Music in Boston

Music in Boston: Composers, Events, and Ideas, 1852–1918 is a history of the city’s classical-music culture in the period that begins a decade before the American Civil War and extends to the close of the Great War. The book provides insights into the intellectual foundation of Boston's musical development as revealed in the writings of its significant critics and thinkers, including John Sullivan Dwight, John Knowles Paine, William Foster Apthorp, and others. It also examines the influence of outsiders—Patrick Gilmore, Theodore Thomas, Richard Wagner, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and Richard Strauss—on Boston’s performance and composition scene while also considering events that affected music in Boston, such as the building of the Music Hall, the acquisition of its Great Organ, the National Peace Jubilee, Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, Boston’s first Wagner Festival, and the rise and fall of the Boston Opera Company. Music in Boston also accounts for the ascent of the Second New England School of composers—John Knowles Paine, Edward MacDowell, George Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach and others—and discusses their key compositions and legacy. Finally, the book explores Boston itself: its transformations via immigration, its ever-changing topography, and its economy.

Faucett has an enjoyable and approachable writing style, and his vivid turns of phrase skillfully weave in quotes from primary sources. . . Scholars and enthusiasts interested in the development of Bostonian art music culture during this time period, and anyone searching for a supplement to existing historical studies on music in Boston with a fresh take that focuses on the interconnected nature of musical works and institutions, should find that Faucett's Music in Boston provides an eloquent and accessible perspective., Bill Faucett has fashioned an extraordinary journey through 'the Athens of America.'  His fascinating and eminently readable account brings to life the personalities and events which established a classical music culture in our young country.  Much of this story has never been told, and none of it has been told so coherently and convincingly., This book is a compelling, elegantly written narrative of Boston’s musical apostles of high art and their mission to provide great music for a great city. Within this context, Faucett provides a veritable playlist of major classical repertoire by leading Boston composers, such as Edward MacDowell, George Chadwick, and Amy Beach, illuminating works that deserve to be rediscovered by today’s concert audiences. Through describing these largely forgotten compositions, he recaptures the sounds of American music., Bill F. Faucett's kaleidoscopic overview of concert music in Boston from 1852 to 1918 is rich with contextual detail, inviting readers into a vibrant era when music was central to cultural life in the United States, and when Boston aspired to be the country's beacon of musical culture.

Bill F. Faucett is director of development at the College of the Arts at The University of South Florida.