Collection Items

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    "Far awa'" by Mrs. H.H.A. (Amy) Beach Article. Article. From Five Burns Songs, op. 43
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    African-American Band Stocks Article. Article. There are digitized versions of published music by African-American composers from the opening decades of the 20th century on several Web sites. These compositions are found most often on general Web sites on American music. The American music industry began publishing music by African-American composers immediately following the Civil War. Whether these works are on a general music Web site or on...
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    African American Performers on Early Sound Recordings, 1892-1916 Article. Article. Finding music by African Americans on early phonograph records is more difficult than one might surmise. Black artists rarely performed on early recordings. Racial prejudice may only be a contributing factor.
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    Band Stocks Article. Article. The term "ragtime" took on new shades of meaning in the first decades of the 20th century. Originally defined as the "classic rag" style of African-American piano players in the 1880s and 1890s, it described a unique style in which the pianist "ragged" or syncopated the rhythms. Later, however, "ragtime" came to signify a world of popular entertainment that had been sterilized...
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    The American Art Song: An Introduction Article. Article. I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear; ... Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs. -- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
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    "Through the House Give Glimmering Light, op. 39, no. 3" by Amy Beach Article. Article. from Three Shakespeare Songs, op. 39
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    "Bethlehem, op. 24" by Amy Beach Article. Article. Amy Beach's "Christmas Hymn," Bethlehem, op. 24, was heard on December 24, 1893, at Boston's First Church Unitarian. Arthur Foote was the organist. He was also one of the composers included in a group called the Boston Six whose other members were Amy Beach, George Chadwick, Edward MacDowell, John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker.
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    "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...
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    "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...
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    "Bedtime (1906)" by Dudley Buck Article. from Five Three-Part Songs (1906)
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    "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...
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    "Inconstancy" by George Whitefield Chadwick Article. Article. from Four Choruses (1910)
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    "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.
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    "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.
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    "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
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    "The Voice of My Beloved" by Mabel Wheeler Daniels Article. from Part-songs for Women's Voices, Two Violins, and Piano, op. 16 (1911)
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    " 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,...
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    "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...
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    "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.
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    "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...
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    "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...
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    "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...
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    "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.
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    "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.
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    "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.