Mason, Lowell. The Song-Garden: A Series of School Music Books, Progressively Arranged. Each Book Complete in Itself. Third Book. Boston: Oliver Ditson & Sompany, (1866). [11146]
Black cloth spine, printed green paper over card, oblong 5 3/4 x 9 inches, edge-worn, tight. Adverts on the end papers. 240 clean pp., several illustrations in the instruction sections. Good. Hardcover.
"Electrotyped by Smith & McDougal, 82 & 84 Beekman St., N. Y." on the copyright page.
The music is in four parts with round notes. The first song is "Praise the Lord, whose word created." The songs are Christian hymns, and songs about nature.
Lowell Mason (1792-1872), Massachusetts-born hymn composer, music publisher, one of the founders of public school music education in the United States. He is credited with composing over 1600 hymn tunes. "To him we owe some of our best ideas in religious church music, elementary musical education, music in schools, the popularization of classical chorus singing, and the art of teaching music upon the Inductive or Pestalozzian plan. More than that, we owe him no small share of respect which the profession of music enjoys at the present time as contrasted with the contempt in which it was held a century or more ago. In fact, the entire art of music, as now understood and practiced in America, had derived advantage from the work of this great man." - Hall, Biographies of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers (1914).
