An Introduction to America’s Music

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usic making, whether private or public, sacred or secular, served mul-

tiple functions in antebellum America. Just as Lowell Mason built a

successful musical career by cultivating worshipers’ desires for edi-

fi cation as well as praise, so other musicians sought to satisfy the aspirations of

audiences for a more refi ned musical experience than the young republic had

previously known.

This chapter examines the beginnings of a social process of separating a cer-

tain kind of music making from the broader tastes of the general public. It is fair

to say that the usual names for music that appeals to a more specialized audi-

ence are freighted with connotations of elitism: “classical music,” “art music,”

“cultivated music.” These terms imply that other types of music are inferior.

That attitude refl ects a bias that may have been widely accepted in the past but is

no longer consistent with the way most people think about or listen to music in

their everyday lives.

We w ill fi rst approach this topic by looking at the rise of the music publish-

ing industry, where such distinctions were a matter not so much of elitism as

of recognizing that there were different markets for different kinds of music.

The chapter will then explore the birth of professional and semiprofessional

performing ensembles in the United States—opera companies, bands, oratorio

societies, and orchestras—and conclude with the life of America’s fi rst signifi cant

“classical composer,” to the extent that that term can be applied to the colorful

fi gure of Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

HOME MUSIC MAKING AND THE

PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

By the mid-1800s, a substantial music business had taken shape to meet the

desires of women and men, playing and singing at home, for recreation and

amusement as well as edifi cation. The spread of home music making belonged

to a larger trend in the early 1800s, the growth of a middle class seeking a social

CHAPTER

5

“A LANGUAGE OF

FEELING”

Cultivating Musical Tastes in

Antebellum America

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