Stephen Foster

On Stephen Collins Foster's birthday, July 4, 1826, the United States celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and mourned the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps this birthday is symbolic of the fame Foster achieved as a composer of American music. Most Americans have been exposed to the music of Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864), and many of them know some of his songs.[1] Children are exposed to this music in many ways, including school, family and cartoons. Two of his songs, Old Folks at Home, and Oh! Susanna are known throughout the world and have been translated into several languages. There is something attractive about these songs that makes them extremely popular; they are easily singable, and the themes of the lyrics appeal to American audiences. "He helped to fill a gap that had always existed in Treasury 8).

Stephen Foster was the tenth of eleven children, born into a well-respected and politically active family. Two of his sisters played piano, and his father played violin occasionally. Foster's parents detected Stephen's musical ability, but they did not encourage him to pursue it. His mother wrote in a letter to William Foster, "[Stephen] . . . has a drum and marches about . . . with a feather in his hat, and a girdle around his waist, whistling old lang syne . . . There still remains something perfectly original about him" (Howard 78). He learned to play violin, flute and a modest amount of piano as a chiefly self-taught musician. "The other members of the family liked music, too, but they did not think that a man should spend too much time at it. There was more important work to be done in a flourishing pioneer community; music should be kept within reasonable limits as a pleasant pastime. When Stephen went to boarding school he promised that he would not pay any attention to his music until after eight o'clock in the evening." (Foster Treasury 9) During this same time at boarding school, Foster's parents appreciated his musical hobby because it did not allow him time to be mischievous.

It is interesting that Stephen Foster made a career of music despite opposition to it in his family. For a time, he tried to please his family by doing 'useful work.' Foster began his career as a bookkeeper in his brother's commission business, and he began to publish music during this time. But in 1850, he rented an office in Pittsburgh and became a full-time songwriter-the first American composer to subsist that way (Hitchcock Grove 156).

The peak of his career was in the mid-1850's, when his songs began to be widely heard by the public. It was during this time that Foster made an arrangement with a minstrel troupe leader to perform his songs on a regular basis. This early business deal with the creator and leader of Christy's Minstrels, permitted E.P. Christy to put his name on Foster's songs and have first performance rights. This was one of many unwise business decisions Foster made. Many times, he opted for a one-time payment rather than receiving royalties. These one-time payments were often significantly less than the amount of money that he could have made by accepting royalties.

In the same manner, Foster missed an opportunity to make a large profit on his song, Oh! Susanna. It is unclear whether he gave it away to a publishing friend, W.C. Peters, or sold it to Peters for one hundred dollars; in either case, the piece made close to ten thousand dollars for Mr. Peters. One of his most popular songs, Oh! Susanna was widely sung during Foster's lifetime and is still sung often today. "Oh Susanna became a folksong almost overnight. The Forty-niners caught it up and sang it on their way to California, and there was hardly a minstrel troupe that did not sing it at every performance" (Foster Treasury 10). This song became a theme song for the gold rush. It sold almost one hundred thousand copies-more than twice the number of copies popular music would usually sell.

His first composition is believed to be The Tioga Waltz; there is no extant copy of the piece, but his brother wrote the it from memory after Stephen's death. It was written and first performed when Stephen was fourteen as a flute trio or quartet for a school commencement ceremony, and the performance received a standing ovation. After this local success, he wrote almost two hundred songs during his twenty-year career. Of these two hundred, about ten to twelve are still widely popular, and two, My Old Kentucky Home and Old Folks at Home, have become state songs.

Foster's songs generally are categorized in two ways: "(1) songs for the lower-class minstrel stage that were based on a variety of rural sources and (2) songs for the genteel parlor that were imitative of English parlor songs. Foster was supremely-and uniquely-successful in both genres" (Key 148). As the nineteenth century progressed, the distinction between these two genres became less clear. Foster began to blur the lines between the genres by changing his minstrel song style to something less offensive to African Americans. "Although he never openly embraced the abolitionist movement, he took a number of steps to mitigate the offensive caricatures of blacks, including depicting blacks as real, suffering human beings, dropping grotesque cartoons from the covers of his minstrel songs and softening and then eliminating the use of plantation dialect" (Key 156).

The content of the songs consisted of subjects that appealed to an American audience. Besides referring to plantation life, the texts often refer to Foster's own experiences. For example, Old Dog Tray was an ode to Foster's dog, an Irish setter given to him by a family friend, and Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair was inspired by Stephen's wife, Jane. Other texts referred to his daughter, Marion, or to some aspect of society on which he wanted to comment.

On the other hand, Foster also wrote about subjects he about which he was not completely familiar. Some regions of the country that he never have seen inspired some of Foster's songs. My Old Kentucky Home may have been originated with his visit to his cousin's Kentucky home, but there is no evidence that that he made a this trip. The only known voyage Foster made into the South was a riverboat trip to New Orleans. In the case of Old Folks at Home, Foster wrote the song about the South with no particular place in mind. His sketch of the piece reads, "Way down upon the Pedee River" (Howard 191). The evolution of the river name is interesting because of Stephen's indifference. Morrison Foster writes in his biography about Stephen, "One day in 1851, Stephen came into my office, on the bank of the Monongahela, Pittsburgh, and said to me, 'What is a good name of two syllables for a Southern River? I want to it use in this new song of Old Folks at Home.' I asked him how Yazoo would do. 'Oh,' said he, 'that has been used before.' I then suggested Pedee. 'Oh, pshaw,' he replied, 'I won't have that.' I then took down an atlas from the top of my desk and opened the map of the United States. We both looked over it and my finger stopped at the 'Swanee' . . . 'That's it, that's it exactly,' exclaimed he delightedly, as he wrote the name down; and the song was finished." (Howard 191)Considering that Foster had never visited the region, it is amazing that this song achieved such lasting fame and captured the sentiment of the South so well that Florida made it the state song.

Stephen Foster's songs are written in the style of American popular music. This style was the precursor of Gershwin, musical theater and other styles; it was distinctly American, and he was influenced by his surroundings. "The voices Stephen heard were those of the minstrel shows, the singing and dancing of Negroes on the wharves of the Ohio River, and the sentimental songs of mid-century that were carried through the country by the "singing family troupes," and were sung by demure young ladies who played the accompaniments on square pianos covered with brocade and lace." (Foster Treasury 13)His music was simple, and many scholars find it unworthy of analysis. The melodies are uncomplicated and lie in an easily singable range, usually one about one octave, and the harmonies are similarly simple. Foster rarely used any chords other than the tonic, dominant or subdominant, and these chords were almost always in root position. Most of his pieces are strophic, although he ventured into writing a few through-composed pieces.

In 1864, Stephen Collins Foster died at the age of thirty-seven; his good fortune had disappeared. His wife had left him. He was living in poverty because he had made unwise business decisions and because he had spent so much money satisfying his alcoholic cravings. His death was a tragic one. After being sick for a few days, Foster awoke one day in a drunken state, arose from his bed, and fell on his basin. He had a large cut on his neck and face, and when a doctor arrived to take care of him, the doctor sewed the wounds with black thread.[2] Three days later, Foster died.

Although much of Stephen Foster's music is shunned now because of racist sentiment, a dozen or so tunes continue to be widely popular. This music can be heard sung by Bugs Bunny or any number of people. The tunes were equally popular while Foster was alive. He was the first American composer to achieve such widespread fame. "Stephen Foster's music . . . seems to be all things to all people-from the crowd at Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby Day to a lone Caribbean immigrant riding the New York City subway-and it has been so for a century and a half" (Emerson 13). The simple yet attractive melodies and harmonies appeal to a wide audience; they are especially appropriate for people with little or no singing training. These melodies became the folksongs that America was lacking.

[1] Some of Stephen Foster's most famous songs include, but are not limited to Old Folks at Home; My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night; Camptown Races; Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair; Oh! Susanna; Ring de Banjo; Open Thy Lattice, Love; Old Dog Tray; Gentle Annie; Beautiful Dreamer; Under the Willow She's Sleeping; and Massa's in de Cold Ground.

[2] Black thread was apparently unusual. According to Mr. Cooper, a close friend of Stephen's, the doctor used black thread because it was the only thread he could find. Cooper saw this action as one of incompetence.
Bibliography

Austin, William W. "Susanna," "Jeanie," and "The Old Folks at Home": The Songs of Stephen C. Foster from His Time to Ours. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975.

Chase, Gilbert. America's Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Emerson, Ken. Doo-dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Foster, Stephen Collins. American Dreamer: Songs of Stephen Foster. Thomas Hapson, baritone. CDC 0777 7 54621 2 8.

---. Songs, Compositions and Arrangements. Ed. Foster Hall Reproductions. Josiah Kirby Lilly: Indianapolis, Indiana, 1933.

---. Songs of Stephen Foster Prepared for School and General Use. Ed. Will Earhart and Edward B. Birge. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1953.

---. A Treasury of Stephen Collins Foster. New York: Random House, Inc., 1946.

Hamm, Charles. Music in the New World. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1983.

Hitchcock, H. Wiley. Music in the United States. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1988.

---. "Stephen Collins Foster." The Grove Dictionary of American Music. Ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie. 4 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1986.

Howard, John Tasker. Stephen Foster, America's Troubadour. New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1943.

Key, Susan. "Sound and Sentimentality: Nostalgia in the songs of Stephen Foster." American Music 13:2 (Summer 1995): 145-166.

Milligan, Harold Vincent. Stephen Collins Foster: A Biography. New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1920.