AMERICA INSPIRED SPRING 2026
Oratorio Society of New Jersey
“For centuries Native Americans gathered together to sing in unison and in parallel intervals. American music changed rapidly with the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century, and choral singing began incorporating harmony and polyphony. Tonight’s program opened with the colonial composer William Billings and then lept decades forward with a tapestry of music beginning in the early years of the 20th century, when American composers moved away from 19th-century habit of composing in an essentially European style and developed their own distinctive voices.”