Talk:Lowell Mason

What were some of his hymns?
This page could use a list of well-known hymns that Lowell Mason wrote. At the moment, the page only tells us that "many of [his hymns] are often sung today". If one reads later on, one finds that "Joy to the world" is possibly a Mason hymn, but one really has to dig for this. If he is associated with songs that are that well known, this should be made more prominent. 75.167.202.76 (talk) 01:43, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I think a list of his collections might be just a valuable, perhaps under a "List of Works" heading. Many of those collections are now available through GoogleBooks, IMSLP, CPDL, and other sources. A list of individual hymns might be very long. Baldwin1907 (talk) 01:00, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Professionalism, Shape Note Tradition, and Assessment of Legacy
I want to preface this by saying that I don't know which of these points of view is correct, but — Currently, the article's assessment of Mason's impact and significance is basically summed up in: "he radically transformed American church music from a practice of having professional choirs and accompaniment to congregational singing accompanied by organ music." However, this legacy is not uncontroversial, and what is particularly striking to me is that the other point of view seems to disagree, not just about whether the change was good, but about what the change, in fact, was. A highly opinionated commentator on the other side of the disagreement says Mason "bequeath[ed] the Protestant Church in the Atlantic states its long, sad heritage of hired soloists, paid choirs, and shamefaced congregational mumbling." This seems diametrically opposed to the conclusion of the current Assessment section of the article, that "Mason personally changed his view from imagining that church congregations were reluctant to sing to vigorously promoting congregational singing. He eliminated all professional musicians save the organist." The reasoning of the under-represented group of critics seems to be highly motivated by their partisanship for shape note singing, which Mason is acknowledged by both sides to have plaid a large part in driving out of the mainstream. The current article does address this aspect of Mason's legacy in the Assessment section, but in a somewhat veiled way, and probably over-representing the pro-Mason point of view. (Impressively, it does so while attributing to Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the only "source" it names, but does not actually cite, a critical view of this aspect of Mason's legacy.) The partisans of both sides probably go to far, particularly since several Lowell Mason compositions appear in The Sacred Harp, but the current article at a minimum fails to report on the dispute, and probably as neutrality issues. Liberalartist (talk) 16:07, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Citation Verification Needed: Grove Dictionary
In trying to very the above I discovered that I could not find support for some "sourced" claims made in the Assessment section. (I use sourced broadly here, since sources are named in the text itself, but are not actually cited.) Two examples: There are several other statements like "is given credit" that may ambiguously be invoking the Grove, and there are plenty of statements that are just unsourced by any standard, but for the moment I'm focused on the statements that are explicitly attributed to someone, but that I can't verify. Some of the issues: Liberalartist (talk) 17:32, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) "The editors of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians criticize Mason for his focus on European classical music as a model for Americans."
 * 2) "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 … "
 * Because these are not actual citations, it is not entirely clear what is being referenced, especially in the first citation. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is the classic, authoritative reference work in music — but difficult to pin down, because it was first briefly A Dictionary of Music and Musicians in the late 1800s, then Grove's Dictionary of … " for 4 editions from 1904-1975, then The New Grove Dictionary of … " in 1980 and 2001. The long-definitive The New Grove, 2nd ed. (2001), was made available in an online version and is in the process of being supplanted by continuous revision under the title Grove Music Online, which counts itself as the eighth edition. The upshot of all this is that while we have a reasonable idea of what #2 is referring to, it is entirely possible that someone could have written what #1 says they did in a Grove Dictionary in the last 135 years, and I just can't find it. (I'm consulting Grove Music Online)
 * Relatedly and more importantly, no particular article is specified. This is especially important because (at least currently, and I'm fairly confident at least through the New Grove era) the "editors" don't say anything: named authors (often in collaboration) contribute specific articles and should be held responsible for what they say. (I'm trying to presume the very best of possible intentions by thinking that there may have been anonymous "editors" in some pre-1980 version, which is part of why I get into the bullet above.)
 * The NGO entry under "Mason: (1) Lowell Mason (i)" (by Harry Eskew & Carol A. Pemberton) is primarily biographical, not critical or evaluative (there is a reason Grove calls itself a Dictionary and not an Encyclopedia), and focuses on his activities in music pedagogy. Only the last paragraph, which begins "Mason's influence on American music is generally regarded as a mixed blessing" (hardly suggesting the tone of "criticized" or "choked off"), has anything germane. Amidst praise for his compositions and other activities, there is the statement "[H]e replaced the indigenous fuging tunes and anthems of 18th-century America with hymn tunes and anthems arranged from European music or imitations based on ‘scientific’ principles producing ‘correct’ harmonies." and the phrase "both of whom opposed the more folklike musical idioms of revivalism."
 * The following are the only four times, in order, that Lowell Mason is mentioned in the GMO entry "Shape-note hymnody" (by David Warren Steel):
 * 1) "On the eastern seaboard, shape notes had little currency owing to the relative dominance of European musical culture and the scorn of musical leaders such as Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings, who referred to patent notes as 'dunce notes.' Nonetheless, each published a shape-note collection in an effort to reach singers in the South and the West."
 * 2) "They also promoted teacher-training institutes, called music normal schools, in imitation of the earlier schools of Lowell Mason and G.F. Root."
 * 3) "Such settings are a far cry from those of European-trained musicians like Lowell Mason, who composed hymn settings with smooth harmonies inspired by keyboard accompaniment but lacking interest in the middle voices. Tunes by Mason and Hastings, along with adaptations of European compositions, became increasingly frequent in many shape-note tunebooks of the 1830s and 1840s, and provided a striking contrast … "
 * 4) "Most early seven-shape collections, like Aikin’s Christian Minstrel, were dominated by more modern, “scientific” composers, such as Lowell Mason … "

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