Chase Castle is a cultural historian of music. He is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music History at the University of Delaware and received a PhD in Music from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2024. Castle’s research explores American revivalism across the nineteenth century, focusing on racial politics in evangelical hymnody. His current book project, The Gospel in Black and White: Race and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century American Hymns, uncovers African American and white musical influences in the formation of gospel hymns, a popular sacred genre that rose to prominence at the end of the century. Unlike previous scholarship that often separates Black from white histories and treats African American music primarily in terms of spirituals, Castle’s research casts a wider net to consider how racial politics played out in pervasive, popular, sacred practices. He is also an active organist and choral conductor who performs most Sunday mornings at St. Mary’s Church, Hamilton Village on the western edge of the University of Pennsylvania campus.

Media

Presentations and Performances

Bamboula: Obsession and Race in the Piano Music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Paper read at the Fourth International Chopinological Congress during a session titled “Chopin and Nineteenth-Century Pathologies.” Warsaw, Poland. 3 December 2021.

Magnificat in C Major, Op. 115 (C.V. Stanford). An excerpt from the bicentennial choral evensong at St. Mary's Church, Hamilton Village, an Episcopal church on the University of Pennsylvania campus. This service features the St. Mary's choir and choral scholars directed by organist and choirmaster Chase Castle. Other repertoire included music by Bairstow, Hogan, Lutkin, Titcomb, and Vaughan Williams.

Audio Recordings

Quotation and Nostalgia in the Songs of Charles Ives. Excerpt from a lecture recited at Temple University during a concert titled “Charles Ives—American Iconoclast.” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 23 October 2024.

The Hymns of Richard Allen and the Contact Zones of American Revivalism Hymnody. Paper read at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention during a roundtable titled “Race, Religion and Justice in the Archives.” Virtual. 9 January 2022.