The Euterpeiad, published in Boston by the Franklin Music Warehouse (one of the first music stores in the country), becomes the first periodical entirely about music in the United States.[3][4]
The all-black African Grove theater in Manhattan begins staging with pieces by playwright William Henry Brown and Shakespeare, sometimes with additional songs and dances designed to appeal to an African American audience.[6]Ira Aldridge, the first renowned actor of African descent, is among the performers. He will later popularize "Opossum Up a Gum Tree", the earliest known slave song.[7]
John Cromwell becomes the leading African American singing school master in Philadelphia; his students will include other prominent masters, such as Robert Johnson and Morris Brown, Jr.[8]
The black African Grove theater, led by Henry Brown,[10] in Manhattan opens to the public, one of the earliest theaters to feature African American performers in full productions, also training the renowned Ira Aldridge.[6]
Lowell Mason publishes his first book of hymns, the Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music, which quickly becomes one of the most popular tunebooks of the era.[11][12][13][14]
The Army is reorganized, allowing musicians to be treated as privates in pay and allowances, and bands were officially allowed to form their own squad within each regiment.[15]
Thomas Hastings publishes his Dissertation on Musical Taste, the "first American treatise of its kind".[16]
John Cole forms an influential music publishing business with his son, located in Baltimore.[17]
English comedian Charles Matthews tours the United States, including a song in his act, "Possum up a Gum Tree", which he hears on his trip by African Americans at a theater in New York. His use of the song is the "first certain example of a white man borrowing (African American) material for a blackfaced act."[18]
Dancing has become such an "integral part of a gentleman's education it was incorporated into the curriculum at West Point".[21]
The first piece of sheet music with a lithographed cover appears; it is "The Soldier Tired".[22]
The first Italian opera introduced to the United States is Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville, performed in New Orleans, but in French.[33]
Pierre Egan's Tom and Jerry, or Life in London is a hit play, presented at the African Grove Theatre, that establishing a common comic convention, that of the urban city slicker and a rural visitor.[23]
With the composition of The Saw Mill; Or, a Yankee Trick, Micah Hawkins becomes the first American-born composer to write both the music and libretto for an opera.[26]
Mid 1820s music trends
African American churches begin sponsoring concerts of sacred music in Eastern cities.[8]
The Park Theatre in New York City hosts a performance of The Barber of Seville by an opera led by Manuel García and aided by exptriate Lorenzo da Ponte.[27] The show was very successful, and helped establish a market for continental opera in the United States. Maria García, the show's female lead, became the first female star singer in New York.[28]
The American piano industry begins with the patenting of a new construction for the instrument by Alpheus Babcock of Boston, which used a metal frame rather than a wooden one.[29]
James Hill Hewitt writes the parlor song "The Minstrels Return from the War", which becomes the first internationally successful by an American songwriter",[31] and remains the most popular song until the advent of Stephen Foster.[32] The song's success establishes Hewitt as the first American "compose parlor songs and market them successfully".[27] "The Minstrels Return from the War" is the first song commonly perceived as truly American.[32]
The Forest Rose; Or, American Farmers by John Davies and Samuel Woodworth is probably the first opera with an African American female role in the country.[33]
The Army stops requiring officers to pay for the costs of forming a regimental band.[15]
The first black newspaper in the country, Freedom's Journal, is founded, containing, among other topics, announcements and advertisements for concerts and singing schools, and music editorials.[34]
New Orleans' Théâtre d'Orléans begins touring the major cities of the Northeast with non-English operas.[25]
The Allentown Band is founded. It will become the oldest American band in continuous existence.[30]
Elizabeth Austin, a famed English singer from London, begins traveling across the eastern half of the United States. She becomes a major singing sensation.[36]
Street vendor Henry Anderson, also known as The Hominy Man, becomes a local legend in Philadelphia for his "strong, resonant 'tenor robusto' and the fact that his were 'the most musical of all cries'."[37][38]
St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Philadelphia becomes the first black church in the country to purchase a pipe organ,[39] and the first to hire a black female organist, Ann Appo.[40]
Thomas D. Rice, an actor, creates a stage character called Jim Crow, based on a crippled African American stable groom's singing and dancing. Jim Crow became a stock character in blackfaceminstrel shows.[41] Rice publishes "Jump Jim Crow", a fantastically popular song whose status will endure for decades.[42]
Late 1820s music trends
The banjo spreads from African Americans to whites, with the first documentation coming from Joel Walker Sweeney in Virginia.[43] Sweeney will change the body of the banjo from the traditional gourd to a European drum shell.[44]
Marches have become the most prominent part of military and other large band repertories throughout the United States. These are commonly characterized as using "fanfare-like melodies and a characteristic dotted rhythm motive.[46]
Approximate: Lowell Mason forms the earliest known formal singing school for children. The school is free.[49]
The first documented reference to a performance that is a "definitive account" of spirituals.[9]
General Winfield Scott heads a board to prepare a tactics manual, which provides a place for musicians in the regimental order of battle. The manual also contains the musical signals used by Army musicians.[50]
Anthony Philip Heinrich composes Pushmataha, a Venerable Chief of a Western Tribe of Indians; this has been called the influential composer's artistic peak, and is also when Heinrich became the first "American composer to celebrate the customs of North America's native peoples".[51]
American copyright law recognizes music "as a form of culture that required systemic protection".[52]
Elizabeth Austin, an English singing star, stars in the premier of Michael Rophino Lacy's Cinderella, or the Fairy and the Little Glass Slipper, which made her a household name across much of the United States.[53]
Joshua Leavitt, a Congregationalist minister (and later a prominent abolitionist publisher), publishes The Christian Lyre, the "first American tunebook to take the form of a modern hymnal, with music for every hymn (melody and bass only) and the multistanza hymns printed in full, under or beside the music. The Christian Lyre and this year's Spiritual Songs for Social Worship, compiled by Thomas Hastings and Lowell Mason, were widely adopted tunebooks in the 1830s New England Revivalism movement.[54]
Nat Turner's slave rebellion fails; the song "Steal Away", which may have been written by Turner himself, is sung during the rebellion, and it becomes one of the major songs of the spiritual tradition. Only much later does mainstream American discover that the song contains coded references to secret religious meetings.[55]
Early 1830s music trends
Quicksteps begin to replace marches as the most prominent music of the military and other large band repertory. This is, in part, spurred by the development of brass instruments, whose aptitude for playing melodies is reflected in the sprightly and flowing melodic style of quicksteps. Marches remain common in country dancing, as accompaniment for dances like the cotillion and the quadrille.[46]
Changes to Army regulations make bandsmen regular soldiers, required to serve in battle if needed, establishes a position for bandmasters, and limits the size of regimental bands.[50]
José de la Rosa, a guitarist, composer and printer, moves to California, where he will document the oldest-known transcription of Mexican-Californian song lyrics.[56]
The Boston Academy of Music moves from education and sacred song into the cultivation of instrumental music by recognized European masters.[62]
John Hill Hewitt and other composers of popular parlor songs begin adopting influences from Italian opera, bringing a "new source of grace and intensity, as well as a tone of accessible elevation.[63]
The first convention of "singing masters" is organized by Lowell Mason, with the intent of improving the quality of music education in the United States.[65]
The Boston Billings and Holden Society publishes The Billings and Holden Collection of Ancient Psalmody, a collection of church songs presented in their "original character instead of in the 'improved' versions of Mason and his associates". The book is published for the benefit of the elderly, which may be an "early example of musical consideration for the benefit of 'senior citizens'".[70]
Music education is first introduced into the public school system of New York City.[71]
Touring by European bands becomes commonplace across North America, as more inhabited areas have grown large enough to make performances commercially viable.[66]
The banjo begins to be used as a solo instrument in minstrel shows, which will soon settle on the standard quartet of banjo, fiddle, tambourine and bones.[74]
Lowell Mason begins teaching singing, without pay, in Boston's public schools, becoming the first to teach music there.[3][49][75] The local school board had already authorized the teaching of music, but hadn't allocated any funds for the subject. Mason's volunteer teaching constitutes the beginning of music education in American public schools.[58] Later in the year, music is introduced to the public school system of Buffalo, New York.[58]
Chickering patents the first of several technical innovations that will make that firm the most important manufacturer of pianos in the country.[76]
The Shakers begin a revival, which produces a large body of songs that endure as part of their canon, including songs said to be received from the spirits of famous leaders, Native Americans and others.[77]
Encouraged by the success of Lowell Mason's experiment in volunteer singing instruction, the Boston school board declares music a school subject and hires Mason as Superintendent of Music.[49] Mason is the first person in the country to serve in that position for a public school system.[81] This is the beginning of music education in public schools in the United States.[82]
The Marigny Theater opens in New Orleans to cater to free African American audiences, banning both whites and slaves, and producing light French comedies and musical shows.[6]
The Richmond Theater, the premier concert stage in the city, is renovated and renamed the Marshall Theater.[83]
Allen Dodworth patents horns worn over-the-shoulder to project the sound behind the performer. This is intended for use in military contexts, and leads to military bands becoming almost exclusively brass bands.[50]
The Rainer family emigrates to the United States, beginning a craze for a new style of "public popular music performance... based on the four-part glee".[27]
William Henry Harrison's presidential campaign becomes the first to use music and campaign songs as an integral part of its strategy.[84]
Early 1840s music trends
Brass bands spread across the United States, and are a well-established part of local musical life.[85]
Pianos have become an increasingly common household item, and are owned by most families that are capable of affording one.[86]
An African American dance technique using the heel of the foot without raising the rest of front of the foot dates back to this era; it will eventually become the basis for the stop-timeragtime dance.[87]
The Theatre de la Renaissance opens in New Orleans, with members of the local Negro Philharmonic in the orchestra, offering full-length plays, variety shows and other productions, intended for African American audiences.[6]
Justin Miner Holland becomes the first "professional black musician" to study at Oberlin College, one of very few colleges to accept African Americans prior to the Civil War.[88]
Lowell Mason's collection of Christian songs, Carmina Sacra, sells a record 500,000 copies between its release this year and 1858.[89]
William B. Bradbury, an organist and choir leader in a Baptist church in New York, publishes The Young Choir, a highly successful tunebook aimed at Sunday schools.[91] He will become one of the most popular publishers of church music of the era.[92]
The number of musicians in an Army band is increased from 10 to 12.[50]
The Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church in Pennsylvania becomes the first in the country to introduce choral singing.[39] The national conference of the Church passes a resolution to "strenuously oppose" the use of hymns with refrains, added to the standard pieces, which were introduced by African Americans to the texts.[93]
The Hutchinson Family Singers are joined by eleven-year-old Abby Hutchison, the first female member, and the group begin performing across the United States, becoming some of the first performers to make social causes, such as abstaining from alcohol and abolitionism, a part of their concerts and their image.[98][99]
Master Juba, an African American performer, is described as the "greatest dancer known" by Charles Dickens. He is one of the first blacks to perform onstage for white audiences.[100] He is the first popular African American to perform in blackface.[101]
Michael William Balfe composes The Bohemian Girl, which incorporates Italian operatic idioms and is received in the United States with "great acclaim". The aria "I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls" becomes particularly popular.[27]
The first historically notable compilation of Shaker music is published, A Short Abridgement of the Rules of Music, by Isaac N. Young.[108]
The Steinway family open up a piano-making business, Steinway & Sons, in New York.[109]
Performances in New York and Boston by the Virginia Minstrels herald the beginning of the American minstrel show tradition.[47][110][111] They present the first minstrel show with all the characteristics now associated with, thereby establishing that as the most popular form of musical theater in the 19th century.[27][112] This is, for most northern whites, their first exposure to African American music.[113][114][115][116][117] Music historian David Wondrich called the Virginia Minstrels the first band perceived as truly American, playing music of a distinctly American style.[44]
Benjamin Franklin White and Elisha J. King publish The Sacred Harp, a collection of old American songs, and one of the greatest commercial successes in music publishing; the book remains in print as of 2001[update].[68][106] It will be the most influential and longest-lasting shape-note tunebook in American history.[118]
The polka is introduced to the United States at a theater in New York.[120]
Stephen Foster publishes his first song, "Open Thy Lattice, Love", through George Willig in Philadelphia (words by George Pope Morris); he will go on to become the most successful songwriter of the 19th century.[121]
The African American Master Juba defeats a renowned dancing master in a contest promoted by P. T. Barnum. Juba is considered one of the major innovators of black dancing, especially tap dancing.[122]
"Wake, Lady Mine" is written, by Augusta Browne; it will become one of her most renowned songs, and will establish her career as the most prolific American female composer of the era.[119]
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft publishes Onéota, or Characteristics of the Red Race of America, one of the first publications to include a Native American song, specifically one called "Death Song" and collected from the Ojibwa. It is published without music.[123]
Justin Miner Holland, a freeborn African American, begins his composing career and opens a studio in Cleveland; he was, perhaps, the first black composer whose "African roots... played little or no role in his professional life".[88][124]
The growing Anglo-Texan population declares independence from Mexico, leading to Tejano music becoming distinct from other regional styles of Mexican music as Tejano identity becomes more pronounced than Mexican among Texans of Spanish descent.[125]
Thomas Commuck, with Thomas Hastings, publishes Indian Melodies... Harmonized by Thomas Hastings, a collection of hymns which uses Native American names and other details in the lyrics, an unusual practice for the time.[126]
W. C. Peters and Son is founded, soon becoming the largest music publishing firm in the Midwest.[127]
William Henry Fry's Leonora is the first grand opera by an American-born composer to "receive wide-ranging publicity and reviews".[33]
Christy's Minstrels of Buffalo, New York, settle in New York City and become one of the most popular minstrel troupes in the city.[97]
Music education is first introduced into the public school system of Cincinnati, Ohio.[58]
Jesse B. Aikin's The Christian Minstrel firmly establishes "shape-note singing as an important factor in the growth and popularity of what would later be called gospel music".[128] It is also the most enduring system of seven-syllable shape-note transcription in the United States.[129]
Master Juba, a popular African American performer on the musical stage, becomes the first black member of a white performing troupe when he joins Charley White's minstrel show as a dancer and tambourine player.[130]
New York's Trinity Church completes the construction of an organ, which is the largest organ in the country, reflecting the growing importance of the organ in American life.[132]
The Mexican–American War begins. Bandsmen will be employed in nonmusical capacities, such as stretcher carriers and messengers, and many musicians will not perform at all during the entire war.[50]
Stephen Foster's "Oh! Susanna" is published; it becomes immensely successful around the world,[133] and is characteristic of the minstrel stage; it is "musically derived from the Anglo-American fiddle tune repertoire (and) adds an additional measure of rhythmic excitement and places greater emphasis on the refrain".[27]
German immigration to the United States begins to shift from religious refugees to political exiles, following a revolution in Germany.[134]
A collection of traditional church songs, Ancient Harmony Revival, becomes popular, providing momentum for a movement away from the modernized songs popularized by Lowell Mason and others.[135]
Army bands are increased in size from 12 to 16. Regulations also require bands to be mustered in a separate squad, a precedent that leads to the modern practice of setting the band apart from the unit entirely.[50]
Charles Aiken of Cincinnati publishes pioneering books for the education in music of elementary school-age children, before such children were commonly taught music.[58]
The California Gold Rush begins, bringing many new and diverse peoples and their musics to California, which had been dominated by the music of the region's Mexican inhabitants.[56][138]
The Germania Musical Society, which debuts in New York in 1848, is the most prominent of several German orchestras that tour the United States, bringing new popularity to performances by Classical and Romantic composers.[106][140]
The first substantial wave of Chinese immigration to the United States begins, inspired by the California Gold Rush. The vast majority of these immigrants are from the coastal southern region of Guangdong; as a result, the dominant forms of Chinese-American music will remain Cantonese opera and other folk songs, as well as the Taishan tradition of muyulmuk'yu song.[143]
The German-American musician Hermann Kotzschmar moves to Portland, Maine; he will play a major role in that city's musical life, and make it a "thriving music center".[144]
Louis Moreau Gottschalk, then living in Paris, composes Bamboula,La savane,Le Bananier and Le Mancenillier, all based on Afro-American melodies; these works helped establish Gottschalk as a "musical representative of the Old World in the New".[145] He will become the "first American concert artist and composer to achieve international renown."[146]
A conflict between the supporters of a British and an American Shakespearean actor leads to the Astor Place Riots in New York City. Popular music historian Donald Clarke calls this a major turning point in American music history, marking the beginning of a split between highbrow and lowbrow entertainment and the beginning of specialized performances rather than pastiches and melodramas attempting to appeal to all consumers.[149]
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Hester, Karlton E. (2004). Bigotry and the Afrocentric Jazz Evolution. Global Academic Publishing. ISBN1-58684-228-5.
Klitz, Brian (June 1989). "Blacks and Pre-Jazz Instrumental Music in America". International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music. 20 (1). Croatian Musicological Society: 43–60. doi:10.2307/836550. JSTOR836550.
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Southern, Eileen (1997). Music of Black Americans. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN0-393-03843-2.
Tawa, Nicholas E. (1980). Sweet Songs for Gentle Americans: The Parlor Song in America, 1790–1860. Popular Press. ISBN0-87972-130-8.
Ukpokodu, Peter (May 2000). "African American Males in Dance, Music, Theater, and Film". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 569 (The African American Male in American Life and Thought): 71–85. doi:10.1177/0002716200569001006.
^ abcPreston, Katherine K.; Susan Key; Judith Tick; Frank J. Cipolla; Raoul F. Camus. "Snapshot: Four Views of Music in the United States". The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. pp. 554–569.
^Horn, David. "Oliver Ditson and Company". The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music. pp. 584–585.
^Chase, pg. 134; all single quotes in original; Chase quotes from the Collection that the songs "must be republished as originally written, or the elderly and middle-aged must be deprived of the satisfaction and delight they have heretofore experienced."
^ abcdeBirge, pg. 65, citing Francis M. Dickey's The Early History of Public School Music in the United States
^Cornelius, Steven, Charlotte J. Frisbie and John Shepherd, "Snapshot: Four Views of Music, Government, and Politics", pgs. 304–319, in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
^ abcRycenga, Jennifer, Denise A. Seachrist and Elaine Keillor, "Snapshot: Three Views of Music and Religion", pgs. 129–139, in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
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