1. The Varieties of Middlebrow Musical Experience
From parlor songs to singing schools,
James
Lawrence Dusenbery witnessed the gamut of middlebrow musical
life during his senior year of college. In the opening section of his
journal, he transcribed poetic verses that were commonly disseminated as
sheet music or performed on stage. Although it is unclear whether or not he
intended to convey specific musical impressions along with these verses, his
transcription project is not unlike a college student from the twenty-first
century making a notebook of his or her favorite radio tunes. After all,
several of the songs in
Dusenbery's
journal would have been Hot 100 hits in the 1840s. He also left a few
tantalizing glimpses of music from his everyday life in the main section of
his journal. The character of these musical activities ranged from genteel
to downright bawdy. Though at times only obliquely, his journal thus offers
a surprisingly wide cross-sectional view of the variety of musical
opportunities available to a college student in the antebellum South.
A persistent bifurcation between "high art" and "popular
culture" began to define the American musical landscape in the decades following the
Civil War, but in the
antebellum era, the boundaries between elite and common forms of musical
entertainment were much more fluid. This fluidity created a large musical
middle ground accessible to several social strata and is evident throughout
Dusenbery's journal (Levine). One
night he might waltz at a
dancing school, while a few
nights later he might dance with friends and local prostitutes to the sounds of a
fiddle. Today we think of waltzing and fiddling (and prostitution) as
socially immiscible, but in the 1840s, these activities would have been
common engagements for young men of a wide range of social classes. In
general, though,
Dusenbery's
experiences consisted of common "middlebrow" amateur music making
in the domestic sphere.
Three common types of antebellum musical life recur in
Dusenbery's journal: music from the stage,
parlor songs, and sacred music. Although these do not constitute the
entirety of his musical experiences, their prominence suggests that
Dusenbery was most interested
in—or at least attuned to—these particular musical sounds.
Indeed, these types of music were, by far, three of the most popular and
widespread in the antebellum United
States.
2. Songs on Stage
^ top of page ^
Over half of the texts quoted in the opening of
Dusenbery's journal were songs of English, Scottish, or Irish
origin popularized in the United
States on the theatrical or concert stage.
"Sally
Roy," for example, was a "Scottish ballad" composed by
Englishman
William Shield (1748–1829), a
noted operatic composer from London
with an antiquarian interest in folk music from the British Isles. Tunes like
"Sally Roy" came to the United States when itinerant performers
from Britain or Ireland embarked on American tours.
[1] After these star performers generated sufficient
audience demand, local publishers attempted to capitalize on their fame by
printing editions of the most popular songs for home use, often by marketing
them with the phrase, "As sung by —," prominently marked on the
cover.
[2] Although
Dusenbery never mentions attending a show put
on by an itinerant stage or concert musician, his inclusion of songs they
performed demonstrates how popular the music had become by the 1840s.
Antebellum stage music attained great popularity in large part because of its
enormous variety. Whether in a minstrel show or an orchestral concert,
performances consisted overwhelmingly of "potpourris": mixtures of
old and current popular songs, instrumental pieces, and other miscellaneous
musical items. English songs like
those found in
Dusenbery's collection
first appeared on stage as part of larger works called ballad operas. One of
the most famous of these,
"The Beggar's
Opera" (1728) by John
Gay (1685–1732), enjoyed widespread success in
colonial and post-Revolutionary
America. Unlike the serious operas
by Gay's contemporaries such as
Georg Frideric Handel
(1685–1759), ballad operas combined arias (or "airs"),
spoken dialogue, and other tunes to create a dramaturgical hodgepodge that
did not necessarily create a cohesive narrative. Using this structure to
their advantage, producers or singers could—on a whim or at a
moment's notice—insert unrelated popular tunes at key dramatic points
or delete unsuccessful selections from the previous night. This potential
for pastiche found in ballad operas mirrored the larger trend of musical
"potpourri" and contributed to the genre's mass appeal.
Musical potpourris, including ballad operas, filtered into practically every
genre of American stage music
during the early nineteenth century and contributed heavily to the wider
dissemination of English popular
songs. Instrumental potpourri overtures based on popular tunes, for example,
were common in both England and
America.
[3] Concert societies similarly adopted the
potpourri principle in their large-scale programming strategies. At the
public debut of the Musical Fund Society of
Philadelphia, the nation's first standing orchestra performed
Ludwig van Beethoven's First
Symphony and a violin concerto by Frenchman
Pierre Rode (1774–1830)
alongside a ballad, two glees, and other popular vocal numbers (Madeira).
Unlike programming trends today, which focus on musical masterworks,
run-of-the-mill concerts in antebellum America resembled the variety shows of itinerant musicians
such as Charles Incledon. Because the
potpourri principle blurred the boundaries between "high" and
"low" and reached a broad audience, traveling musicians and
composers enjoyed an exceptionally high potential for popularity. One of the
greatest beneficiaries of this trend was the poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852), whose works
Dusenbery and the rest of America enjoyed throughout the antebellum
era.
3. Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies
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In the opening of his journal,
Dusenbery
copied more musical poems by the Irishman
Thomas Moore than any other single
author. The specific poems found in the journal come from three separate
printed collections, but only one of these included printed music:
A Selection of Irish Melodies.
This multivolume set, first published in London and Dublin
in 1808, was a collection of common Irish folk tunes to which Moore added original texts. John Stevenson (1761–1833), a composer
and fellow Irishman, provided
keyboard accompaniments for the songs and composed original instrumental
interludes called "symphonies."
[4] The collection was an immediate
hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
Reprints of individual poems began to appear in American periodicals within months of the original
publication, and full American
printings soon followed.
[5] Part of
the collection's immediate success can be attributed to the particular
affection Americans felt toward the
Irish people, whom they viewed
as still under the heavy yoke of British captivity.
[6] More importantly, however,
Irish Melodies captivated Americans on a purely musical level.
The music in Thomas Moore's
Irish Melodies is
representative of broad American
tastes during the antebellum era.
"Lesbia Hath
a Beaming Eye," set to the tune
"Nora Creina," has a delightfully catchy melody that
combines the rustic gesture of the Scotch snap with a beautifully arched
outline.
Click to hear singer James W. Flannery and harpist Janet Harbison perform
"Lesbia Hath a Beaming Eye." [7]
"Lesbia Hath a Beaming Eye." [7]
The six phrases of each stanza create an AABBAA structure and give a definite
shape to
the text that
would be hard to discern without the music.
[8] The rolling triplets in Stevenson's accompaniment contribute further
to the song's rusticity. Country songs like
"Nora Creina" hearkened Americans back to the imagined pastoral bliss of their
ancestral homelands. Unlike
"Lesbia," which would have been a good opening number
at a variety show,
"She Is Far from the
Land" would have been a sentimental showstopper. Set to the
tune
"Open the Door,"
this text combines the
sentiments of love, melancholy, and heroism that appealed to
Dusenbery and audiences throughout the
country.
Click to hear singer James W. Flannery and harpist Janet Harbison perform
"She Is Far from the
Land."
"She Is Far from the
Land."
The melody itself is quite difficult to sing, and the wide leaps and steep
climaxes leave room for a skilled performer to add unique ornamentations to
the song. Each stanza lies atop only two harmonically plain musical phrases,
giving the entire song an air of simplicity and honesty.
Because
Dusenbery was interested in
melancholic poems such as
"She Is Far from the
Land," it is all the more curious that he omitted Moore's most famous poem,
"The Last Rose of Summer," from his
collection. This song was ubiquitous and had a profound effect on American musical culture.
[9] In 1829,
for example, a church musician complained to
The Episcopal Watchman of Hartford, Connecticut, that collections of
sacred music were rapidly becoming "profaned" with psalm texts set to
the tunes of popular songs such as
"The Last
Rose" (Tansur 1).
[10] The German composer
Friedrich von Flotow
(1812–1883) quoted the song directly in his opera
Martha (1847), which was widely popular in the United States beginning in the 1850s. Even
the famed soprano Jenny Lind
(1820–1887), "the Swedish
Nightingale," performed
"The Last
Rose" on her American programs, no doubt because of its popularity
(Crawford,
America's Musical Life 189).
"The Last Rose," however, had the
most enduring impact on the musical and lyrical style of nineteenth-century
America's most famous composer,
Stephen C. Foster
(1826–1864), whose works would live for decades on the stage and in
the parlor.
Click to hear singer James W. Flannery and harpist Janet Harbison perform
"The Last Rose of Summer"
"The Last Rose of Summer"
4. From Stage to Parlor
^ top of page ^
Was
Dusenbery a Stephen Foster fan? He couldn't have been
during his senior year, which preceded Foster's first musical publications by two years. Given his
taste in music, though, he almost certainly was later in life. At this early
date, he instead copied texts by the British poet Felicia
Hemans (1793–1835), whose verses were adored on both
sides of the Atlantic and inspired
several musical settings published in the United States. Although the music set to Hemans's poetry was not a staple on
American stages (as we saw with
Thomas Moore), composers did
capture the theatricality of her verse in music published for use in homes.
American sheet music publishing
grew in tandem with the rising middle class and the budding piano-making
industry. As pianos became more affordable, more households were able to
acquire them. In turn, the affordability of instruments created heightened
demand for music to be performed in the home. This spiral effect led to
tremendous growth in both industries throughout the early nineteenth
century. The market for sheet music greatly extended the popularity and
geographic reach of song composers and, as we have seen, stage
performers.
Beyond its sheer popularity, sheet music frequently played a specific role in
the domestic sphere. Nineteenth-century household
management—including creating a pleasing sonic environment—was
the primary domain of women. Understanding that women were the majority
consumers of piano music (and often sheet music for voice, as well),
publishers developed marketing strategies geared toward what they perceived
women wanted: emotional, touching music. These forces of real and perceived
demand clearly contributed to the overall ethos of sentimentality pervading
the popular music industry during the antebellum period. This trend affected
men as well; indeed, it helped generate the kinds of music that
Dusenbery found so appealing (Crawford,
America's Musical Life 236-37).
The gendering of popular music in nineteenth-century America reflected gender roles in specific
social interactions. Since middle- and upper-class women were frequently
taught to play piano, the instrument became the locus of courtship rituals.
In these rituals, women would accompany a gentleman caller, or suitor, on
piano while he played violin or sang. We encounter this ritual in the main
part of
Dusenbery's journal at a moment
when he also briefly alludes to a musical setting of Hemans's poetry. On
January 8, 1842,
he recounts a story in which a potential love interest,
"Miss Elizabeth" Holt, performed
the song
"Come to the Sunset
[Tree]" for him during a visit to her home. After hearing
the music, the romantic
Dusenbery very
reluctantly "tore [him]self" away from her. Though fleeting, this
heartwarming episode demonstrates the role that music for the parlor
frequently played within antebellum courtship rituals.
5. Music Set to the Poetry of Felicia Hemans
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The music set to Hemans's poetry ranges
from purely sentimental American
melodies to dramatic ballads to art song. Her poetry inspired the work of
over a dozen composers, but her own sister, Harriet Browne (ca. 1790–1858), wrote more musical
settings than any other.
[11]
Christopher Meineke (1782–1850),
a versatile German-born musician
who settled in Baltimore, also set
to music several of her texts, including
"Troubadour Song," found in the first half of the
journal, and the well-known poem,
"The Captive
Knight."
Meineke and Browne composed music for several of the same texts, which
is a testament to the musical versatility of Hemans's poetry.
"Casabianca," perhaps her most famous (and most
parodied) poem, also made it into
Dusenbery's journal. A comparison of two musical settings
that
Dusenbery might have known
illustrates more concretely how her poetry was interpreted in the musical
world.
"Casabianca" is the tragic tale of
a dutiful boy who remains steadfastly at his post aboard a burning ship.
William West of Hackney, an enigmatic British composer, set the text in the late
1850s using standard musical signifiers of a sea ballad. The eight-measure
introduction establishes the nautical scene with a rolling wavelike triplet
figure in the left hand and a thrilling quasi-martial melody in the right.
The singer picks up this melody, which becomes the foundation of the song's
structure. West combines each group of
three stanzas into a larger musical unit with statements of the martial
melody in the first and third stanzas of each group (ABA ACA ADA, etc.). The
musical phrases throughout the song tend to mirror the melodic shapes found
in Moore's
Irish Melodies, especially the sweeping arch
with decorated cadences that was so common in the nineteenth century.
[12] The setting has no unusual
musical elements, but the combination of the pictorial barcarolle
accompaniment and the stately melody perfectly captures the boy's courage
and resolve.
By contrast, an earlier setting by the Bostonian
J. W. Turner (fl. 1840–1880)
evokes the inherent drama of the story. The piano prelude begins with a
loud, dissonant, and aggressive eight-measure unit that places the listener
in medias res. The camera, as it were, then
shifts to the boy in the following eight bars, as the pianist's left hand
provides a barcarolle accompaniment to a soft and extremely high melody with
lyrical attributes similar to Moore's
and West's. This melody returns as the
voice enters, but the accompaniment changes to a more plodding duple rhythm,
thus eliminating any sense of the nautical surroundings. Generating musical
variety, the vocal melody and the bass line become much more sinewy and
chromatic than in West's setting, a
gesture more in keeping with advanced parlor song composition. Turner adds to the drama by giving the
performers more explicit expressive instructions. The first musical group
(stanzas 1 and 2), for example, concludes with a difficult set of rapid
arpeggios marked ad libitum, or "at the
performer's discretion." In the second musical group, the barcarolle
accompaniment returns, and as the boy is about to shout to his father, the
music calls for singing "con agitazione." The expressivity, drama, and
chromaticism of the setting step outside of Moore's Irish
tradition and place it more firmly in the realm of Italianate operatic
writing, a common approach to popular music that followed the rise in
popularity of Italian
bel canto opera in the 1830s.
Miss Holt's choice of
"Come to the Sunset Tree" and
Dusenbery's enthrallment with the
performance reveal how prominent a role the emotions of loss, yearning, and
separation played in antebellum courtship rituals. The
text
itself
is filled with metaphors of death and loss: the sunset tree, the woodman's
axe, the reaper, rest, and silence. Although the text does not explicitly
mention a lover, the performance context found within
Dusenbery's journal allows us to read it as
one specific voice singing to another. Even without a context, the music
supports such a reading.
[13]
Click to hear Karen Shadle perform "Come to the Sunset Tree."
"Come to the Sunset Tree."
The song's most memorable motif may be found in the arpeggiated statement of
the words "Come, come, come" at the beginning of the first stanza and
of each repetition of the chorus. As the singer leaps from the first
"Come" to the second, and then holds the third, the
beckoning—and perhaps seductive—tone is undeniable. This
simple musical gesture gives all the color and shape necessary for enriching
an otherwise quotidian musical setting.
[14]6. Singing Schools, Camp Meetings, and Southern
Harmony
^ top of page ^
Christianity, and especially several
varieties of Protestantism, permeated
everyday American life much more
fully in the early nineteenth century than we tend to appreciate today. It
should be no surprise, for example, that
Dusenbery kept rather meticulous records of his attendance
at compulsory daily prayers and Sunday church services while on campus in
Chapel Hill. Even at a public
university, religious observance was not merely expected; it was required.
Although he does not describe it at all, music at church services—and
possibly at daily prayers—must have contributed significantly to his
larger musical world. Despite this curious absence from his journal, sacred
song found its way outside the church walls—and into the
journal—through his experiences with singing schools and camp
meetings, two common musical activities in the antebellum South.
American singing schools arose in
eighteenth-century New England in
order to foster literate congregational singing in Protestant churches. In contrast to the
unharmonious and at times cacophonic singing common in New England churches, the style propagated
by singing school masters was measured, used standard harmony, and was
teachable to as wide a population as possible. Over the course of the
century, singing school masters traveled the countryside with hymnals in
hand and taught townspeople how to sing in this new style. Most singing
school texts contained lengthy introductions about how to read music, how to
sing, and the religious significance of sacred singing. Shortly after the
turn of the nineteenth century, certain musicians attempted to re-introduce
European sacred music into
religious assemblies (Crawford, "Ancient Music" 225–55). This move
drove singing school instructors southward, where they continued to lead
students well into the twentieth century.
These southern singings schools make
an appearance, though brief, in
Dusenbery's journal. Early in the journal, he noted that
"dancing & singing schools are all the go here at present"
(
July
31, 1841). In keeping with his ambivalence toward
religion, there is no rich description of an experience at a singing school
and it is unclear whether or not he actually attended one. Yet given his
authoritative statement that "nearly all colleges are learning to caper
& sing," he seemed to have a clear idea of what they were and
how they functioned within his cultural milieu. Later (
March 28,
1842),
Dusenbery
mentioned in passing that as he was returning from a German Reformed service, he met his friends
Hunt and
Long, who had just attended a singing school (and,
unsurprisingly, slipped out before the lessons were over).
Although the reader is tantalized by
Dusenbery's silence about the music taught at the singing
schools, he does write about another religious occasion—a Baptist camp meeting—that provides
interesting musical intersections with the schools. After expressing his
general disdain for the proceedings at the camp meeting, he quotes the
preacher as saying, "kind bruthring & friends, let us all sing that
song about Jordan's stormy
banks & will some kind bruthrin or friend give us the
pitch" (
August 22, 1841). Whereas music at these camp meetings, or revivals,
generally involved spontaneous outbursts of heterophonic and improvised
singing, this particular musical moment unfolded more like a singing school
session: a song was named and a competent singer was called upon to set the
key. In this case, the song was
"On Jordan's
Stormy Banks I Stand," a recent sacred hit found in various
singing school hymnals used throughout the region.
7. "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I
Stand"
^ top of page ^
Dusenbery's experience with
"On Jordan's Stormy Banks" opens a
window onto the transmission and dissemination of sacred musical texts in
the nineteenth century. The song's text
was
written by Samuel Stennett
(1727–1795) and was first published in 1787
by John Rippon (1751–1836) under
the title,
"The Promised Land."
[15] The hymn was reprinted in an
American collection as early as
1805, this time under the title,
"The Heavenly Canaan" (
Hymns on Various Subjects). After that date,
Stennett's text appeared regularly
in American hymn collections for
several denominations, especially Methodists, as well as for use at camp meetings.
[16]
In these early collections, hymn texts almost always appeared without musical
settings, a testament to the music's oral dissemination. They were
accompanied instead by markings designating their poetic
meter—"long" or "common" meter, for example.
These designations allowed for the free interchange of tunes that logically
fit texts with specific meters. In worship settings such as a camp meeting,
a song leader could suggest a hymn text and then begin singing it to an
appropriate tune. In turn, the congregation would begin singing the text
while drawing on its common storehouse musical knowledge.
[17] Without concrete evidence, the
free interchange of metrically similar texts and tunes makes it virtually
impossible to know which tune was sung to a given text on any one occasion.
Nevertheless, tunes and texts frequently did form associations and were
frequently transmitted together.
"On Jordan's
Stormy Banks" is one of those texts.
Although it was known as a camp meeting song,
"On Jordan's Stormy Banks" traveled to the singing
school in 1835, when it was published in
William Walker's
Southern Harmony, and Musical Companion to a
musical setting by Miss Matilda Durham
of Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Adopting the original title given by Rippin in 1787, Durham called her tune
"The Promised Land" and added a
refrain.
Walker's
Southern Harmony touted the newly developed
shape-note notation, named for the four basic shapes in which the music was
presented so that people with no musical training could learn to sight read
it. Singing school masters spread
Walker's collection throughout the mid-south during the
1830s and 1840s, precisely the time when
Dusenbery came into contact with
"On Jordan's Stormy Banks" at the revival. It seems
possible that
Dusenbery's friends sang
the same song at their singing school that he heard—and possibly sang
himself—at the revival.
Whether sung at a revival or a singing school,
"On Jordan's Stormy Banks" remained a perennial
favorite among Southerners
throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. The hymn's common meter text
gives it great versatility.
[18] It
could, for example, be sung to the tune
"New
Britain," which we know today as
"Amazing Grace." Unsurprisingly, then, it appears in
Walker's collection three times. In
addition to Durham's setting,
Walker himself wrote the other two,
"Sweet Prospect," and
"The Heavenly March." The settings found in
The Southern Harmony
appeared later in
The Sacred
Harp (1844), another popular shape note
tunebook by Benjamin Franklin White
(1800–1879) and Elisha J. King
(ca. 1821–1844) that is still used today. By 1910,
The Sacred
Harp included no fewer than six separate settings of the text.
Today, mainstream congregations that use the text would probably know it
conjunction with an 1895 arrangement of Durham's tune by Rigdon M. McIntosh, who transformed its minor-key austerity
into a nondescript major-key hymn representative of his era.
[19]Notes
^1. The English tenor Charles Incledon (1763–1826)
popularized "Sally Roy" in
1816 and 1817
while performing his theatrical set, "The
Wandering Melodist."
Incledon traveled as far west as
Cincinnati, but an
Irishman named
Webster had already popularized "Sally Roy" there three years
earlier. See William Osborne, Music in Ohio, p.
20.
^2. This strategy was employed in an undated Baltimore publication of "The Knight of the Golden
Crest," a tune composed by Englishman
John Barnett (also spelled Barnet)
(1802–1890) and Harry Stoe Van
Dyk (1798–1828).
^3. One well known American
potpourri overture is The
Federal Overture (1797) by
Benjamin Carr, an Englishman who settled in Philadelphia. The piece is a
theatrical opener that combines several patriotic tunes, including
"Yankee Doodle," into a
panorama of American
politics.
^4. Although the term "symphony" later referred to a specific genre
(i.e., Beethoven's
"symphonies"), English-speaking populations applied the term much more
freely to instrumental compositions or accompaniments in the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries.
^5. The first edition appears to have been printed in 1809 by G. E. Blake, a
Philadelphia music
publishing house.
^6. One early reprint in a New
York magazine noted, "The following Verses are written
by Mr. Moore; whose principles
seem to have taken a purer hue from the devotion of his genius to
the cause of his oppressed and native country" (Lady's Miscellany 383).
^7. James W. Flannery is a singer,
scholar, stage director, producer, lecturer, teacher, and Irish cultural
activist. The songs featured on this page come from his 1997 book/recording Dear Harp of My Country: The Irish Melodies of Thomas
Moore, which combines evocative renditions of Moore's songs
with perceptive scholarly commentary. He is currently Winship Professor
of the Arts and Humanities at Emory University and Director of the W. B.
Yeats Foundation. Janet Harbison is an award-winning performer on the
Irish harp and founder of the Irish Harp Centre and the Irish Harp
College. More information about her work as a performer, composer, and
teacher can be found on her website.
Thank you to Dr. Flannery for permission to use his recordings.
^8. Though the text suggests that the last four lines would be a chorus,
Moore set the words to
pre-existing music, not the other way around.
^9. Noted American music scholar
Charles Hamm has claimed that
"Every American
songwriter in the half-century after 1810
was strongly affected by both melodies and texts of the Irish Melodies"
(58). Jon Finson also discusses the
Moore phenomenon in The Voices That Are Gone: Themes in
Nineteenth-Century American Popular Song.
^10. The author, who might have adopted a pseudonym, should not be
confused with the more famous English psalmodist William
Tans'ur (1700–1783).
^11. We know very little about Harriet
Browne, in part because bibliographic records frequently
confuse her with Augusta Browne
(1820–1882), an American
song composer who enjoyed popularity at roughly the same time.
^12. The closing final phrase is particularly climactic and virtuosic.
^13. Thank you to Karen Shadle, who
provided the vocal and piano tracks, and Dayna
Wittman of WestStreet
Recording in Durham,
NC, for producing the recording.
^14. We can surmise that Miss Holt
would have melted any heart with this song, but we are left to wonder
how Dusenbery would have reacted to
a performance of George Pope
Morris's "On the
Lake," set to music by Charles Horn in 1837. This song
is quoted at length in his journal, but he makes no
mention of it in his chronicles.
^15. Both Stennett and Rippon were
British
Baptist ministers. The collection itself was called
A Selection of Hymns by the
best authors, intended to be an appendix to Dr. Watts's Psalms and
Hymns. By John Rippon, A.M.
^16. See, for example, Hymns on
selected passages of Scripture with others usually sung at
camp-meetings, &c.
^17. Even contemporary hymnals frequently contain a metrical index to
assist with substituting a lesser known tune for one that is more common
(or better known by a specific congregation).
^18. Common meter comprises four iambic lines alternating with four and
three feet (8 6 8 6 syllables).
^19. This arrangement appears most notably in the latest edition of the
popular United Methodist
Hymnal.
^20. On the Seguins, see Katherine
Preston, Opera on
the Road: Traveling Opera Troupes in the United States,
1825–60. On pianists, see R. Allen
Lott, From Paris
to Peoria: How European Virtuosos Brought Classical Music to the
American Heartland. On European orchestras in America, see H. Earle
Johnson, "Germania Musical
Society" in The
Musical Quarterly.
^21. He narrowly missed an opportunity to hear the first American grand opera in English: Leonora, by William Henry Fry
(1813–1864), which premiered on June 4,
1845, at Philadelphia's Chestnut
Street Theatre.
"Henry Clay's Grand March, Waltz, and
Quick Step Arranged for the Piano Forte."
Composed by John C. Bartlett. Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1842.
"Jullien's Musical Tour in America:
Collections of the New and Popular
Compositions." Composed by Louis Antoine Jullien
and arranged by Thomas Baker. New York: S. C. Jollie, 1853.
"The Universal
Medley." Arranged by James Pierpont. Boston:
Oliver Ditson, 1853.
"The Minstrel Boy"
from Moore's Irish Melodies. Illustrated by D.
Maclise, R.A. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans,
1846.
Parlor Album
Songs. Composed by Franz Abt. Engraved by R. M. Gaw.
Philadelphia: Marsh, n.d.
Cover of the
sheet music for "Come to the Sunset
Tree," with lyrics by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
and music composed by her sister, Harriet Browne. Baltimore: George
Willig, Jr., n.d.
Cover of
the sheet music for "Casabianca,"
composed by William West. London: J. Shepherd, n.d.
Cover of
the sheet music for "Casabianca,"
composed by Joseph W. Turner. Boston: Keith's Music, 1845.
Lyrics for "The Promised Land."
A selection of hymns from the
best authors, intended to be an appendix to Dr. Watts's Psalms and
hymns. By John Rippon, A.M. London: Printed by Thomas
Wilkins, 1787.
Title page of Southern Harmony, and Musical
Companion. Spartansburg, SC, 1835.
Sheet music for "The Promised Land,"
composed by Miss Matilda Durham. The Southern
Harmony, and Musical Companion. Philadelphia, 1854.
