Trav'ling Home: American Spirituals, 1770–1870

The Boston Camerata’s pioneering programs of early American music have brought pleasure to thousands of music lovers, and have helped to clarify and define our country’s rich and diverse cultural identity. This program, "Trav'ling Home", traces migratory currents and flows of early American song, largely spiritual but also secular. Among the various communities participating in this rich American mosaic we encounter the Puritans of New England, the Shakers and their visionary monodies, the Amish and Mennonites of Pennsylvania, and the newly-freed African-American religious communities. The musical sources of this program are drawn from European and New World oral traditions, hymns, psalms, and chants in English, German dialects, the early songbooks of Black churches, as well as gems from the still largely unpublished Shaker manuscript archive at Sabbathday Lake, ME.