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Emotion and StructureLike a modern film score, David Kneupper’s music created for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum serves two purposes. Music helps establish the emotional tone of an environment. This is true with the music for every exhibit, from the austere simplicity of the “Log Cabin” and the prissy fussiness of the “Blue Room,” to the transcendental elegy of Lincoln lying in state. Music also articulates structure, marking transitions, or harmoniously blending or comparing from one space to another – as with the “Slave Auction” and the Springfield Gallery. Why Classic Melodies?The music for the Lincoln project was all based on themes composed or played during Lincoln’s lifetime. Instead of choosing obscure, academic material to work with, we chose the most familiar, most durable and most culturally ubiquitous material available. People know these tunes. This is music that is, at its very essence, truly American folk music -- of and by the people. With most popular projects, you write melodies that you hope your guests can leave whistling. With the Lincoln Museum, we used melodies that visitors could enter the Museum whistling. This is a huge difference: our audience arrives already knowing the melodies. When your audience knows the tune, they can follow the music as it depicts complex, nuanced expressions of emotions and events. Audience familiarity allowed us to be more adventurous with the music, using more of the compositional devices of the 20 th and 21 st centuries. This makes the overall experience feel current and new. Hail to the ChiefHail to the Chief is recognized by most Americans today as the tune played by the US Marine Band in ceremony to announce the entrance of the President of the United States. Composed in the early 19 th century, it is a song -- like so many others of this era -- whose words and music have separate histories. How it became the official music of the President is a fascinating story involving at least seven Presidents, two First Ladies and an attempted subversion by John Phillip Sousa. The melody comes from an old Scottish air, and was first adapted by an English composer named James Sanderson around 1811 for a London stage production of Sir Walter Scott's romantic poem, The Lady of the Lake (1810). “The chief” referred to Roderick Dhu, a Scottish folk hero central to Scott’s story. The original words were from Stanza XIX of the Second Canto. The poem – about a Scottish clan losing their land and heritage to imperialist invaders – broke all publishing records in England and quickly caught the imagination of an America in the throes of a similar anti-imperialist conflict, the War of 1812. A successful US stage production of The Lady of the Lake was first performed in New York in May, 1812. This is the first time the original Sanderson song was performed in the US. The G.E. Blake Co. in Philadelphia published it the same year. Hail to the Chief told the story of a heroic underdog and the futile struggles of an oppressed people against a conquering villain. “The Chief” is part William Wallace; part Luke against the Empire, and it became popular in America because it portrayed current themes dear to American’s hearts. In a testament to this popularity, an admiring American named L.M. Sargent wrote new words to the song around 1814 and re-titled it Wreaths for the Chieftain. Although Sargent’s new title didn’t stick, his lyrics did. These are the lyrics that we know today. It was first performed on Feb. 22, 1815 in Stone Chapel, Boston at a double celebration of both the end of the War of 1812 and the birthday of the late George Washington, who had died in 1799. The first sitting President to be honoured with a performance of Hail to the Chief was John Quincy Adams on July 4, 1828 at the opening of Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Performed for President Andrew Jackson in 1829, in 1837 the Marine Band played Hail to the Chief at Martin Van Buren’s inauguration ceremony. Julia Tyler -- wife of President John Tyler (1841-1845) -- is credited with first requesting Hail to the Chief be used to announce the arrival of the President. Another First Lady, Sarah Polk, is generally regarded as responsible for formalizing its use, in part to aid the public recognition of her diminutive husband, President James Polk, to avoid him entering crowded rooms unnoticed. President Chester Arthur disliked Hail to the Chief, so much so that he asked his director of the Marine Band – John Phillip Sousa – to compose something new to announce his arrival. Thus was born the Sousa’s Presidential Polonaise, which fell out of use soon after the Arthur administration. Harry S. Truman secured the song’s permanent role in our history. Truman, a musician and amateur musicologist, researched the origins of Hail to the Chief during his Presidency from 1945-1953. At his request, in 1954, the Department of Defence established Hail to the Chief as the official music of the President of the United States. Battle Hymn of the RepublicIt was surprising to discover the origins of Battle Hymn of the Republic, the defacto theme song of the North and Lincoln. According to legend, the tune most closely associated with the Northern cause was composed by a Southerner: from South Carolina, no less. Historians disagree, pointing to a composer from Pennsylvania as the much more likely source. And the original words were not “Mine eyes have seen the glory…” Originally, it was a camp song, sung at religious revivals. Bob Rogers’ initial assumption concerning this song was that it was so overused and had become such a cliché that it must never be heard in the ALPM. But over the course of the project, Bob changed his mind. By the end, David Kneupper had created 14 different arrangements of Battle Hymn of the Republic– making it the most used melody in the ALPM. The versions appear as follows:
In addition, David created a 15 th version for the fifth movement of Civil War Suite. DixieThe song that symbolizes the South in the Civil War, Dixie’s Land, was actually written by a Northerner writing on Manhattan Island. Dixie’s Land is a song that has very different associations for different people. But there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that, ironically, Dixie’s Land may have been Abraham Lincoln’s favorite tune. Just after the fall of Richmond, Lincoln was asked by a band leader what tune he would like to hear. He is said to have replied, “Play ‘Dixie’ for me. That tune is no Federal property. [It's] good to show the rebels that, with us in power, they will be free to hear it again." There are a couple of theories about why Lincoln said this:
Amazing GraceIn early American folk music, words, melodies and titles often have separate histories. Such is the case with Amazing Grace. The melody is generally cited as an unknown early American folk tune. There is scholarly speculation that it was originally a slave song. Comparing it stylistically to other slave songs of the period, this is a sound assessment. The original words were written by John Newton (b. London, July 24, 1725) sometime between 1760-1770 in Olney, Buckinghamshire. They were first published in "Olney Hymns" in 1779 ( London: W. Oliver), though under a different title. A seaman, Newton captained his own ship in the slave trade from 1748 to about 1755, which is probably how he heard the melody. Newton had a dramatic religious conversion on May 10, 1748. He continued to ply the slave trade for years after, though he claimed he thereafter treated his slave cargo with newfound compassion. (Apparently, the paradox of “compassion” and “slave trader” didn’t bother Captain Newton.) In 1755, he left sailing altogether and became a minister in England. It is in this period that he wrote the original words to the hymn. He died on December 21, 1807. Later, in American hymnals, additional verses were added anonymously, some of Newton's original words were dropped, and the whole thing appeared re-titled anonymously as Amazing Grace. Music Publishers in the 19th CenturyMusic Piracy is nothing new. The mid 1800s saw abuses by music publishers and composers that are outrageous and sometimes laughable by today’s standards. In the 1800s, there was no recording technology, so the entire industry revolved around the publishing, printing and sale of sheet music. Copyright laws were nearly impossible to enforce. The cultural attitudes about ownership and author’s rights were very different. For example, in the mid 1800s, it was considered perfectly acceptable to steal someone else’s melody, put your own words and title on it, and publish it as your own work. Not only do hymn melodies often have many different titles and sets of words, there exists literally hundreds of 19 th Century “song sheets,” secular one-page posters containing new words to existing melodies people were expected to already know. Sheet music sold more copies if the song was written by a famous composer, or if its subject was a familiar one, such as a song commemorating a famous person or event. So, songs were frequently incorrectly credited to more famous composers, or re-titled to celebrate a recent historical event or recently famous figure. And all this was considered acceptable. For example, the death of the famous statesman Daniel Webster in 1852 brought an outpouring of grief from the people of America, and dozens of pieces of music from publishers, each alleged performed at Webster’s funeral. An example is Funeral March in Honor of Daniel Webster. Published by Oliver Ditson & Co. of Boston in 1861 -- nine years after Webster’s death -- it implies it was composed for the event by Ludwig von Beethoven. This neglects the fact that Beethoven had died 25 years earlier, in 1827, without ever even knowing Daniel Webster. Where Are the African American Composers?While researching the music for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, we were reminded of a sad fact: there is a highly suspicious lack of credits for African American composers in the 19 th Century. We can only conclude that their music was being appropriated and published by others. On the other hand, we also discovered a few courageous music pioneers who escaped anonymity. In 1818, George Willig of Philadelphia published Collection of New Cotillions by Francis (Frank) Johnson. With this act, Johnson -- a bugle player, composer and bandleader -- became the first American of African decent to publish music in the US. Originally born in Martinique, West Indies, Johnson moved to Philadelphia in 1809 and was among the first African American bandleaders to give dances and concerts in the US. In 1824, during the French General Lafayette’s celebrated tour of the US, Johnson’s band played at a Philadelphia ball in Lafayette’s honor, performing Johnson’s Lafayette March. Frank Johnson was the first American – black or white – to tour abroad as well, performing in London in 1837 for the newly-crowned Queen Victoria, who presented him with a silver trumpet. Jim Crow was a real person – a slave whose music was stolen. In 1829, the minstrel performer Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice gained enormous success with his “Jim Crow” song and dance routine. Like all minstrel performers of the period, Rice was white. His song and dance routine, which he performed in black-face, was actually copied from that of a crippled African American stable hand named Jim who worked for a white family named Crow. The “Jim Crow” character was so popular that it became a cliché - the stock stereotypical plantation slave in plays and books (and legislation). (“Zip Coon,” a character in a song by George Washington Dixon, later became Jim Crow’s urban counter-part – the stereotypical black city dandy.) By mid-century, a blind and autistic slave named Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins gained considerable fame as a composer and performer. In 1861, at age 12, t he Atlanta Southern Confederacy described a concert where Blind Tom played Dixie’s Landwith one hand and Yankee Doodle with the other, while simultaneously singing The Girl I Left Behind Me. (This could be said to be a precursor of the Blended Sequence concept used in the Lincoln Museum.) The proceeds of a lifetime of Blind Tom concert tours and sheet music sales were enormous, and nearly all of it went to his owners – the Bethunes of Columbus, Georgia – and their heirs. Wiggins died in 1905. Scott Joplin was an accomplished pianist whose name is virtually synonymous with ragtime. Born in Texas in 1868 to a former slave father and a free black mother, Joplin gained prominence in 1893 with the publication of Maple Leaf Rag. In addition to piano music, Joplin composed serious works as well, including the folk ballet The Ragtime Dance (1902), and three operas, the best known of which is Treemonisha (1911), a work never performed in his lifetime. Joplin led a lifelong struggle for the legitimization of his music against a cultural and legal system unfavorable to blacks. Upon his death in 1917, jazz was the rage of the day and his music remained neglected for decades. After a revival, spurred in part by the film, The Sting, Scott Joplin was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1976. As a final note, the first known African American orchestral composer is William Grant Still (1895-1978), who wrote the jazz-influenced Afro-American Symphony in 1930. Though it has been recorded several times by modern orchestras, it remains unpublished to this day. America's First Hit SongYou can probably hum America’s first hit song, but you don’t know it by its original title. The earliest documented hit song in America was The Minstrel’s Return’d from the War, whose words and music were composed by John Hill Hewitt in 1825. It was the biggest selling song in America until Stephen Foster’s Oh! Susanna eclipsed it in 1848. The Minstrel’s Return’d from the War was a very durable hit. In 1870, thirty-five years after its first publication, there were – amazingly – five editions of it still in print in the US. Written in the English strophic style, the song concerns a soldier who returns home from battle, promising his love that his beloved bugle will never part them again. Of course, the bugle beckons, and he dies on the battlefield in the final verse. This historic melody still lives with us today. It is the tune you know as the timeless campfire song, If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands. Eternal Father, Strong to SaveThe original words to the famous hymn, Eternal Father Strong to Save, were written in 1860 by Rev. William Whiting of Winchester, England for a student who was about to sail for the United States. His text is derived in part from both Old and New Testament sources – specifically Matthew 8:26 and Psalm 65 – and was inspired by his own survival of a Mediterranean storm years earlier. The melody was composed a year later – in 1861 – by the Episcopalian clergyman, hymnist and fellow Englishman, Rev. John Bacchus Dykes. A prolific composer, Dykes composed over 300 hymns, including such popular ones as Nearer, My God, to Thee and Holy, Holy, Holy. He based Eternal Father on an earlier melody he had written called Melita, the ancient name for the Mediterranean island of Malta and a place associated with the biblical shipwreck of the Apostle Paul in Acts 28:1. In 1879, the choir director at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland – Lieutenant Commander Charles Jackson Train – began performing Eternal Father regularly at the close of each Sunday service. Because of this, Eternal Father soon became known as The Navy Hymn. The hymn was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s favourite. Formerly Asst. Secretary of the Navy, it was sung at his funeral in Hyde Park, New York, in April 1945. It also accompanied the body of President John F. Kennedy – another Navy man – in 1963 as it was carried up the steps of the U.S. Capitol to lie in state. Since 1960, the hymn has evolved through an extensive list of new verses by American authors, including stanzas written for US submariners, aviators, astronauts, medics, the Coast Guard, female sailors, operators of land vehicles and even one in honor of military personnel stationed in Antarctica. Dykes original harmonization of the melody is sophisticated, but remains characteristic of music in the Romantic period. Starting in C major, he employs a harmonic vocabulary of 10 different chords with inversions. Using secondary dominants, Dykes cadences in both G Major and E minor before returning to C in a span of just twelve measures, creating a distinctive chordal motion which swells like the ocean it depicts. Eternal Father is a great example of musical originality in a typically conservative idiom and demonstrates Dyke’s unusual skill as a gifted text painter. Just Before the Battle, MotherJust Before the Battle, Mother was composed in 1862 by George Frederick Root, one of the most important figures in popular music from this period. In addition to writing such classic songs as Battle Cry of Freedom and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, he and his brother ran the successful Chicago music publishing house, Root and Cady. George Root studied with Lowell Mason at the Boston Academy of Music in 1850 and received an honorary Doctorate in Music from the University of Chicago in 1872. The lyrics to the song, Eve of Battle, Mother begin with a young soldier on the eve of battle. Each verse advances his story to dawn, to battle, to battle and finally to the voice of the ghost of the now deceased boy. The sentimentality of this song is typical of its period and was part of a now dead style of song sung by tenors. The fashion of the “Tenor Hero” died out with Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddie in the 1930s. Today, in late night reruns, the falsetto cartoon voice of the original Dudley Do-right provides evidence of why this style has mercifully vanished. But it did take with it a cosmology of songs that didn’t deserve to die. Root was a Unionist, and though much of his music is stirring marching tunes, he was capable of the over-the-top sentiment so popular in songs of the period. He also was a clever self-promoter. In a fascinating early example of product placement, as the soldier in Just Before the Battle, Mother lies dying in the 3rd verse, he hears angels bugling George Root’s Battle Cry of Freedom! Written early in the Civil War, Just Before the Battle, Mother touched a tender part of the nation’s heart and was one of the most popular songs of both the North and the South. The famous Christy’s Minstrels toured England with the song in 1863, where it was quickly embraced by English audiences. In fact, the Brits mistakenly thought it was an English song referring to the Crimean War (1854-1856). The song’s popularity – like the memories of fallen sons themselves – extended long after the Civil War was over. In December, 1912 a recorded version of Just Before the Battle, Mother by the romantic tenor Will Oakland was released on one of the earliest “long-playing” formats: the Edison Blue Amberol wax cylinder (Edison Record No. 1516). Capable of a then-unheard-of four minutes of recording time, this astonishing recording includes a middle interlude featuring the sounds of battle, including explosions and bugle calls. At the insistence of Bob Rogers, this beautiful melody was brought to the attention of David Kneupper. David gave it a rebirth both in the museum and in his separate work, The Civil War Suite.
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