Music in Maine

People play and sing sacred music during religious services and events. Singing allows worshipers to participate in the liturgy, with the music itself central to worship.

Sacred music isn’t bound by time, geography, or culture. Humans around the world use sacred sounds to connect with a higher being, to advance beliefs, give praise, and to inspire others to join in explorations of faith.

Although sacred music is entertaining outside of religious realms, its main function is within real-world spiritual contexts.

When donated to MHS in 1929, the owner of this bassoon noted it was “over 100 years old” and played in the first church built in Standish, likely the First Parish Meeting House, also called Old Red Church, built in 1804-1806. A woodwind instrument, this bassoon disassembles into six pieces for transport.

John Parker of London, England made this bassoon. Parker was an oboist, bass singer and bassoon player who made bassoons for the Goulding music business.

Melodeons are keyboard instruments invented in Buffalo, New York in the 1830s. Similar to accordions, melodeons use reeds and airflow to create sounds, but the musician pumps the instrument by foot rather than using their arms.

Melodeons were popular with rural Maine congregations and for personal use in homes because they require little maintenance and are portable. The instruments are smaller and less expensive than pianos, with a loud organ sound. Parishioners carried this fold-up melodeon to West Cumberland Methodist Church each Sunday where Evelina D. Morrill Montfort played it for the congregation.

John Joy (1809-1878) used this pitch pipe and lyre while leading the Baptist Church choir in South Limington.

Blowing through the small whistle sets the pitch and helps musicians tune their instruments and voices to the correct note. This pitch pipe has letters signifying different musical notes marked at the top, and by twisting the middle of the cylinder the conductor can reach the desired pitch.

Lyres hold books in place for musicians while marching in a band.

Jewish Cantors

Small communities of Jewish people lived in Maine during colonial times. Beginning in the 1870s, Jewish people arrived in Maine in greater numbers and began setting up synagogues for worship.

A cantor is a trained vocalist who leads the synagogue congregation in song and prayer, and prepares 13-year-old children for coming-of-age ceremonies called a bar or bat mitzvah. In some rural congregations, the Rabbi and cantor were the same person.

Samuel Zimelman served as cantor of the Hochschule Synagogue in Lomazy, Poland, before he and his family fled from Nazi Germany to Canada around 1938. The family, including five sons, moved to Maine in 1946 where Zimelman worked as a cantor at Shaarey Tphiloh in Portland.

A musical family, all five Zimelman sons—Milton, Ralph, Rabbi Sidney, Cantor Sol and Cantor Paul— joined Samuel on the album, A Family Rejoices. Duo Sol and Paul performed as the Zimel Brothers, producing several albums including The Zimel Brothers sing Chassidic Melodies. Cantor Sol Zim—using a further shortened version of Zimelman—teaches and records in New York, with 23 recordings of Yiddish, Israeli, Chassidic, Broadway, opera and pop music as of 2024.

Alan B. Jacobs ran Tikva Records, a label specializing in Jewish American recordings in Manhattan, New York from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Shaker Music

Established in 1783, Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester is, as of 2024, home to the only active Shaker Community in the world. Shakers receive songs from spiritual inspiration rather deliberately composing them. Preserved through oral tradition, it’s estimated that there are least 25,000 Shaker songs. Today the Sabbathday Lake Shakers sing about 1,000 songs as part of their active catalog.

Shaker music originally concentrated on acapella march tunes, but after 1896, Shakers welcomed the organ into their services, adding chord awareness and four-part harmonies.

Simple Gifts written in 1848 by Maine’s Elder Joseph Brackett of Alfred Shaker Village, achieved wide acclaim when composer Aaron Copland slowed the tempo, and used it for his well-known work, Appalachian Spring. Brother Arnold Hadd of the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester said in 2021, there is “nothing more difficult to sing than a Shaker song” because the singer must feel the spirit of the music from the bottom of their feet to the top of the head.

Shakers shared their music by word of mouth and by circulating letters among their communities. Some wrote out lyrics in their own manuscript hymnals. Millennial Praises, a hymnal published in 1813, contained only lyrics as an effort to help spread the songs.