Topic: Folk Music Revival
The American folk-song revival began, in part, as a reaction against the migration of people from southern and eastern Europe that began in the 1880s after technological improvements in steamships made voyages by the poor economically viable. [1]
In 1913, Peter Dykema headed a committee within the Music Supervisors National Conference tasked with identifying songs that should be sung in every public school. [2] Most of the eighteen were nineteenth-century sentimental songs, with two by Stephen Foster. [3] There also were three Scots [4] and one Irish song. [5] The implicit message was people from the British Isles could revive or perpetuate their musical traditions, but everyone else needed to abandon their’s.
A different edition was published in 1914. [6] Five songs were eliminated: one shanty and one religious song were replaced with others of the same type. [7] The post-Civil War popular songs disappeared, and songs from England and Wales took their place. [8]
German content was disguised. One of the rounds was "Oh, How Lovely Is the Evening." [9] Friedrich Wilhelm Kücken’s 1827 setting for a romantic poem by Helmina von Chézy, [10] was identified as a Thuringian folk-song in 1913. "How Can I Leave Thee" was little different from Foster’s lyrics. Michael Mark said the 1914 edition included a translation of "O, Tannenbaum," but didn’t indicate if it was the Christmas song or the tune for some other words. [11]
General teachers, not trained musicians, were the ones who led singing in most schools, and publishers were eager to accommodate their needs. [12] Norman Hall provided them with a larger collection in 1915. [13] He said his purpose was to offer "not the popular song of the day but the songs that have stood the test of time: the songs of true sentiment, of school days, and early childhood, folk songs and national songs." [14] During World War I, he said his goal was "to amalgamate our people" with "our home and folk songs." [15]
Of the 166 items in The Golden Book of Favorite Songs, the nine labeled as Scots and the six identified as Irish were clearly identifiable as national songs, while the three Italian and eighteen German ones only were identified as tunes. Several were classic pieces, [16] but some were by Abt, Kücken, Nägeli, and Silcher. [17] "O Tannenbaum was not identified as the melody for "Michigan, My Michigan." [18]
Folklorists would deny lyrics by Robert Burns and Thomas Moore were authentic folk texts, but that missed the point. Dykema and Hall were seeking to define a common American song repertoire, and, to them, there was no difference between people who lived in towns where Dykema taught [19] and those living in the country where Hall advertized his wares. [20]
End Notes
1. The problem for steamships crossing the Atlantic was the need to carry enough coal to make the trip. After Alfred Holt solved this problem in 1865, other inventions in the 1870s made long-range shipping economically possible. [21] The final step was the organization of corporations that shipped from Liverpool, [22] Hamburg, [23] Genoa, and Naples. [24]
2. James A. Keene. "Peter Dykema." 100–119 in Giants of Music Education. Centennial, Colorado: Glenbridge Publishing, 2010. 113. The Music Supervisors National Conference collection was Standard Songs: Eighteen Songs for Community Singing. Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1913. I couldn’t locate a copy of the songbook; contents are from WorldCat entry.
3. "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Old Folks at Home"
4. "Annie Laurie," "Auld Lang Syne," and "Flow, Gently Sweet Afton." The lyrics of the last two were by Robert Burns.
5. "The Minstrel Boy." The lyrics were by Thomas Moore.
6. Music Supervisors National Conference. Eighteen Songs for Community Singing. Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1914.
7. "Bow, Ye Winds, Heigh Ho" was replaced with "A Capital Ship." "Come, Thou Almighty King" replaced "Sweet and Low."
8. I couldn’t locate a copy of the songbook; contents are from Michael L. Mark. A Concise History of American Music Education. London: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2008. 94. The Welsh song was "Ash Grove."
9. According to Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, the melody was written in 1826 by Christian Johann Philipp Schulz. (Letter to author, 20 December 1976.)
10. German Wikipedia. "Friedrich Wilhelm Kücken." The German title was "Ach, wie ist’s möglich dann."
11. Mark. 94. James Fuld discovered the melody first appeared in 1799 with the words "Es lebe hoch" in a collection produced by a German nationalist and youth leader, Rudolf Zacharias Becker. The "Tannenbaum" text was published in 1820. [25]
12. Clarence C. Birchard published the collections. He had been involved with public school music publishers since the 1890s when his employer, Ginn and Company, organized summer training schools for which it supplied the materials. [26] He founded his own company in 1901. [27] He later was quoted as saying: "We are teaching music not to make musicians but to make Americans" [28]
13. N. H. Aitch. The Golden Book of Favorite Songs. Chicago: Hall and McCreary, 1915. Aitch was a pseudonym for Hall. He used edition numbers for print runs. In 1923, the book was revised by a team of music educators led by John Beattie.
14. Aitch. 3. Apart from questions of taste, the primary reason Hall and other textbook publishers were not interested in "the popular song of the day" was the copyright law of 1909 that required publishers to pay royalties to reprint pieces. The cost became more onerous in 1917 when Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., ruled anyone playing a piece in public had to pay for the privilege. [29]
15. Norman H. Hall. Quoted by "‘National Week of Song Will Amalgamate American People.’" Musical America 29:42:26 April 1919. 42.
16. It included Georg Friedrich Händel’s "Hallelujah Chorus" and "Largo." The first was from the Messiah, a 1741 oratorio. [30] The second was from "Ombra mai fu," an aria in the 1738 opera Serse or Xerxes. [31]
17. Nägeli was discussed in the post for 14 April 2019. Abt and Silcher were mentioned in the post for 21 April 2019.
18. The rest of the songs were, like Hall said, sentimental, religious, Civil War, and patriotic songs, or songs specific to the classroom. Five were by Foster.
19. By 1913, Dykema had taught in Aurora, Illinois, and New York City. [32]
20. Hall began as a textbook seller in Chicago in the 1890s. [33] He had established Hall and McCreary in the city by 1905. [34] Nothing more is known about him, and I found nothing on McCreary. His partner in publishing the first Golden Book was Frederick A. Owen of Danville, New York. He offered a correspondence school for teachers in 1889, and began publishing the Normal Instructor in 1891 to provide teachers with materials and ideas. [35]
21. Wikipedia. "Steamship."
22. "The Departure Gates: How Your Ancestors Came to America." Ancestry website. 5 July 2016.
23. "Hamburg-Amerika Line." Immigration to the United States website.
24. "Departure Gates.
25. James J. Fuld. The Book of World-Famous Music. New York: Dover Publications, 2000 edition. 355–356.
26. Edward Bailey Birge. History of Public School Music in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Music Educators National Conference, 1966.
27. "Birchard." International Music Score Library Project website.
28. Brian Cardany. "Clarence C. Birchard." Arizona State University website.
29. Wikipedia. "Copyright Act of 1909."
30. Wikipedia. "Messiah (Handel)."
31. Wikipedia. "Ombra mai fu."
32. Wikipedia. "Peter W. Dykema."
33. Advertisement following page 247. Western Teacher 2:247+:March 1894.
34. Advertisement. Publishers Weekly 66:1904:28 January 1905.
35. "Frederick A. Owen (1867 – 1935)." Danville Area Historical Society blog.
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