In Williamsburg, Fredericksburg, Richmond, Petersburg, Norfolk, Alexandria and elsewhere in Virginia there were public concerts given at an early period. Unfortunately there has not yet been unearthed much documentary evidence which would throw light on the early musical life of these cities. But from what we know of Charleston and Baltimore and from our general knowledge of conditions among the Southern colonists we should be inclined to say that the Virginia cities possessed a musical life quite creditable in proportion to their size. The same is true of Savannah and New Orleans. It must not be forgotten that, with the exceptions of Charleston and Baltimore, no Southern city had a population of more than ten thousand people. Most of them had very considerably less. Obviously it would be unfair to expect that they enjoyed metropolitan conditions.
IV
Enough, perhaps, has been said to show that the American colonists were not the musical barbarians they are so frequently and complacently pictured. Of course, European writers visiting the colonies almost invariably took occasion to incorporate in their literary works slighting references to the state of culture in America. The custom still obtains among literary visitors to these shores. Since the time of Columbus, apparently, it has been an unwritten law that European travellers must speak slightingly of American culture, just as American travellers must make uncomplimentary remarks about European hotel accommodations and transportation systems. Such comments are usually the result of a congenital incapacity to see more than one thing at one time. As a rule they are accurate, but they do not mean what they seem to mean. They are sentences detached from their context. A statement that there is no first-class symphony orchestra in New York would have a very different significance from a statement that there is no first-class symphony orchestra in Oskaloosa—though both sound alike to one who knows nothing about either New York or Oskaloosa. Equally ridiculous are the well-meant attempts to demonstrate the growth of our artistic stature by drawing parallels between the musical activity of the colonies and the musical activities of America to-day. In 1750 the population of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, and Charleston combined was less than one hundred thousand, and even as late as 1800 it was little over two hundred thousand. If we are to be fair to the American colonists, we must take into consideration the conditions under which they lived, the youth of the country, its comparative isolation from the old-established centres of culture, the many and complex circumstances that operated to retard its æsthetic development. And if we take these things into consideration, we cannot fairly persevere in our supercilious attitude toward the musical life of eighteenth-century America.
There is another side to the picture, however. In spite of the undeniable growth of musical culture among the American people of the eighteenth century, it cannot be said that music had a really intimate meaning for them, that they had woven it into the web of their lives, that they had found in it a necessary form of expression. Art is created that way. It may be the folk-song of an ignorant peasant or the symphony of a Mozart or Beethoven. But always it is born of a need for personal expression. Music was not personal to the American colonists; it was still an exotic, a pleasure supplied from outside sources, a diversion which serious men might occasionally enjoy but to which they could not afford to devote serious attention. Even among a certain class of Americans of the present day this attitude persists to some degree. Music is not yet generally regarded as a profession for men. Men go into business; they become brokers, lawyers, or politicians; they even become newspaper reporters—but not musicians. Music is still par excellence the avocation of long-haired, libidinous foreigners. We may, perhaps, without injustice trace this attitude to Puritan New England. The aristocracy of the South had the aristocratic point of view. Most Southern gentlemen were practical musicians. They were not, of course, professional musicians—gentlemen did not adopt professions, except that of arms. But music had a certain personal meaning for them. It was a graceful and elegant medium for the expression of their gallant, romantic and courtly sentiments. They could sing of arms and the red glow of wine and the red lips of women—all frankly important things in their lives, all supposedly unimportant things in the lives of the upright New Englanders. But, as a vehicle for the expression of profound and fundamental emotions, music had no meaning to them.
The aristocratic Southern point of view, however, did not impress itself on the mass of the American people; the New England point of view did. The psychological effect of New England on the rest of the country has been extraordinary. Certainly the New Englanders were fond of music; they encouraged it; they had considerable taste; they were glad to have their daughters take music lessons—music was a thoroughly ladylike accomplishment. When Priscilla spilled the 'Battle of Prague' con brio over the 'forte piano' her performance brought undiluted joy to the parental heart. When Fil Trajetto played a concerto of Corelli the more cultivated Bostonian could justly appreciate the virtues of the composition and its performance. The people of New England had relatively as much taste and culture as the same class of people elsewhere. Nevertheless they did not feel music as a serious and necessary thing.
V
Such an attitude was most unfavorable to the growth of a native art. During the eighteenth century there were few native American musicians by profession. In the South the professional musicians were chiefly French, in the North chiefly English. As a consequence there were few American composers. Of course, many Americans manufactured music. Every civilized man at some period of his life has composed a tune or a poem or a play. It is as inevitable as the measles. The American colonists did not escape the infection. Many American compositions lie unidentified in the early collections of hymns and anthems; many more undoubtedly were denied even such an anonymous burial. We have already alluded to William Tuckey, whose anthem was included in the collection of James Lyon. Tuckey was organist of Trinity Church, New York. He has sometimes been called the first American composer, and he would be did he not happen to be born in Somersetshire, England. Many of Tuckey's contemporaries, such as Flagg, and undoubtedly others whose names have been forgotten, composed church music in the style of the period—the weak, insipid, undistinguished style of Tansur and Williams. We can easily afford to forget their efforts.
There are, however, a few American composers of this period whom we cannot afford to forget It is really impossible to say who was the first American composer, but the right to the title seems to be divided between Francis Hopkinson and James Lyon, natives of Philadelphia and Newark, N. J., respectively. Certainly they were the first of any importance. Hopkinson, a lawyer, poet, musician, inventor, painter, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, was one of the most remarkable men of his time. He was born in 1737, was graduated at the College of Philadelphia, received the degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Laws from that institution and the degree of Master of Arts, gratiæ causa, from the College of New Jersey. After his admission to the bar he held a number of public offices, became a delegate to the first Continental Congress and was appointed by that body to 'execute the business of the Navy under their direction.' He presided over the Admiralty Court of Pennsylvania from 1779 until its jurisdiction became vested in the United States and took an important part in the debates of the convention which framed the Constitution. We know little of his musical education, but the most important part of it seems to have been guided by James Bremner, while his taste was undoubtedly polished by subsequent visits to Europe. He was an able harpsichordist, we learn, and often deputized for Brenner as organist of Christ Church. In spite of his official duties he found time to promote musical education, to give concerts and to participate in frequent musicales at the home of Governor John Penn. His inventive turn found expression in an improved method of quilling a harpsichord, the application of a keyboard to the harmonica and a 'contrivance for the perfect measurement of time,' known as the Bell-harmonic.
The most important thing about Francis Hopkinson from our point of view, however, is that his song 'My Days Have Been so Wondrous Free,' dated 1759, is, as far as we know, the earliest secular American composition extant. It is included in a collection of songs made by Hopkinson which contains also several other specimens of his muse. They are pretty, simple, graceful, and somewhat amateurish. Among them is an anthem with figured bass—a rarity in early American music. Possibly Hopkinson was editor and part author of the 'Collection of Psalm Tunes with a few Anthems and Hymns' published in 1763 for the use of Christ and St. Peter's churches. He has been credited with the authorship of one of the numerous 'Washington's Marches,' though which of them he wrote—if he wrote any—his sole and painstaking biographer[22] has been unable to discover. Mr. Sonneck, however, has succeeded in proving that he composed 'The Temple of Minerva, a Musical Entertainment performed in Nov., 1781, by a Band of Gentlemen and Ladies at the hotel of the Minister of France in Philadelphia.' The music of this piece, unfortunately, is not extant. A collection of eight songs by Hopkinson, with accompaniments for harpsichord or pianoforte, was published in Philadelphia in 1788. Speaking of these Mr. Sonneck says: 'As a composer Francis Hopkinson did not improve greatly during the twenty years which separate this song collection from his earliest efforts. His harmony is still faulty at times, and he possesses not an original musical profile. To claim the adjective of beautiful or important for these songs or his other compositions would mean to confuse the standpoint of the musical critic with that of the antiquarian. But even the critic who cares not to explain and pardon shortcomings from a historical point of view will admit that Hopkinson's songs are not without grace and that our first poet-composer obeyed the laws of musical declamation more carefully than a host of fashionable masters of that period. Artistically, of course, he resembles his contemporaries. His musical world, like theirs, was an untrue Arcadia, populated with over-sentimental shepherds and shepherdesses, or with jolly tars, veritable models of sobriety and good behavior, even when filling huge bumpers for drinking-bouts. Then again we notice in Francis Hopkinson's music the studied simplicity of that age for which treble and bass had become the pillars of the universe. This and much more is antiquated to-day. But why should we criticize at all our first "musical compositions?" It becomes us better to look upon these primitive efforts as upon venerable documents of the innate love of the American people for the beauties of music and as documents of the fact that among the signers of the Declaration of Independence there was at least one who proved to be a "successful Patron of Arts and Sciences."'
It is a peculiar coincidence that in 1759, the same year in which Hopkinson's first songs were written, an ode, set to music by James Lyon, a student at Nassau Hall, was performed at the college commencement. This, perhaps the earliest of American commencement-odes, is unfortunately not extant. Lyon was graduated from Princeton in 1759 and took up his residence in Philadelphia. There he seems to have founded or taught in a singing school where one of his anthems was performed in 1761—'an elegant anthem,' according to the 'Pennsylvania Gazette.' In 1762 he received the degree of M.A. from Princeton and perhaps wrote the music for an entertainment entitled 'The Military Glory of Great Britain' which was performed at the commencement. Subsequently he was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian church and preached the gospel in Nova Scotia, Maine, and elsewhere until his death in 1794.