Brass Chamber Music in Lyceum and Chautaqua

 

 

Earlier in the semester, I mentioned the book Brass Chamber Music in Lyceum and Chautaqua by Raymond David Burkhart.

I think will be a very valuable resource of information about many aspects of this course. Not only does it discuss dozens of touring brass chamber groups that toured across the United States, but includes promotional photos, programs and histories of each group. Additionally, Chapter one provides excellent detail of the history of brass chamber music including overviews of:

• Brass Chamber History from the Renaissance to 1813
• French Chamber Brass School 1814-1870
• Russian Chamber Brass School 1870 - 1940s
• America to 1939
• Remarks on the 20th century and beyond

Appendix one is a chronology of the brass chamber ensembles active in the US including the Distin Family Sax Horn Quartet, the Brooklyn Cornet Quartet, the Aida Brass Quartet and many more. The extensive 42-page bibliography is also a very valuable resource, listing numerous archived collections, books, catalogs, CD-ROMS and DVDs, dissertions, electronic sources, journal articles, magazines and newspapers, published music and sound recordings. He also has a blog (and it looks a lot like ABEL Central!) Check out some of his recordings on his iTunes preview page.

Here is an excerpt from the book to give you an idea of what Lyceum and chautauqua were:

Lyceum and chautauqua were two of many attractions that competed for Americans’ leisure time in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Festivals, fire-works displays, parades, concerts, theater, fairs, circuses, camp meetings, lectures, minstrel shows, carnivals, concert saloons, variety theater, medicine shows, bur-lesque shows, Wild West shows, puppet shows, balls, magic, amusement parks, dime museums, lectures, vaudeville, and motion pictures all enjoyed popularity,581but many of these options were not considered respectable. After the Civil War especially, the working class often sought the combination of song, drink, and frequently crude entertainment in variety theaters and saloons. Minstrel shows, concert saloons, medicine shows, burlesque shows, and early vaudeville also appealed to the working class.582Even theater and circuses were sometimes considered a threat to morality.583In contrast, the very respectable lyceum and chautauqua originated not as types of entertainment, but as means of education. Public lectures were the central feature of both lyceum and early chautauqua, but other elements, especially musical performances, gradually increased in importance, drawing focus at least par-tially away from the single speaker. As America’s rural population increased, its desire for information and culture grew, and lyceum and chautauqua were developed to help meet this need.

 I am currently working on a hyperlinked outline of chapter one, look for it soon here...