(b Norwich, CT, March 22, 1762; d Philadelphia, cSept 30, 1793). American singing teacher, concert organizer and tune book compiler. In 1783 he assisted Andrew Law in a Philadelphia singing school. Later he worked in the city as a wool-card manufacturer and merchant; he was a volunteer in the citizens’ committee organized during Philadelphia’s yellow-fever epidemic of 1793, and died of that disease. In 1784 he opened an ‘Institution for the Encouragement of Church Music’, later reorganizing it as the Uranian Academy. Adgate presented many concerts during the mid- to late 1780s, most notably a ‘Grand Concert’ on 4 May 1786, at which works by Handel, James Lyon, William Billings, William Tuckey and others were performed by 230 choristers and an orchestra of 50. Adgate’s first known compilation is an anthology of sacred texts: Select Psalms and Hymns for the Use of Mr. Adgate’s Pupils (Philadelphia, 1787...
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(b Dobitschen, Saxe-Altenburg, Jan 4, 1720; d Berlin, Dec 2, 1774). German musicographer, composer, organist, singing master and conductor. His father occupied an important post as government agent and jurist in Dobitschen. Burney, who visited the Agricolas in 1772, reported that Johann Friedrich’s mother, born Maria Magdalena Manke, ‘was a near relation of the late Mr Handel, and in correspondence with him till the time of his death’; but later Handel research has failed to substantiate this claim.
Agricola began his study of music as a young child. In 1738 he entered the University of Leipzig, where he studied law; during this time he was a pupil of J.S. Bach and visited Dresden, where he heard performances of Passion oratorios and Easter music by Hasse. In 1741 he moved to Berlin, became a pupil of Quantz, made the acquaintance of C.P.E. Bach, C.H. Graun and other musicians, and embarked on a career that touched many aspects of Berlin’s musical life. He became keenly interested in music criticism and theoretical speculation in Berlin, and his work as a musicographer has proved to be his most lasting accomplishment. In ...
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(b Swanton Morley, Norfolk, bap. Jan 15, 1571; d Amsterdam, ?1622–3). English minister and psalmodist. He attended Cambridge University from 1586 to 1591, leaving without a degree. He was expatriated as a ‘Brownist’ in 1593 and settled in Amsterdam, where he became ‘teacher’ of the Ancient Separatist Church in 1596; in 1610 he founded an Independent church, becoming minister of it himself. He took the Calvinist position on predestination. He was the author of a number of controversial religious tracts, annotations, and translations of scripture. Many consider him one of the finest Hebrew scholars of his day. His Book of Psalmes: Englished both in Prose and Metre, with Annotations (Amsterdam, 1612, 4/1644; music ed. in ISAMm, xv, Brooklyn, NY, 1981) contains all 150 psalms in a new metrical version, together with prose translations and annotations. 48 are provided with monophonic tunes (six melodies are used twice and one three times). 21 of the 40 tunes are drawn from the Continental Reformed tradition, and 16 are from English sources (including three of the newer, short variety such as ...
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Renee Lapp Norris
(b Northborough, MA, Sept 5, 1830; d Madison, WI, Dec 9, 1889). American classical scholar, teacher, editor, and writer. Allen is best known musically as an editor of Slave Songs of the United States (New York, 1867), also edited by Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim Garrison, who were white collectors of black music.
Allen graduated from Harvard in 1851, subsequently studied in Europe, and returned to the United States in 1856. In 1863 he began an eight-month stint as a teacher on St Helena Island in South Carolina, home to former slaves who remained after plantation owners left in 1861. Here, Allen gained first-hand experience of slave singing that contributed to the detailed explanations of his 36-page prologue to Slave Songs. In 1867 Allen was appointed chair of ancient languages at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he remained until his death.
Allen’s interest in philology is evident in the many pages of the prologue to ...
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Carolyn Gianturco and Teresa M. Gialdroni
(b Mosso Santa Maria, nr Biella, Jan 31, 1921). Italian musicologist. He took diplomas in piano at the Parma Conservatory (1942) and in choral music at the Turin Conservatory (1948), and studied music history with Della Corte at Turin University, where he took an arts degree (1946). He subsequently taught music history in the conservatories of Bolzano (1950–51), Parma (1951–5) and Milan (1954–88); he has edited the journals Almanacco musicale italiano (1954–5), Ricordiana (1955–7) and Musica d’oggi (1958–63) and has been vice-director of Enciclopedia della musica Ricordi (1960–64). He has been a consulting editor for Ricordi since 1964. Music education is one of his major interests: he became director of the series Manuali di Didattica Musicale and Canti nel Mondo (Ricordi) in 1965, and editor of Educazione musicale...
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Peter Clulow
(b Comber, Co. Down, Aug 10, 1904; d Oxford, Oct 10, 1965). Northern Irish music scholar, teacher, organist, composer and editor. He went to Bedford School, and studied at the RCM in London, Trinity College, Dublin, and New College, Oxford, gaining doctorates of music at both universities. In 1938, after four years as organist and choirmaster at Beverley Minster, he moved to a similar position at New College. Thereafter, he lived and worked in Oxford, where he was a university lecturer in music and a Fellow of New College, and later of Balliol. He also taught at the RCM.
Andrews's published work consists of three books, various articles (including contributions to the fifth edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music), reviews, and several motets, services and songs. The Oxford Harmony, vol.ii, traces the development of chromatic harmony through standard repertory works and relates this to techniques of composition. The opening chapters of ...
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Greg A. Handel
(Eugene)
(b West Hempstead, NY, April 26, 1956). American music educator, choral arranger, editor, and conductor. He was a member of the American Boychoir (1969–71), and received degrees from St Olaf College (BM 1978), the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (MM 1980), and Michigan State University (DMA 1987). He was on the summer faculty of the American Boychoir School and now serves on the Board of Trustees. He taught at Calvin College (1980–90) before becoming the fourth conductor of the St Olaf Choir and the Harry R. and Thora H. Tosdal Endowed Professor of Music (1990–). Armstrong is the editor for Earthsongs publications and co-editor of the St. Olaf Choir Series. He chronicled the history of the St Olaf Choir in his doctoral dissertation. He is featured on an instructional video for adolescent singers, Body, Mind, Spirit, Voice (2002...
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(Vilhelm)
(b Bredaryd, Feb 5, 1925). Swedish music administrator, writer and lexicographer. He studied the double bass, cello, organ and music theory privately and romance languages at Lund University (graduated 1958). He taught French and Spanish at the Malmö Gymnasium (1959–74), and has pursued various musical activities, including posts as music critic of the Malmö newspaper Kvällsposten (1950–80), founder and leader of Chamber Choir ’53 (1953–62), founder (1960) and director (1965–71) of the Ars Nova society for new music and programme director of Sal. Smith Chamber Music Society (1966–73). He has also taught music history at the Malmö National School of Drama (1963–71), and served as a board member of the Malmö Musikhögskola (from 1964) and the Swedish Royal Academy of Music (1966–73; general secretary from 1973–90), and as vice-chairman of the board of the Stockholm Elektronmusikstudion (...
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Laurie J. Sampsel
(b Milton, MA, Feb 18, 1760; d French Mills, NY, Nov 23, 1813). American composer, singing master, singer, and tunebook compiler. Babcock lived most of his life in Watertown, MA, where he worked as a hatter. As a teenager he fought in the Revolutionary War, and he died while enlisted in the Army during the War of 1812. He was active primarily as a psalmodist during the period from 1790 to 1810. Babcock was the choir leader at the Watertown Congregational church, sang at and composed music for town events, and taught singing schools there in 1798 and 1804. He may also have been an itinerant singing master in the Boston area. Babcock composed 75 extant pieces, including anthems, set pieces, fuging tunes, psalm, and hymn tunes. Most of his music was first published in his own tunebook, Middlesex Harmony, which was published in two editions (1795...
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Paul C. Echols
(b Detroit, MI, Feb 19, 1803; d New Haven, CT, Dec 23, 1881). American author of hymn texts and hymnbook compiler. The son of a missionary to the Native Americans, he was educated at Yale University and Andover Theological Seminary. While at Andover he compiled a small pamphlet containing 101 missionary hymns, three of them his own: entitled Hymns and Sacred Songs; for the Monthly Concert (Andover, MA, 1823), it was intended for use at missionary prayer meetings and was the first such collection to be published in the United States. In 1825 Bacon was ordained and became pastor of the Center Church, New Haven, where he served until he joined the faculty of the Yale Divinity School in 1866. In 1833 he published in New Haven a revision of Timothy Dwight’s edition of Isaac Watts’s Psalms and Hymns, to which he appended the collection Additional Hymns, Designed as a Supplement to Dwight’s Psalms & Hymns...
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David Tunley
(b c1720; d Paris, c1798). French publisher, composer and teacher. On 27 April 1765 he took over the music publishing house known as A la Règle d’Or, which comprised businesses once owned by Boivin, Ballard and Bayard. During some 30 years he issued many works by both French and foreign composers, the latter including not only early masters like Corelli and Vivaldi, but also some of those who were influential in the development of the emerging Classical school: Carl Stamitz, Haydn, Piccinni, Paisiello, Cimarosa, Boccherini and Clementi. French composers included Gossec, Davaux, Monsigny and Brassac, and some of the earlier generation, Lully, Lalande and Campra. One of his major publications was the Journal d’ariettes des plus célèbres compositeurs, comprising 240 works issued in 63 volumes (scores and parts) from 1779 to 1788. Bailleux’s adoption of the royal privilege granted to the Ballard family led to his imprisonment during the Terror. He was released after the coup d'état of 9 Thermidor (...
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Sally Drage
(bap. Sunningwell, Oxon., June 23, 1700; d after 1758). English psalmodist and singing teacher . He was a farmer's son. One of the first itinerant singing teachers to engrave and print his own music, he was arguably the ‘father’ of the fuging-tune, which became popular in England and America during the late 18th century. A psalmody book, apparently produced in the mid-1720s, has not survived, but four later publications, all undated, make a substantial contribution to our knowledge of country psalmody. The different editions had identical titles, but the use of separate engraving plates meant that contents could vary according to the purchaser's requirements. The music, which Beesly collected but may not have composed, exemplifies the bare harmony and unresolved dissonance of much early Gallery music. Although a few previous examples exist, his claim that the 20 new psalm tunes were ‘Compos'd with veriety of Fuges after a different manner to any yet extant’ is fully justified; his tune to Psalm viii was widely reprinted....
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(b Framingham, MA, Feb 9, 1771; d Pawtucket, RI, Oct 31, 1815). American composer, tunebook compiler, and singing master. The son of Jeremiah Belknap Jr. and Hepzibah Stone, he grew up in Framingham, where he received a common-school education. He then worked as a farmer, mechanic, and militia captain, and taught singing-schools from the age of 18. Around 1800 he married Mary Parker, with whom he had five children by 1809. In 1812 he and his family moved to Pawtucket, where he died of a fever.
Most of his 86 known compositions were first printed in his own tunebooks, an exception being his most widely published piece, “Lena,” which was introduced in The Worcester Collection (Boston, 5/1794). His ambitious Masonic ode, “A View of the Temple,” was sung at the installation of the Middlesex Lodge of Framingham in 1795. Belknap’s The Harmonist’s Companion (Boston, 1797), a brief 32-page collection, contains only his own compositions, which are written in an American idiom untouched by European-inspired reform. His later compilations, ...
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William R. Lee
(b Cambridge Springs, PA, July 13, 1866; d Carlisle, MA, Feb 27, 1946). American music publisher and music educator. Son of a Pennsylvania physician, Birchard taught music in public schools and managed summer schools for music songbook publishers in the 1890s. In 1901 he became founder and president of C.C. Birchard and Co., specializing in the publication of school music and the works of American composers. His school series, The Laurel Song Book (1901), was highly successful and set new standards in music selection and graphics. He promoted American composers, including Ives, Still, Hanson, and Copland, and encouraged Arthur Farwell to organize the Wa-Wan Press (1901) to stimulate American composition. He was one of the founders (at Keokuk, Iowa, 1907) of the Music Supervisors National Conference (MSNC). He took advantage of the community singing movement, the patriotic fervor of World War I, and the Americanization drive of the 1910s and published several collections of which the ...
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Christopher Fifield
(b Berlin, Feb 17, 1852; d Niederschönenhausen, nr Berlin, June 12, 1889). German pianist, teacher and editor. He was a piano pupil of Theodor Kullak and Richard Wüerst in Berlin, and studied philosophy and modern languages at Berlin University (1868–72), taking the doctorate at Göttingen in 1873 with a dissertation on Bernart de Ventadorn. He taught the piano and (from 1879) theory at Kullak’s Neue Akademie der Tonkunst (1873–8), and later at the Stern Conservatory, where he remained until his death. He also had an active career as a concert pianist, playing mainly chamber music; with the violinist W. Helmich he organized the Monday Concerts at the Berlin Sing-Akademie. He was a leading figure among 19th-century German critical editors. His editions of piano music were exemplary for their time and encompass keyboard works of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Clementi, Weber, Schubert and Schumann, including the first variorum edition of Bach's ...
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Harry Eskew
(b York Co., ME, Oct 6, 1816; d Montclair, NJ, Jan 7, 1868). American composer, teacher, organist, publisher, and piano manufacturer. In 1830 his family moved to Boston, where he studied music with Sumner Hill and attended Lowell Mason’s Academy of Music; he also sang in Mason’s Bowdoin Street church choir and later became organist there. From 1836 he taught music classes and gave private piano lessons in Machias, Maine, then in 1838 became a singing-school teacher in St. John’s, New Brunswick. Bradbury moved to New York in 1840 as choir leader of the First Baptist Church, Brooklyn, and the following year he accepted a position as organist at the Baptist Tabernacle in New York. He established singing classes for children similar to those of Mason in Boston; his annual music festivals with as many as 1000 children led to the introduction of music in New York’s public schools. He also published his first collection, ...
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Ruth M. Wilson
(b Bolton, CT, May 13, 1746; d Smithfield, NY, 1815). American composer, singing master, and printer. He was prominent among the Connecticut composers who contributed many psalm and fuging-tunes to the repertory of 18th-century choral music. Brownson taught in several parts of Connecticut, and from 1775 to 1797 was mostly in Litchfield, Simsbury, West Simsbury, and New Hartford. He was associated with Asahel Benham, Timothy Swan, and Alexander Ely in the sale of music books. He settled in Peterboro, New York, sometime between 1797 and 1800.
Brownson’s compositions were first published in Law’s Select Harmony (Cheshire, CT, 1779). Brownson’s own Select Harmony, issued in four editions (probably in Hartford, CT) between 1783 and 1791, contained a large number of new pieces by Americans with “Author’s Names set over the tunes,” as well as 22 original works. The title page, engraved by Isaac Sanford, depicts a church choir arranged around three sides of the gallery, the leader at the center with a pitchpipe in hand. Brownson also published ...
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(Carter)
(b London, March 25, 1871; d London, Oct 3, 1947). English writer on music, music editor, teacher, organist and composer. He studied at the Royal College of Music under Parratt, C.H. Lloyd and Parry (1888–92). He held posts as organist of Worcester College, Oxford (1891–4), Wells Cathedral (1896–9) and Bristol Cathedral (1899–1901), and was then appointed director of music at Harrow School, a post that he held until 1927. In 1910 he succeeded Prout as professor of music at Trinity College, Dublin, occupying the chair until 1920. In 1925 he was appointed King Edward Professor of Music in the University of London and had meanwhile begun to teach at the RCM. When he left Harrow he became music adviser to the London County Council (1927–36). In August 1937, on his retirement from the London professorship, he received a knighthood....
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(b Enfield, CT, Feb 9, 1744; d Hartford, CT, Aug 20, 1825). American singing master, composer, and tunebook compiler. He grew up in Enfield and Farmington and lived most of his life in central Connecticut. Bull married five times and had several children; he probably received his musical training in a singing-school. In 1766, he advertised for subscribers to a tunebook, The New Universal Psalmodist, in the New Haven Connecticut Gazette. (This book was never published.) Bull lived in New York City during the Revolutionary War years, where he taught singing schools and became parish clerk and master of the Charity School of Trinity Church from 1778 to 1782. He returned to Connecticut where he bought a house in Hartford in 1788 (now a state landmark), remaining there until his death in 1825. He ran a dry-goods store, hardware store, and evening school, and formed a private literary academy. Although he joined the Hartford Episcopal Church in ...
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Jean Snyder
(b Erie, PA, Dec 2, 1866; d Stamford, CT, Sept 12, 1949). American singer, composer, arranger, and music editor. His early music study included piano, voice, guitar, and bass viol. In January 1892 he won a scholarship at the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Among Conservatory faculty who influenced his career were Victor Herbert and Antonín Dvořák, director of the conservatory from September 1892 to April 1895. Burleigh became Dvořák’s copyist and librarian of the Conservatory orchestra, in which he played timpani and bass viol. He sang plantation songs and spirituals for Dvořák that he had learned from his grandfather, a former slave. Dvořák’s Symphony no.9 in E minor, “From the New World,” was written and premiered while Burleigh was at the Conservatory.
In New York Burleigh took his place among prominent African American singers such as soprano Sissieretta Jones (known as the Black Patti). In the years ...