Colonial Baroque

Our program features the works of eight composers living in the British North American colonies from 1740 to 1800.

During the first half of the century, music was mostly practiced and performed in an amateur capacity by musicians from all backgrounds of American society. Some professional musicians were active as tutors, church organists or dance instructors, and most of them moved places quite frequently. Unlike their European contemporaries, American musicians evidently did not benefit from any royal patronage to fully dedicate their career to their art.

In the second half of the century, employment opportunities increased as culture expanded in American society. At the same time, many European musicians moved to America, including the composers featured on today’s program, raising musical standards.

The American composers had very different backgrounds and careers: ministers, missionaries, merchants, and teachers. However, all desired to create their proper musical lineage, emancipating themselves from European imported music and contributing to the nascent American musical landscape.

Giovanni Gualdo was born in Italy around 1730 and settled in London in the 1750s. From England he moved to Virginia in 1767. A music master among the colonial planter elites, he soon moved to Philadelphia as a wine merchant (while informally opening a music store). By 1769, Gualdo had become a successful music businessman: he was a composer, an arranger, sold instruments and offered music copying services. A music impresario, he would also promote concerts in Philadelphia featuring works by Handel, Geminiani, Abel, and J.C. Bach. In spite of Gualdo’s premature death in 1772, his legacy remained a significant influence on Philadelphia society at the origin of the city’s cultural ascension.

Only three works by Charles Theodore Pachelbel are known to exist today - his Magnificat for eight voices composed in Germany, a “Bass minuet” in a 1739 anonymous Philadelphia copybook and the following vocal work “God of Sleep for whom I languish,” likely written in Charleston.

God of Sleep for whom I languish,

God of pleasing dreams and peace,

Gently sooth a Lover’s anguish,

Spread thy Sacred pinions o’er me,

Lull my busy Soul to rest.

Then bring her I love before me,

She that’s seated in my Breast.

If kind as fair my prize, I’ll keep

and great as Jove the world forsake,

let me this bless’d forever sleep,

and ly and dream and never wake.

But if the Fair Divinly bright,

reject my Love and scorn my fl ame,

fly kind Sleep restore the light,

Let Strephon see t’was all a Dream.

Born in England in 1708, William Tuckey moved to America in 1753. He was first hired as a clerk at the New York City Trinity church and soon became the choir master of the associated charity school. Other duties were to set out music for church services and to lead the singing during the psalms. Tuckey remains famous for presenting the very first performance of Handel’s Messiah in America in 1770. An Anthem from the 97th psalm was first published in 1761 in the hymnal Urania, and mention of it can be found advertised in a 1786 concert publicity flyer.

Very little is known about James Hewitt’s early career in the mid-1750s. The English composer moved to New York City in 1792 and led an active musical life as a performer, conductor, composer, and music publisher. His three Caprices for solo violin were published around 1798 and were dedicated to violinist Charles Bérault. Although the title page to the works appears as “Three Caprices and Twelve Cadenzas For the Violin…”, the cadenzas were unfortunately not included in the collection. The impressive compositional quality of these Caprices vastly surpassed the standard of any solo violin repertoire composed in America until that point, and for many years after.

A second-generation German American musician, John Antes was born in 1740. He received his classical education in the Moravian boys’ school and showed at an early age an obvious talent for music and craftsmanship (his 1764 viola is thought to be the oldest American-made viola). Antes spent some time in England and Germany where he was an apprentice watchmaker, before being ordained as a Moravian minister in 1769 and sent to Egypt to serve as a missionary. This proved a challenging time for Antes: while in Egypt, he was imprisoned by local authorities and seriously injured, and it was during his convalescence that he composed his Op. 3 trios for two violins and cello (today arranged for violins and viola) in 1780. He then returned to England and worked as a business manager of the Moravian Congregation until his passing in 1811. Primary sources presume that Antes was personally known to Haydn and Johann Peter Salomon. Antes considered himself an amateur and received inspiration from Haydn’s chamber music (a musical reference the Moravian musical courant was well acquainted with), but also composers such as Handel, Hasse, and Graun.

Peter Pelham (1721-1805) moved to Boston at the age of five. A prominent figure in Colonial America, he was the first musician raised in British North America to become a professional musician. Pelham was the student of Charles Theodore Pachelbel (son of German organist Johann Pachelbel) and followed him to Charleston to study keyboard with him for nine years. From 1744 to 1749 he was the organist of Trinity Church of Boston, before moving to Williamsburg, Virginia where he ended his career as the Bruton Parish Church organist, as a teacher and music director. The 1744 manuscript copybook is all that remains from his music. This pedagogical work includes 19 pieces arranged in order of increasing difficulty featuring the music of various composers from Handel, Pachelbel, to Lully and other leading European musicians. The Minuet played today is Pelham's only composition.

Lead Me in Thy Truth

The Lord is His Holy Temple

O, There’s a Sight That Rends My Heart

Johann Friedrich Peter came from Holland to America in 1770. The most gifted composer among his peers, he worked as a teacher and minister in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. If his early compositions (70 anthems) were written for a small chorus, strings and organ, the works written after 1793 were set for orchestra and a bigger choir. Lead Me in Thy Truth was the first work written by Peter when he first arrived in Nazareth, Pennsylvania in 1770; The Lord is His Holy Temple was composed in 1789, presumably dedicated to the composer’s wife six months after their wedding. It is the last solo song Peter composed. His six secular quintets (1789) remain the earliest examples of chamber music written in America.

O, There’s a Sight That Rends My Heart is the only composition by Simon Peter (and Johann’s older brother) preserved in the Moravian Church’s archives.

Lead me in thy truth and teach me the truth

Lead me in thy truth and teach me the truth.

For Thou art the God of my salvation,

All the day do I wait on Thee.

O there’s a sight that rends my heart

O there’s a sight that rends my heart, nor can it from my mind depart, how thou on Olivet did’st languish, o Lord, for Thy soul’s agony, when wrestling there with Death for me, make me a trophy of Thine anguish.

The Lord is in His holy temple

The Lord is in His holy temple,

Let all the earth keep silence,

before Him.