Here is something WAV might like to consider, especially as regards his top-line melody theory.

http://www.wgma.org.uk/Articles/intro.htm

In parish records all around the country, details of the setting-up of singing groups may be found. Often this is in the form of an agreement, and this one from Alberbury in Shropshire made in 1788 is typical.


It was agreed by the Majority of a Parish Meeting of the Parishioners ... that the parish should be at the Expence of paying a Proper Person to improve and instruct any Young People that are willing to sing Psalms (to the Glory of God) in the said Church.

The next entries are for payments for meat and drink for the singers, to a Mr Michiner for instructing the psalm singers, and for the purchase of five psalm books. The only item missing from the Alberbury churchwardens' accounts is the purchase of a pitch-pipe. This was a wooden whistle or recorder-like pipe with a sliding insert which could be moved in and out to vary the pitch. Such an instrument had become necessary because the groups usually sang in three- or four-part harmony.

The early west gallery singing was, with only a few exceptions, dominated by male voices. In much of the early music the melody line is given to the tenor, with an underpinning bass harmony, contra-tenor as a counter. and a treble voice or voices above. As far as we have been able to discover, most early groups sang unaccompanied, but plainly, with limited local resources, often with little schooling, it would have been difficult for relatively untutored singers to hold their lines against other parts. This is probably the most significant single reason for the introduction of instruments. Fiddles would almost certainly have been available within village communities, but the cost of bass instruments would have been beyond the pockets of the middling tradesmen and artisans who made up the groups.

When reading old records one can almost detect a feeling of pride in the parish accounts when their subscriptions raised enough for the purchase of a bass viol, 'cello, bassoon, or serpent. Later purchases might have included an oboe (although it was more often called an hautbois, hoby, hotboy, etc.), a clarinet, and a flute, or flutes. The instruments were not grouped together as a band; instead, each instrument led a group of singers who would normally gather around the player, as in the marvellous painting of a village quire on the cover of the Watersons' 'Sound, Sound your Instruments of Joy'. In most parish accounts they remained 'the psalm singers' despite the addition of instruments, and they often cost a considerable proportion of the parish spending.

Too poor to afford a printed hymn book for each member of the quire, the musicians would lovingly copy out the words and scores into their personal tune-books, the instrumentalists often adding the dance tunes of the period in the back of the book.

There is no doubt that the mixed groups of instrumentalists and singers which we refer to as 'quires' to distinguish them for the organ-driven, surpliced latter-day groups, became very important in parish life. Those who played for the singing in church would also have played a major part in parish social life on feast days, high days and holidays. They had status within parish society, the nature of their jobs often gave them a measure of independence, and they were not infrequently in conflict with the parson or the squire. Their music often travelled far and wide, and in surprising forms.

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Why would trad songs have necessarily been treated differently, and not sung in parts or with instruments playing more than the top-line melody? Granted, if you were singing a song whilst plowing the fields, you wouldn't have been able to play an instrument, but that's a different matter.