In this same period the “Yankee singing- school” and the so-called “musical conventions” flourished. The latter were held for years in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. The singers of these different States had organized governing boards that appointed the time of meeting and engaged the music director and assisting artists. The chorus of singers chiefly studied so-called “ sacred music,” and usually wound up their week’s labor with an oratorio performance.

[...]

The evenings of the conventions were generally devoted to mixed music, in which the chorus took part Nearly every oratorio worthy of mention—entire or in part—was thus familiarized to people who lived in the remotest parts of New England.

This little history will account for the possibility of assembling, on occasions like the Gilmore Peace Jubilees, a chorus numbering five to ten thousand singers who were at home in oratorio music. Outside of New England no similar condition existed.