Composing the nation: Writers of the American Renaissance and music

In the 1840s and 1850s, music emerged as a form of mass-entertainment in America. During that time, performers like The Hutchinson Family Singers, Christy's Virginia Minstrels, Ole Bull, and Jenny Lind played to huge crowds clamoring to hear them. What is now known as classical music was also growing in popularity as the music of J. S. Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart was introduced to American audiences. With music flourishing at mid-century, the art came to exert a powerful influence on the American imagination. Serials devoted to music were established and individual essays on the art could be frequently found in the leading newspapers and magazines of the day. Among those fascinated by the musical renaissance of antebellum America were four American authors: Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, William Wells Brown, and Herman Melville. "Composing the Nation" is the story about why music fascinated these authors and how that fascination influenced the writings that they produced. In particular, "Composing the Nation" claims that the music and musical aesthetics of nineteenth-century America shaped the literary arguments that Fuller, Whitman, Brown, and Melville made as they tried to reform America of the social, economic, and political problems that beset it.