An Introduction to America’s Music

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ommercial and religious outreach spurred Europe’s settlement of North

America. The southern arm of the process was controlled by Spain,

whose king and queen, hoping to extract riches from far-off lands,

sponsored the voyage that sent Christopher Columbus to the Caribbean in 1492.

The northern arm of settlement, beginning in the 1530s, took two different

forms. Canada was colonized chiefl y as a fur-trading venture under the direc-

tion of the French crown. Working with the Roman Catholic Church, which sent

Jesuit priests to make Christians of American Indians and to minister to white

settlers, the French turned the St. Lawrence River and its waterways into a deliv-

ery system for a business profi table in Old World markets. In the meantime, the

English, who soon dominated the continent south of Canada, were far less sys-

tematic in their approach.

American history is not something that all happened west of the Atlantic

Ocean; the territory that is now the United States was in reality an extension

of European empires. Entrepreneurs in those nations, needing a labor force

to extract the “new” continent’s riches, encouraged their own people to settle

there. They also brought slaves from Africa to enhance production and promote

the increase in farming. Though geographically separated from Europe, Amer-

ica has for more than four centuries been tied economically, politically, and cul-

turally to the Old World, forming a vast transatlantic arena in which the drama

of western expansion has been played out. That fact looms large in the history of

this country’s musical life.

CATHOLIC MUSIC IN COLONIAL

NORTH AMERICA

Two European nations were primarily responsible for the spread of Catholicism

in North America: Spain in the South and Southwest, and France in the North

and Midwest.

CHAPTER

1

“NATURE MUST INSPIRE

THE THOUGHT”

Sacred Music in the European Colonies

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