The Luther Whiting Mason-Osbourne McConathy Collection
The Luther Whiting Mason-Osbourne McConathy Collection
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Date
1983
Authors
Hall, Bonlyn Goodwin
Advisor
Serwer, Howard
Citation
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Abstract
The Mason-McConathy Collection at the Library of Congress contains approximately 700 items, principally nineteenth-century European school song books, folk-song books,
and books of vocal pedagogy. The collection belonged to two
American music educators, Luther Whiting Mason (1818-1896)
and Osbourne McConathy (1875-1947) before being given to the
Library of Congress in 1948. This thesis consists of a
catalog of the collection and an introductory essay. The
catalog organizes the collection into 500 bibliographic
records, with indexes by title and personal name. The essay
traces the collection's history and relates it to the
careers of its two owners. After a brief analysis of the
contents, the question of its significance is addressed.
This appears to be a unique collection in the United States,
for material of its kind and period. Its greater significance,
however, lies in its use as source material for songs
published in Mason's and McConathy's own American series of
school song books. To test the thesis that the collection
was so used, Mason's first publication, The First Music
Reader, serves as a sample. Of its 64 songs, 48 can be
demonstrated to have come from the European song books, most
of them German, in the Mason-McConathy Collection. Of
those, at least seven have become popular in the United
States, as measured by their repeated publication in song
anthologies. The collection thus is shown to have special
significance as a vehicle through which elements of popular
German musical culture have been disseminated in American
society.