The history of the well-known spiritual “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child,” is wrapped up in the legacy of the Hampton Students, an ensemble of African American students modeled after the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The song's inclusion in the 1901 edition of Cabin and Plantation Songs as Sung by the Hampton Students solidified its place in the growing canon of spirituals. Although the tune remained in Hampton Institute's repertoire through subsequent printings of Cabin and Plantation Songs, it also entered the art music world, quickly becoming a favorite of performers and arrangers. But even as the tune journeyed away from Hampton, it remained tightly bound to composers, performers, and choir directors affiliated with what is now Hampton University. The story of “Motherless Child's” entrance into Hampton's repertoire around the turn of the twentieth century, its move beyond Hampton, and its later return is the story of the complex racial, cultural, and geographical relationships that have characterized the Institute's history. The telling of this story reveals a networked cast of characters, all invested in the health and growth of African American music in the early twentieth century, crossing paths in Tennessee, Mississippi, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, London, and, of course, Virginia.

This article explores the U.S. career of the Dutch immigrant violinist Jacques Oliveira. Following successful performances in Britain, Oliveira sailed for the United States in the fall of 1859. Under P.T. Barnum's management, the twenty-three-year-old became a fixture on New York's theatrical scene, as an instrumental soloist with Tom Thumb's company, with the Drayton Parlor Opera troupe, and with Hooley and Campbell's Minstrels. After a year, he traveled south, settling in occupied New Orleans, where he had family connections. Despite the economic difficulties of the time, he soon became an important figure in the city's cultural life, only to die during an outbreak of cholera and yellow fever in the summer of 1867.

In the absence of letters or diaries, the article relies heavily on close examination of period newspapers, city directories and census data to reconstruct Oliveira's world. Oliveira's activities, his successes and struggles, offer insights into the place of the working musician, newly arrived in the Unites States in the late 1850s. Examining the events of his life enables us to contrast cultural life in New York and New Orleans at the time of the Civil War. The article illuminates the place of the instrumentalist in the theater, reveals how attitudes toward music were influenced by a cultural hierarchy, provides insights into the place of the violin in the musical life of the United States, and examines the impact of the Civil War on musical life in New Orleans.

Late in his career, John Cage often recalled his brief interaction with German abstract animator Oskar Fischinger in 1937 as the primary impetus for his early percussion works. Further examination of this connection reveals an important technological foundation to Cage's call for the expansion of musical resources. Fischinger's experiments with film phonography (the manipulation of the optical portion of sound film to synthesize sounds) mirrored contemporaneous refinements in recording and synthesis technology of electron beam tubes for film and television. New documentation on Cage's early career in Los Angeles, including research Cage conducted for his father John Cage, Sr.'s patents, explain his interest in these technologies. Finally, an examination of the sources of Cage's 1940 essay “The Future of Music: Credo” reveals the extent of Cage's knowledge of early sound synthesis and recording technologies and presents a more nuanced understanding of the historical relevance and origins of this document.