page_title: Music of Maryland
section_title: Early independence and 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Music of Maryland / History / Early independence and 19th century
caption_attribution_description: Peabody Institute, Baltimore
context_page_description: Maryland is a U.S. state with a musical heritage that dates back to the Native Americans of the region and includes contributions to colonial era music, modern American popular and folk music. The music of Maryland includes a number of popular musicians, folk styles and a documented music history that dates to the colonial archives on music from Annapolis, an important source in research on colonial music. Famous modern musicians from Maryland range from jazz singer Billie Holiday to pop punk band Good Charlotte, and include a wide array of popular styles.
  Modern Maryland is home to many well-regarded music venues, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Baltimore Opera, and the Peabody Institute's Conservatory of Music. Baltimore, the largest city in the state, is home to many important local venues, such as the Red Room, a center for the local experimental music scene, and the house nightspot Club Choices. Outside of Baltimore, Frederick's Weinberg Center for the Arts and Rockville's Strathmore are also important regional venues. The Merriweather Post Pavilion and 1st Mariner Arena host most of the largest concerts in the area.
context_section_description: Professional theater in Maryland died out during the American Revolution  but was reestablished by 1780, now with Baltimore having replaced Annapolis as a cultural capital in the state. Maryland ratified the federal Constitution on April 28, 1788 and became the seventh state in the Union. The Holiday Street Theater in Baltimore opened in 1793 and was one of the first large theaters in the country, showcasing light theater, opera, and concerts. In 1822, Arthur Clifton from Baltimore debuted his opera The Enterprise, while religious music flourished after the 1821 opening of the first constructed Roman Catholic Cathedral in the country. The African Methodist Episcopal churches in Maryland were home to singing traditions using the shape-note method.
  By the turn of the century, the middle classes of Maryland were holding regular dances featuring the cotillion, quadrille, schottische, polka and waltz. Eastern European dances were also popular, brought by immigrants from various countries. Many immigrants in Maryland moved to Baltimore, forming their own distinct neighborhoods with German liederkranz singing societies, and Irish St. Patrick's Day parades and Jewish chants flourished among their respective communities. Maryland was home to several folk traditions, including the work songs of rail and canal diggers and the crab- and oystermen of the Chesapeake Bay, whose repertoire varied from hymns to risqué songs and Bahaman shanties.
  By the middle of the 19th century, Baltimore was a major center of sheet music publishing, home to Joseph Carr, F. D. Benteen, John Cole and George Willig, as well as the piano-building businesses of William Knabe and Charles Stieff. This period also saw the rise of blackface minstrel shows, featuring the pseudo-African American songs of composers like Dan Emmett and Stephen Foster.
  During the Civil War, Maryland was a border state, home to people who sympathized with both sides of the conflict. Federal troops occupied Baltimore, and some people who wrote music that favored the Confederacy were jailed; these pieces included "The Confederacy March", "Stonewall Jackson's Way" and "Maryland, My Maryland", the last later becoming Maryland's state song. The Civil War left several lasting effects on American music nationwide, most importantly the normalization of white and black cultural mixing, especially in music, caused by the mixing of soldiers in multiracial units; military brass bands became a popular part of the music scene during and after the war, one of the first being the Moxley Band from Frederick.
  The middle of the 19th century saw a wave of immigration from Europe into the United States, including a large number of German musicians who settled in Baltimore; the presence of these musicians, as well as the general growth in urban population with the industrial revolution and the continued rise of the music publishing industry, helped make music training more affordable for more Americans.
  Conservatories, institutes of music education, were introduced to the United States in the mid to late 19th century, beginning with Baltimore's Peabody Institute's Conservatory of Music, founded in 1857. The Peabody trained numerous musicians who went on to found most of Baltimore's major musical organizations, including the Baltimore Opera, Baltimore Choral Arts and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Though founded in 1857, the Peabody Institute did not hold an orchestral concert until after the Civil War, when James Monroe Deems directed a concert; Deems was a musician and composer, known for Nebuchadnezzar, one of the first American oratorios. He was succeeded by Lucien Southard, who failed to organize the Institute (then known as the Academy of Music), blaming the lack of a "proper musical atmosphere" in Baltimore. It was not until Asger Hamerik's reign that the Peabody Symphony Orchestra finally became successful, one of only five professional orchestras in the country at the time. Hamerik was an advocate of American music and regularly included the works of American composers, eschewing the more typic
caption: Peabody Institute in Baltimore in about 1902
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