Lowell Mason (January 8, 1792- August 11, 1872) was a leading figure around Western religious music, a composer of assibilate 1600 hymns, many of which are then typically sung in todays world. He was too responsible the foremost teaching of music around Our contries public schools.

Life
Mason was born & grew higher around Medfield, Massachusetts, but spent the number one section of his adulthood inside Savannah, Georgia, where he worked first withwithin the dry-soft goods store, so in the bank. He got super hard amateur musical interests, & deliberate music by having a German teacher Frederick L. Abel, in time starting to write his have music. He too became the leader in the music of his local Presbyterian church, in which he served when choir director & organist. Under his initiative, his church as well created the number 1 Sunday school for black tykes within United states of america.

Charted an earliest British model, Mason start a project of producing the hymnary whose tunes would exist as drawn from either the act of European authoritative composers like Haydn and Mozart. Mason got swell difficulty inside selecting the publisher for this act. At last, it was published (1822) per Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, which was one of the earliest U.s. organizations devoted to classical music. Mason's hymnary turned intent on exist as a great profits. A operate was at number one promulgated anonymously--Mason felt that his independent career was as a banker, & he hope does'nt to damage his career prospects.

Around 1827, Mason moved to Boston, in which he continued his banking career for a few instance however likewise became conductor for many churches. Mason became an significant figure on the Boston musical scene: he served when president of the Handel & Haydn Society, taught music within the public schools, was co-founder of the Boston Academy of Music (1833), & in 1838 was appointive music superintendent for the Boston school models.

Around late life, Mason continued his function of teaching, writing, publishing, & organizing; he remained an crucial & influential figure throughout his life. He died inside the big estate he got purchased in Just released Jersey, touching Up to date York City.

Assessment

Modern scholars (e.g., a editors of the New Grove) give Mason a mixed assessment. Mason was strongly revolve about European classical music, & took it to become the model for what Americans should become singing & performing. A notable anthem & Christmas carol "Joy to the World" is a good case: these are debated whether a tune of this anthem is by George Frideric Handel or by Mason himself, but it sure as shooting sounds elysian by European classical music.

Mason lean credit for popularizing European classical music within a area where it was rarely performed, & since his day the United States has been firmly section of the spherical region in which this form of music is cultivated.

In which scholars another time denigrate Mason's operate concerns of these symptom of his introduction of European system for Our contries psalmody: it choked off the flourishing & participatory native tradition of religious music which was already producing spectacular compositions from either composers like William Billings. Mason & his colleagues (notably his brother Timothy Mason) did their better to characterize this music when backwoods poop, "unscientific" & undeserving the attention of modern Americans, & it propagated their views super profits by owning the freshly form of singing school, set up to replenish a old singing schools dating from either compound days.

Compared to by using a earliest forms of Our contries sacred music, a music that Mason & his colleagues propagated would become considered by numbers of musicians to exist as rhythmically other homogenous & harmonically less emphatic. By accentuation a soprano line, it too manufactured a more choral area less interesting to sing. Finally, a newly music typically involved a trend lines of an organ, which, perhaps single incidentally, was the Mason personal business.

A sooner tradition retreated to the inland rural South, in which it resisted efforts at conversion, surviving in the form of (e.g.) Sacred Harp music, a genre that around modern days hwhen actually grown around popularity as Americans all told regions rediscover a vigor of pre-Lowell Mason U.s. sacred music.

Other

Lowell Mason was a father of Henry Mason (1831–90), a founder of the Mason and Hamlin firm. Masin & Hamlin 1st built organs, however in the late 19th century went on to get the manufacturer of top-top-grade & technologically innovative pianos. It was run virtually all of its history by Mason descendent.

Books

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (published inside arduous copy & available as a fee places low) will bring adept coverage of Mason's life & operate. White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands, by George Pullen Jackson (1932), away from print however available within several libraries, offers a intense account of how else Lowell & Timothy Mason won the battle for their have sort of sacred music in the city of Cincinnati.