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خانه

A

HISTORY OF
OF MUSIC

IN

NEW ENGLAND:

WITH

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

OF

REFORMERS AND PSALMISTS.

BY GEORGE HOOD.

BOSTON:

WILKINS, CARTER & CO.

1846.

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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, BY GEORGE HOOD,

in the Clerk's office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

BOSTON:

PRINTED BY FREEMAN AND BOLLES,

DEVONSHIRE STREET.

PREFACE.

EVERY one desires to know something of the history of the art or science in which he is interested. Divest architecture, or any one branch of the natural sciences of its history, and you take away the prime part of all that can interest. So music, if you leave its history unwritten and unread, becomes the mere plaything of the present, instead of the dignified and venerated subject that has been favored by princes and sages, Christians and prophets, ever since the world began.

It was this idea that prompted the writer to collect and arrange the materials for the following pages. His success in finding historical matter has far exceeded his anticipations; and that which he supposed would end with the scanty materials for a

single lecture, has, by much labor, increased to a volume.

This book pretends only to be a history of psalmody, and to extend from the settlement of New England to the beginning of the present century.

In preparing this work, it has been the writer's constant aim, to give the facts as he found them; and if they seem broken or isolated, it must be remembered that, with such material, it was scarcely possible to make a full and consecutive history. The matter has been gathered by much labor, time and expense from different parts of the Union, and frequently in very small portions. The labor has been almost incredible. To show something of its difficulty, there are six consecutive lines that were unfinished more than one year; and the matter of which was gathered at more different times and places, than the number of lines, twice told. But with all its difficulties, the reader may rely upon the truth of the work. It must not, however, be expected that such a production should be entirely free from error; yet all who know its difficulties, will acknowledge its fidelity. Had the materials all been written, though scattered in different libraries, much of the present labor would have been saved; and were all the matter that has been written still in existence, the history would be far from meagre ;

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