19th Century Black Music and Musicians
Music and Some Musical People...Following Which Are Given Sketches of the Lives of Remarkable Musicians of the Colored Race. With Portraits, and an Appendix Containing Copies of Music Composed by Colored Men
Publication: Boston and New York: Lee and Shepard and Charles T. Dillingham, 1878. First Edition.
Notes: One of the most important American music books of the nineteenth century, a landmark cross-genre survey that gave equal attention to sacred and secular as well as popular and classical music. "This volume stands as the very first survey of American music published in this country" ("Black Scholars on Black Music" by Doris Evans McGinty in Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring, 1993). The final section of the book provides the scores of songs and instrumental pieces by Black composers including Justin Holland, William Brady, Jacob Sawyer, and others.
After more than a century, Trotter endures "as the authoritative source for nineteenth-century black musical activity." James Monroe Trotter was born enslaved in Mississippi in 1842 but grew up free in Cincinnati. During the Civil War he fought with the Massachusetts volunteers, rising to the rank of second lieutenant. After the war, he worked for the post office and pursued musicology on the side. He based this book on interviews and countless letters sent to contacts as far west as St. Louis. He details "the nineteenth century musical contributions of hundreds of Americans of African descent" (see "An Index to James M. Trotter's Music and Some Highly Musical People" by Jennifer DeLapp, Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring, 1995).
The book sold well, with copies marked "4th thousand" in 1881 and an additional printing in 1882. The first edition is uncommon.
[2: blank], [portrait frontispiece], 353, [blank], [2], 152 (music), [2: blank] pages.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing, with 1878 on the title page and no indication of later printings.). Front hinge cracked and rather crudely reglued, else very good in the publisher's green cloth with light wear to the spine ends. Previous owners' names, one early: "Miss A. M. Davis, 1432 Addison [Philadelphia?], the other 20th century.
Item No: #66590
Price: $1,250