American Choral Music, 1870-1923
of 1881 - Handel's "Dettigen Te Deum." Wood
engraving. From American Art Journal 35
(14 May 1881): cover. Performing Arts Reading
Room, Library of Congress.
About this Presentation
American Choral Music, 1870-1923, is a collaboration between the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and the Library of Congress. Founded in 1959, the ACDA serves some 19,000 members. Its mission is to promote excellence in choral music through performance, composition, publication, research, and teaching. In addition, ACDA strives through arts advocacy to elevate choral music's position in American society. ACDA members direct choirs across the choral spectrum: boy choirs, men's and women's choruses, public and private school choruses, college and university choruses, and choirs in worship settings, ethnic choirs, show choirs, vocal-jazz ensembles, and community choirs. The Choral Journal, ACDA's official publication, is issued monthly and contains articles of scholarly and practical nature, in addition to reviews of books, recordings and printed music.
In 2007, the ACDA and the Library of Congress began a collaborative effort to create this Web site devoted to choral music that would present choral music in the public domain, available for users to download, with introductory information on the composers along with each work's historical context and stylistic features. Thus the site serves to highlight the collections of sheet music in the Library of Congress and to advance and promote the performance of choral music. It contains a diverse selection of choral music, both sacred and secular, including works for mixed choirs, for women's and men's ensembles, and for children's choruses.
Eight composers’ works are represented in this initial release. Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, 1867-1944) was one of the first Americans to be trained completely in the U.S.A. and the first American women to achieve widespread recognition as a composer. Dudley Buck (1839-1909) was an organist, conductor, and founding director of the Brooklyn Apollo Club’s male chorus. George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931), credited as the “dean of American Music,” was a highly respected teacher who reorganized the New England Conservatory. William W. Gilchrist (1846-1916) was one of the founding members of the American Guild of Organists. Mabel Wheeler Daniels (1878-1971) wrote The Desolate City, op. 21, among other significant works, during her many stays at the MacDowell Colony. R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943), who as director of the Hampton Institute, developed a choir into a superior organization that won critical acclaim in both the U.S.A. and Europe. Margaret Ruthven Lang (1867-1972) was a composer whose singular song Ojalá brought her international attention at the Paris Exposition of 1889. Horatio William Parker (1863-1919) was a composer and educator known for major vocal and choral compositions, many of which reside in manuscript in the Music Division.
Twenty-eight representative choral works were selected by the ACDA from the illimitable collections of the Music Division, illustrating a period beginning shortly after the Civil War, when many large mixed-voice choral societies proliferated and enormous choral festivals became a popular medium of expression in American musical society. These festivals frequently involved thousands of choristers, bands, orchestras, and many conductors were needed to coordinate the enormous musical performances. Dudley Buck wrote Festival Hymn for the Peace Jubilee in Boston (1872). Similarly, the New York Music Festival of 1881 included numerous choristers, as did the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, for which Amy Beach wrote Festival Jubilate, op. 17. In 1892, George Whitefield Chadwick wrote Ode for the Opening of the Chicago World's Fair.
Numerous singing clubs were established, notably the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Cecilia Society of Boston, the Oratorio Society of New York, the Mendelssohn Glee Club of New York and the Bethlehem Bach Choir. The Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, begun in 1815, was still functioning successfully. Many large cities boasted their own women's musical clubs, such as Boston's Thursday Morning Music Club, and were frequently named after leading women composers, for example, the Margaret Ruthven Lang Club, the Mrs. H. H. A. Beach Club.
About Choral Music at the Library of Congress
The works in this presentation were selected from a variety of sheet music collections in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. Of the 28 choral music works chosen by the American Choral Directors Association for this Web site, 16 works are from the A. P. Schmidt Company Archives. The remaining works include sheet music from the John Church Society Publishing Company and from the Gustav Schirmer and the Oliver Ditson publishers, all found in the general collections. The holographs are from the A. P. Schmidt Collection. The material in this collection ranges from 1880 through 1909, a period which nicely parallels and exhibits the growth of a new American music culture in which communal music making was the approved entertainment and a valuable means of social expression.
One of the most valuable resources for the study of American choral music, the A. P. Schmidt Archives, occupies a special place in the history of American music publishing. In 1958, the publisher Summy-Birchard bought out the Arthur P. Schmidt Company, and both principals agreed to donate the Schmidt papers to the Library of Congress. Included in the large deposit of business papers and financial records were numerous containers of music manuscripts, including many holographs, and printed sheet music. Because the A. P. Schmidt Collection contains over 300 boxes of manuscripts and published choral music, it is no surprise that nearly half the examples used in this collection originate from that source. Found in this collection is the music of Arthur Foote, George Whitefield Chadwick, Horatio Parker, and John Knowles Paine. Because Schmidt championed the music of women, the collection is also rich in the holdings of holographs and sheet music of Amy Beach (Mrs. H. H. A. Beach), Mabel Wheeler Daniels, Margaret Ruthven Lang, Florence Newell Barbour, Marion Bauer, Helen Hopekirk, Gena Branscomb, and Anna Pricella Rischer.
