Johnson, J. C. Juvenile Oratorios: A Collection of Songs, designed for Floral and other Concerts, Juvenile Classes, School, &c. The Festival of the Rose; The Indian Summer; The Children of Jerusalem. Boston: Wilkins, Carter, and Company, 1851. [10592]
Copyright 1849.
Leather spine with printed paper boards, small oblong 4 1/4 x 7 inches, edges worn with slight loss of paper, joints very good. Lacks the front and back free end papers (blanks). 176 unmarked pp., light foxing. Good. Hardcover.
"The unusual, and almost unprecedented popularity to which floral concerts have attained, is sufficient apology for the appearance of a book designed for them and for juvenile classes in general. The author, the originator of this kind of exhibition, first gave a concert with floral decorations in 1843, and in 1846 brought forward a May Festival, and an Autumnal Festival, the music to the former of which has been published, and has been performed with much acceptance in many places.
"The three oratorios contained in the present work have each been 'brought out' before large audiences in Boston, and every song contained in them has been tried and proved to be good and pleasing." - Address by the Author.
The music is in round notes.
James C. Johnson (1820-1895), b. Middlebury, Vermont. He learned the fundamentals of music in the Congregational Church Sabbath School of his village. After his family moved to Boston James, as a lad, sang in Lowell Mason's Juvenile Choir. He graduated from Boston's English High School in 1835, a degree of learning unknown to most at the time. In less than ten years Johnson was producing what has been credited as some of the first secular cantatas in America, his Floral Concert series.
