Robert H. Kemp, known as Father Kemp, was an American merchant and music conductor who organized the Reading Old Folks' Musical Society and brought New England's older sacred and secular singing traditions to audiences throughout the United States and England. He also published concert music and an autobiography of the movement.
Background
Robert H. Kemp was born on June 6, 1820, in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, to Nathan and Hannah (Wharf) Kemp. Wellfleet was a Cape Cod community whose nineteenth-century economy was closely connected with maritime work, and Kemp spent three years on a fishing boat during his youth.
At about twenty, he became a junior partner in the Boston shoe firm Mansfield & Kemp. He later married Elizabeth Jane Alden and purchased a farm in Reading, Massachusetts, where informal gatherings of singers developed into the Old Folks' concerts. His musical revival drew on the region's older singing-school and church-music traditions, especially the repertory preserved in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century New England tune books.
Career
Kemp began his adult working life in Boston's shoe trade as a junior partner in Mansfield & Kemp. For a short period around 1843, he was also associated with the Boston Fire Department. After his marriage, he purchased a farm in Reading, Massachusetts, and divided his time between commercial work and community musical activity.
From 1854 to 1870, Kemp conducted the Reading Old Folks' Musical Society, an amateur ensemble formed around the revival of earlier New England sacred and secular songs. The first concerts grew from rehearsals at his Reading home and soon moved to public halls, including the Lyceum Hall in Reading and Tremont Temple in Boston. The group performed in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and other American cities; one New York concert drew several thousand listeners, and proceeds from at least one performance were devoted to charity.
The Old Folks' troupe toured the American West and traveled to England in 1861, appearing in Liverpool, London, Chester, and Brighton. The English tour did not meet expenses, and Kemp returned to the United States. Later concerts included the Monday Popular Concerts at Tremont Temple and performances in other American cities. Kemp's work belonged to a nineteenth-century revival movement that presented older singing-school repertory in historical costume and concert settings, helping make early New England psalmody familiar to a broad public.
After leaving the touring organization, Kemp returned to the Boston shoe business. In later life he lived at the Old Men's Home in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where he died in 1897.
Achievements
Kemp organized and led the Reading Old Folks' Musical Society, transforming informal community singing in Reading into a traveling concert enterprise that performed widely in the United States and England.
Through the Old Folks' concerts, Kemp helped popularize older New England sacred and secular repertory, presenting music associated with the region's earlier singing-school and church traditions to large nineteenth-century audiences.
Kemp conducted thousands of concerts by his own account and used at least some concert proceeds for charitable purposes, extending the social reach of the Old Folks' movement beyond entertainment.
(A collection of older New England tunes, anthems, choruse...)
1860
Views
Quotations:
"Although I have swung my baton before a large choir in upwards of six thousand concerts, my word upon it, I never knew a note of music, and cannot distinguish a minim from a demisemiquaver. I flatter myself, however, that I can beat time with the most accomplished impresario."
Interests
Kemp's documented interests centered on preserving and performing early American vocal music, collecting older tune books, organizing community singing, and publishing concert repertory.
Music & Bands
Kemp was closely associated with older New England sacred and secular singing traditions, including the tunes of William Billings, Oliver Holden, Daniel Read, Timothy Swan, Jacob Kimball, and other early American composers and tune writers.
Connections
Kemp was the son of Nathan Kemp and Hannah (Wharf) Kemp. He married Elizabeth Jane Alden, who was associated with the Old Folks' concerts and appeared in the period costume connected with the performances.
Father:
Nathan Kemp
He was associated with maritime life in Wellfleet and was described as a sea captain.
Mother:
Hannah (Wharf) Kemp
Wife:
Elizabeth Jane Alden
She was associated with the Old Folks' concerts and appeared in the period costume connected with the performances.
References
Nebraska Folklore
A reference work preserved in the biography's source record as an external publication about Kemp.
