(
This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
(70 Negro Spirituals edited by William Arms Fisher publish...)
70 Negro Spirituals edited by William Arms Fisher published by Oliver Ditson Company Copyright 1926 212 Pages Laminated cover Book is nice and Clean light age/shelf wear former owner's name stamped on cover and written on page edges THIS IS NOT A HARDCOVER BOOK, THIS IS A SOFT COVER Hick 6
(
About the Book
A song book contains lyrics and possibly...)
About the Book
A song book contains lyrics and possibly notes for songs. Music publishers also produced printed editions for group singing, which in the United States were used by piano manufacturers to promote sales. Song books containing religious music are generally called hymnals.
About us
Leopold Classic Library has the goal of making available to readers the classic books that have been out of print for decades. While these books may have occasional imperfections, we consider that only hand checking of every page ensures readable content without poor picture quality, blurred or missing text etc. That's why we:
• republish only hand checked books;
• that are high quality;
• enabling readers to see classic books in original formats; that
• are unlikely to have missing or blurred pages. You can search "Leopold Classic Library" in categories of your interest to find other books in our extensive collection.
Happy reading!
(Originally published in 1918. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1918. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
William Arms Fisher was an American composer, music historian and writer.
Background
He was born in San Francisco, California, the oldest of three children and only son of Luther Paine Fisher and Katharine Bruyn (Arms) Fisher. Both parents were descended from colonial Massachusetts families; they were natives, respectively, of Scotland, Connecticut, and Kingston, New York. Luther P. Fisher, who had come to San Francisco in the gold rush year of 1849, was for half a century the owner of a successful advertising agency.
Education
Young Fisher attended public and private schools in Oakland, where the family made its home, and began musical studies there under John P. Morgan.
Moving east in 1890, he studied harmony with Horatio Parker in New York City and singing with William Shakespeare in London.
While teaching at the National Conservatory of Music in New York, then recently established by Jeannette M. Thurber, Fisher became a student and close friend of Anton Dvorjak, the noted Bohemian composer, who was director of the conservatory from 1892 to 1895.
Career
The young man was a guest of Dvorjak at the first performance (December 15, 1893) in Carnegie Hall of the symphony From the New World.
He later wrote words to the slow movement of that work, and the song, published under the title "Goin' Home, " achieved great popularity, many persons believing, erroneously, that it was a Negro spiritual.
Fisher wrote popular arrangements of other noted melodies, including "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, " "Deep River, " "Would I Were the Tender Appleblossom, " "Steal Away, " and "Passing By, " all of which sold thousands of copies. Over the years he also composed about seventy-five part-songs and anthems, and many solo songs to sacred texts.
Fisher's songs were solidly crafted and inclined to fullness of texture, reflecting the continuing Mendelssohnian tradition as influenced by Dvorjak and Dudley Buck. The lack of simple, straightforward accompaniments or of easily conveyed melody somewhat limited their popularity.
Written in a commendable pattern of their day, they were not trivial; but they did not outlast their time. It was as an editor that Fisher exerted his greatest influence on American music.
In 1897, after two years of teaching music in Boston, he became director of publications and editor for the Oliver Ditson Company, the largest music publisher and dealer in the United States.
Hired to improve the company's output, Fisher eliminated outdated publications and began to produce a series of educational works including the Music Student's Library (begun 1897, numbering more than forty textbooks), the Musician's Library (1903, nearly 100 volumes), and the Music Student's Piano Course (1918, twenty books).
He also edited Sixty Irish Songs (1915) and a volume of Negro spirituals. In a day when nearly every middle-class home had a piano and every neighborhood a music teacher, when churches were prospering and were maintaining large choirs and highly paid soloists, and when anthems and oratorios sung by local choral societies were often a mainstay in the musical life of the community, American music publishers enjoyed a strong market, and many began offering editions previously obtainable only from Europe. Boston firms--including those of C. C. Birchard, B. F. Wood, E. C. Schirmer, and Arthur P. Schmidt--then led the field, and Fisher was one of the most discerning of their editors.
While the family of Oliver Ditson remained nominally in charge of the Ditson company's far-flung enterprises (there were at various times branches in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia), the editorship of William A. Fisher was at the core of the firm's success. Fisher later (1926 - 1937) became vice-president, but by this time the golden age of music publishing had passed, and in 1931 the Ditson assets were sold to the Theodore Presser Company of Philadelphia.
Fisher claimed no authority as a musicologist (a term not widely used in that day), but his scholarship is proven by the orderly, continuous flow of accurate catalogues issued by the Ditson firm.
His books, including Notes on Music in Old Boston (1918), an enlarged edition titled One Hundred and Fifty Years of Music Publishing in the United States, 1783-1933 (1934), and Music Festivals in the United States (1934), were carefully researched and engagingly written and illustrated.
Mrs. Fisher, who survived her husband, was active in bringing professional musicians into contact with amateur talents, often through settlement schools.
He died of arteriosclerotic heart disease at his home in Brookline, Massachussets, at the age of eighty-seven and was cremated at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.