Votaries of Apollo

This work is a comprehensive account of the musical culture of Charleston's golden age. Blending archival research with musical expertise, Butler offers a definitive history of the dynamic and vibrant concert life in Charleston from 1766 to 1820, when the exclusive St. Cecilia Society functioned as North America's premier musical organization. In the process, he provides an unprecedented look into the early membership and inner workings of this storied society. For fifty-four seasons during the late colonial and early federal years, the St. Cecilia Society offered Charleston's wealthy elite opportunities to enjoy the latest European musical fashions performed by a cosmopolitan orchestra, visiting professional musicians, and talented amateurs. Intermingling the practices and values of both the Old and the New Worlds, the society's events formed a social stage on which the patronage, performance, and appreciation of contemporary European concert music evinced the cultural and political authority of its participants. In reconstructing this era of the St. Cecilia Society's concert patronage, Butler begins with a survey of the socio-economic background of the golden age of Charleston's prosperity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and then examines British modes of concert patronage that inspired this South Carolina institution. Following an overview of the society's half century of concert patronage, Butler focuses on specifics of the musical activity: organizational structure and management of activities, administration of finances, performance venues, performers and their relationship to the society, concert repertoire, and withdrawal from patronage.