[Mason, Lowell]. The Boston Academy's Collection of Church Music: consisting of the most popular Psalm and Hymn Tunes, Anthems, Sentences, Chants, &c. Old and New. New York: Mason Brothers, 1856. [12224]
Leather spine with green printed paper over card (hardcover), loss of leather to spine with some old shiny glue over some of it, otherwise edge-worn, oblong 6 x 9 3/4 inches. 360 generally clean pp., final leaf torn with loss, affecting some lines of the Index. Good. Hardcover.
Title continues: Together with many beautiful pieces, tunes, and anthems, selected from the masses and other works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Pergolesi, Righini, Cherubini, Romberg, Winter, Weber, Nageli, Kubler, and other distinguished composers, arranged and adapted to English words expressly for this work: including, also, original compositions by German, English and American Authors. Published under the direction of the Boston Academy of Music.
"Elements of Vocal Music" ends at page 24. The music is in four parts with round notes.
Lowell Mason is noted as one of the "Professors" of the Boston Academy of Music. 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).
