton's lyrics had both literal and figurative meanings for Americans.<ref name="turner126"/> This became poignantly true during the most serious test of American cohesion in the [[U.S. Civil War]] (1861–1865). "Amazing Grace", set to "New Britain", was included in two hymnals distributed to soldiers. With death so real and imminent, religious services in the military became commonplace.<ref>Turner, pp. 127–128.</ref> The hymn was translated into other languages as well: while on the [[Trail of Tears]], the [[Cherokee]] sang Christian hymns as a way of coping with the ongoing tragedy, and a version of the song by [[Samuel Worcester]] that had been translated into the [[Cherokee language]] became very popular.<ref>Duvall, p. 35.</ref><ref>Swiderski, p. 91.</ref>

=== Urban revival ===
Although "Amazing Grace" set to "New Britain" was popular, other versions existed regionally. [[Primitive Baptist]]s in the Appalachian region often used "New Britain" with other hymns, and sometimes sing the words of "Amazing Grace" to other folk songs, including titles such as "[[In the Pines]]", "Pisgah", "Primrose", and "Evan", as all are able to be sung in common meter, of which the majority of their repertoire consists.<ref>Patterson, p. 137.</ref><ref>Sutton, Brett (January 1982). "Shape-Note Tune Books and Primitive Hymns", ''Ethnomusicology'', '''26''' (1), pp. 11–26.</ref> In the late 19th century, Newton's verses were sung to a tune named "Arlington" as frequently as to "New Britain" for a time.

Two musical arrangers named [[Dwight Moody]] and [[Ira Sankey]] heralded another religious revival in the cities of the US and Europe, giving the song international exposure. Moody's preaching and Sankey's musical gifts were significant; their arrangements were the forerunners of [[gospel music]], and churches all over the US were eager to acquire them.<ref>Turner, pp. 133–135.</ref> Moody and Sankey began publishing their compositions in 1875, and "Amazing Grace" appeared three times with three different melodies, but they were the first to give it its title; hymns were typically published using the [[incipit]]s (first line of the lyrics), or the name of the tune such as "New Britain". Publisher [[Edwin Othello Excell]] gave the version of "Amazing Grace" set to "New Britain" immense popularity by publishing it in a series of hymnals that were used in urban churches. Excell altered some of Walker's music, making it more contemporary and European, giving "New Britain" some distance from its rural folk-music origins. Excell's version was more palatable for a growing urban middle class and arranged for larger church choirs. Several editions featuring Newton's first three stanzas and the verse previously included by Harriet Beecher Stowe in ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' were published by Excell between 1900 and 1910. His  version of "Amazing Grace" became the standard form of the song in American churches.<ref>Noll and Blumhofer, p. 13.</ref><ref>Turner, pp. 137–138, 140–145.</ref>