originally published 8/1/2021

Musicologist Peter Mercer-Taylor tells the story of how 19th-century American musicians adapted classical repertoire into hymn tunes in his book Gems of Exquisite Beauty: How Hymnody Carried Classical Music to America. Mercer-Taylor’s research began as an extension of his Felix Mendelssohn scholarship, specifically when he began to uncover the story of Hark, the Herald Angels Sing. This led to his discovery of many hundreds of these adaptations, specifically in the American context. While classical hymn tunes were not uncommon in England, they were more prominent in America, serving a “central cultural purpose,” since the performance of classical music was a rarity. These hymn tunes gradually fell out of vogue, but we can still see traces of the adaptations in the hymnals used today.

27 minutes

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