Publisher's Synopsis
When we become used to Mr. Brooks' ideas of book-making we are able to get much entertainment from the stores of curious things his industry has provided. "Olden-Time Music" offers another proof of the value of the newspaper, and shows that there is hardly a field that could be named-artistic, social, industrial - in which the old newspaper could not be made renewedly interesting by an investigator of patience who knew where to look for salient things and rightly apprehend them when he saw them. Mr. Brooks has simply dug into a few New England newspapers, principally of Boston and Salem, but it is astonishing what quantities of diverting and instructive things he has brought to light. His title is misleading, for while the music of which he treats is undoubtedly olden-time music the subject might be thought to be a general one, whereas it applies almost wholly to the towns of Boston and Salem. Philadelphia is mentioned once, and there are a very few scattered allusions to New York and other localities, but olden-time music in Massachusetts is what Mr. Brooks' clippings and copies really elucidate. Making these allowances and corrections, a huge fund of enjoyment may be found in this book by devotees of what is truly the art universal, --that art which makes precisely the same appeal to all civilized people, whatever their differences of race, language, habits or religion.
The book, taking its material broadly, divides itself, if it has not been formally divided into three main parts-New England church music, singing schools, and public performances, and matters relating to the harpsichord, spinet, and other precursors of the pianoforte, and to early music books and sheet music. On all of these heads Mr. Brooks has collected a mass of suggestive records ranging from about 1730 to 1830. Some of his excerpts are from books, diaries, and the like, but most of them are from newspaper advertisements and notices of performances. One of the most interesting sections gives a good idea of the gradually adoption of the organ by New England churches, and if we could have had provided a summarized view of this subject as applying to all the Atlantic coast cities, the obligation would be all the greater. This olden-time music - at least in New England - we need hardly say was nearly all religious. Having its rise and head in psalmody, the singing school on the same lines was hardly more than the church carried to the schoolhouse or town hall, while presently along came "the great Mr. Handel," with his oratorios, which so perfectly fitted themselves to the temper of the time and the people as to prolong the controlling influence of the hymnal in New England. By far the greater number of Mr. Brooks' illustrations are of this nature. Even in his programs, agreeably printed in facsimile, it is observed that the great Mr. Handel and his congeners are nearly all that Boston and New England had to rely on for popular entertainment. Not only does Mr. Brooks reproduce numbers of programs and notices of concerts, but he gives accounts of the importation and manufacture of instruments, advertisements of music teachers, lists of publications, in books and sheets, etc., all of very true interest to those who care for the general subject. The matter is not well embodied or written up to, - is often not even edited, - yet no shortcomings of arrangement can destroy its value.
-Book News, Volume 6 [1888]