Historic Deerfield Museum Course 2025 — One Hundred Years of Song: Singing Early New England Music for Science, Memory, and Abolitionism, 1770–1870

Historic Deerfield’s hybrid 2025 museum course, “One Hundred Years of Song: Singing Early New England Music for Science, Memory, and Abolitionism, 1770–1870,” will be held on Wednesdays March 12, 19, and 25, 2025  virtually and in person.

The Revolutionary and early Federal period saw a great outpouring of new choral music by local and   regional composers who worked in a lively vernacular style still familiar to many from its place in the “shape-note” tradition. In this course, students will engage with the exciting sounds of this early New England music through singing, listening, and lectures on three historical sites of imagination and musical practice: singing as cutting edge “science,” singing as local history, and singing as social justice work in the 19th-century Abolitionist movement.

Instructor: Dr. Tim Eriksen, Historic Deerfield Musician-in-Residence

Dr.Tim Eriksen’s work as an ethnomusicologist and teacher has included extensive research on shape-note music in New England and the venerable Sacred Harp four-part harmony tradition. He is a founder of what is currently the world’s largest Sacred Harp singing convention in Northampton, MA. Eriksen has taught college courses including American Balladry, Global Sounds, Film Music from Hollywood to Bollywood, American Music, and Songwriting at Dartmouth College, Amherst College, Smith College, the University of Minnesota, Hampshire College, and Wesleyan University. In addition, he has taught hundreds of hour-to week-long workshops and seminars in shape-note harmony singing, American music history, and ballad singing. His students have ranged from kindergarteners to Nicole Kidman, Elvis Costello, Sting, extras in the film Cold Mountain, and the senior citizen members of the now legendary Young at Heart Chorus. Tim currently serves as Historic Deerfield’s Musician-in-Residence.

Registration

There are two options to participate in the Museum Course. Option 1 is to attend in person at the Deerfield Community Center. Option 2 is to attend via Zoom webinar. Each session will be recorded, and participants will receive a bibliography for future reading and other course materials.

Option 1: In Person Lecture and Singing: Deerfield Community Center
Note: In Person participants will experience the lectures, hear recorded music, and have an
opportunity to sing some of the music.
Registration Fee: $120/$105 (members) and $50/student
Wednesdays, March 12, 19, and 26, 2025 from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Register for the in person course here. (This will register you for all three dates.)

Option 2: Online: Zoom Webinar Lecture Only
Note: Online participants will experience the lectures and hear recorded music
Registration Fee: $100/$90 (members) and $40/student
Wednesdays, March 12, 19, and 26, 2025 from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Register for the virtual course here. (This will register you for all three dates.)