Lowell Mason

His best-known work includes an arrangement of "Joy to the World" and the tune Bethany, which sets the hymn text Nearer, My God, to Thee.

He has also been criticized for helping to largely eliminate the robust tradition of participatory sacred music that flourished in North America before his time.

Under his initiative, his church created the first Sunday school for black children in America at the now Historic First Bryan Baptist Church in Savannah, GA.[citation needed] Following an earlier British model, Mason embarked on producing a hymnal whose tunes would be drawn from the work of European classical composers, such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.

Ultimately, it was published (1822) by the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, which was one of the earliest American organizations devoted to classical music.

During his tour of Europe in 1852, he developed a great interest and enthusiasm for congregational singing, especially that of German churches, such as the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig or the Kreuzkirche in Dresden.

[6] Following his return to New York City, Mason accepted the position as music director in 1853 for the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

On the other hand, Mason is given credit for popularizing European classical music in a region where it was seldom performed.

The New Grove editors believe that Mason's introduction of European models for American hymnody choked off a flourishing participatory native tradition of church music, which had already produced outstanding compositions by such composers as William Billings.

James Keene also addresses the shift in church music that Mason led, putting forth the idea that to some degree Mason's work cut off the people from their music: As so often happens in America, the so-called arbiters of good taste looked across the Atlantic for their models and scorned that which was home-grown.

And such was their influence, then as now, that an uncertain population, striving for cultural respectability, embraced the common practice of European art music.

[10] The noted early music specialist Joel Cohen, whose ensemble has performed much early American music, offers the following assessment of Mason: [Mason] spent his long career trying to "correct" the vital American folkhymn tradition and to replace it with something blander, and worse.

He was rewarded for his largely successful efforts with fame, fortune, and a place in all standard music history books, while true geniuses like the anonymous harmonizer of Midnight Cry lie in unmarked graves.

[11]The tradition that Mason largely succeed in defeating retreated to the inland rural South, where it resisted efforts at conversion, surviving in the form of (for example) Sacred Harp music.

Later that evening another concert featuring Mason's music was held at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.