"A capacity for music is much more common than is generally supposed"; "some degree of cultivation is necessary to enable us to enter into the spirit of singing"; "children must be taught music as they are taught to read"; "the practice of music might be pursued in such a manner as to afford relief from other studies and be a pleasant and agreeable employment". These were radical ideas in 1826, the year Lowell Mason delivered his Address on Church Music, for in those days, as Mason observed twenty-five years later, "children did not generally sing, nor was it supposed to be possible to teach them." Settling in Boston in 1827, Mason organized the first children's singing school -- a voluntary class which at first consisted of no more than six or eight, but which increased eventually to five or six hundred. In 1833, inspired by the public performances of these singing children, a group of Bostonians organized the Boston Academy of Music, a society which sustained Mason's work among the children until music was introduced into the schools of the city. In this book, based upon an exhaustive study of primary sources, Dr. Rich gives a full account of Mason's career as a church musician, chorus master, and pioneer in training teachers of public school music; of his struggles for self-education and his failures and successes as a practicing musician, teacher, and publisher. It stresses the educational aspects of his career, his methods, his theories on music teaching for school children, and his interrelationships with such educators as Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Barnard, and Horace Mann. A valuable feature of this study is the bibliography, which contains a complete catalog of Mason's writings and publications with a list of their numerous editions and the names of collections and libraries where copies are available. - Jacket flap.