Lowell Mason

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Lowell Mason
Age portrait

Lowell Mason (born January 8, 1792 in Medfield , Massachusetts , † August 11, 1872 in Orange , New Jersey ) was an American composer and music teacher and is considered an important reformer of church and school music.

Life

Mason led the church choir at the age of 16 and the orchestra in his hometown at the age of 18. In 1815 he became organist and choirmaster at the Presbyterian Church of Savannah . In 1817 Friedrich Ludwig Abel , a great-nephew of Carl Friedrich Abel , came to Savannah. From him he received lessons in harmony and composition until his death from yellow fever in 1820. In 1827 he became director of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston and worked as church music director . Together with George J. Webb , he founded the Boston Music Academy in 1832, which taught according to Pestalozzi principles .

Mason composed and arranged over fifteen hundred hymns , including such well-known as Nearer, My God, to Thee , My Faith Looks Up to Thee and From Greenland's Icy Mountains . His son Henry Mason (1831–1890) founded one of the first organ and piano companies in the United States, his son William Mason (1829–1908) was an important concert pianist and piano teacher, and the composer Daniel Gregory Mason (1873–1953) was his grandson.

literature

Web links

Commons : Lowell Mason  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Charles W. Hughes: Frederic L. Abel . In: American Hymns old and new . Columbia University Press, New York 1973, ISBN 0-231-05148-4 , pp. 289 f . (English, archive.org ).
personal data
SURNAME Mason, Lowell
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer and music teacher, reformer of church and school music
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1792
PLACE OF BIRTH Medfield , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1872
Place of death Orange , New Jersey