Elkanah Kelsey Dare

Elkanah Kelsey Dare (15 January 1782 – 26 August 1826) was a Mid-Atlantic schoolteacher, composer of music, and Presbyterian minister.^[1]^[2] He was among the first American composers^[3] who published music in shape notes.^[4]

Elkanah Kelsey Dare was born in Salem, New Jersey, the son of Benoni Dare (1749-1802) and Damaris Kelsey (1748-1788). In 1804, he married Mary Shallcross Phillips (1785-1841), and they had ten children.^[5]

They moved to Wilmington, Delaware some time before 1809, and to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, before 1818. Dare joined the Presbyterian church in Greenwich, Cumberland County, New Jersey, at age 23. Dare was hired by the Harrisburg printer John Wyeth as music editor for Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second (1813), where he is mentioned as being "late of Wilmington College,"^[6] so this may have been the occasion of his move to Pennsylvania. From 1817 until his death, he pastored at the Union Presbyterian Church, Colerain Township, Pennsylvania. He also served as Dean of Boys at Wilmington College, Delaware. Dare died of swamp fever in 1826.^[7]

Musical works

All of Elkanah Dare's ten compositions^[8] appear in Wyeth's Repository, 1813.^[9] Five of his compositions have recently been reprinted in the Shenandoah Harmony (2013),^[10] and three have been reprinted in the Valley Pocket Harmonist. (2024).^[11]

Kedron (1799)^[12]
Road's Town (1813)^[13]^[14]
Babylonian Captivity (1813)^[15]
Free scores available at The Choral Public Domain Library.^[16]

Music Editor of Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Second Part

Discography

References

↑ "Elkanah Dare." The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press. Web. 29 Dec. 2018.<http://www.hymnology.co.uk/e/elkanah-dare>
↑ The Union: a history of Union United Presbyterian Church 1816-1980, Union History Committee, compilers (Oxford, Pa.: Union United Presbyterian Church, 1980), 15
↑ http://www.voxnovus.com/resources/American_Composer_Timeline.htm American composer Timeline
↑ Delaware - A Guide to the First State By Hesperides, Hesperides Published 2007 READ BOOKS ISBN 1-4067-6230-X
↑ https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/benoni-dare_2461644 ^{[user-generated source]}
↑ John Wyeth, preface to "On the Genera of Music" in Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second Irving Lowens, ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1964), p. 3.
↑ 200 Years of Union Presbyterian Church Archived 2018-12-29 at the Wayback Machine May 2016
↑ Temperley, Nicholas. The Hymn Tune Index, accessed 28 December 2018.
↑ Wyeth, John. 1813. Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: John Wyeth. 120 pp. Second Edition, 1820, 132 pp. (Second Edition reprinted by Da Capo Press, New York, 1964).
↑ Road's Town (p. 40), Marcus Hook (p. 70), Babylonian Captivity (p. 87), Glasgow (p. 377), and Bellevue (p. 420) del Re, John; Macklin, Kelly; del Re, Leyland; Hunter, Daniel L.; Dakan, Myles Louis; Miller, Nora; Hall, Rachel Wells (2012). The Shenandoah Harmony. Boyce, VA: The Shenandoah Harmony Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-615-74366-0. Retrieved Jan 2, 2025.
↑ Dismission (p. 328), Fairton (p. 369), and Millville (p. 359) Hunter, Daniel L.; Macklin, Kelly; et al. (2024). The Valley Pocket harmonist: A Supplement to The Shenandoah Harmony. Boyce, VA: The Shenandoah Harmony Publishing Company. ISBN 979-8-218-39203-1. Retrieved Jan 2, 2025.
↑ "Kedron". people.bethel.edu.
↑ http://www.shapenote.net/berkley/277.jpg ^{[bare URL image file]}
↑ "Score&#93 MIDI".
↑ "Score". www.shapenote.net.
↑ "Elkanah Dare - ChoralWiki". www1.cpdl.org.
↑ Irving Lowens, "Introduction" to Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music Irving Lowens, ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1974), p. vii.
↑ Scholars who agree with Lowens' argument about Wyeth's lack of musical training nevertheless emphasize the business acumen of Wyeth in perceiving a market for religious folk music, where none had existed before, for example Ross W. Ellison, "John Wyeth, Early American Tunebook Publisher", The American Music Teacher, Vol. 25, No. 1, (Sep 1, 1975), p. 22.
↑ "The fact that Wyeth himself was no musician poses a collateral problem: whose were the musical brains behind Part Second? It appears highly probably that the person responsible for the organization of the tue-book and its general editorial supervision was the Rev. Elanah Kelsay Dare (1782-1826), Methodist clergyman, Freemason, and musician, who at one time served as the dean of boys at Wilmington College, Wilmington, Del., an institution long since defunct." Irving Lowens, "Introduction" to Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second Irving Lowens, ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1964), p. xii.
↑ John Wyeth, Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second, Irving Lowens, ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1964), p. 3.
↑ For example, Alexander Johnson, Johnson's Tennessee Harmony (Cincinnati: Morgan, Lodge & Co., 1818), p. xiii; Allen D. Carden, The Missouri Harmony, stereotype ed. (Cincinnati: E. Morgan & Co., 1839), p. 12.

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