CHAPTER 3 | EDIFICATION AND ECONOMICS: THE CAREER OF LOWELL MASON 79
about right.’ ‘And how many were there in the class?’ He smiled as he answered:
‘A b out fi ve hundred.’ ”
Mason was sometimes attacked for being mercenary, overpaid, or both. Root
denied that he was either: “I do not believe he ever made a plan to make money,
unless when investing his surplus funds. In his musical work it was... a clear
case... of seeking fi rst what was right.”MASON AS BUSINESSMAN
Lowell Mason seems to have been the fi rst American musician who made a
substantial profi t from musical work. How he managed that remarkable feat is
worth noting.
To earn a living in music, you have six basic choices: composing, performing,
teaching, distributing (sales and publishing), writing about music, and manu-
facturing musical instruments or other goods. Mason’s career was striking in
that he took part in all of these occupations except the last. Yet while he was an
active composer, performer (as church organist and choir leader), and writer on
music, teaching and distributing music were the keys to his fi nancial success and
his widespread infl uence.
Long before Mason came on the scene, teaching was the foremost Ameri-
can musical profession. But the notion that it could also be profi table seems to
have been Mason’s invention, at least on this side of the Atlantic. The key lay in
the large scope of the projects he tackled, which were often too big to handle
alone. From the time he began children’s classes, Mason used assistants, and by
1844–45 he was teaching singing in six Boston public schools while supervising
ten assistants who taught in ten others. Mason’s aides taught from his methods,
used his books, and were paid by him from funds he collected from the school
board. It seems likely that he took a cut of those funds for himself.
W hen Mason entered the book trade, profi t was linked not to authorship but
to fi nancial risk. Hence, only publishers stood to reap substantial capital from
successful books. Mason was never a publisher. Yet in view of the deal he worked
out for The Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collection, he seems to have found ways
to collect a larger share of the proceeds from his books than did other authors.
Indications are that he earned substantial rewards as an author without taking
a publisher’s risk.
How wealthy did Mason become? In 1837 he was suffi ciently well off to man-
age a European trip of several months that took him to England, Germany, Swit-
zerland, and France. An 1848 list of Boston taxpayers valued his estate at $41,000,
making him by far the richest musician in town. And The Rich Men of Massachusetts,
a book published in 1852, set his worth at $100,000. Mason’s tunebooks were regu-
larly updated, and many of them continued to sell for years—especially Carmina
Sacra, or Boston Collection of Church Music (1841), which logged sales of 500,000 by- Mason traveled to Europe for a longer stay at the end of 1851, remaining there
until the spring of 1853. W hen he returned to the United States, it was not to Bos-
ton but to New York, where he set up a new headquarters while he and his family
settled in Orange, New Jersey. In 1869, three years before Mason’s death, the plates
of his copyrighted works alone were said to be worth over $100,000.
If Mason’s publications produced a fountain of profit, he supplemented
that income by taking part in conventions and so-called normal institutes for
Pestalozzian Principles
as Applied to Music- Teach children to sing
before they learn written
notes. - Make students active
learners by having them
imitate sounds. - Teach one subject at a
time, such as rhythm,
melody, or expression,
and practice each
separately. - Help students master
each step through
practice before moving
to the next. - Teach principles and
theories after the
practice.
A CLOSER
LOOK
Mason’s wealth172028_03_063-085_r3_ko.indd 79 23/01/13 8:12 PM