Trav'ling Home: American Spirituals, 1770-1870

The Boston Camerata’s pioneering programs of early American music have brought pleasure to thousands of music lovers, and have helped to clarify and define our country’s rich and diverse cultural identity. Trav'ling Home traces the migratory currents and flows of early American song, largely spiritual but also secular. Among the various communities participating in this rich American mosaic we encounter the Puritans of New England, the Shakers and their visionary monodies, the Amish and Mennonites of Pennsylvania, and the newly-freed African-American religious communities. The musical sources of this program are drawn from European and New World oral traditions, hymns, psalms and chants in English & German dialects, early songbooks of Black churches, and gems from the still largely unpublished Shaker manuscript archive at Sabbathday Lake, ME.

Image: Lake George and the Village of Caldwell, ca. 1850s, Thomas Chambers (1808–after 1866), The MET, Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1966.