[American Music]
Two Autograph Musical Manuscripts, Massachusetts, ca. 1830
Two oblong-format musical manuscripts, with an inscription mentioning Abel Piper (1746-1836) of Phillipston, Massachusetts, Lieutenant in the Massachusetts Militia who served in the campaign of 1776 in the Company of Captain Robert Longley, Asa Whitcomb's Regiment, for the town of Bolton. The music is of a military flavor, consisting mainly of marches, but also including many dances and hornpipes, lessons, and some scribbled lyrics, all music relating to the clarinet; the larger book in sheepskin over scabbard, the other smaller and bound in rude soft leather covers, both with many loose pages, chipping, smudging, and other signs of intense wear and use.Volume 1: 10 1/2 x 7 in. 112p, mostly hand-numbered. 100-110 blank; "A complete scale for the clarinet” on the closing pages, along with fingering diagrams and arpeggio exercises. Numerous loose sheets at back, including some which may once have been integral to the manuscript (same instrumentation as opening), a printed sheet of exercises; fingering diagrams for clarinet; a “Federal Cotilion" manuscript music with dance instructions at bottom of page ("First lady approaches gent forward + backwards, allemand halfway …”) Loose sheet at end including the "Long Visit Cotillion" is dated Nov 28, 1830. An apparent receipt or note written near the end of the bound portion of the manuscript corroborates this date: "Phillipston, March 25 1835, by credit to Ransom Stratton for Dogs Eight.33 // By Credit to Mending Chains Snibels -- . 67." Includes familiar colonial tunes such "Yankey Dolittle" and "Old Hundred," rewritten as a march. Music for two clarinets, four clarinets, two cl + bassoon, as well as incomplete copy for larger ensemble (2 clarinets, flute, horn, bassoon, and clarion. Later part of manuscript mostly single staff.
Volume 2: 60p, (hand numbered 1-35, 37-49, then unnumbered). Single staff throughout. Most works are titled with a number, but some include titles: "Brimstone (Hymn)", "New German March," "Chickering Delight," "Hulls Victory." Markings for other instruments including bugle and violin primo. At page 33 the numbering of works starts over, under "The New Testament.” Includes Hymns, Marches, Hornpipes, Reels. 7 1/2 x 4 1/2 in.
After the Revolutionary War, Piper was an innkeeper in Phillipston, and he also served as a Justice of the Peace. Genealogical records show Jonathan Ransom Stratton to have been a figure in the town at that same time, so based on the dates in the larger manuscript, the manuscript can be decisively placed in Phillipston in the 1830s. The smaller manuscript, with its individual lines, was likely used in ensemble playing with other amateur or professional musicians. The larger volume seems more didactic in purpose, and may have been used as a teaching tool. Together, these volumes witness the ongoing presence of amateur music making by upper and middle class Americans in the Jacksonian era.
"The earliest known mention of the clarinet in America is Benjamin Franklin's account, related in his Autobiography, of having heard the instrument at the Moravian community of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1756. It turns out that this is probably not true; Franklin wrote his autobiography late in life, and his recollection of early events was often faulty. Moreover, when Franklin wrote a letter to his wife just after his visit to Bethlehem, he made no mention of clarinets. Scholars who have worked in the Moravian archives, including myself, have found no evidence of clarinets this early. Nevertheless, the first real evidence of the clarinet in America comes not too long after this: in 1758 an advertisement appeared in the New York Gazette and Weekly Postboy, seeking musicians, including clarinetists, to play in General Lascell's regimental band, stationed at Amboy. It is undoubtedly through the activities of the British regimental bands that the clarinet first arrived in the American colonies in significant numbers. From the beginning of the Seven Years' War (or the French and Indian War, as many of us know it) in 1756 through the end of the American Revolution in 1783, no fewer than 84 British regiments served in the colonies, and most had their own bands. These military bands consisted of two clarinets and/or oboes, two horns, and two bassoons … in other words, the traditionalHarmonic ensemble for which so much music was written in the second half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth."
"Clarinets were also used as domestic instruments in households that were wealthy enough to support a small band. Thomas Jefferson wrote as follows to a friend in Italy, for the purpose of scouting out possible servants for his plantation: 'I retain for instance among my domestic servants a gardener... weaver... a cabinet maker... and a stone- cutter... to which I would add a vigneron. In a country where, like yours, music is cultivated and practised by every class of men, I suppose there might be found persons of those trades who could perform on the French horn, clarinet or hautboy and bassoon, so that one might have a band of two French horns, two clarinets and hautboys and a bassoon, without enlarging their domest[ic] expences. ...Without meaning to give you trouble, perhaps it mig[ht] be practicable for you in your ordinary intercourse with your pe[ople] to find out such men disposed to come to America. Sobriety and good nature would be desirable parts of their characters.'"
"The clarinet was also clearly counted amongst the instruments that could be learned by a gentleman as a social 'accomplishment.'" (Jane Ellsworth, “The Clarinet in Early America, 1758-1820,” Dissertation - Ohio State University, 2004, accessed https://www.clarinet.org/clarinetFestArchive.asp?archive=27) (10782)
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