American psalmodists in contact and collaboration, 1770-1820. (Volumes I and II).

Abstract

American sacred-music imprints through 1810 name some 300 composers and compilers who have been identified as active on these shores. This dissertation grew from the writer's project of compiling and analyzing biographical data on these early American psalmodists. A wide range of sources was consulted for this project: the printed tunebooks themselves, music manuscripts, personal papers, journals, memoirs, newspapers, town and church records, town histories, genealogies, published biographies, dissertations, specialized biographical dictionaries, and standard reference works. One of the most fertile areas of inquiry in this collective biography-in-progress proved to be that relating to the contacts and interactions between early American psalmodists. The assembled data show that psalmodists came into personal contact as fathers, sons, and brothers in musical families; as neighbors participating in the musical life of their communities; as colleagues printing each others' tunes or compiling tunebooks together; and as members of institutions devoted to musical study and practice. In exploring these various forms of interaction and collaboration, the present study calls attention to the existence of local, compiler-centered networks of musicians, particularly in rural Massachusetts and Connecticut; documents the increasing practice of tunebook co-compilership; and suggests that musical societies not only brought psalmodists together but played a central role in the institutionalizing of musical life in early 19th-century America. Part II of the dissertation draws on the author's extensive familiarity with the early American tunebook repertory to introduce the subject of musical contact and influence among psalmodists. A large number of examples document the practices of borrowing and modelling in this tradition, and suggest that William Billings's and Daniel Read's compositions were particularly influential, that individual tunes such as Oliver Holden's Coronation could spark imitations by several other composers, that occasionally one psalmodist used a single tunebook as his chief source for musical ideas, and that the pieces of composers born in the 1740s and 50s were frequently drawn upon by composers born in the 1770s.