M4 - Music and Patriotism

author of “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania” + topic

John Dickinson

* Britain seemed intent on taking away the colonists’ few existing rights

1768 Massachusetts House of Representatives drafted

“Circular Letter”

“Circular Letter” declared

Townshend Acts were unconstitutional

British response to “Circular Letter” + House response to British

ordered Massachusetts government to rescind letter + House voted 92-17 opposing that act

Why was 45 celebrated?

it was the issue number of an English newspaper that had outspokenly criticized King George III in 1763

Who wrote the “45” newspaper?

John Wilkes

Dickinson’s “Circular Letter” song nickname + tune

“song for American Freedom” + “Heart of Oak”

origin of “Heart of Oak”

commemorate 3 British victories in 7 Years’ War

“Heart of Oak” original composer + words from

William Boyce + David Garrick

“Heart of Oak” popularity

still sung in navies of Great Britain + Canada

“The Liberty Song” was which version of Dickinson’s poem

2nd

How did Dickinson feel about his first version of “Heart of Oak”

“composed in great haste” and was “rather too bold.”

Dickinson used 8 lines of whose poem in “Heart of Oak”

Arthur Lee

Who published the quote “the universally admired American Song of Liberty.”

Boston Evening-Post

Who watched 350 Sons of Liberty sing “The Liberty Song” in public?

John Adams

* “This is cultivating the Sensations of Freedom.”

Silverman noted what about “The Liberty Song”

“the first set of verses by an American to be learned by heart by a large, intercolonial audience.”

aspects of “The Liberty Song”

not exceedingly radical

* will pay their taxes
* if treated as “free men”
* toast to king’s health
* “united we stand / divided we fall”

“The Liberty Song” form

verse-chorus form

“Steady, friends, steady” is catchy because

Scotch snaps

Boston Almanack editor who announced “the new and favorite LIBERTY SONG, neatly engraved and set to MUSICK for the VOICE, to which are added the words”

Isaac Bickerstaff

Tory rebuttal to Dickinson

“A Parody upon the well known LIBERTY SONG (Said to be in great Vogue at a certain Fortress, where it was compos’d).” AKA “The Parody”

pro-patriot counter-parody of “The Parody”

“The Parody Parodiz’d; or The Massachusetts Liberty Song.”

slang in the bitter Tory parody

* “Bawl” - meaningless noise
* “brat” - child
* “bunter” - prostitute

New-England Psalm-Singer: or American Chorister number of pieces

127

William Billings was apprenticed to be

tanner

What age did Billings start teaching at singing schools?

23

Billings’s wife + where he met her

Lucy Swan + his singing school (she was a student)

Billings’s students formed

Old Stoughton Musical Society

oldest active musical choral society

Old Stoughton Musical Society

Billings hung outside his home in Boston a sign that said

“Billings: Music”

Billings family + end of life

6 kids + music was pirated so he was poor - died in poverty as street cleaner

1st completely original publication by 1 American composer (and collection of American music)

The New-England Psalm-Singer

Billings included the birthplace of his mother in his tunes, which was

Braintree

some canons, such as Billings’s are drawn in a

circle

Who engraved New-England Psalm-Singer frontispiece?

Paul Revere

Who published the New-England Psalm-Singer?

Edes and Gill

3 patriotic Billings pieces

“Freedom”, “Liberty”, “Union”

Billings believed which book was better than the New-England Psalm-Singer

The Singing Master’s Assistant

How many out of 71 pieces were pirated from The Singer Master’s Assistnt?

51

* 44 were not from Billings

tunebook that went through 4 subsequent editions

Billings’s Best

Chester’s main melody/air is in what voice

tenor

* followed by bass then soprano + alto

Billings did not compose chord by chord but

line by line

biggest change to Chester

text

1770 Chester only had

single stanza of poetry

* after popularity, he added four fist-shaking stanzas

William Schuman wove “Chester” into the 3rd movement of his work,

New England Triptych

most popular patriotic song of American Revolution

Chester

Nathaniel Niles sapphic ode name

“The American Hero”

sapphic ode stanza format

3 stanzas of 11 + 1 stanza of 5

“The American Hero” subject matter

Battle of Bunker Hill

Niles issed his ode via

broadside

Andrew Laws’s “A Select Number of Plain Tunes” included which of Niles’s songs

“Bunker Hill. A Sapphick Ode”

Who is given credit for composing the plain tune for “The American Hero”?

Reverend Sylavnnus Ripley (dubious authorship)

When there was no sheet music, singers had to

couple musical notation with ode poetry

Niles’s choice of uncommon syllabic structure led to addition to

“Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads Project” (soloist sings melody alone)

elegiac set piece from The Singing Master’s Assistant

“Lamentation Over Boston”

“Lamentation Over Boston” showed

* recent political events
* Billings development as a composer

New-England Psalm-Singer criticism

bland, predictable harmonies

Billings response to New-England Psalm-Singer criticism

“a piece of Jargon, it being the best piece ever composed . . . from the beginning of time, to and through the endless ages of eternity.”

Billings crammed 30 chords of “Jargon” with

every dissonance (2nds, 7ths, 9ths)

“Jargon” sounds

jazzy

* to 18th century listeners, it may sound crazily discordant

Billings used what dynamics for “Jargon”

forte + fortissimo (very rare amongst Yankee Tunesmiths)

* he was trolling

“Lamentation Over Boston” was written in response to

“Intolerable Acts”

“Lamentation Over Boston” includes paraphrasings from

Bible + local cities (Watertown + Roxbury)

Silverman says “Lamentation Over Boston” what aspect has “cosmic importance”

blending of local place names with biblical names and phrases

“Lamentation Over Boston” lyric changes

* “Boston” - “Zion”
* “Israelites” - “Americans”

Biographer Kimberly Anne Veenstra observes which of Billings’s music is most dramatic

anthems

Billings technique in “Lamentation Over Boston”

word-painting

H. Wiley Hitchcock argues that Billings’s music was

“completely in tune with the society for which it was written. . . . it was accessible to all and enjoyed by all.”

managers of Old American Company

Lewis Hallam Jr. + John Hodgkinson

Why were Lewis Hallam Jr. + John Hodgkinson fretting about an upcoming premiere (Southwark Theater - 1794)?

Hewitt had been attacked 6 months earlier during Tammany

less than a week after Tammany attack,

“violence disrupted a second Old American Company performance . . . when the audience took offense at an actor having the gall to wear the red coat of a British military officer while playing such a character on the stage.”

Southwark Theater (“Theatre in Cedar Street”) attempt to protect orchestra members

erected ring of protective spikes around the players

* one of the on-stage dancers “accidentally fell from the stage during a show and the injuries he suffered from being impaled left him unable to dance for two months.”

orchestra’s role in early America

“waiting music”

* before curtain and intermission

orchestra played music to fill time between

prologue (intro) + main piece (primary play/ballad opera) + after piece (lighter comedy or farce)

editor of Federal Orrery

Robert Treat Paine (wrote text for “Adams and Liberty”)

Robert Treat Paine commended what in his editorial

participants in a 1796 theater riot “for teaching the orchestra and theater managers an important lesson”

writer who opposed Robert Treat Paine quote

“a mob of fifty-to-one” that pelted the orchestra with hurled objects was not a victory, but rather “an outrage, and a most dastardly one.”

Hallam + Hodgkinson solution to fear of audience riots

“medley overture” combining tunes cherished by both political parties

composer chosen by Old American Company for Southwark Theatre premiere

Benjamin Carr

Benjamin Carr career before commission by Old American Company

English immigrant who established successful publishing firm in Philadelphia

Benjamin Carr younger brother name + achievement

Thomas Carr + creator of 1st score for “Star-Spangled Banner”

Anti-Federalists initial name

Federal Republicans

What was the play that “The Federal Overture” premiered for?

The Grecian Daughter

before the Old American Company performed in NY, Carr published

keyboard arrangement of The Federal Overture

only way to enjoy “orchestral” music at home

sheet music for keyboard

When was Carr’s piano arrangement of The Federal Overture discovered again?

1930s

Federal Overture score discovery story

* discovered in vast holdings of avid music collector (didn’t allow for copies to be made)
* score changed hands
* one of later owners allowed facsimile in 1957

Who has The Federal Overture original copy?

New York Public library

Antifederalist tunes in The Federal Overture

“Marseilles March” + “Ca ira” + “La Carmagnole”

Federalist tunes in The Federal Overture

“President’s March” + “Rose Tree”

“La Marseillaise” composer

Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle

“La Marseillaise” original vs. adopted purpose

marching song for Army of the Rhine vs. volunteer battalion sang as they marched into Paris

French Republic new national anthem

“La Marseillaise”

Federalists referred to “La Marseillaise” as

“murderer’s song”

The Federal Overture inclusion of “La Marseillaise” was ___ time it was printed in America

2nd

* Carr printed the first time as a stand-alone version

“official” song of French Revolution

“Ca ira”

“Ca ira” before 1789

instrumental for “Le Carillon national”

Who composed + gave text to “Ca ira”?

Jean-Antoine Becourt (violin) + Ladre (street singer)

Who do the French give credit to for “Ca ira” title phrase?

Ben Franklin

French diplomats were impressed with Franklin’s response to

Valley Forge news

* “That is unfortunate, but it will be fine, it will be fine”