American sacred music composers biography
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The Evolution of American Choral Music: Roots, Trends, and Composers before the 20th Century
How did choral music start in the United States?
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.
—Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass1
Prologue
Unlike political history, American choral music did not immediately burst forth with significant people and events. Choral music certainly existed in America since the Colonial Period, but it was not until the twentieth century that its impact was significant. The last half of the twentieth century saw an explosion of interest in choral music unprecedented in the history of the country. American choral music came of age on a truly national level, and through the expansion of music education, technology, professional organizations, and available materials, the interest in choral singing escalated dramatically.
It is possible to trace the history of American choral music from its two most basic perspectives:
1. Music that had a functional
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Wm. J. Kirkpatrick: Sacred Music Composer
by Jacob Henry Hall
There are but few gospel song composers who are better and more favorably known than the subject of this sketch, Wm. J. Kirkpatrick, born February 27, His father, Thompson Kirkpatrick, was a school teacher and music teacher, and well known as a musician in Mifflin, Juniata, Cumberland and Perry Counties, Pennsylvania, [United States].
William J. grew up in a musical atmosphere, and at an early age learned to play upon the fife, flute, violin, and later upon the violin cello. In the spring of he left his home in Duncannon, Perry County, Pennsylvania, for Philadelphia to study music and learn a trade, and served over three years at carpentering. He was much more interested in music than in mechanics, devoting all his leisure time to its study. His ambition at this time was to become a violinist.
In February, , he joined the Wharton Street Methodist Episcopal Church, of Philadelphia, and from that time devoted himself m
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Sacred Harp hymnwriters and composers
The Sacred Harp is a shape note tunebook, originally compiled in by Benjamin Franklin vit and Elisha J. King in Georgia and used to this day in revised struktur by Sacred Harp singers throughout amerika and overseas. This article is a historical overview and lista of the composers and poets who wrote the songs and texts of The Sacred Harp.
Music
[edit]The music of The Sacred Harp fryst vatten eclectic in origin, and can be roughly grouped into the following categories of songs (listed chronologically).
In the examples listed below, songs are identified by the page number in the two most prominent modern versions of The Sacred Harp; the so-called "Denson edition" and the "Cooper edition". Thus, "D,C 49" means "found on page 49 of both the Denson and Cooper editions".
- A few very old songs of European ursprung, such as "Old Hundred" (D,C 49), which in its original version dates to These oldest songs also include a few from a remote ancesto