Classical Music in Pre-Civil War American Hymnody: A Digital Anthology for Listening and Singing
FAIN: FEL-267903-20
Peter Jameson Mercer-Taylor
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN 55455-2009)
Preparation of an open-access digital anthology of almost 300 hymn melodies published in the United States before 1861 derived from European classical music.
In the decades leading up to the Civil War,
American compilers of sacred tune books crafted hundreds of hymn tunes from
melodic stretches of European classical music. Hymn tunes being the
best-selling genre of music in the U.S. at the time, it was through these melodies that
many Americans first encountered classical music. This repertoire has all but
vanished today, and has been only very fleetingly explored by scholars. The
website proposed here will provide an online anthology of 276 pre-Civil War
hymn tunes that borrow material from Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and other
European composers, culled from over 70 antebellum American publications.
Modern scores and recorded piano renditions will be provided, but the website
will also offer a platform for sharing recordings of these tunes by whatever
ensembles choose to submit them, forming a growing, crowdsourced repository of
performances that, it is hoped, might serve as a hub for the reclamation of
this repertoire in modern musical life.
Associated Products
American Classical Hymns (Web Resource)Title: American Classical Hymns
Author: Peter Mercer-Taylor
Abstract: This website is organized around a body of 278 pre-Civil War American psalm and hymn tunes based on European classical music, most long since forgotten. All 278 tunes are gathered into a searchable "Anthology," in which each appears with a modern edition and a piano recording. But the website also includes — along with a range of essays and interpretive material — a growing "Choral Showcase" of recordings of tunes in the Anthology, as submitted by any and all interested choirs.
Year: 2020
Primary URL:
http://americanclassicalhymns.com