Frederick R. Selch

Music of the Federal Era is an excellent overview of late 18th and early 19th century compositions by Benjamin Carr, Oliver Shaw, Raynor Taylor and others, performed on period instruments. The variety of styles represented on this disc reflects two kinds of music that existed quite separately: one centered in the cities, essentially European in origin, and the other in villages and the countryside. For while America found itself politically independent at the end of the Revolutionary War, cultur…