Classical Mythology, 7th Edition - obinfonet: dia logou

CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MUSIC, DANCE, AND FILM 717
School. These musical pioneers published hundreds of such "tunebooks," collections
of hymns, songs, and anthems, which are still sung today and continue
to be an inspiration for American composers. Initial musical developments in
America were dominated by the Bible and Christianity, not the classics.
Francis Hopkinson and The Temple of Minerva. A wave of immigration following
the consolidation of the United States brought with it many enriching foreign
influences, among them those of the great European master composers. As
a result the American idiom of the Yankee tunesmiths became modified, broadened,
or submerged. In the context of these new developments in music emerged
the two earliest composers who may be confidently identified as native-born
Americans, James Lyon and Francis Hopkinson, both of whom also figured
prominently in the world of sacred music in Philadelphia, a Quaker center.
It is upon Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791) that our survey now must focus,
one of the new breed of cultured artists who helped immeasurably in the fostering
of urban secular music in the eighteenth century; 10 he has good claims to
be honored (with deference to Lyon) as the very first native American composer,
and the influence of the classics upon him is very much apparent.
In 1788, Hopkinson dedicated a set of Songs for the Harpsichord or Forte Piano
to George Washington, remarking in the dedication that "I cannot, I believe,
be refused the credit of being the first native of the United States who has produced
a musical composition." 11 Gummere, in his survey of Hopkinson's importance,
comments that this "volume of songs, dedicated to Washington, who
acknowledged the honor in a note that sustained the metaphor of Orpheus
throughout the first paragraph, is no whit inferior to many English Elizabethan
madrigals." 12 The first composition we can unequivocally attribute to a native
American is a song by Hopkinson dated 1759, "My Days Have Been So Wondrous
Free." 13
Hopkinson, a member of the first graduating class of the College of Philadelphia
in 1757, was indeed a man of many parts: besides being a composer, he
was also a virtuoso musician on the harpsichord; he was trained in the classics
and was an essayist and satirist, and his satire embraced criticism of dry teaching
of Latin and Greek grammar; he studied and practiced law and was judge
of the Admiralty; as a politician, he was a member of Congress and was one of
the signers of the Declaration of Independence; he was an inventor and a designer
of the American flag; and he was a poet. Many of his poems contain classical
allusions. 14
It is as the poet of the classic-laden libretto for the work entitled America Independent
or The Temple of Minerva (first performed on December 11, 1781) that
Hopkinson is vital for our topic. He was the composer too, in the sense that he
chose the music for his text. 15 The significance of this surviving work in the political
and musical history of America cannot be overestimated. It provides us
with firsthand evidence for the highly charged emotions of the American patri-