National Identity and the Oratorio in New Orleans, 1836–1861
Following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the population of New Orleans was divided along cultural lines that distinguished between “creoles”—native-born residents, most of French ancestry—and a newer cohort of arrivals from the Northeast who spoke English and were dubbed “Americans” by their Francophone neighbors. The newcomers brought with them distinct cultural practices, including a brand of New England music making that flourished in New Orleans during the decades preceding the Civil War but whose role in the city’s history has been forgotten. Drawing upon unexamined archival evidence (including English-language newspapers, the records of a prominent choral society, and private correspondence), this paper documents for the first time the history of “American” music in antebellum New Orleans, focusing particularly on the public performance of English-language oratorios.
The first such concert took place in 1836 and introduced the city’s concert-going public to the sacred choral works of Handel and Haydn. In 1842 an amateur choral group modeled on Boston’s famous Handel and Haydn Society was founded and became a fixture of the city’s concert life. The minutes of the society reveal that the organization was structured according to Northern models, that it purchased music from Boston, and that it drew its membership almost exclusively from the city’s American community. After tracing the development of public sacred concerts in the city, this article examines ways in which these performances served as markers of national, ethnic, and class identity in antebellum New Orleans. Likewise, these concerts helped to spread a Northern, Republican ideology amongst the city’s American community. This ideology played an important role in the social performance of an American identity by the Northern residents of New Orleans, for whom oratorios and other sacred choral works became markers of Americanism in the context of the city’s French and Spanish heritage.
Following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the population of New Orleans was divided along cultural lines that distinguished between “creoles”—native-born residents, most of French ancestry—and a newer cohort of arrivals from the Northeast who spoke English and were dubbed “Americans” by their Francophone neighbors. The newcomers brought with them distinct cultural practices, including a brand of New England music making that flourished in New Orleans during the decades preceding the Civil War but whose role in the city’s history has been forgotten. Drawing upon unexamined archival evidence (including English-language newspapers, the records of a prominent choral society, and private correspondence), this paper documents for the first time the history of “American” music in antebellum New Orleans, focusing particularly on the public performance of English-language oratorios.
The first such concert took place in 1836 and introduced the city’s concert-going public to the sacred choral works of Handel and Haydn. In 1842 an amateur choral group modeled on Boston’s famous Handel and Haydn Society was founded and became a fixture of the city’s concert life. The minutes of the society reveal that the organization was structured according to Northern models, that it purchased music from Boston, and that it drew its membership almost exclusively from the city’s American community. After tracing the development of public sacred concerts in the city, this article examines ways in which these performances served as markers of national, ethnic, and class identity in antebellum New Orleans. Likewise, these concerts helped to spread a Northern, Republican ideology amongst the city’s American community. This ideology played an important role in the social performance of an American identity by the Northern residents of New Orleans, for whom oratorios and other sacred choral works became markers of Americanism in the context of the city’s French and Spanish heritage.