Mason, Lowell. Carmina Sacra: or Boston Collection of Church Music, comprising the most popular Psalm and Hymn Tunes in general use, together with a great variety of New Tunes, Chants, Sentences, Motetts, and Anthems...&c. Boston: Wilkins, Carter, & Co., 1845. [9301]
Leather spine with printed paper over card, oblong 6 1/4 x 9 3/4, joints fine, covers with old stains and scuffing, tight. Dampstains on the front end paper, carrying through to p. 10. 348 generally clean pp. plus index. Two leaves (4 pp.) detached as one folded piece and laid in at back (last leaf of music & first of the index).
Published under the Sanction of the Boston Academy of Music. The music is in four parts with round notes.
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).
