Biography
As a composer, conductor and educator in music, Mason helped embed musical training within the public school curriculum across the United States. Choirs in Savannah and Boston came under his direction, and he led the Handel and Haydn Society from 1827 to 1832. Children's singing classes he developed, together with the hymnals and teaching manuals he produced, established music as a standard subject in American classrooms. At the Boston Academy of Music, an institution he created, Mason offered systematic instruction in music pedagogy. His output consisted chiefly of anthologies devoted to sacred vocal music, among them "The Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music," the "Juvenile Psalmist," the "Juvenile Lyre," "Sacred Melodies," the "Manual of the Boston Academy of Music," and, written with Thomas Hastings, "Spiritual Songs."
Albums
