Band Music from the Civil War Era February 25 2010, 0 Comments

A Concert for Brass Band, Voice, and Piano Contributed by Jack Kopstein On September 27, 1974, the Music Division of the Library of Congress recreated a typical concert of brass-band and vocal music from mid-nineteenth-century America. Recorded selections from that concert were presented. These recordings were the result of several years of research by Jon Newsom of the Music Division and many more years of experience and study by the late Frederick Fennell, founder and former director of the Eastman Wind Ensemble and professor of music at the University of Miami, and Robert E. Sheldon, then of the Smithsonian Institution's Division of Musical Instruments and presently Curator of Musical Instruments in the Music Division, Library of Congress. Because the purpose of these recordings was to demonstrate the style and quality of the popular music of the era, the musicians used instruments appropriate to the period. Band concerts of the mid-nineteenth century frequently included vocal music, which as a genre was inseparable from the band music of the same era. The performances included a number of songs performed by Merja Sargon, assisted by Bernard Rose, who also plays two piano solos using the Smithsonian Institution's 1850 Chickering square piano. Although this is a parlor instrument, it is the kind used by Jenny Lind on her American tour of 1850-52. The iron-frame piano, first introduced by Alpheus Babcock in 1825, was manufactured by Jonas Chickering in Boston in 1840 and was widely popular by the 1850s. Miss Sargon and Mr. Rose are joined in one piece by Robert Stallman, who plays a modern adaptation of the Boehm-system, wood, conical-bore flute. It produces a timbre very much like that of the 6- and 8-keyed flute common in the period. The Programme (Click on a Track to Listen) 1.   Hunters' Chorus, from The Rose of Erin (Band) 2.    O Summer Night, from Don Pasquale (Band) 3.    Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway (Vocal) 4.    The Herdsman's Mountain Song (Vocal) 5.    Captain Shepherd's Quickstep (Band) 6.    Captain Finch's Quickstep (Band) 7.    Indiana Polka (Band) 8.    Old Memories (Vocal) 9.    The Moonbeam Waltzes (Band) 10.    La Fontaine (Piano) 11.    Upon a Summer's Day(Vocal) 12.    Slow March: Midnight! (Band) 13.    Scots Wha Hae: Variations (Piano) 14.    General Taylor Storming Monterey (Band) 15.    Lilly Bell Quickstep (Band) 16.    Why, No One to Love? (Vocal) 17.    Free and Easy (Band)