Oct 3, 2022
Legacies of Lowell Mason (1792-1872), Medfield’s Master Musician
A Lecture Presented by the Medfield Historical Society at the 1789 Meetinghouse, now First Parish, Unitarian-Universalist
October 3, 2022
Stephen A. Marini, Wellesley College
With Eva Kendrick, Music Director of First Parish, and singers from Norumbega Harmony
I. Introduction: Why Lowell Mason?
If you enjoy attending concerts of classical music,
If you support the teaching of music in public schools,
If you sing in a traditional church choir or congregation,
If you have used a hymnal with text underlay,
If you know the tune to “Nearer, my God,” or “Blest Be the Tie that Binds,” or “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,”
Then you are in debt to Lowell Mason.
Medfield’s most famous resident, along with his neighbor Hannah Adams. The most famous and successful church musician and music educator in American history, certainly in antebellum America. Changed American musical taste and training and built America’s first music-publishing empire.
His career also intersects with many major figures in antebellum American culture, but he has only one biography, by Carol Pemberton, Lowell Mason: His Life and Work, 1985
Why me, Steve Marini? My donation of a Mason collection to the Historical Society resulted in an invitation to speak about him. But also full disclosure: I am a long-time performer, leader, and scholar of American singing school music, the very tradition that Mason and “the better music boys” drove out of urban America in the pre-Civil War decades. But this stereotype of Mason by today’s preservers of singing school music (often known as Sacred Harp or shape-note singers) is inadequate to his achievements and to the changing American culture in which he worked.
While a single lecture does not offer sufficient opportunity for a full-scale reassessment of this important figure, I can try to offer some broader perspectives on Lowell Mason’s career and its antebellum American context.
[EVA KENDRICK SINGS “NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE”]
II. Mason’s family and his Medfield years
Thompson and Caty Hartshorn Mason
His father Thompson Mason born 1767; too young for Revolutionary service; commissioned militia captain 1800; lieutant colonel 1803. The Masons (an original Arbella family – John Winthrop’s Boston settlement company in 1630) and among the original settlers of Medfield in 1650.
Thompson was an inventor who ran a dry goods story and made bonnets out of rye straw, which became the town’s leading business. He also developed a machine to mechanize many of the manufacturing operations.
1791 marries LM’s mother —-Catherine (Caty) Hartshorn, also from old Medfield families. Five children (four boys and one girl). Lowell born 1792, their first child. The family lived for years in old family homestead off North Street.
Masons were neighbors of Rev Thomas Prentiss, minister of First Parish, town schoolmaster, and founder of the town’s first public library. Masons also friends with Hannah Adams’ family. Her View of Religions, 1784, the first American study of comparative religions.
Thompson Mason elected town clerk 1803-1821, also served as selectman and state representative.
Lowell’s early life surrounded by young Prentiss and Adams peers; studied in Medfield school under Prentiss.
The Masons and Religion
>Family attends [trinitarian] First Parish under Thomas Prentiss; Caty joins 1800 and has all the children baptized; Johnson has reservations about predestination and election and total depravity (Calvinism), but Caty’s influence prevails with Lowell.
The parish gradually becoming Unitarian (one God, Christ not divine, Holy Spirit not part of the Trinity), but Prentiss holds it together. After his death in 1814, however, the Masons leave with others to form the Trinitarian Congregational church around 1820.
Young Lowell and Music
Thompson and Caty sang in the church choir (he sang bass and played bass viol).
Lowell shows early talent for playing many instruments: clarinet, viol, cello, flute, piano, and organ, as well as all the wind instruments in a local marching band.
LM studies music w Amos Albee, a singing master and compiler of Norfolk Collection of Sacred Harmony (1805); also with Oliver Shaw, a blind singer-composer of popular tunes, Libbeus Smith , a singing master, and local violinist James Clark.
Lowell also studied at Albee’s singing school 1805-6 and at age 15 taught on his own in 1807.
[Singing schools taught music literacy and vocal technique. Became popular in the American colonies around 1720. By 1770, singing masters in New England and Philadelphia had begum composing their own hymn tunes, “fuging” tunes, and anthems, led by William Billings of Boston (1748-1800). Singing school music was experimental and adventurous, while its lyrics were generally sacred and conservative, centered on the popular Evangelical hymns of English Congregationalist Isaac Watts (1674-1748).]
Lowell directs the choir in Medfield First Parish 1808-10 (age 16 to 18) and composes an ordination anthem in 1812 for Ralph Sanger at the Dover Unitarian Church.
Lowell marries Abigail Gregory in MA in 1812.
III. To Savannah, 1813-1827
LM takes lucrative job as a banker in Savannah through New England contacts, but also becomes dissatisfied with musical taste in the city’s churches and concerts.
Appointed organist/choir director at Independent Presbyterian Church 1820, but also superintendent of Savannah’s first public school and founder of Savannah (Home) Missionary Society 1818; GA Bible Society, and GA Tract Society. In these roles he participated in the Evangelical “empire” of voluntary social reform and religious organizations. Mason also helped organize the first Sunday school for Black children at the historic First Bryan Baptist Church in Savannah.
Religion in Savannah
Among the original materials in Marini donation is a Card-fold of affirmations of doctrine and faith and moral discipline (“Religious Notes”) set down by Mason in 1813-1815 in Savannah. LM kept it as a pocket reminder. Some of his writings:
“To be carnally minded is Death.” Savannah May 16, 1813.
“Believing that by the influence of God’s most Holy Spirit, the glorious work of regeneration has been begun in my depraved Heart—I do at this time, imploring the aid of Divine Grace—most solemnly Devote myself, & future life, to the service of Almighty God.”
**
“Prepare to meet thy God.” Savannah. August. 29, 1814.
“I resolve depending upon Divine grace hereafter never to do anything which I would not wish to perform if Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and Saviour of man were personally present.” Lowell Mason.
**
“Know thyself.”
“Excluding all self-dependence, I rely wholly upon the free mercy of God as manifested to mankind, in Jesus Christ his son, for salvation—whom I embrace for righteousness, for sanctification, and complete redemption.” Lowell Mason
**
“Christ the Son of God.”
“The Father is GOD—
The Son is GOD—
The Holy Ghost is GOD—
The Three are ONE GOD.”
**
“I believe in Original Sin, justification by Faith, which is the Gift of God, and of course establishes election.
I believe the sinner is his own destroyer and that every one that will be saved may be saved.”
**
Around 1817, LM joins in founding First Presbyterian Church of Savannah after leaving Independent Presbyterian Church
Music in Savannah
>Mason makes a musical transition from English psalmody and singing school music to German classical/ Romantic model of church music
Studies 1817 in Savannah with Frederick L. Abel, nephew of Carl Frederick Abel, noted composer and viola da gamba player who studied under Bach. Abel immigrates to Savannah 1817.
Abel encourages Mason to compose hymn tunes and anthems, and to compile a new Euro tunebook inspired by Bartholomew Brown’s Bridgewater Collection and Thomas Hastings’s Dissertation on Musical Taste (1822).
Bartholomew Brown, et al, Columbian and European Harmony: or, The Bridgewater Collection of Sacred Music (Boston: Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer T Andrews, 1802)—includes compositions of Leach, Arne, Croft, Knapp, Tans’ur, Jennings, Madan, Williams, Butts, Arnold, Bull, Wood, Handel. Boston area interest in Euro music before 1800: Hans Gram, Oliver Holden, and Samuel Holyoke, eds., The Mass Compiler (1795). Brown a lawyer and editor from Bridgewater MA as well as musician, refers to Gram in Preface. “A great proportion of the music is the production of the greatest Masters, both ancient and modern, in Europe, and has the sanction of general use and approbation.”
Thomas Hastings, leading Presbyterian church musician of his generation. Dissertation argues that church music is only for church, not concerts; should be simple, unaffected, powerful; congregational singing should be supported by organ; teach church music to children in home, church, and school.
In Savannah, Mason also conducts benefit concerts including Haydn, Arne, Handel, and Mozart, as well as conducting singing schools.
IV. Handel & Haydn/ Oration on Church Music/ Return to Boston 1827-1851
On trip back to Boston, LM consults with Handel and Haydn Society, founded 1815 (US premieres of Messiah 1818 and Creation 1819; H&H Collection of Sacred Music (1821-1827)). Mason joins the society, eventually signs five-year contract in 1821 for anonymous publication of his H&H Coll of CHURCH MUSIC (1822), which is hugely successful (22 editions) and an endorsement of “scientific” and “correct” musical composition. Mason signs successive five-year contracts, each of which gives him more autonomy to publish on his own, which he does.
Oration on Church Music
During one of these visits Mason delivers his Oration on Church Music on Oct 11, 1826 at Hanover St Church, whose minister was Lyman Beecher, great Evangelical revivalist and organizer; father of Harriet, Catherine, Edward and Henry Ward Beecher.
>Oration is a critique of singing school music and exhortation to observe these principles:
Church music should be simple, chaste, correct, and free of ostentation.
Text handled with as much care as music (he wrote some hymn texts).
Congregational singing must be promoted.
Capable choirs and organs are indispensable for good congregational singing.
Solid music education for children is only means of genuine reform.
Musicianship per se is subordinate to facilitating worship.
>This is actually Charles Avison’s agenda in his Essay on Musical Taste 1753 and generation of “cathedral” and “country parish” composers in England. Mason usually thought of as German influenced because he studied there. But this program is Anglican parish music reform, and Mason never studied music in Germany—his mentor was Abel in Savannah.
>Mason’s original transition and synthesis: he grafts an English Anglican program for reform of psalmody to the new stylistic developments in European classical and romantic musical style, while keeping very traditional theology (Edwards) and lyrics of Watts, etc.
Beecher publishes Oration; ad hoc committee from Congregational and Baptist churches invites Mason to Boston; he refuses; Beecher wants him at Hanover Street; meanwhile Mason helps form a new orthodox Congregational church in Savannah in 1827.
Handel and Haydn/ Church Music publisher
Mason suddenly reverses and agrees after being offered presidency and music directorship of H&H 1827 (served thru 1847). Performance of Haydn’s Harmonie Messe/Mass in Bb in Jan 1829 turns the tide to raise the flagging fortunes of the society. Meets George James Webb, his long-term collaborator. Also 1827 serves as organist and choir director at Beecher’s Bowdoin St Church (new building; introduces auditions and soloists, meets William B Bradbury) until Beecher leaves for Cincinnati in 1832. Shifts to Boston’s Central Congregational Church in 1843
Continuing struggle with singing school and revival hymns and tunesà Spiritual Songs for Social Worship (w Thos Hastings), 1832—against Joshua Leavitt’s Christian Lyre and the Finney revivals—and Church Psalmody 1833, his first hymnal.
Many publications through the 1830s try to bridge the gap between scientific/correct Euro music and American congregations. Relies on Webb and Chas Zeuner for Lyra Sacra 1832.
>Mason as influencer: Educating/shaping lay taste thru mass-produced hymn collections. He “adapts” Euro tunes by arranging them for American congregations and choirs. The success of his music publications establishes new taste and makes him the lead authority and influencer of church music.
Music instruction and public education:
Jacksonian ideal of public education.
>Italian-Swiss Johann Pestalozzi’s 1746-1827 theory of education through direct experience rather than vicarious ones (thru line to Maria Montessori). Mason and others applies Pestalozzi to music education through musical experience.
By 1830, Mason was teaching music free to 150-200 students; WC Woodbridge champions Pestalozzian argument music in public schools, arguing that it would also enhance religious training: music for moral and religious uplift through texts. Students built up to ed goals, focus on child, Mason embraces Woodbridge/Pestalozzi and experiments with their theories.
>Mason founds his Boston Academy of Music 1833; issues its Manual 1834:
- Experiences come first, then the symbols
- Teaching is based on understanding the child
- Teaching should promote natural and wholesome growth
- Students must learn to think and act independently
- Pestalozzian system relates directly to moral and religious values
Academy began to offer music training to wider range of people. Board includes Andover Seminary grads, Woodbridge, etc.
Manual gives all aspects of music education classroom and techniques; his outreach leads to “normal institutes” for music instruction and choral societies and festivals and music conventions.
[Mason’s Euro Tour 1837: received as celebrity; bought a lot of music; met with leading composers, performers, and educators. Not a revelatory transformation of his ideas or taste. Admires Mendelssohn.]
>Acceptance of music in public school curriculum, 1838
Geo H Snelling begins campaign in a report to Boston School Committee in 1831; Mason advocates through Boston Academy of Music; 1837 school comm approves, but city council does not fund; Mason teach demo program at Hawes School in 1838 gratis, and supplying all materials. Aug 14, 1838 first public school concert a rousing success, including “Flowers, Wildwood Flowers”—first song ever sung in public schools.
BSC approves music education “in the full, modern sense” with hiring a teacher of vocal music and providing materials for it on August 28, 1838. Mason appointed, hires assistants. Teaches simple “elements of music” and songs to 200 students at a time. Makes it fun, begins with rote singing, then solmization (scale singing) and tone. Democratic and Pestalozzian principles of music education vs Euro elite methods. Serves until 1851, then retires from public school teaching.
>Publishes continuing stream of music for children w Pestalozzian/Euro repertoire: Mason begins with The Juvenile Psalmist 1829; The Juvenile Lyre 1830 is definitive, claiming democratic approach, universal musical ability, leisure enjoyment, good mental and physical health, habits of “order and union,” soft and elevated feelings, kindness to peers, obedience to elders, and distraction from harmful amusements.
Last years in Boston: 1841-1851 much in public eye through holiday concerts, civic occasions. Teaches for free at Andover Seminary 1836-44 and at State Normal School 1848 (became Framingham State)
>Eventually advocates Black Boston composer Henry F Williams (1813-1903) and sends him to Liberia to gain the recognition he deserved but did not receive in the US. But Mason is not a social or race or gender reformer, not an abolitionist or feminist or socialist; has traditionalist religious, social and political attitudes.
>Teaching teachers. Horace Mann Summer Institutes for Teachers 1845-1862. Mann first secretary of Mass State Ed Board, includes music in these institutes for educational enrichment of general teachers. Mason teaches it for 17 years 1845-1862; these popularize his brand.
[Lowell and Abby’s 4 sons marry; sons become businessmen, publishers, lawyers. Son Henry cofounded Mason & Hamlin piano company in 1854.]
V. To New York City, 1852-1872
Lowell and Abby leave Boston 1852 with Mason’s work largely completed.
>Masons visit Europe in 1852. To England, German cities (Leipzig, Berlin), Zurich, Paris, and back to London. 16 months, Jan 1852-April 1853. Visit much like 1837—celebrated and honored; meets musicians and clergy, buys music, visits schools. Mason publishes his occasional essays written during tour as Musical Letters from Abroad 1854.
After Europe, The Hallelujah (1854) advocates softer singing, styles of Palestrina, Purcell, and Tallis (simplicity).
Mason was a good music critic for works he knows, not so much for new compositions. Criticizes nasal singing, straining the voice, faulty enunciation, and inappropriate conduct during concerts. Buys whole libraries of musicians and of music, many accolades.
>In NYC, immediately leads Geo F Root’s Normal Musical Institute April 1853.—3 month terms of teaching teachers an education curriculum. Mason also sponsors WB Bradbury (Just as I am, He leadeth me, Sweet hour of prayer). Bradbury leads public school music instruction in NY State.
1856 George F Root leads music institute in North Reading MA that attracts the Beechers and huge popularity: sometimes 1000 voices. Root, Webb, Bradbury, Mason all at North Reading Institute after 1857: professional training–vocal training, sight-singing, harmony. They spread across the country. But it is also an incubator for “gospel hymns” prominent in late 19th and 20th-century Evangelical revivals: Root and Bradbury’s tunes hugely popular after Civil War.
Continuing Promotion of Congregational Singing –through his many continuing tunebooks and hymnals, Mason continues to advocate “correct” editing, moderate vocal range, unison melody singing by congregations led with part-singing by choir. Experiments with Gregorian and Anglican chants.
Mason becomes music director at Fifth Avenue Presbyterrian Church: disbands choir and orchestra, promotes congregational singing with precentors sprinkled throughout the church. It works, but Mason moves to Orange, NJ and NYC churches do not change.
>Sabbath Hymn and Tune Book 1859 is first to use stereotyping for vertical organization of score and text underlay (Mason abandon oblong format and separated texts and tunes). Stereotyping applied to music makes production of whole pages possible, vs musical type permits mass production.
Henry Ward Beecher’s Sabbath Hymn Book for Plymouth Church in Brooklyn 1859/60 also Wattsian and Masonian.
Austin A Phelps and Edwards A Park of Andover Seminary criticize Mason’s and Beecher’s Wattsian texts, opt for Ray Palmer and Horatius Bonar—call for more literary and Romantic texts.
>Mason as businessman:
- closely attuned to book market and made a fortune: he sold over 1 million tunebooks and hymnals.
- a perfectionist who corrected even final proofs.
- guarded his copyrights carefully.
>Sons Daniel and Lowell, Jr form Mason Brothers publishers 1853; aggressively promote Mason’s works in South and West. Lowell Jr and Henry form Mason and Hamlin Co. Develop new reed stops for reed organs, which became hugely popular (70,000 per year by 1900). Began pianos in 1892 w new method of stringing to improve tone and stay in tune.
Later years in Orange, NJ still connected to old family friends in Medfield. Owned real estate including the Adams house, corresponded with Davis and Rhodes families.
Family sadnesses: 1858 Grandson Walter dies @ 15 months; grand-daughter Abigail mentally ill; son Daniel dies in Germany 1869.
Final years after Civil War in nearly complete retirement, though he was occasionally lured out by interesting opportunities.
>Mason’s final statement about church music principles: Song in Worship, 1878:
- Choir should help or be servant to the people.
- Christian church has vacillated between choirs and congregational singing. They should combine.
- Pastor’s influence is most important.
- Everyone should consider it a duty to unite in worship song.
VI. Mason’s tunes
[NORUMBEGA HARMONY SINGS BOYLSTON/ ”My God, my life, my love”]
>Mason composed 1210 original hymn tunes and 487 arrangements. The most popular:
TUNE TEXT HYMN AUTHOR
BETHANY Nearer, my God to thee Sarah Flower Adams, 1841
COWPER There is a fountain filled with blood William Cowper, 1776
DENNIS arr. 1845 from Naegeli 1836. Blest be the tie John Fawcett, 1772 `
HAMBURG When I survey the wondrous cross Isaac Watts, 1707
MISSIONARY HYMN From Greenland’s icy mountains Reginald Heber, 1819
OLIVET My Faith looks up to thee Ray Palmer, 1830
WORK SONG Work for the night is coming Annie L. Coghill, 1854
>WHY THEY WORKED: PRAGMATIC, SIMPLE, TRADITIONAL THEOLOGY, PEDAGOGICAL, MODIFIED EURO INFLUENCE BLENDED WITH AMERICAN MELODIC AND HARMONIC STYLE.
- His tunes established “moderate” American Protestant style between singing school/revival/gospel on one hand and opera and classical on the other.
- His style indistinguishable from his contemporaries: “practical” and responsive to specific needs, not monolithic.
- He has been polemicized so there is little good criticism of his work.
Remember his goal was music education; stay in context; evaluate his actual music.
Mason’s style: simple, standard (“correct”), consistent—syllabic, chordal, diatonic melodies in middle range (no dissonance), diatonic harmony (mostly major, begin with tonic, the primary chords), little chromaticism or modulation, simple rhythmic patterns (quarters and halves), much repetition of phrases. Standard form: 16 bars in four 4-bar phrases.
As an arranger, he took liberties to sell books to Americans—practical to facilitate singing and satisfy his principles of church music. Simplified arrangements characteristic of American popular culture.
VII. In sum.
Lowell Mason (1792-1872)
>was a characteristic and major figure of New England cultural leadership before Civil War;
>asserted urban elite taste over rural tradition, yet maintains Evangelical theological tradition of Lyman Beecher/Jonathan Edwards;
>blended American and Euro musical and education styles,
>sought civic improvement through New England public educational efforts,
>an entrepreneurial success—marketing, adapted old products, new technologies innovation—sold 1 million books,
>was a lasting musical presence and influence from his own lifetime through the 20th century.
>It may be a stretch, but I think Mason belongs on the short list of New England and Northeastern arts leaders of the Civil War generation who brought European cultural forms and experience to America’s cities, including H.H. Richardson, the architect; Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect, and even Henry James, the great novelist. Mason should be understood and appreciated in the same way as the rest of that august list.
[THE AUDIENCE SINGS “BLEST BE THE TIE THAT BINDS”]