An American Romantic: The Music of Stephen Foster for Harp - PHH 054

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan, and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want the way they want. But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, I, although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show. Stephen Foster is often referred to as the father of American music or America's first songwriter, neither of which is strictly true. However, Stephen Foster's extensive output of songs and the strength of their popularity more than 150 years later attests to the powerful connection his music creates. The homespun appeal of his words and music evoke gentle images of family and home, love and longing that are in sharp contrast to his more difficult reality. In fact, there are many ironical contradictions between his music and his life. His songs, for instance, paint vivid pictures of life in the south, but Foster never lived there and only visited there once. His music was a staple in music hall minstrel shows. But Foster himself became an ardent abolitionist, and his life came to a close not with the old folks at home, but alone in Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Nonetheless, his music is filled with singable melodies, uncomplicated harmonies, and a romantic sentiment that not only still but touches the hearts of listeners, but is perfectly suited to the harp. And on this Memorial Day, I couldn't think of a more fitting composer to pay tribute to. So on today's show, I'm going to discuss and play for you three songs by Stephen Foster. Two of these are less familiar ones that I believe are worthy of more attention. The third is a very familiar one, and I will share my insights about Stephen Foster's music and give you some tips for playing it well with the right stylistic touches to make it sound authentic but fresh and beautiful. Also, I wanted to make it a little bit easier for you to play some of Stephen Foster's music yourself, so I've created PDFs of all three of the arrangements I'm playing for you today, and I will tell you how you can get them at the end of today's show. But my goal today is really to give you an inside look at this totally American music and the man who wrote it. So let's begin by imagining yourself back in 1826. July 4, 1826, to be precise.

Yes, Stephen Foster was born on July 4, 18, 1826, a really significant date. Of course, it was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the day that two former presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, died. So here's, you know, the great American songwriter being born that very same day. He was born in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania. Now, Lawrenceville is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, but at the time, Lawrenceville wasn't so much a neighborhood of Pittsburgh as its own, own community. And in fact, Lawrenceville was founded by Stephen Foster's father. Stephen Foster's father was an interesting character, William Barkley Foster. He was a businessman, a dry goods merchant. His father was actually one of the founders of Canonsburg Academy, which is now Washington and Jefferson College.

But William himself was a Pennsylvania state legislator, a very prominent citizen, and he founded the community of Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania. He named it after James Lawrence, who was a naval hero in the War of 1812. You might not have heard of James Lawrence, but you have heard his most famous quote, which was, don't give up the ship. That was James Lawrence. So Stephen Foster's father was very notable, very prom in the community, and it enabled Steven to have a pretty privileged childhood. Stephen was one of 10 children. He was the youngest of 10. He had three older sisters and six older brothers, and one of his brothers. Morrison wrote a biography of Stephen, which is how we have much of the information about Stephen Foster's life. It's probably sort of not terribly objective and perhaps glosses over some things that might not be so flattering or that Foster's family might not want especially publicized, but nonetheless, it's a really definitive source for information about Stephen Foster.

So Stephen, as the youngest of all these siblings, was.

Pretty well looked after, for sure. He. The story is that at 2 years old, he saw his sister's guitar on the floor and he started picking out harmonies. Now, his sister had a number of musical instruments, but the guitar could be laid on the floor for him, and he would pluck out little, little chords and stuff on the strings. And he called it his itty pisani, I guess, like his little piano. Huh. So that's Stephen already showing musical talent at two. Um, by the time he was six he was, he had a drum, he was marching about. He was whistling tunes to go along with it. And his mother sensed that there was something very original in him. Now, I know mothers say that about all their kids, but. But in Stephen's case, I guess it proved to be true. And the following year when Steve. When Steven was just 7, he and his mother went to a music store in Pittsburgh and Stephen played a flageolet. It's a member of the. The flute and record family.

And he'd never had any previous experience with a flute or a recorder or anything like that, but he picked it right up and took to it so naturally. And actually the flute became one of Stephen Foster's instruments. He played it all of his life, arranged some of his songs when he first wrote them for flute quartets or flute duos. So the flute became sort of a staple of his life. And. And although he never had formal musical instruction or instruction in composition, he was really helped by a German music dealer who was in Pittsburgh who sort of took him under his wing and helped him learn some of the. The important points of music. But Stephen had a long way to go before he became a professional songwriter. Now he had a number of jobs, his schooling. He had a classical education at Canonsburg Academy, of course, and some other schools. Went to college for a year, didn't care for it and left and, and went to work. He had a number of jobs, different kinds of things. In 1845, he was working at a cotton mill, checking cotton bales as they were rolled up from the steamboats onto the wharf. Two years later he was working as a bookkeeper for one of those. Those companies. Went back to, to Pittsburgh after traveling around some in 1850. And he was deciding at this point, I mean, you know, 1850, still a young man, but. But this was the time. And he gave his whole attention to the study of the composition of music. Locking himself in a room in his parents house and not ad anyone other than his mother. Now, he'd already written quite a bit of music at this time. He composed his first song when he was 14. That was the Tioga Waltz. And he played it along with three other student flutists, perhaps a pianist. He had arranged it for flute quartet.

At 16, his first song was published, Open Thy Lattice Love. And so that was definitely a pivotal moment in, in his life because after that it was all about publishing his music. So he had written many, many songs by the time we got to this 1850 date. And although he was locking himself in his room and dedicating himself to his music, somehow he managed to find time for something else, because that same year, he was married to Jane McDowell, his beloved Genie, as in Genie with the light brown hair. So they were married in 1850. 1850. Well, the following year, I guess, they had a daughter born Marian. And 1852, another pivotal year in Stephen Foster's life, because finally, he and Jeanne took a trip, a boat trip, steamboat trip to New Orleans, traveling from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. And this was the first time that Stephen Foster had been in the South. Imagine this. He'd written all these songs that were so evocative of the south, right? Susanna was already popular by this time. Many of the songs that he'd written about the South, a man who'd never been further south than apparently Louisville, Kentucky. So he'd never been further south. This was his big trip to New Orleans. And the highlight of that trip, at least as it's recorded, is that on the way back, they stopped in Bardstown, Kentucky, where he played his song, which is now known as My Old Kentucky Home. It had had a different title, but Stephen Foster changed the title later, figuring that it might get some more attention. And, of course, My Old Kentucky Home is the Kentucky song now. So it certainly was a good move on his part.

But after that, things started to get difficult in Steven's household, and he moved to New York. He was actually living in Hoboken for a while, and the whole Foster family had moved to Hoboken, which is kind of interesting when you think about it. He was living truly just blocks away from what many years later would be Frank Sinatra's boyhood home. So, you know, another great Hoboken artist right there. And they were living just blocks from each other. So just interesting little connection. But Stephen Foster's last four years were spent in New York City. He was working closely with George Cooper, who wrote many of the words for some of. You know, wrote words for many of Foster's songs. Not for all of them, of course, but for a number of them. And.

Foster contracted a fever. Whether it was flu, nobody's quite sure. There's not really good correspondence from this time. But he fell ill and somehow injured himself in his hotel room. Once again, there's a lot of speculation about this. Nobody really knows, but it was his writing partner, George Cooper, who found him, had him taken to the hospital, and Foster died there just three days later. He was only 37. Just for a little bit of perspective here, Mozart died at age 35. Another life ended too early. George Gershwin also died at age 39. So, you know, it's. It's just, you know, one of those things that you just sort of, you know, think about a little bit of perspective. So Stephen Foster died January 13th of 1864. And one of those songs written in those. In those last years of his life was Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair. The words were so. So lovely, so sentimental, like much of Foster's music. Right. And, you know, so what. What words do we have? He wrote these words, by the way. I dream of Jeanne with the light brown hair Born like a vapor on the summer air I see her tripping where the bright streams play Happy as the daisies that dance on her way Many were the wild notes her merry voice would pour Many were the blithe birds that warbled them o' er oh, I dream of Genie with the light brown hair Floating like a vapor on the soft summer air.

That's one of his most familiar songs, certainly one of his loveliest. And I would like to play that for you now. Would you give it just a listen here, and I'll come back and talk a little bit about it after.

It's such a beautiful melody, isn't it? Just so simple, so clear, so sentimental, and it's a song.

Stephen Foster's music, almost exclusively, was meant to be sung. And of course, when you play it, you have to keep that in mind. And we'll talk about that in just a little bit. But I want to talk about the way Stephen Foster worked his songwriting career. It's interesting because there are some really close parallels to the way the songwriting industry works today. I mean, now, Stephen Foster wanted his music to be sung. He needed it to be sung. And as the only way he had of getting the music out to the world, right. There weren't recordings was through publishing. His music had to be published. So what he would do as a professional was he would seek out the people he wanted to sing his songs because they were the ones that were going to help him sell his music. I mean, think about it, right? If you have. Well, let's go back to Hoboken for a second. If you had Frank Sinatra sing your song, that song was going to be a hit. So Stephen Foster was doing much the same thing. He was working with singers that he knew already had an audience, knowing that if this song was on their program, it was going to become popular. There are some songs that we know to be Stephen Foster's that were originally attributed to other writers and other singers, particularly just because they were the ones that had access to it and first got it out to the public. So it, you know, there are some, there, there were some copyright disputes with the publishers, nothing really serious. But, you know, it took a lot of work for Stephen Foster to make sure that he got credit for the things that were his. But in, in essence, as a professional songwriter, in fact, he is often credited with being America's first fully professional songwriter. He needed performances to sell his music. So what he would do would be to seek out these people, have little test performances. He'd find the people that he wanted. They were his friends, he knew them, go to them, say, look, I wrote this song and I think it would be great for you. Would you mind singing it before I publish it and, you know, tell me what you think of it and thereby guarantee sales from the publications as his friends, you know, adopted the songs and, and took them for their own programs.

One of the singers that Stephen Foster worked with for a number of years was Edwin Pierce Christie, also known, his more professional name was E.P. christie. Now he was the founder of the, the original Christie's Minstrels. Those of you who grew up in, in the 60s and 70s might remember the new Christie Minstrels. But the, but Christie Minstrels was a blackface minstrel group. Now you have to. Let's put this in perspective here. Stephen Foster's family, although they were northerners, they were not abolitionists. But Stephen Foster did befriend one of the most prominent abolitionists in Pittsburgh and became an abolitionist, him even writing an abolitionist themed play.

So you. I think that we can understand Foster's music from the turmoil of the time and the language of the time. And while there's much that is not acceptable from our 21st century perspective, I think that there's a lot that we can understand in terms of the historical perspective and when he was writing. So Foster had much of his music not only sung by EP Christie or in Christie's minstrel shows, but he wrote many compositions specifically for E.P. christie to sing. In fact, it was after a benefit performance in Cincinnati, Ohio, that the group began to specialize in performances of Foster's works. And in fact, Stephen Foster sold his song Old Folks at Home to Christy for his exclusive use. But Stephen Foster's output is huge. He wasn't just writing for E.P. christie, he was writing songs for schools. He was writing songs for.

That supported drinking. He wrote songs that supported temperance. This was a man who needed to make his living. And he wasn't necessarily particular about exactly who he wrote for. Of course, he wrote so many Civil War Songs. And we'll be looking at one of those a little bit later. But.

The hymns for church, including ones called. There was one called the Pure, the Bright, the Beautiful one called over the River. He also arranged many works by Mozart or Beethoven, Donizetti, Strauss and. And Schubert for flute and guitar, his two instruments, if you remember. Right. So there was quite a bit of output here. I mean, he wrote a lot, um, and so his music was everywhere, and that's where he needed it to be, everywhere. One of the. The publications that. That helped Stephen Foster immensely by publishing many of his pieces was called the Clark's School Visitor. It was a publication for school children and, And Stephen Foster had a number of songs published in that little pamphlet.

One of them is one of the songs that. That a lot of people don't know. I think it's lovely and I want to bring it to your attention. Now. The song is called Beautiful Child of Song. Remember this was going in a children's publication and think about that, that 19th century aesthetic and the. The sentiment around school children and children singing, and you'll get a little bit of the idea of this song. Let me play it for you first, and then I'll review the lyrics with you. It's a lovely melody, a very simple and elegant little tune with a childlike simplicity. Beautiful child of song.

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You can hear the childlike simplicity in there, can't you? It's very sentimental, it's very sweet. And let me just give you the. The words to one of the verses. Stephen Foster did write the words and the music to this piece, and the words are this. Come. I am longing to hear the beautiful child of song Come though the hearts that are near thee around thee devotedly throng Come. I am longing to hear the beautiful child of song I'm longing to hear the carol thy lay Sweet child of song Definitely sentimental, just a little bit on the mushy side for those of us in the 21st century, but. But incredibly sweet and lovely and a perfect little tune to play. So. But speaking of playing these Stephen Foster tunes, one of the difficulties for us as harpists might already have occurred to you. These are songs, and a singer spins out a song with a beautiful elongated melody and with all the poignancy of. Of the words. And we don't have that. We don't have a legato the way a singer does. And we can't sing the words to. Well, I mean, we could, but as harpists, we're just playing the melody and the words are in A listener's ear. So how do we make them sound the way Stephen Foster wanted them to sound? Well, I think that part of the unique quality of his melodies is that they're very lyrical in themselves. They're very well balanced melodies. They're simple, and they could be sung and sung beautifully and sung by a singer who was professionally trained or not. But because the melodies themselves speak with or without the words, the music has power. And its power is in its purity is the word I'm going to use. The melodies are pure. The harmonies are pure. They're not complicated. There's nothing difficult here. And that's what can make them a little bit challenging to play, because they're so homespun, because they're sentimental, because we associate them with sort of parlor performers, right? You know, the. The. The family sitting around and. And someone's singing and, you know, it can make it very difficult to play there. There's not. There aren't a lot of notes, right? No barrage of flashy arpeggios to hide what you're doing. You just need to play and express yourself as fully as you can through this minimal number of mo of notes. So when you play these things, I think you have to be very conscious of the melody. You want to support it with the accompaniment. If you're making your own arrangement or playing somebody else's, the accompaniment should support it, but not overwhelm it, because it's all about the melody. And I think that whether you like to sing in front of people or not, singing the melody to yourself, with or without the words, is a great way to find the inflection in this music. Consider also what a singer would do, and you've heard me do that in a couple places in the playing that I already did for you on this episode, where the melody just breathes and holds that note at the top and then goes on.

The arrangements that I've done have Fermatas in them, and they're Foster's Fermatas, they're not mine. That's the way that music was supposed to go. It has.

That little bit of a. It could be a sob, it could be a heartbeat, it could be an intake of breath. But that little bit of sentimentality that those Fermatas represent, and we need as harpists to observe them, because the depth and the power of these pieces comes from the honest emotion that is conveyed through here. Remember that although Stephen Foster was writing them and being concerned with his career, that doesn't make the music less honest. It doesn't make it less touching or less true.

The professionalism and the tactics that he used to get that music to the people. That was how he was able to make his music communicate.

By getting it out into the world. But the music itself is nothing more than a candid expression of sincere emotion. Just bear in mind that these melodies were meant to be sung. So be conscious of the arch of the melody, the phrasing and the breathing. Don't, don't be shy about putting the emotion that you feel into these pieces. Now, I have one more piece I'm going to play for you. Not one of Foster's best known treasures, but a treasure nonetheless. This is a Civil War era piece and you can tell that just from the title. The title is Willie has Gone to the War. Now, Willie, I don't think. I think the name Willie here was a stand in for anyone's son or brother or husband or father who might have gone to the war. Stephen Foster himself had. His father and his brother were both named William or one of his brothers anyway. So this very well could have been the reason he chose that name. He did a number of Willie songs. But Willie has Gone to the War is another very affecting song. It goes between the pride of Willie being gone and the fear and the terror and the longing that he might not come back. This song was written in 1863 and these words are by George Cooper, he's the writing partner of Stephen Foster. And you remember that if this song was written in 1863, Stephen Foster died in January of 1864. So this was close to the end of his life. So here are the words. The bluebird is singing his lay to all the sweet flowers of the dale the wild bee is roaming at play and soft is the sigh of the gale I stray by the brookside alone where oft we have wandered before and weep for my loved one, my own My Willie has gone to the war Willie has gone to the war Willie, Willie, my loved one, my own Willie has gone to the war Willie, Willie, my loved one is gone Let me play the song for you while those lyrics are fresh in your mind.

Could you hear the drum beats? Could you hear those distant drums calling Willie to the war? And could you hear the sobs and the sighing and the fear, the longing in the singers heart coming through? There's so much in that song and there's so much of it that is so true for us today. So that's. Those are the three Stephen Foster songs that I wanted to share with you on this Memorial Day. I hope that you Spend some of your Memorial Day remembering those who have served and died to bring peace to the world, to help give us our freedom here and around the world.

On next week's show, we're talking about something completely different Next month. June, which starts in just a couple of days from now.

Marks the 10th anniversary harp mastery and in particular the 10th anniversary of the Harp Mastery blog, which I started writing in June of 2012. And I've been thinking a lot about sort of my accidental journey into blogging and what has happened because of that, and sort of the fear and trepidation I felt around starting it. And so on next week's podcast, we're looking into overcoming fears and doubts and misgivings and thinking about the wonderful places that it can lead you. Because whether or not it leads you into blogging or podcasting or anything else, that's not the point. We all have fears and doubts and misgivings about our harp playing all the time, right? And being able to overcome them, being able to move through them, and is truly an act of courage. But it's the way that you find what lies beyond that. And there are ways to move beyond those things. And that's what I'd like to talk with you about on next week's show. Now, I did promise you that I would tell you how to get the the PDF arrangements of the music that I played for you on today's show. You will find a link in the show notes to our sheet music store and what's really cool there. The the three songs are published in two different publications. Willie has Gone to the War is published separately and there's a version for petal harp and two different keys of versions for lever or petal harp.

And then Beautiful Child of Song and I Dream of or Dream of Jeie. Right. Genie with the Light Brown Hair is the name of the song Genie with the Light Brown Hair. Those two songs are published together and the arrangements work for pedal or lever harp. It's simple music, right? There aren't a lot of pedal changes or lever changes or anything. It's pretty simple and. And I certainly hope that you enjoy them. You will find links in the show notes and if you buy one of those, you'll get the other one at 50% off, I believe so. So there's a coupon code there waiting for you and you'll find that when you get to the store, I believe it's there for you. So use the links in the show notes and you'll get that special discount. Thank you so much for listening today. Once again, happy Memorial Day to all of you who.

Are celebrating and remembering on this special day here in the United States. I look forward to seeing you on next week's show. And remember to share your music. It's a wonderful way to keep us all connected and especially today. All right. I look forward to talking with you again next week. Bye. Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your Harp happiness every day. See you next time.