A Jesuit University in the New World: Music’S Cultural Mission at Georgetown University (1789–1930)

chapter 9 A Jesuit University in the New World: Music’s Cultural Mission at Georgetown University (1789–1930)

Anna Harwell Celenza

We all know the influence of the noble art of Music: for where is the man whom its sweet strains do not affect? […] We hear it resounding through- out every nation and clime, and indeed it seems that the great God in his goodness and mercy has blessed us with this precious gift to comfort us in the hour of affliction, to still those passions which rage within our breasts and to make us peaceful and kind. samuel h. anderson, “Introductory Address for St. Cecilia’s Day,” Georgetown University, 18661 ∵

1 This essay was originally published in Music as Cultural Mission: Explorations of Jesuit Practices in Italy and North America, ed. Anna Harwell Celenza and Anthony R. DelDonna, Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series 9 (Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s University Press, 2014), 167–89. The publisher’s permission to reprint it here is gratefully acknowledged. (Alterations to the text have been made to adapt to the present volume as well as this Brill series’ style.) I am grateful to Lynn Conway for archival assistance. Samuel H. Anderson [class of 1867], “Introductory Address for St. Cecilia’s Day” ([No- vember 22], 1866), manuscript; in gua, University Archives, Georgetown University Music to 1900, Accession no. 000275, Box 1, [Folder:] “1852–1875.” nb: Old Archives no. 462–2. http:// findingaids.library.georgetown.edu/repositories/12/archival_objects/1362276 (accessed Sep- tember 15, 2016). Ed. note: The 1860 census records a sixteen-year-old Samuel H. Anderson (b.1844) employed as a farmer living in Lewis, Virginia. Lewis was in Unionist territory, which, after Virginia’s secession convention in April 1861, separated and formed West Virginia. The 1910 census lists a Samuel H. Anderson (b. January 17, 1848) employed as a medical doctor. A grave in St. Peter’s (Protestant Episcopal) Church Cemetery, Fort George Meade, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, lists his date of death as May 17, 1912. Year: 1910; Census Place: Election Dis- trict 4, Anne Arundel, Maryland; Roll: T624_550; Page: 13A; Enumeration District: 0012; fhl microfilm: 1374563. For grave, see http://files.usgwarchives.net/md/annearundel/cemeteries/ stpeters.txt (accessed September 15, 2016).

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Shortly after the American Civil War (1861–65), Samuel H. Anderson, a junior at Georgetown College, evoked the power of music in an address to students and faculty. Like many before him, Anderson embraced music’s ability to unify, both literally and symbolically, the various elements of his community. Cel- ebrations in honor of St. Cecilia (d.230 ce), the patron St. of music, brought students and faculty at Georgetown together after the wrenching tribulation of the war between the states. In this and other events, music played a valu- able role in the school’s cultural and spiritual outlook. Indeed, the tradition of looking to music as a unifying force had been in place long before Anderson arrived. In 1789, Bishop John Carroll (1735–1815) founded an academy in Maryland that eventually became Georgetown University, the first Catholic university in the United States. Fundraising for the school began as early as 1787, and in 1788 construction was started on the first building. Carroll originally conceived of his academy in three parts: an “elementary” school for boys as young as eight, a “preparatory” school for adolescents, and the “college” for young men.2 As this chapter demonstrates, from its earliest years, Georgetown looked to music as an essential part of its cultural mission, and, even though the role of music in the curriculum waxed and waned during the school’s first century and a half, its symbolic power as a unifying force remained strong. This is perhaps most clearly displayed in the school’s first official crest, apparently commissioned by Louis-Guillaume-Valentin Dubourg, S.S. (1766–1833), the French immigrant Sulpician who was president of Georgetown from 1796 until 1799. An entry in the university accounts shows that a cash gift of fifteen shillings was given by Justine Douat to “pay for the seal of the corporation” on May 11, 1798.3 The seal, the designer of which is unknown, was likely created shortly thereafter since the sixteen stars that encircle the design, each representative of a state in the

2 The source used for information about the general history of Georgetown University is: Rob- ert Emmett Curran, The Bicentennial History of Georgetown University: From Academy to Uni- versity, 1789–1889 (Washington, dc: Georgetown University Press, 1989). Ed. note: Ms. (or Mrs.) Justine Douat (or Dau) was a Frenchwoman who served as a nurse for the school’s younger students. She was hired by Sulpician Fr. (later Bishop) Louis Guillaume Valentin Dubourg (1766–1833), Georgetown’s third president (1796–99), who “hired Frenchmen whenever possible.” See George M. Barringer, “They Came to Georgetown: The French Sulpicians,” Georgetown Magazine (July 1977), available at http://www.library. georgetown.edu/special-collections/archives/essays/french-sulpicians (accessed January 3, 2017). 3 G. Ronald Murphy, s.j., “Georgetown’s Shield: Utraque unum,” in Splendor and Wonder: Jesuit Character, Georgetown Spirit, and Liberal Education, ed. William J. O’Brien (Washington, dc: Georgetown University Press, 1988), 23–38, here 26.

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