Parlour music (or parlor music ) is a type of popular music which, as the name suggests, is intended to be performed in the parlours of houses, usually by amateur singers and pianists . Disseminated as sheet music , its heyday came in the 19th century, as a result of a steady increase in the number of households with enough resources to purchase musical instruments and instruction in music, and with the leisure time and cultural motivation to engage in recreational music-making. Its popularity faded in the 20th century as the phonograph record and radio replaced sheet music as the most common means for the spread of popular music.
31-526: Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as "the father of American music", was an American composer known primarily for his parlour and minstrel music during the Romantic period . He wrote more than 200 songs, including " Oh! Susanna ", " Hard Times Come Again No More ", " Camptown Races ", "Old Folks at Home" ("Swanee River") , " My Old Kentucky Home ", " Jeanie with
62-488: A version of "Old Folks at Home" that was titled "Swanee River Rock (Talkin’ ’Bout That River)", which became his first pop hit that November. In the 2000s " Old Folks at Home ", designated the official state song of Florida in 1935, came under attack for what some regarded as offensive terms in the song's lyrics. Changes were made to them with the approval of the Stephen Foster Memorial . The modified song
93-841: Is honored on the University of Pittsburgh campus with the Stephen Foster Memorial , a landmark building that houses the Stephen Foster Memorial Museum, the Center for American Music, as well as two theaters: the Charity Randall Theatre and Henry Heymann Theatre, both performance spaces for Pitt's Department of Theater Arts. It is the largest repository for original Stephen Foster compositions, recordings, and other memorabilia his songs have inspired worldwide. Two state parks are named in Foster's honor:
124-499: Is said to have been an occasional visitor according to his brother, Morrison Foster. The park dedicated a bronze statue in honor of Stephen's work. The Lawrenceville (Pittsburgh) Historical Society, together with the Allegheny Cemetery Historical Association, hosts the annual Stephen Foster Music and Heritage Festival (Doo Dah Days!). Held the first weekend of July, Doo Dah Days! celebrates
155-1001: The Camptown Races – which would provide both the title and setting for events of one of Foster's best-known songs – was located 30 miles (48 km) from Athens and 15 miles (24 km) from Towanda. Foster's education included a brief period at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania , now part of Washington & Jefferson College . His tuition was paid, but he had little spending money. He left Canonsburg to visit Pittsburgh with another student and did not return. Foster married Jane Denny McDowell on July 22, 1850, and they visited New York and Baltimore on their honeymoon. Foster then returned to Pennsylvania and wrote most of his best-known songs: "Camptown Races" (1850), "Nelly Bly" (1850), "Ring de Banjo" (1851), "Old Folks at Home" (known also as "Swanee River", 1851), "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853), "Old Dog Tray" (1853), and "Jeanie with
186-574: The South and visited it only once, during his 1852 honeymoon. Available archival evidence does not suggest that Foster was an abolitionist. Foster's last four years were spent in New York City. There is little information on this period of his life, although family correspondence has been preserved. Foster became sick with a fever in January 1864. Weakened, it is possible he fell in his hotel in
217-835: The Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida , and Stephen C. Foster State Park in Georgia. Both parks are on the Suwannee River . Stephen Foster Lake at Mt. Pisgah State Park in Pennsylvania is named after him. One state park is named in honor of Foster's songs, My Old Kentucky Home State Park , a historic mansion formerly named Federal Hill, located in Bardstown, Kentucky , where Foster
248-501: The American People" was selected from entries submitted by 25,000 people. As described by Peter van der Merwe (1984), in contrast to the chord-based classical music era , 'parlour music' features melodies which are harmonically-independent or not determined by the harmony. This produces parlour chords, many of them added tone chords if not extended such as the dominant thirteenth, added sixth, and major dominant ninth. Rather,
279-824: The Bowery and cut his neck; he may also have sought to take his own life. His writing partner George Cooper found him still alive but lying in a pool of blood. Foster died in Bellevue Hospital three days later at the age of 37. His leather wallet contained a scrap of paper that simply said, "Dear friends and gentle hearts", along with 37 cents in Civil War scrip and three pennies. Other biographers describe different accounts of his death. Historian JoAnne O'Connell speculates in her biography, The Life and Songs of Stephen Foster , that Foster may have killed himself. As O'Connell and musicologist Ken Emerson have noted, several of
310-474: The Heart" by Claribel (Mrs. Charlotte Barnard), " Oh Promise Me " by Reginald de Koven , " I Love You Truly " and " A Perfect Day " by Carrie Jacobs-Bond , and "The Rosary" by Ethelbert Nevin . " Just Awearyin' for You " (see insets) exemplifies the parlor song. Note the sentimental lyrics by Frank Lebby Stanton , the plaintive but well matched tune by Carrie Jacobs-Bond , and the conscious artistry (including
341-466: The Light Brown Hair ", " Old Black Joe ", and " Beautiful Dreamer ", and many of his compositions remain popular today. There are many biographies of Foster, but details differ widely. Among other issues, Foster wrote very little biographical information himself, and his brother Morrison Foster may have destroyed much information that he judged to reflect negatively upon the family. Foster
SECTION 10
#1732772992636372-517: The Light Brown Hair" (1854), written for his wife Jane. Many of Foster's songs were used in the blackface minstrel shows popular at the time. He sought to "build up taste...among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order". However, Foster's output of minstrel songs declined after the early 1850s, as he turned primarily to parlor music . Many of his songs had Southern themes , yet Foster never lived in
403-853: The Pittsburgh Art Commission have not reached an agreement as to who will be commemorated or if the statue will stay in the Schenley Plaza location. The musicologist Ken Emerson has suggested the presence of racism in some of Foster's lyrics. Music scores Parlour music Many of the earliest parlour songs were transcriptions for voice and keyboard of other music. Thomas Moore 's Irish Melodies , for instance, were traditional (or "folk") tunes supplied with new lyrics by Moore, and many arias from Italian operas, particularly those of Bellini and Donizetti , became parlour songs, with texts either translated or replaced by new lyrics. Various other genres were also performed in
434-499: The clarinet, guitar, flute, and piano. In 1839, his brother William was serving his apprenticeship as an engineer at Towanda and thought that Stephen would benefit from being under the supervision of Henry Kleber (1816–1897), a German-born music dealer in Pittsburgh. Under Kleber, Stephen was exposed to music composition . Together the pair studied the work of Mozart , Beethoven , Weber , Mendelssohn and Schubert . The site of
465-794: The day, but shorter and simpler in structure and making fewer technical demands on singer and accompanist. Stephen Foster 's " Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway " and "Come with Thy Sweet Voice Again" are early and elegant examples of the genre. The high point of the parlour song came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during the Victorian era in North America and the British Isles. Songs of this genre became more complex and sophisticated in their melodic and harmonic vocabulary, and in addition to their continuing use in
496-638: The inclusion of his hymns in hymnals ended by 1910. Some of the hymns are "Seek and ye shall find", "All around is bright and fair, While we work for Jesus", and "Blame not those who weep and sigh". Several rare Civil War-era hymns by Foster were performed by The Old Stoughton Musical Society Chorus, including "The Pure, The Bright, The Beautiful", "Over The River", "Give Us This Day", and "What Shall The Harvest Be?". He also arranged many works by Mozart , Beethoven , Donizetti , Lanner , Weber and Schubert for flute and guitar. Foster usually sent his handwritten scores directly to his publishers. The publishers kept
527-680: The life and music of one of the most influential songwriters in America's history. His home in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania, still remains on Penn Avenue nearby the Stephen Foster Community Center . A 1900 statue of Foster by Giuseppe Moretti was located in Schenley Plaza , in Pittsburgh, from 1940 until 2018. On the unanimous recommendation of the Pittsburgh Art Commission,
558-554: The melodies are organized through parlour modes, variants of the major mode with the third, sixth, and seventh emphasized through modal frames such as the mediant-octave mode, which uses the third as a floor and ceiling note, its less common variants the pseudo-phrygian, in which the seventh and often fifth are given prominence, and submediant-octave mode. Some mediant-octave mode examples are: [REDACTED] [REDACTED] George Cooper (poet) George Cooper (May 14, 1840, New York City – September 26, 1927, New York City)
589-612: The music of the Italian, Scots-Irish , and German residents. He composed his first song when he was 14 and entitled it the "Tioga Waltz". The first song that he had published was "Open thy Lattice Love" (1844). He wrote songs in support of drinking, such as "My Wife Is a Most Knowing Woman", "Mr. and Mrs. Brown", and "When the Bowl Goes Round", while also composing temperance songs such as "Comrades Fill No Glass for Me" or "The Wife". Foster also authored many church hymns, although
620-446: The operatic trilled "r"s) by singer Elizabeth Spencer . In addition to dissemination as individual pieces of sheet music, parlour songs were also collected into anthologies and sold in this format. The most notable collection was Heart Songs, first published in 1909 by Chapple Publishing Company of Boston and repeatedly revised and republished for the following several decades. The publisher claimed that this selection of songs "Dear to
651-484: The parlour, including patriotic selections, religious songs, and pieces written for the musical stage. Excerpts from blackface minstrel shows , arranged for voice and keyboard, were particularly popular. Also, a handful of the better-known art songs , such as Schubert's "Serenade," became part of the parlour repertory. Lyrics written for parlour songs often have sentimental themes, such as love songs or poetic meditations. Fantastical or exuberant themes were also common, as
SECTION 20
#1732772992636682-568: The parlour, they were also often sung in public recitals by professional singers. Characteristic and popular parlour songs include "Home, Sweet Home," composed by Henry R. Bishop with lyrics by John Howard Payne, "The Old Arm Chair" by Henry Russell , "When the Swallows Homeward Fly" by Franz Abt , "Kathleen Mavourneen" composed by Frederick Nicholls Crouch with lyrics by Marion Crawford, " The Lost Chord " composed by Arthur Sullivan with lyrics by Adelaide A. Proctor , "Take Back
713-575: The sheet music manuscripts and did not give them to libraries nor return them to his heirs. Some of his original, hand-written scores were bought and put into private collections and the Library of Congress . " My Old Kentucky Home " is the official state song of Kentucky, adopted by the General Assembly on March 19, 1928. Foster's songs, lyrics, and melodies have often been altered by publishers and performers. In 1957 Ray Charles released
744-402: The songs Foster wrote during the last years of his life foreshadow his death, such as "The Little Ballad Girl" and "Kiss Me Dear Mother Ere I Die." Emerson says in his 2010 Stephen Foster and Co. that Foster's injuries may have been "accidental or self-inflicted". The note inside Foster's wallet is said to have inspired Bob Hilliard 's lyric for " Dear Hearts and Gentle People " (1949). Foster
775-541: The statue to be replaced with one honoring an African American woman with ties to the Pittsburgh community. The Task Force held a series of community forums in Pittsburgh to collect public feedback on the statue replacement and circulated an online form which allowed the public to vote for one of seven previously selected candidates or write in an alternate suggestion. However, the Task Force on Women in Public Art and
806-485: The statue was removed on April 26, 2018. Its new home has not yet been determined. It has a long reputation as the most controversial public art in Pittsburgh "for its depiction of an African-American banjo player at the feet of the seated composer. Critics say the statue glorifies white appropriation of black culture and depicts the vacantly smiling musician in a way that is at best condescending and at worst racist." A city-appointed Task Force on Women in Public Art called for
837-471: Was an American poet remembered chiefly for his song lyrics, many set to music by Stephen Foster . He translated the lyrics of German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, and French musical works into singable English. This biographical article about an American poet born in the 1840s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This biography about a translator from the United States
868-635: Was born on July 4, 1826, in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania . His parents, William Barclay Foster and Eliza Clayland Tomlinson Foster , were of Ulster Scots and English descent. He had three older sisters and six older brothers. He attended private academies in Allegheny , Athens , and Towanda, Pennsylvania , and received an education in English grammar, diction, the classics, penmanship, Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Foster taught himself to play
899-540: Was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. After his death, Morrison Foster became his "literary executor". As such, he answered requests for copies of manuscripts, autographs, and biographical information. After his death, " Beautiful Dreamer ", one of the best-loved of his works, was posthumously published in 1864. Foster grew up in Lawrenceville, now a neighborhood of Pittsburgh, where many European immigrants had settled and were accustomed to hearing
930-437: Was commentary on incidents and events of the day, such as "Bryan Free Silver March", "Homeless Tonight" or "Shootin' Craps". As the 19th century wore on, more and more songs were newly composed specifically for use by amateurs at home, and these pieces (written originally as parlour songs, rather than being adapted from other genres) began to develop a style all their own: similar in melodic and harmonic content to art songs of
961-580: Was kept as the official state song, while " Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky) " was added as the state anthem. A 1974 published collection, Stephen Foster Song Book; Original Sheet Music of 40 Songs (New York : Dover Publications, Inc.,) of Stephen Foster's popular songs was edited by musicologist Richard Jackson . Many early filmmakers selected Foster's songs for their work because his copyrights had expired and cost them nothing. Foster