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Browsing University Libraries by Subject "19th-century music"
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Item Affirmative and Ironic Resonances from the Personal Sheet Music Collection of Julia Ward Howe(2015-12-02) Gerber, Steven K.Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), the prominent 19th-century poet and reformer who famously penned the lyrics to “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” collected and bound for personal use five volumes of music; three volumes bear labels stamped “Miss Julia Ward” and two are labeled “Julia Howe,” postdating her 1843 marriage. The collection includes two complete operas in vocal score: Rossini’s Il Mose in Egitto and Beethoven’s Fidelio. The other three volumes contain 76 individual songs, primarily Lieder in German editions, but also 28 American imprints that range from Anglo-American sentimental songs to translations of European art songs and arias; most date from the 1830s and early 1840s. Howe’s adolescent education included musical training, and her singing and piano-playing around domestic hearths before and after her marriage was admired. She quickly rose to prominence both for her literary work and for her activism in favor of abolitionism and other causes, while diligently performing duties as mother to six children and wife to a physician and writer (who did not appreciate her talents and actively opposed her career and her emerging feminism). Her choice to acquire Mose in Egitto, a drama about deliverance from slavery, seems congruent with her abolitionist positions, while her interest in Fidelio, a drama about a courageous and self-empowered wife who rescues a grateful and loving husband (a score acquired after her marriage), resonates ironically with her actual domestic situation. With exceptions, the contents are atypical of such American owner-bound music albums, and the individual songs mirror the cultivated tastes of an educated connoisseur; minstrelsy is conspicuously absent.Item Bigamy Scandal Sinks Sacred Music Group! A Case Study of the Rise and Fall of the Church Music Association, 1869-1874(2015-12-18) Gerber, Steven K.Regular, series concerts of major choral-orchestral repertoire in 19th-century America were risky ventures, and promoters struggled to develop sustainable entrepreneurial models. Prominent Wall Street lawyer and diarist George Templeton Strong, a music connoisseur, devised an ingenious business plan for his part-volunteer, part-professional Church Music Association in 1869, one that relied on advance sale of private subscriptions to the affluent, who then shared their large allotments of tickets with personal guests. But after three successful seasons in Steinway Hall, culminating in the American premiere of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, the group lost its “star,” brilliant choral conductor James Pech, when he was found to be a bigamist who had deserted his first family in England. The subsequent demise of the demoralized organization illustrates the precariousness and vulnerability of concert infrastructure at this time.