After years of research and writing, I am proud to announce that my first book is finally available from the University of South Carolina Press:
Votaries of Apollo: The St. Cecilia Society and the Patronage of Concert Music in Charleston, South Carolina, 1766-1820.
For fifty-four seasons between 1766 and 1820, Charleston’s exclusive St. Cecilia Society functioned as the premiere musical organization in North America. Here the families of the region’s wealthy planters and merchants, as well as their invited guests, enjoyed the latest European musical fashions performed by a cosmopolitan orchestra of amateur and professional musicians. Intermingling the practices and values of both the Old and the New Worlds, the society’s events formed an social stage on which the patronage, performance, and appreciation of contemporary European concert music celebrated the cultural and political authority of its participants.
Votaries of Apollo reconstructs this nearly forgotten era of the St. Cecilia Society’s concert patronage by weaving together a myriad of archival sources. The book begins with a survey of the socio-economic background of Charleston’s “golden age” of prosperity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and then examines British modes of concert patronage that inspired this South Carolina phenomenon. Following an overview of its fifty-four years of concert patronage, it focuses on specific aspects of the St. Cecilia Society’s musical activity: organizational structure and management of activities, administration of finances, performance venues, performers and their relationship to the society, concert repertoire, and withdrawal from patronage.
While previous scholars have characterized early American concert life as a feeble imitation of European practices, Votaries of Apollo demonstrates the existence of a robust and long-term effort to replicate Old World models. The details of the society’s concert series, which was commensurate with the content, form, and nature of those in the urban centers of contemporary Britain, greatly enhance our understanding of the vitality of early American concert life and challenge established historiographic conclusions.
The book is available through bookstores and various online retailers such as Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble, or you can download a PDF order form (requires Adobe Reader) here and order it directly from the University of South Carolina Press.
