Jacklin Bolton Stopp collection of 19th-century American music

Jacklin Talmage Bolton Stopp (b. 1926) is a musicologist and independent scholar based in Lockport, New York whose research interests are centered on nineteenth-century American music. She is the author of several published works on the history of the secular cantata in the United States from 1850 to 1930, including her 1964 Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Michigan, articles for the Journal of Research in Music Education and American Music, and entries in the New Grove Dictionary of American Music and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. A former faculty member of the State University of New York (SUNY)–Geneseo, SUNY–Buffalo, and Wisconsin State University–Oshkosh, Stopp has also served as a certified adjudicator for the New York State School Music Association.

In connection with her professional and personal interests, Stopp collected hundreds of rare books, scores, and other music-related materials published in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since most of these materials were intended for amateur musicians in religious, scholastic, or social settings, Stopp’s collection helps provide a picture of everyday American music-making during this period.

As singing schools and choirs emerged in many Protestant New England congregations in the late eighteenth century, composers and music editors began producing collections of hymns in simple four-part arrangements. During the nineteenth century, singing schools spread into the rest of the United States, and published collections of sacred vocal music grew larger and more numerous. These tune books typically contain original or newly arranged hymns and anthems, and include an instructional preface about basic vocal technique and how to read music. Major compilers of tune books during this period include Thomas Hastings (1784–1872), Lowell Mason (1792–1872), William Bradbury (1816–1868), and L.O. Emerson (1820–1915). In the second half of the century, composers such as Philip Paul Bliss (1838–1876) and Ira Sankey (1840–1908) produced new collections of gospel hymns to meet the growing demand for music for Sunday schools and Protestant evangelical revival services.

The growth of public education in the nineteenth century also led to the publication of many songbooks for young singers and public school choirs, such as collections by A.N. Johnson (1817–1892) and C.E. Leslie (1845–1893). Some music theorists and educators also attempted to expand music literacy by promoting alternative systems of notation based on solfege or shape note.

The later nineteenth century featured greater public interest in secular vocal music, including quartets, glees, and choruses. Secular American cantatas, such as those by George F. Root (1820–1895), grew popular with musicians and audiences during this period. As the piano became increasingly common in the bourgeois American home, the publication of songs for solo voice with piano accompaniment—in popular anthologies or as individual pieces of sheet music—flourished.