Music and Art Day Celebration at Old Sturbridge Village June 20

OSV historic interpreter Rob Lyon teaches young visitors how to play the jaw harp.

STURBRIDGE, MA:  Old Sturbridge Village will come alive with the lost sounds and sights of 19th-century popular music and art as more than 50 singers, dancers, and musicians, and artists perform at the museum’s first Music and Art Day on Sat. June 20.  Singers will present solo a cappella vocal performances of 19th-century songs and ballads, and a concert by the OSV Singing School.  Visitors can enjoy fife and drum music, a recorder concert, and a performance on the museum’s antique pipe organ.

Artists will demonstrate early 1800s-style sketching, silhouette cutting, watercolor and theorem painting. Visitors can learn 19th-century dances, paper marbling, and how to play the jaw harp and tin whistle. All performances are free with museum admission. Details: 1-800-SEE-1830; www.osv.org

Historians at Old Sturbridge Village point out that early New Englanders enjoyed a wide variety of music – and not all of it was serious religious music. Popular tunes also included songs about murders and executions, famous battles, salacious songs, and satirical songs.

“We shouldn’t imagine that families in early New England just went to sleep after dark,” notes OSV musician Jim O’Brien. “They enjoyed singing songs and telling stories – a pastime that was enjoyed by all ages.”

Beautiful English ballads like “Barbara Allen,” were passed down from one generation to the next for hundreds of years.  People also sang “broadside songs,” which were printed on single sheets in Boston and sold all over the countryside. People in rural villages learned four-part harmony in singing schools taught by itinerant instructors.

Those who wanted to be really genteel would sing romantic parlor ballads like Thomas Moore’s popular series of “Irish Melodies,” which romanticized Ireland, and songs by Scottish poet Robert Burns, whose most famous song, “Auld Lang Syne,” remains a New Year’s Eve staple today.

The most skilled amateur musicians in early New England could perform some of the classical pieces of Handel, Haydn and Mozart, and others had wide repertoires of popular tavern and country music of the day.  The modern piano was just gaining popularity during this time period. It was called the “pianoforte” because, unlike on the harpsichord, whose strings are plucked when its keys are pressed, a piano’s strings are struck by hammers when the keys are played.  This allows musicians to control the volume by how lightly or forcefully they touch the keys, playing soft (piano) or loud (forte).

Many early New Englanders loved to dance, and most dances were informal affairs held in farmhouse parlors or barns, although there were fancy balls in the larger cities. In the countryside, young people had the option of learning all the latest steps at formal dancing schools taught by dancing-school masters who traveled from town to town.

Popular contra dances, or country dances, were an old English tradition, and featured long lines of women facing a line of men repeating a series of steps in sequence.  The French took English country dance and rearranged it for four couples standing in a square, calling it the cotillion, or quadrille. The waltz was just appearing in American social circles in the early 1800s, and because it involved dancing one on one with bodily contact, it was seen as racy and risqué – much too intimate and intoxicating an experience for unmarried young ladies, who were cautioned to refrain from it altogether.

Theorem painting, or oil painting with stencils on white velvet, was quite popular among women of all ages in the early 1800s because the technique made it possible for amateur artists to create charming artwork for their own homes. Silhouettes – profile portraits cut from black paper -- were very popular in America from 1790-1840, and were an affordable way to have a portable likeness of a loved one.

“So much of the everyday life we portray at Old Sturbridge Village revolves around work – the farming, spinning, sewing, shoe-making, blacksmithing and tin-making – because early New Englanders worked very hard,” O’Brien says.  “But they also loved music, art and dance, so it’s very fitting that we celebrate this aspect of their lives, too.”

Old Sturbridge Village celebrates New England life in the 1830s and is open daily 9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. seven days a week.   Admission: $20; seniors $18; children 3-17, $7; children under 3, free. For information: 1-800-733-1830; www.osv.org.