84 PART 1 | FROM COLONIZATION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR
the 1850s he realized that he had a choice to make. “A majority of the music- loving
world,” he knew, enjoyed only an “elementary” state of musical knowledge.
Would he be selling out if he turned his efforts toward serving the majority,
rather than the art of music?
Mason convinced Root that he would not. In the fi rst place, a beginner’s love
of music was no less genuine than a connoisseur’s, and in the second, a beginner’s
taste ought not to be despised. As Root came to understand, “all must pass” through
the same hierarchy of musical genres, and very few reach the top. Moreover, the
journey need not be one from bad music to good music but from simple music to
more complex compositions. Root later wrote: “I am simply one, who, from such
resources as he fi nds within himself, makes music for the people, having always a
particular need in view.” Root’s idea of himself as a musician of the people eventu-
ally led him to compose popular songs, something that Mason never attempted.Edifi cation, in whose name Root toiled throughout his career, was a dynamic
ideal in the fi rst half of the nineteenth century. Yet its opposite number,
praise, was equally, if not more, powerful in the realm of sacred music, as later
developments will bear out. Already with Mason, Bradbury, and Root, the forces
of edifi cation were leading musicians out of the church and into schools and
other sites of secular music making. Later chapters will explore those sites, both
public and private. But fi rst it is necessary to consider the musical achievements
of Americans whose ancestors came not from Europe but from Africa.QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REVIEW
- Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society is still in existence today. After visit-
ing the organization’s website, describe how the society’s original mission
resembles its current activities and how it differs. How do the differences
reflect changes in the United States in general and Boston in particular over
the two intervening centuries? - Southern shape-note hymnody resembles the music of earlier New England
psalmodists such as Billings and Read in some respects and differs in others.
W hat are those similarities and differences? - Likewise, what are the similarities and differences between Southern shape-
note hymnody and Northern reform hymnody?
FURTHER READING
Broyles, Michael. “Music of the Highest Class”: Elitism and Populism in Antebellum Boston. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.
Crawford, Richard. The American Musical Landscape. 2d edition. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2000.
Gould, Nathaniel D. Church Music in America. 1853. Reprint. New York: A MS Press, 1972.
Jackson, George Pullen. White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk,
Their Songs, Singings, and “Buckwheat Notes.” 1933. Reprint. New York: Dover, 1965.
Marini, Stephen A. “Hymnody and History: Early American Evangelical Hymns as Sacred
Music.” In Music in American Religious Experience. Edited by Philip V. Bohlman, Edith L.
Blumhofer, and Maria M. Chow. 123–54. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.edifi cation and praise172028_03_063-085_r3_ko.indd 84 23/01/13 8:12 PM