Music of the United States of America

This MUSA volume makes an important contribution to American music studies by presenting a scholarly edition of selected choral works by Dudley Buck (1839–1909). Buck was arguably the finest composer of choral music among the group of musicians who had come of age by the end of the Civil War. The works chosen for this volume, some of which became icons of American Victorian culture, represent the three most popular choral genres during the Gilded Age: the anthem, the sacred and secular cantata, and the partsong. All of the works included here found immediate publication and stayed in print well into the twentieth century. Buck's works became the standards, not only by their intrinsic merit, but owing to their widespread performance throughout the country. His services, canticles, anthems, and hymns—musically engaging, well-crafted, and often genuinely moving—were considerably more professional than the homegrown music in use when he began his work. Included here are three works, a hymn anthem ("Rock of Ages"), a liturgical text ("Festival Te Deum No. 7 in E-flat"), and a late, through-composed work ("Grant to Us Thy Grace"). Buck's sacred and secular cantatas along with his partsongs also enjoyed widespread success among the growing number of church choirs and community choral groups. The two partsongs come from his earliest and latest periods. "In Absence" represents the early Victorian partsong, and the second, "The Signal Resounds from Afar" is both Buck's longest partsong and the one showing the greatest contrapuntal complexity. Both The Centennial Meditation of Columbia, written for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, and the Forty-Sixth Psalm, from 1872, are in full score and typify some of the finest cantata writing in Victorian America.

Music Sample

Contents:

Part I: The Life and Career
    Hartford, Wanderjahre, and Artistic Maturity
    Final Years and Legacy

Part II: The Music
    Sacred Works
    Secular Works

Part III: The Music in this Volume
    Large-scale Works
          The Forty-sixth Psalm, op. 57
          The Centennial Meditation of Columbia
    Anthems
          Festival Te Deum in E-flat Major, op. 63, no. 1
          Rock of Ages, op. 65, no. 3
          Grant to Us Thy Grace
    Partsongs

  VICTORIAN CHORAL MUSIC
  The Forty-sixth Psalm, op. 57
      No. 1.  God is our Refuge and Strength
      No. 2.  There is a river
      No. 3.  The heathen raged
      No. 4.  The Lord of Hosts is with us
      No. 5.  O come hither
      No. 6.  Be still, the, and know that He is God
      No. 7.  FINALE: The Lord of Hosts is with us
  The Centennial Meditation of Columbia
  Festival Te Deum in E-flat Major, op. 63, no. 1
  Rock of Ages, op. 65, no. 3
  Grant to Us Thy Grace
  "In Absence"
  "The Signal Resounds from Afar"

  Apparatus
      Sources
      Editorial Methods
      Critical Commentary
  Literature Cited