Choral Music In Nineteenth Century America

Nineteenth-Century Choral Music is a collection of essays studying choral music making as a cultural phenomenon, one that had an impact on multiple parts of society. Rather than merely offering a collection of raw descriptions of works, the contributors focus their discussions on what these pieces reveal about their composers as craftsmen/women. Major works as well as other equally rich parts of the repertoire are discussed, including smaller choral works and contributions by composers such as Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach, Charles Stanford,

Choral music represented an important part of American cultural life during the nineteenth century, whether integral to worship or merely for entertainment. Despite this history, choral music remains one of the more neglected studies in the scholarly community. In an effort to fill this gap, N. Lee Orr and W. Dan Hardin offer a new approach to the study of choral music by mapping out and bringing bibliographical control to this expansive and challenging field of study. Their unique guide focuses on literature related to choral music in the United States from the end of the second decade of the nineteenth century through the earlier part of the twentieth century. Choral Music in Nineteenth-Century America explores the entire range of choral music conceived, written, published, rehearsed, and performed by an ensemble of singers gathered specifically to present the music before an audience or congregation. The guide expertly sifts through the extensive literature to cite the most notable sources for study and provides individual chapters on the leading nineteenth-century composers who were instrumental in the development of choral music.

From the author of the critically acclaimed "Choral Music in the Twentieth Century" comes an indispensable resource for choral conductors, choral singers, and other music lovers, and an essential text for educators and their students. Strimple covers repertory by Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and lesser figures.

This MUSA volume makes an important contribution to American music studies by presenting a scholarly edition of selected choral works by Dudley Buck (18391909). Buck was arguably the finest composer of choral music among the group of musicians who had come of age by the end of the Civil War. The works chosen for this volume, some of which became icons of American Victorian culture, represent the three most popular choral genres during the Guilded Age: the anthem, the sacred and secular cantata, and the partsong. All of the works included here found immediate publication and stayed in print well into the twentieth century. Buck's works became the standards, not only by their intrinsic merit, but owing to their widespread performance throughout the country. His services, canticles, anthems, and hymnsmusically engaging, well-crafted, and often genuinely movingwere considerably more professional than the homegrown music in use when he began his work. Included here are three works, a hymn anthem ("Rock of Ages"), a liturgical text ("Festival Te Deum No. 7 in E-flat"), and a late, through-composed work ("Grant to Us Thy Grace"). Buck's sacred and secular cantatas along with his partsongs also enjoyed widespread success among the growing number of church choirs and community choral groups. The two partsongs come from his earliest and latest periods. "In Absence" represents the early Victorian partsong, and the second, "The Signal Resounds from Afar" is both Buck's longest partsong and the one showing the greatest contrapuntal complexity. Both The Centennial Meditation of Columbia, written for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, and the Forty-Sixth Psalm, from 1872, are in full score and typify some of the finest cantata writing in Victorian America.

"Worthwhile repertory of every style and level of complexity is critically surveyed and described, reflecting the author's vast experience with - and enthusiasm for - choral literature. Strimple provides a useful summary of trends in Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish sacred music, as well as an evaluation of repertory intended specifically for educational use.".

Lowell Mason, Horatio Parker, Amy Beach, Charles Ives, Edward MacDowell, and Arthur Foote are but some of the American composers featured in this guide.