Choral Music in Nineteenth-Century America: A Guide to the Sources (review)

Choral Music in Nineteenth-Century America: A Guide to the Sources. By N. Lee Orr and W. Dan Hardin. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1999. [ix, 135 p. ISBN 0-8108-3664-5. $25.]

Although this little book promises much more than it delivers, it is a welcome addition to the field. Choral Music in Nineteenth-Century America is a classified, unannotated bibliography consisting of a preface and twenty-six short chapters on various topics, including choral societies, Moravian music, periodicals indexes, Horatio Parker, and so forth.

In the preface, which would have benefited from the attentions of a competent copy editor, the authors claim that their book "will play a seminal role in defining the entire field as it is the first complete survey of choral music in nineteenth-century America" (p. vii). This statement is misleading in its claim of completeness, though the guide will be useful to anyone embarking on research in this area.

N. Lee Orr and W. Dan Hardin set forth a reasonable definition of choral music--music written to be performed by a choral ensemble for an audience--which, they say, necessarily excludes hymns as well as subgenres such as the spiritual, gospel song, and shape-note tune. Yet about 20 percent of this slender volume comprises four chapters entitled "Shape-Notes," "Slave Songs and Spirituals," "Denominational Music," and "Hymns and Gospel Songs." The authors admit that these chapters barely scratch the surface of relevant source material. ("No attempt at any kind of bibliographical completeness was attempted" [p. viii].) Still, they provide at least a starting point for anyone whose general interest in choral music leads toward congregational singing rather than rehearsed and performed music.

The book's lack of organization is occasionally annoying. The topical chapters are in no coherent order. Boy choirs and male choral groups are treated within one chapter rather than as subsections under "Choral Organizations and Societies" or in adjacent chapters. "Denominational Music" would have been more helpful if it were organized by denomination. Certain composers are singled out for chapters of their own (some rather meager) on the debatable grounds of their "significance for the development of American choral music" (p. viii). A cogent argument could certainly be made, for example, that F. Melius Christiansen and the a cappella movement he founded at St. Olaf College had greater significance for the development of American choral music than did the music of the impresario and orchestra conductor Anthony Philip Heinrich. Yet Christiansen is lumped together with many others in chapter 9, "Composers and Conductors," while Heinrich receives a chapter of his own consisting of three entries. A better plan would have been to include all composers and conductors within a single, alphabetically organized chapter. Birth and death dates of all listed individuals would have been an additional help. Theodore Thomas, a conductor and educator of enormous influence on music culture in nineteenth-century America, is inexplicably missing altogether.

The strength of Orr and Hardin's work lies in its eclecticism. The authors point out that the information assembled in this volume has been scattered and inaccessible, and that ten years of travel and research have gone into its gathering. They are to be commended for including hard-to-find denominational church histories and regional studies, many of which contain precious information on choral events such as festivals and commemorative concerts. Also welcome is the chapter "Philosophy, Sermons and Talks"--to judge from the titles, all but two of the thirty-six entries here concern music in worship--and inclusion of numerous doctoral dissertations and master's theses.

Orr and Hardin do indeed "bring some bibliographical control" (p. vii) to a vast area of American music history that has begun to receive scholarly attention only in the past few decades. For this reason, their guide belongs in the collection of any serious scholar of nineteenth-century American music, where, despite its flaws, it will not only encourage, as...