| Contents |
Preface -- Early contacts with the aborigines -- Huguenots in Florida, 1564 -- Drake's men in California, 1579 -- Puritans and "Praying Indians" in New England -- New England puritanism, 1620-1720 -- Ainsworth Psalter -- Bay Psalm Book, 1640 -- Revisions of 1651 and later -- Samuel Sewall's precentorship -- Changing repertory of tunes at the turn of the century -- "Regular singing," 1720-1775 -- Reaction against improvised embellishment of psalm tunes -- Early musical reformers: John Tufts, Thomas Walter, Cotton Mather, Thomas Symmes -- Rise of singing schools in New England, Pennsylvania, and Virginia -- Pennsylvania Germans -- Johannes Kelpius (1673-1708) and "The lamenting voice of the hidden love" -- Johann Conrad Beissel (1690-1768) and the Ephrata experiment -- Moravian musical mentors: Jeremias Dencke (1725-1795), John Antes (1741-1811), Johann Friedrich Peter (1746-1813), and others -- Native-born composers in the middle Atlantic colonies -- Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791), signer of the Declaration of Independence -- Availability of organs for accompaniment and use of figured bass -- James Lyon (1735-1794), compiler of Urania -- The south before 1800 -- Musical life in Virginia, 1710-1774 -- Composers in South Carolina: C.T. Pachelbell (1690-1750), Peter Valton (ca. 1740-1784), J.H. Stevens (1750-1828) -- Singing-school masters in the new republic -- British precedents -- Musical idiom in early American tunebooks -- William Billings (1746-1800) -- Lewis Edson (1748-1820) and Daniel Read (1757-1836), fuging-tune composers -- The New England anthem -- The half-century preceding the civil war -- Changes wrought by immigrant "scientific" composers -- Lowell Mason (1792-1872) and his circle -- "Set pieces" -- Adaptations from Roman Catholic composers -- Shape notes and other schemes for simplifying music notation -- Fasola folk in the West and South: Elkanah Kelsay Dare (1782-1826), Lucius Chapin (1760-1842), Ananias Davisson (1780-1857), James P. Carrell (1787-1854), William Walker (1809-1875), William Hauser (1812-1880) -- Negro spirituals: origins an present-day significance -- Samuel Davies in Virginia, 1755-1758, and musical propaganda among the Negroes in South Carolina, 1745 -- Reactions of Russian and English visitors to antebellum Negro religious singing -- Slave Songs, 1867 -- Periodical literature on Negro spirituals published in the same year -- The "shout" -- Jubilee Songs, 1872 -- Cabin and Plantation Songs, 1875, and other pioneer collections -- Interrelationship of white and Negro spirituals -- Spirituals as documents of social protest -- Present-day repertory -- Diverging currents, 1850-present -- "Upper-class" Eastern seacoast music: Henry Wilson (1828-1878) and S. Parkman Tuckerman (1819-1890) -- Rise of gospel hymnody: William B. Bradbury, Ira D. Sankey, Philip P. Bliss, Charles H. Gabriel -- Heyday of the mixed quartet -- Dudley Buck (1839-1909) -- John Knowles Paine (1839-1906) -- Horatio W. Parker (1863-1919) -- Twentieth-century composers of "elevated" church music: D.S. Smith, Roger Sessions, Randall Thompson, Leo Sowerby, and their contemporaries -- The younger generation of scholars and composers. |
| Abstract |
Beginning in 1564, when Huguenot settlers in Florida taught their psalm tunes to the local Indians, the author traces the history of Protestant church music in the United States through four centuries of development and diversity. In this thoroughly documented survey, the reader will find the fruits of the most recent researches into the history of music in America: the puritans of New England and their psalm books; the Germans in Pennsylvania; Francis Hopkinson, composer and signer of the Declaration of Independence; the Negro spiritual; and developments within the various denominations up to the present day, ranging from gospel hymnody to the works of Roger Sessions and Randall Thompson. A number of representative musical examples are included, and there is an extensive bibliography for the reader who wishes to examine further any aspect of the vast and fascinating subject that the author has so expertly surveyed. |
