The Voices that Are Gone Themes in Nineteenth-Century American Popular Song

by Finson, Jon W.

• ISBN13: 9780195113822
• ISBN10: 0195113829
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-07-03
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In this unique and readable study, Jon Finson views the mores and values of nineteenth-century Americans as they appear in their popular songs. The author sets forth lyricists' and composers' notions of courtship, technology, death, African Americans, Native Americans, and European ethnicity by grouping songs topically. He goes on to explore the interaction between musical style and lyrics within each topic. The lyrics and changing musical styles present a vivid portrait of nineteenth-century America. The composers discussed in the book range from Henry Russell ("Woodman, Spare That Tree"), Stephen Foster ("Oh! Susanna"), and Dan Emmett ("I Wish I Was in Dixie's Land"), to George M. Cohan and Maude Nugent ("Sweet Rosie O'Grady"), and Gussie Lord Davis ("In the Baggage Coach Ahead"). Readers will recognize songs like "Pop Goes the Weasel," "The Yellow Rose of Texas," "The Fountain in the Park," "After the Ball," "A Bicycle Built for Two," and many others which gain significance by being placed in the larger context of American history.

Author Biography

Jon Finson is Professor of Music and Adjunct Professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Robert Schumann and the Study of Orchestral Composition: The Genesis of the First Symphony (Oxford, 1989) and editor of a forthcoming edition of the songs of Edward Harrigan and David Braham.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
PART I	3	(156)
1. The Distant Beloved: Genteel Romance Before the Civil War	3	(40)
2. Realism and National Industry: Courtship in the Gilded Age	43	(40)
3. Familiar Journey: Protocols of Dying in the Nineteenth Century	83	(39)
4. The Social Faith: Popular Views of Technology	122	(37)
PART II	159	(156)
5. Antebellum Minstrelsy and the Carnivalesque	159	(41)
6. Postbellum Blackface Song: Authenticity and the Minstrel Demon	200	(40)
7. The Romantic Savage: American Indians in the Parlor	240	(30)
8. Out of Many, One? Western European Ethnicity	270	(45)
References	315	(8)
Illustrations, between 176 and 177
Index of Song Titles	323	(7)
Index of Names	330