Music of Annapolis

The music of Annapolis, Maryland played a major role in the music history of the United States during the colonial era and has since produced a number of notable musical institutions and groups.

In the 1710s in the colonial United States, a number of singing schools arose, beginning in New England and spreading into Maryland by 1764, beginning in Annapolis. These singing schools met in the evenings, with a singing master leading the education of both youth and adults in the basics of musical performance, including note-reading and part-singing, and the particulars of Christian hymns. Most singing masters were educated only in other singing schools, and not in any sort of formal music education. Many singing masters were itinerant travelers.

Though Annapolis was the first town in Maryland to be home to a singing school, they became common, first in Baltimore and then throughout the state, after the Revolutionary War. The first was at St. Anne's Anglican Church in Annapolis, in 1764, led by singing master Phillip Williams, who taught psalmody in four parts. Though Williams, being itinerant, left Annapolis after only one year, he was replaced by a new singing master, Hugh Maguire, the following year.

After the Revolutionary War, singing school activities began diminishing throughout Maryland, including Annapolis. The only noted singing master during this time was Alexander Gray, in 1786, and possibly for some time thereafter.

During the colonial era, Annapolis was one of the larger cities in North America, and was home to an organization called the Tuesday Club, which documented musical activity in the city in more detail than any other record of its kind. The club was founded in 1745 by Alexander Hamilton in imitation of similar clubs in Edinburgh, specifically the Whin-Bush Club. Music was not initially the major focus of the group, but it soon came to specialize in musical activities at biweekly meetings known as sederunts. Both original vocal and instrumental material and published compositions were a part of the Tuesday Club's repertoire, including Scottish and English folksongs, and English theatrical pieces. Among the club's members was Jonas Green, printer of the Maryland Gazette and publisher of music books, and Thomas Bacon, the club's most renowned composer whose works were very much in the European model. No compositions from the club gained significant acclaim outside of the city.

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