| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
106 Youth's Golden Gleam
Buchanan. Before Stephen left Pittsburgh, Mrs. Buchanan wrote from the village pi Paradise, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, asking Stephen to compose some organ music for her; she was playing the organ recently installed20 in All Saints Church,21 one of her husband's several parishes. Stephen replied with humor:22 "As I have no knowledge of that instrument I have thought it advisable not to expose my ignorance." If Stephen while in Cincinnati chose to amend his ignorance he could have found a suitable organ in Christ Church,23 a short distance from his boarding house on Fourth Street. The records of Christ Church and St. Paul's Church of those years do not contain his name; they give only the names of communicants who formally became members of the parishes. It is possible that Stephen attended the course of lectures on sacred music given in Cincinnati in 1848 by the noted composer of hymns, Lowell Mason, of Boston.24 Later in life Stephen wrote hymns and Sunday School songs, concerning which John Tasker Howard found himself compelled to say that they "are almost worthless muÂsically."
As to the weak side of Stephen's character it is not out of place to cite Henry Adams's comment on New England and Southern types in America of the 'fifties: "Both were apt to
* In the Episcopal cemetery at Paradise is the grave of the oldest daughter of the Buchanans, Charlotte Foster Buchanan, 1836-1850. |
||