Book Description

The tunebook and the singing school emerged as two of the most important developments in early-American music. Allen D. Carden's, The Missouri Harmony, was one of the outstanding shape-note collections from the first half of the nineteenth century and the first tunebook from Missouri. Carden traveled west in the year 1820 to establish a singing school in St. Louis, and subsequently compiled the tunebook for use in his own classes. At that time, however, St. Louis did not possess a font of type of setting shaped-notation and the actual printing took place in Cincinnati. Between 1820 and 1858, there appeared nine editions and twenty-one issues of Carden's book. Editions were repeatedly designated at "Reviesd and Improved," "Latest Improved Edition," or "New Edition, Revised, Enlarged and Corrected." A note-by-note comparison of all editions was made to establish the authenticity of these repeated claims of editorial revision. It was found that the first eight editions were characterized by simply a resetting of type but contained no changes in the musical aspects of the tunes or their settings. The revisions were in the form of correcting printing and notational errors (e.g., incorrect shapes, inaccurate placement of a note on the staff, notes inadvertently placed in the press upside down, and so forth). In 1835, a Supplement specifying "By An Amateur," was added to The Missouri Harmony. Effort was made to determine the identity of this "Amateur." Although insufficient existing records prevented positive identification, Timothy Flint has been advanced in this paper as a possible candidate. The Prefaces of Flint's tunebook and that of Carden contain identical statements and similar objectives. Flint had numerous occasions to become acquainted with both Carden and his tunebook, and was active in Cincinnati in 1834, just prior to the publishing of the 1835 edition of Carden's book. The Supplement contains "a Number of Admired Tunes of the Various Metres and Several Choice Pieces, Seleced from Some of the Most Approved Collections o Sacred Music." In contrast to the other sections of The Missouri Harmony, the voice parts are designated in each selection and the treble voice is assigned the tune. The revising of the ninth edition in 1850, was undertaken by Charles Warren at the request of the publishers. Warren was a noted Professor of Music in Cincinnati at the time and described as a "scientific musician." While Warren retained the tunes and general format of Carden's book (including the complete theoretical introduction), the settings were found to be quite different. The Missouri Harmony, a southern tunebook, had become "northernized" through the refinements made by Warren. Gone were the parallelisms, unprepared and unresolved dissonances, incomplete and ambiguous sonorities, retrogressive patterns, and lack of coincidence between strong textual and metric accents. The settings were polished and refined. An examination of the changes taking place in the musical and academic life of the period revealed the necessity for Warren's revisins. His refinements clearly represented the efforts of a northern, "scientific musician" to retain the popularity of Carden's four-shape collection while confronted with the rising competition from seven-shape collections, the progressive improvements espoused by the academic musical practices (forged originally by Timothy and Lowell Mason), and the growing refinement of taste on the part of the public by the middle of the nineteenth century.