Stirling replies to me on the rise of the churchly culture in concert-going:

>>No. Read Bamboula!  by S. Frederick Starr, on the life and times of
>>Louis Moreau Gottschalk.  Among other things, he traces the rise in the
>>19th century of the churchly notion of concertgoing, an attitude that got
>>going around Boston, on the fringes of American Transendentalism.
>
>The German Romantics, culminating in Wagner with his "Art and Religion"
>would have something to add to that...

Sure.  That's, after all, where a lot of Transcendentalism (and a lot of
Coleridge) comes from.  Nevertheless, the immediate battles between the
Dionysians and the Puritans of the concert hall do seem to play out quite
apparently in the articles of Dwight's Miscellany.

Steve Schwartz