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The Merchant and the Muse: Commercial Influences on American Popular Music before the Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

James H. Stone
James H. Stone
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Humanities at San Francisco State College
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Abstract

In what ways and to what extent has business exerted an influence on cultural development? The question has had many answers. Most of these have dealt with the diversion of business wealth to specific cultural ends — the accumulation of great art collections, the importation of Italian villas, the subsidization of noted performers and craftsmen. Considerable attention has also been paid to the direct aesthetic contributions of businessmen who manufactured objects of art, or who were successful in imparting artistic attributes to objects of utility. The present article probes a more subtle but quite possibly more basic kind of business influence. Available evidence suggests that American musical tastes and talents were directly and forcefully molded by the commercial environment itself. Market characteristics of the music publishing trade, pricing policies, associationist activities, and other purely economic circumstances helped determine the nature of musical America. This case study involves a capsule in time and a small segment of the total culture, but its implications are broad and merit further investigation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 1956 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1956

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References

1 New York Times, Jan. 1, 1855, through Feb. 1855, published advertisements of the price change; similar advertisements and notices appeared in the New York Tribune, Jan. 1 and 12, 1855, and in music journals: Musical World (New York), Jan. 6, 13, 20, and 27, 1855, XI, 6, 21, 26-27, 34, 37; Dwight's Journal of Music (Boston), Jan. 13 and 27, 1855, VI, 118, 135.

2 New York Times, May 17, 19, 20, 21, 1855; Musical World (New York), May 26 and June 2, 1855, XII, 37, 49; ibid., July 25, Oct. 10, 17, 1857, XVIII, 467-68, 647-8, 663.

3 Naylor, Emmett Hay, “History of Trade Associations in America,” Trade Association Activities (Washington, D.C., 1923Google Scholar), Appendix A, 301-7; Foth, Joseph Henry, Trade Associations (New York, 1930)Google Scholar.

4 Stone, James H., “War Music and War Psychology in the Civil War,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, XXXVI (1941), 543–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. General treatments of American music, such as that of Howard, John Tasker, Our American Music (New York, 1931)Google Scholar, give the Civil War a special chapter and thereby indicate its relative importance. So also do collections of popular and traditional music published for home and civic use, which usually contain several examples of Civil War music but few or no specimens from any other historical era.

5 An indirect indication of the rise of musical activity, which is recorded directly in the recollections of participants and in journalistic records of musical events, appears in the increase of special publications in the field of music. The Musical World called attention to this phenomenon just before the Civil War, listing 28 music journals which had begun publication since 1821. Many of them were short-lived; a few were trade journals of music publishing houses; but their existence, unique in the field of American art at the time, signifies the growing interest in music in the United States: Musical World (New York), bet. 17, 1857, XVIII, 663. Journals published in Boston are listed and briefly described in Christine Ayars, M., Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston, 1640 to 1936 (New York, 1937), 78–86Google Scholar.

6 Stone, op. cit.; Spaeth, Sigmund, A History of Popular Music in America (New York, 1948Google Scholar) describes the most popular music of the early nineteenth century in Chapter 3. He comments on the musical or poetic antecedents of many songs. Valuable studies of American choral music have been made by Jackson, George Pullen, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands (North Carolina, 1933Google Scholar); and Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early America (New York, 1937). Contemporary comments indicate the intermixture of folk, concert, and choral music, each furnishing material to and receiving material from the others and, in turn, presenting it to the public: see The Message Bird (New York), Aug. 15, 1849, I, 23–24; Musical World (New York), May 15, 1852, III, 285–86; ibid., Jan. 21, 28, 1854, VIII, 26-27, 41-12; Boston Musical Gazette, June 27, 1838, I, 36.

7 I have made these calculations from data in Dichter, Harry and Shapiro, Elliott, Early American Sheet Music, Its Lure and Its Lore, 1768-1889 (New York, 1941), 166–248Google Scholar. See also Fisher, William Arms, One Hundred and Fifty Years of Music Publishing in the United States, 1783-1933 (Boston, 1933)Google Scholar; Strunk, Oliver, “Early Music Publishing in the United States,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XXXI (1937), 176–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ayars, op. cit., 3-98.

8 Musical World (New York), Jan. 6, 1855, XI, 6; New York Times, June 9, 1855.

9 Gamble, William, Music Engraving and Printing (London, 1923Google Scholar); Wright, Edith A. and McDevitt, Josephine A., “Early American Sheet-Music Lithographs,” Antiques, XXIII (1923), 20-53, 99–102Google Scholar; Ayars, op. cit.

10 Bowker, Richard Rogers, Copyright, Its History and Its Laws (Boston, 1912Google Scholar); Orpheus (New York), July, 1868, IV, 4; Musical World (New York), Jan. 13, 1855, XI, 21.

11 Fisher, op. cit., passim; Boston Musical Gazette, Sept. 19, 1838, I, 84; Musical World (New York), May 7, 1853, VI, 2; ibid., Nov. 28, 1857, XVIII, 734; Wright, Richardson, Hawkers and Walkers in Early America (Philadelphia, 1927Google Scholar); Matthews, Albert, “An Early American Music Store,” Nation (New York), May 12, 1904, LXXVII, 370Google Scholar; Ayars, op. cit. Notices in early city directories suggest the combination of more than one trade in the same shop.

12 New York Times, Jan. 1, 1855, through Feb., 1855; Musical World (New York), Jan. 13, 1855, XI, 21, 26–27; Dwight's Journal of Music (Boston), Jan. 13 and 27, 1855, VI, 118, 135.

13 Ibid.

14 New York Times, Jan. 11, 1855.

15 Ibid., Jan. 12, May 17, 1855; Musical World (New York), Jan. 13, 1855, XI, 21, 26–27.

16 New York Times, May 17-21, June 7 and 9, 1855; Musical World (New York), May 26, June 2 and 23, 1855, XII, 37, 49, 86.

17 New York Times, June 7 and 9, 1855; Musical World (New York), July 25, Oct. 10 and 17, 1857, XVIII, 467-68, 647-18, 663.

18 Ibid.; Boston Daily Advertiser, June 13, 1856.

19 New York Times, June 12, 1857, June 9, 1858.

20 New York Times, June 11, 1856, June 12, 1857, June 9, 1858, Aug. 9, 1860; New York Music World, June 13, 1857, XVII, 371; Musical World (New York), May 8, 1858, XIX, 289; Dwight's Journal of Music (Boston), May 15, 1858, XIII, 54–55; ibid., Aug. 18, 1860, XVII, 167; ibid., July 6, 1861, XIX, 111; Boston Musical Times, Aug. 25, 1860, I, 214; ibid., Aug. 5, 1865, VI, 116; ibid., Aug. 4, 1866, VII, 5; ibid., March, 1869, X, 15-16; Boston Daily Advertiser, Aug. 8, 1863; The Musical Review and Music World (New York), Aug. 13, 1864, XV, 263; The Musical Independent (Chicago), Sept., 1870, II, 134; The Folio (Boston), Aug., 1871, V, 178; ibid., Aug., 1872, VII, 41; ibid., Aug.-Sept., 1873, IX, 40, 71; ibid., Sept., 1876, XV, 88; ibid., Aug., 1878, XVII, 286; Brainard's Musical World (Cleveland), July, 1873, X, 101; The Music Trade Review, Nov., 1878, VII, 15.

21 Musical World (New York), Jan. 13 and 27, 1855, XI, 26–27.

22 Musical World (New York), July 25, Oct. 10 and 17, 1857, XVIII, 467-68, 647-48, 663.

23 Dichter and Shapiro have published a classified list of sheet music, but the music itself has yet to be thoroughly analyzed. Sigmund Spaeth comments on the most popular songs of the era. Branch, E. Douglas, The Sentimental Years, 1836-1860 (New York, 1934Google Scholar), emphasizes the degraded romanticism in the arts and customs of the period. Jordan, Philip D., Singin' Yankees (Minneapolis, 1946Google Scholar), presents the famous Hutchinson Family and thereby reveals many facets of popular musical life before and after the Civil War. The music journals, in reporting concerts, supply the titles of compositions played or sung, and thus record the potpourri of romantic, sentimental, dramatic, narrative, and topical music which suited the public. The journals also directly comment on such music, in some instances to criticize it and in other instances to provide a rationale for it. For a program of Italian, English, and patriotic American music (“Washington and Liberty”) see the Hartford Courant, July 1 and 7, 1846. For a satirical and revealing comment on the content of American popular music, Boston Musical Gazette, Jan. 9, 1839, I, 146; for a criticism of descriptive music, Musical World (New York), Feb. 2, 1852, III, 152; the same for “battle” music, Message Bird (New York), Sept. 15, 1849, I, 59–60; and again for the whole of current popular composition, Dwight's Journal of Music (Boston), June 11, 1853, III, 79; ibid., Jan. 13, 1855, VI, 118; and for a composer's rationale, that of William Fry (1813-1864), in Musical World (New York), Jan. 21, 1854, VIII, 29–34: Fry is discussing his symphony entitled “Santa Claus.” Ayars, op. cit., in her lists of Boston publishers, indicates the nature of the publishers' “staples,” as do the advertisements in the music journals.

24 Boston Musical Gazette, Nov. 14, 1838, I, 115.

25 Wright and McDevitt, op. cit.; Dichter and Shapiro, op. cit.; Jordan, op. cit., 58-60, 73-80, 99, 112, 171, in discussing negotiations between the Hutchinsons and their publishers, indicates that the question of a cover illustration was regularly considered in the bargaining. Sonneck, Oscar G., “The History of Music in America,” Miscellaneous Studies in the History of Music (New York, 1921), 342–43Google Scholar, predicted accurately that American sheet music might become more valuable for print than for music collectors.

26 “The Battle of Prague,” by the minor Polish composer Franz Kotzware (1730?-1791), was a hardy perennial in America. It is shown in Dichter and Shapiro in an American edition of 1810 with a portrait of Washington on the cover. There is no way of knowing now, however, whether specimens of this edition (or reissues of it) were the ones referred to in Chapter 38 of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi.

27 Sonneck, op. cit., 325-44; Dwight's Journal of Music (Boston), June 11, 1853, III, 79; ibid., Nov. 11, 1854, VI, 43; Brainard's Musical World (Cleveland), June, 1879, XVI, 82; Musical World (New York), Jan. 1, 1853, 14; ibid., Nov. 25, 1854, X, 158. In their 1854 issues, Dwight and the Musical World both noted the recent U. S. Department of State catalogue of copyrighted sheet music. One hundred and twenty volumes had been collected, divided equally between vocal and instrumental music. An indication of the growth trend is found in the fact that the vocal compositions copyrighted between 1819 and 1834 were included in a single volume, as were those registered between 1834 and 1838. Thereafter, at least two volumes were required to include the vocal numbers copyrighted annually except in one case, the year 1846. From 1847 onward, from five to seven volumes were required for the annual production of copyrighted vocal music.

28 The Musical World and Musical Times (New York), Sept. 11, 1852, 20, 84; Dwight's Journal of Music (Boston), Jan. 13, 1855, VI, 118; Boston Musical Times, Aug. 5, 1865, VI, 116; Orpheus (New York), July, 1868, IV, 4; Howard, John T., “Stephen Foster and His Publishers,” The Musical Quarterly, XX (New York, 1934), 77–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Musical World (New York), Feb. 2, 1852, III, 152; The Message Bird (New York), Aug. 1, 1850, II, 405; Dwight's Journal of Music (Boston), Jan. 13, 1855, VI, 118.

30 Boston Musical Gazette, Nov. 15, 1838, Feb. 6, 1839,1, 113, 164; The Message Bird (New York), Feb. 1, 1850, I, 215; Boston Musical Times, X (March, 1869), 15–16; Musical World (New York), Nov. 6 and 13, 1852, IV, 147, 155, 166; Dwight's Journal of Music (Boston), June 27, 1857, XI, 99; Musical World and Times (New York), Sept. 4, 1852, IV, 4; Sonneck, Oscar G., Music Teachers' National Association Proceedings, XVII (1923), 122–47Google Scholar.

31 Editors of some music journals, notably Dwight, earnestly attempted to remedy this lack of public attention to high aesthetic standards and traditions, and their comments indicate a constant distress at the indifference or ignorance of the public and of performers.

32 Reports on the “state of music” in various localities appeared intermittently in the music journals. Typical are those in The Message Bird (New York), Aug. 1, 1849, Feb. 1, 1850, I, 7, 215; ibid., Aug. 1, 1852, II, 405; Boston Musical Times, March, 1869, X, 15-16; Dwight's Journal of Music (Boston), June 11, 1853, III, 79; Musical World (New York), Feb. 2, Aug. 1, 1852, III, 152, 391–92; ibid., Feb. 12, 1853, V, 98.