by Daniel Hathaway
CWRU music professor Ross W. Duffin has made his name as a scholar in several fields, among them, fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish music, English music of the Jacobean period and the study of historical tuning systems.
Recently, though, he’s become fascinated with early American music, a subject he’ll explore with the professional singers of Quire Cleveland in “The Land of Harmony: American Choral Gems from The Bay Psalm Book to Amy Beach,” to be presented at Christ Episcopal Church in Shaker Heights on Saturday, April 5 at 7:30 pm and repeated at Historic St. Peter’s Church in downtown Cleveland on Sunday, April 6 at 4 pm.
It all started when Duffin added early American carols by William Billings to Quire’s Christmas carol programs. “The singers mentioned how much they enjoyed that repertory,” Duffin said on the phone, “Billings just permeates you for hours afterward. It’s infectious music, primitive by European standards, but the directness of emotion is wonderful for singers and audiences.”