Collection Items

  • Article
    "Peace on Earth, op. 38, (1897)" by Amy Beach Article. Peace on Earth, op. 38, (1897), Beach subtitled "Christmas Anthem." It is an ambitious piece that sets to music verses one, four, and five of the E. H. Sears text, "It Came upon the Midnight Clear." For the fifth verse, Beach uses a variant published by Edward Bickersteth in his 1879 Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer. The anthem exemplifies her...
  • Article
    "Festival Hymn" by Dudley Buck Article. Buck composed his Festival Hymn, according to the octavo published by Oliver Ditson, for the "World's Musical Jubilee" of 1872. The formal title of this "monster" event staged in Boston by Patrick Gilmore was "The World Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival." Gilmore had staged a very successful, large-scale Jubilee three years earlier in the same city. For the 1872 event, however, he...
  • Article
    "Bedtime (1906)" by Dudley Buck Article. from Five Three-Part Songs (1906)
  • Article
    "O How Amiable" by Dudley Buck Article. O How Amiable sets the verses of Psalm 84 that Johannes Brahms had used in the fourth movement of his Ein deutsches Requiem, "Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen." The first two verses use full chorus, while the beginning of verse three is set for SATB [soprano, alto, tenor, bass] solo quartet, a favorite device of Buck and other Victorian-period composers. The full chorus...
  • Article
    "Inconstancy" by George Whitefield Chadwick Article. Article. from Four Choruses (1910)
  • Article
    "Elfin Song (1910)" by George Whitefield Chadwick Article. Chadwick dedicated Elfin Song (1910) to S. L. Herrman and the Treble Clef Club. The text choice reflects Chadwick's light, humorous side. He sets an excerpt from Joseph Rodman Drake's The Culprit Fay (1836), with references to "ouphe and goblin, imp and sprite." The work's piano reduction of the original orchestral scoring contains some rapid figuration at an Allegretto vivace tempo.
  • Article
    "O Holy Child of Bethlehem (1896)" by George Whitefield Chadwick Article. O Holy Child of Bethlehem (1896) sets the final verse of Phillip Brooks' Christmas poem, "O Little Town of Bethlehem." Brooks (1835-93) was a noted Episcopal clergyman and author who served during the early 1890s as bishop of Massachusetts. Three years after visiting Bethlehem in 1865, Brooks wrote the now famous poem for his congregation.
  • Article
    "While Shepherds Watched (1889)" by George Whitefield Chadwick Article. Adoration of the Shepherds. Marinus, pseudonym of Marin Robin van der Goes, engraver, ca. 1599-1639, after a painting by Jacob Jordaens, history and portrait painter, draughtsman, watercolorist, and engraver, 1593-1678. 17th-century engraving. Dayton C. Miller Collection, no. 474/Y. Music Division, Library of Congress
  • Article
    "The Voice of My Beloved" by Mabel Wheeler Daniels Article. from Part-songs for Women's Voices, Two Violins, and Piano, op. 16 (1911)
  • Article
    " Enchantment, op. 17, no. 1, (1908)" by Mabel Wheeler Daniels Article. Daniels's Enchantment, op. 17, no. 1, (1908) uses a text in praise of summer by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay (1875-1928). Daniels scores the piece for SATB [soprano, alto, tenor, bass]. She sets the mood in the opening tempo marking--"Allegro brilliant, with spirit." In a triple meter, one in a bar, the voices begin with a hemiola figure that returns as a motto several times,...
  • Article
    "Don't Be Weary, Traveler" by R. Nathaniel Dett Article. R. Nathaniel Dett dedicated Don't Be Weary, Traveler to philanthropist and arts patron George Foster Peabody. It was published by the John Church Company, "The House Devoted to the Progress of American Music." The publisher included it in a series titled "Negro Spirituals. Folk Songs of the South, Adaptations of Original Melodies by R. Nathaniel Dett." The publication was issued in 1921, just...
  • Article
    "There's a Meetin' Here Tonight" by R. Nathaniel Dett Article. The John Church Company published Dett's arrangement of There's a Meetin' Here Tonight in 1921. The composer dedicated the work to the Cecilia Society of Boston, an all-white chorus organized in 1874 under the sponsorship of Harvard University. The same group had premiered Dett's Chariot Jubilee a year earlier.
  • Article
    "Done Paid My Vow to the Lord" by R. Nathaniel Dett Article. Dett arranged Done Paid My Vow to the Lord for baritone or contralto solo, women voices, and piano in 1919. It was published that year by the John Church Company. The tune did not appear in his collection Religious Folk-Song of the Negro as Sung at the Hampton Institute (1927). Rather, the spiritual came from the collection of George Lake Imes, secretary of...
  • Article
    "Ponder My Words" by William W. Gilchrist Article. Gilchrist's major choral/orchestral works include his prize-winning God Is Our Refuge and Strength: Psalm 46 (1882), A Christmas Idyll (1898), An Easter Idyll (1907), and The Lamb of God (1909). Though his most successful works were based on sacred texts, he also composed secular pieces such as the ballad The Rose (1887); The Legend of the Bended Bow (1888), a cantata for men's...
  • Article
    "I Love Thee, Lord" by William W. Gilchrist Article. Gilchrist was co-editor of a series titled The International Choir, in which the editors published a new anthem each week. They write in editorial notes, "Few preachers would have the audacity to repeat a sermon to the same audience within a few months. . . . But many choirs repeat their anthems without serious criticism." With the weekly publications, they aimed to help...
  • Article
    "The Old Person of Cassel (1905)" by Margaret Ruthven Lang Article. Margaret Ruthven Lang's father often conducted his daughter's works at his choral concerts. In 1890, his Apollo Club premiered her Jumblies, op. 5, an ambitious part-song on a humorous text by Edward Lear (1812-88) scored for men's chorus, baritone solo, and two pianos. She set at least eight of Lear's nonsense rhymes to music.
  • Article
    "The Old Man with a Beard (1907)" by Margaret Ruthven Lang Article. Margaret Ruthven Lang's father often conducted his daughter's works at his choral concerts. In 1890, his Apollo Club premiered her Jumblies, op. 5, an ambitious part-song on a humorous text by Edward Lear (1812-88) scored for men's chorus, baritone solo, and two pianos. She set at least eight of Lear's nonsense rhymes to music.
  • Article
    "The Lonely Rose, op. 43" by Margaret Ruthven Lang Article. In 1906, Lang wrote The Lonely Rose, op. 43, for Boston's Thursday Morning Musical Club, the women's organization that had commissioned Amy Beach's cantata The Sea-Fairies, op. 59, two years earlier. It is a lengthy setting for women's voices and piano with a wide-ranging soprano solo.
  • Article
    "The Hawthorn Tree (1896)" by Margaret Ruthven Lang Article. In 1900, Margaret Lang wrote about her compositional goals: "My intentions have been poetic and never purely (i.e., merely) musical, often dramatic and sometimes story-telling. I disapprove of pianoforte or vocal music which has no definite meaning to convey. I believe that pianoforte music would either paint a picture, tell a story or speak to the heart. The musical setting of a song...
  • Article
    "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind, op. 14" by Horatio William Parker Article. While he lived in New York, Parker developed many relationships with fellow musicians that led to frequent performances of his compositions. One of these relationships was with Frank Van der Stucken, the conductor of the New York Arion Society male chorus. Van der Stucken's choir performed many of Parker's works for male chorus, and may have taken his part-song Blow, Blow, Thou Winter...
  • Article
    "Three Choruses, op. 33" by Horatio William Parker Article. Parker's Three Choruses, op. 33, were originally cataloged in W. Oliver Strunk's 1930 list of Parker's works as "Six part-songs" for men's chorus. Three songs were not published and remain missing. The other part-songs, "Three Words," "My Love," and "Valentine," were published by G. Schirmer in 1893. Parker dedicated these pieces to the Galveston Quartette Society, a group founded in Galveston, Texas in...
  • Article
    "Bow Down Thine Ear" by Horatio William Parker Article. After Parker moved to New Haven in 1893, he began several years of weekend commuting in order to continue his work as a church musician. He first commuted to Boston's Trinity Church until 1902, and next to New York's Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas until 1910. Parker's dedication to church music led to the composition of 29 anthems, two works of service music,...
  • Article
    "God, That Madest Earth and Heaven" by Horatio William Parker Article. Parker's God, That Madest Earth and Heaven, for mixed chorus and keyboard accompaniment, is a setting of the popular hymn text most commonly sung to the Welsh tune, Ar Hyd Y Nos. Parker sets stanzas one and three written by Reginald Heber (1827) and Richard Whately (1838), omitting the second stanza added by William Mercer in 1864.
  • Biography
    Samuel Barber, 1910-1981 Biography. Samuel Osmond Barber II was one of the most frequently performed composers both in the United States and in Europe during the mid-twentieth century. Known for his trademark lyrical style, Barber never abandoned his expressive voice throughout the course of his compositional career. Unlike many of his fellow composers who had to perform or teach to make a living, Barber had the privilege...
  • Biography
    Aaron Copland, 1900-1990 Biography. Most people know that Aaron Copland was a composer and that his name is synonymous with works such as Appalachian Spring, Fanfare for the Common Man, and the "Hoedown" from Rodeo. What they perhaps do not realize is that Copland's influence on American music extended far beyond the compositional realm. In addition to his creative output as a composer, Copland was also a...