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Thursday, 3 July 2014

Stephen Foster

NAME Stephen Collins Foster

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Stephen Foster is widely regarded as the "Father of American Music." He was the first professional American songwriter and is best known for his parlor and minstrel songs. His compositions, numbering around 200, often evoke themes of home, love, and the American South, even though he had limited personal experience there. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND Stephen Collins Foster was the ninth of William B. and Eliza T. Foster's ten children, with the tenth child dying as an infant, leaving Stephen as the "baby" of the family. His parents were William Barclay Foster (1779-1855) and Eliza Clayland Tomlinson Foster (1788-1855). 

His father was a member of the Pennsylvania State Legislature and the mayor of Allegheny City (a Pittsburgh suburb). William Barclay Foster was a merchant and trader who moved to Pittsburgh in 1796 and quickly entered what Foster biographer John Tasker Howard refers to as the "pioneer aristocracy of Pittsburgh". 

The family was of Ulster Scots and English descent. Stephen had three older sisters and six older brothers. The family also took in a child William Sr. had fathered years earlier outside of his marriage. (1)

Foster's parents, Eliza Tomlinson Foster and William Barclay Foster

CHILDHOOD Stephen grew up as the youngest of the Foster children and was indulged by older brothers and sisters. The family faced financial difficulties, and in 1827, the White Cottage and other Foster properties were seized by the government when Foster failed to pay the mortgages. Stephen thereafter was moved about, sometimes living with relatives.

 His mother remembered him later in her life as a boy marching about with a feather in his cap and pounding on a drum while whistling "Auld Lang Syne". 

Family legends say Stephen played harmonies on a guitar at age two, and played a flageolet with perfection in a music store at age seven. At age nine, he sang and performed with other boys in their own neighborhood theatrical productions. 

In 1834, Stephen went to a black church with Olivia Pise, a mulatto servant, which exposed him to African American musical traditions.

EDUCATION

Foster attended private academies in Pittsburgh and in North-Central Pennsylvania. He studied at the Alleghany Academy and the Athens Academy, where he wrote his first known composition, "The Tioga Waltz," at the age of 14. He then studied at the Towanda Academy where his curriculum included English grammar, the classics, Latin, and Greek. Stephen attended Athens Academy from 1839 to 1841. 

His education included a brief period at Jefferson College (now Washington & Jefferson College) in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, where his grandfather was once a trustee. His tuition was paid, but Foster had little spending money. Sources conflict on whether he left willingly or was dismissed, but either way, he left Canonsburg to visit Pittsburgh with another student and never returned. Stephen never completed a college education, but was a literate, well-educated person. (2)

CAREER RECORD 1842 Foster's professional songwriting career began when he published his song "Open Thy Lattice, Love". I

1846 Foster moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and became a bookkeeper with his brother's steamship company. While in Cincinnati, Foster penned his first successful songs,

1849 Foster entered into a contract with Firth, Pond & Co., the New York publishers. He was commissioned to write songs for Edwin P. Christy's minstrel show. 

1860 Foster moved to New York City 

APPEARANCE Foster was of average height and slender build. He had a somewhat reserved and melancholic demeanor.

Photographic portrait of Stephen Foster

FASHION Foster adhered to the prevailing styles of the era, which included tailored suits, vests, and cravats.

CHARACTER Foster was described as a friendly, good-natured and sociable chap when he was not working. His demeanor changed completely, however, when he was composing. He became exceedingly serious and emotionally detached, requiring long periods of utter silence and solitude. His work mirrored a kind, modest and sympathetic personality. 

He was never a sharp entrepreneur for his talents. Foster sought, in his own words, 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". (2)

SENSE OF HUMOUR  His lyrics sometimes contain playful or lighthearted elements, hinting at a subtle wit.

RELATIONSHIPS Foster married Jane Denny MacDowell, daughter of a leading Pittsburgh physician, on July 22, 1850 in Trinity Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh.  For friends and mutual acquaintances, it remained a mystery why the couple got together in the first place. Jane was not really fond of music and Stephen rather indifferent to feminine charms and physical attraction. There certainly was no trace of romance between them, excepting that Jane gave birth to their only child exactly nine months to the day after the wedding. Their daughter Marion was born in 1851.

The manual for having a successful marriage has not yet been written, but Stephen and Jane really tried to get it wrong from the start. By the spring of 1853, Jane separated from her husband for the first time. She took their daughter Marion to her mother's home in Lewistown, while Stephen journeyed to New York City. Jane eventually reunited with her husband, and the couple moved back to Allegheny. About a year after Foster moved to New York City in 1860, his wife and daughter left him and returned to Pittsburgh. (3)

Foster wrote “Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair" for his wife in 1854  in Hoboken, New Jersey during one of their separations.

Cover of sheet music

He maintained close relationships with his family, particularly his brothers, who often supported him financially and professionally.

MONEY AND FAME Foster was the first man to be paid a royalty on sheet music sales and the first American to make a career of writing songs. However, although Foster achieved great fame, he struggled with financial difficulties throughout his life. 

Foster was constantly teetering on the brink of financial insolvency. In 1857, in financial difficulties, he sold all rights to his future songs for $1,900. Due in part to the limited scope of music copyright and composer royalties at the time, 

Foster realized very little of the profits which his works generated. There was no music business as we know it (sound recording was not invented until 13 years after his death; radio, 66 years), no "performing rights" fees, no way of earning money except through a 5 to10 percent royalty or through the outright purchase of songs by his publishers. In today's music industry he would be worth millions of dollars a year; in January 1864, he died with 38 cents in his pocket. 

FOOD AND DRINK Foster had problems with alcohol, which contributed to his declining health.. He had sold even the clothes off his back for liquor. 

COMPOSING CAREER Stephen Foster, the man many consider the founding father of American popular music, began his melodic tinkering as a teenager—back when pianos were roughly the size of a Victorian bathtub and just as difficult to keep in tune. His first published effort, charmingly titled “Open Thy Lattice, Love” (1842), sounded like something one might whisper to a particularly flirtatious window shutter.

Foster was, in the great American tradition, largely self-taught—though he did take a few lessons from Henry Kleber, a German-born music dealer in Pittsburgh who no doubt had strong views on the superiority of Mozart and how Schubert was tragically misunderstood. From this unlikely corner of Pennsylvania, Foster inhaled an eclectic cocktail of musical influences: genteel ballads warbled by his sisters, spirituals overheard through the doors of Black churches, work songs sung by African American laborers, and the banjo-plunking spectacle of minstrel shows—which, regrettably, were considered top-tier entertainment at the time.

His first big hit, “Oh! Susanna” (1847), was the kind of earworm that tunneled into the nation's collective brain. The tune rode west with the forty-niners, becoming an accidental anthem of the California Gold Rush—a sort of 19th-century viral hit, only with more banjos and less TikTok. And Foster? He made a grand total of $100 from it, which even then barely covered a new frock coat and a few modest tipples. Publishers, of course, made a killing—because in those days, copyright law was less a protective measure and more a friendly suggestion.

Ever resourceful, Foster realized that if he couldn’t make much money from song sales, he could at least get them into people’s ears. So he began distributing sheet music to minstrel troupes, the Spotify playlists of the day, most notably the Christy Minstrels—who gleefully adopted several of his songs and rarely gave him credit.

In 1849, he signed a contract with Firth, Pond & Co., a New York publisher, thereby becoming one of America’s first people to attempt, with mixed results, to earn a living purely by writing songs. It was an audacious career plan, roughly akin to trying to support yourself in the modern age by collecting bottle caps.

Between 1850 and 1856, back home in Pittsburgh (where the air was thick with coal dust and ambition), Foster entered an astonishing period of productivity, churning out over 160 songs. These included enduring chestnuts like “Camptown Races”, “My Old Kentucky Home”, “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”, and “Old Folks at Home”—songs that would become as familiar to Americans as pie and Protestantism.

Many of these tunes were performed in blackface minstrel shows, a grotesque but wildly popular form of entertainment that reflected the country’s complicated, and often deeply shameful, racial history. Foster, to his credit (or perhaps his caution), tried to nudge the tone toward something more genteel, tweaking lyrics and sentiments to better suit drawing rooms than saloons.

In 1854, he also published The Social Orchestra, a rather charming collection of instrumental pieces designed for parlor music-making. It sold approximately five copies. Or so it felt.

By the late 1850s, as public tastes drifted away from minstrel fare, Foster pivoted toward the gentler world of parlor ballads—tear-jerkers and drawing-room weepers that found homes in middle-class living rooms across the nation. Yet despite his astonishing output and cultural ubiquity, Foster never managed to achieve financial security. He was hampered by the intellectual property laws of the day (which were neither very intellectual nor especially lawful) and had a regrettable habit of selling the rights to his songs for what amounted to lunch money.

His final creative chapter came through a collaboration with poet George Cooper, with whom he produced some comic numbers and the odd Civil War tune, though none of them quite matched the lightning-in-a-bottle quality of his earlier hits.

When he died in 1864—penniless and with just 38 cents in his pocket—Foster left behind more than 200 songs, many of which are still part of the national musical landscape. He was the first American to try, however foolishly or heroically, to make a full-time career out of songwriting. In doing so, he helped stitch together the early fabric of American popular music—an odd and wondrous patchwork of folk, parlor, and minstrel traditions.

It’s hard to imagine a more American story: genius, naïveté, cultural contradiction, and the pursuit of a living wage. All set to music.

MUSIC AND ARTS Stephen Foster's musical ability was self-taught; he learned to play the clarinet, guitar, flute, and piano. He probably received some formal musical training from Henry Kleber, a German immigrant who was an accomplished and versatile performer, composer, music merchant, impresario, and teacher. Under Kleber, Stephen was exposed to music composition. Together the pair studied the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Mendelssohn and Schubert. 

He absorbed musical influences from the popular, sentimental songs sung by his sisters; from Black church services he attended with the family's servant Olivia Pise; from popular minstrel show songs; and from songs sung by Black labourers at the Pittsburgh warehouse where he worked for a time. 

Foster was influenced greatly by two men during his teenage years — Henry Kleber and Dan Rice. Dan Rice was an entertainer — a clown and blackface singer, making his living in traveling circuses. His songs are extraordinary for using popular idioms combined with characteristics of Irish melodies, German lieder, and Italian operas.

LITERATURE Foster was an avid reader and likely drew inspiration from popular literature of his time, as well as the sentimental poetry and themes prevalent in the mid-19th century. His lyrics often possess a poetic quality, demonstrating an appreciation for language and storytelling.

NATURE Many of Foster's songs idealize rural life and natural settings, such as "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Old Folks at Home," suggesting an appreciation for the tranquility and beauty of nature, even if experienced primarily through imagination and cultural tropes.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Stephen Foster’s primary passion and avocation was music. From a young age, he was deeply interested in songwriting, performing, and exploring a variety of musical styles. Family anecdotes describe him organizing childhood theatricals, playing instruments (including guitar, flute, clarinet, and piano), and harmonizing with friends and family. Music was not only his career but also his main leisure activity.

Foster enjoyed social gatherings, singing with friends, and participating in community events.

SCIENCE AND MATHS In 1846, Foster took a job as a bookkeeper at his brother’s steamship company in Cincinnati. Bookkeeping in the mid-19th century required a methodical approach, attention to detail, and a solid grasp of arithmetic and basic accounting principles. Foster’s ability to handle bookkeeping duties suggests he was competent with numbers and calculations.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Some scholars have speculated that Foster may have undergone a shift in his views on race and slavery during the early 1850s, moving from his family’s Democratic, pro-slavery background toward more abolitionist sympathies. However, the evidence for this is inconclusive. While Foster did write fewer overtly comic minstrel songs and more “sympathetic” plantation melodies later in his career, this may have been motivated more by market considerations and a desire to appeal to “refined” audiences than by a clear moral or philosophical stance.

Foster himself stated that he aimed to “build up a taste for Ethiopian songs among refined people, by making the words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order.” This suggests a pragmatic approach: he was concerned with making his music acceptable to middle-class listeners, rather than advancing a particular moral or reformist agenda.

There are anecdotes about Foster attending African American church services as a child, but these accounts are considered unreliable or exaggerated by historians. There is no evidence that Foster was deeply religious or that theological concerns played a major role in his creative life. (1)

POLITICS Foster's father was involved in politics as a member of the Pennsylvania State Legislature and mayor of Allegheny City. However, while some of his songs, particularly those associated with minstrelsy, can be viewed through a historical lens of social commentary, there's no evidence he was actively involved in political movements or held strong, publicly articulated political stances.

SCANDAL Foster's life included several problematic elements. His songs, while musically significant, contained racist lyrics that exemplified the dehumanization of African-Americans common in the blackface minstrel shows of his time. His legacy remains marred by his willingness to profit from this tradition. His marriage was troubled and marked by separations. His final years were marked by poverty, alcoholism, and declining health.

MILITARY RECORD Stephen Foster did not have a military record. However, his father William Sr. entered into public service as Quartermaster and Commissary for the United States Army during the War of 1812.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Foster's health declined significantly in his final years. He had become impoverished and was living at the North American Hotel at 30 Bowery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. Beginning in 1862, his fortunes decreased, and as they did, so did the quality of his new songs. He struggled with alcoholism, having sold even the clothes off his back for liquor. Confined to bed for days by a persistent fever, Foster tried to call a chambermaid, but collapsed, falling against the washbasin next to his bed and shattering it, which gouged his head. It took three hours to get him to Bellevue Hospital, and in an era before transfusions and antibiotics, he succumbed three days after his admittance. (2)

HOMES Stephen Foster was born in a white cottage overlooking the Allegheny River in Lawrenceville. After financial difficulties, the family was forced to move in 1827. 

Immediately after his wedding in 1850, the couple moved into the home of Stephen's family in Allegheny. In 1853, he left Jane to go to New York; she joined him in Hoboken, New Jersey sometime in 1854. They returned to Pittsburgh in 1855 after both his parents died, living first in the family home and then a series of boarding houses. Foster moved to New York City in 1860. He spent his final years living at the North American Hotel at 30 Bowery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York.

House in Hoboken, New Jersey where Foster wrote "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" By JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D

TRAVEL In 1846 he went to Cincinnati as a bookkeeper, returning to Pittsburgh in 1850. 

Stephen Foster and his wife Jane (Jeanie) took a month-long cruise down the Mississippi  to New Orleans by steamboat in February 1852. This was Foster's only trip to the Deep South. 

Despite writing about it, Foster never saw Kentucky or the Suwannee River or Alabama. 

DEATH Stephen Foster died on January 13, 1864, in New York, New York, aged 38. Penniless, sick, and alone, he fell while shaving in a flophouse on the Bowery, gouged his head, and died days later, in Bellevue Hospital. In his worn leather wallet, there was found a scrap of paper that simply said "Dear friends and gentle hearts" along with 35 cents in Civil War scrip and three pennies. 

Foster was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA  Three Hollywood movies have been made about Stephen Foster's life :

Harmony Lane (1935), starring Douglass Montgomery

Swanee River (1939), starring Don Ameche

I Dream of Jeanie (1952), starring Bill Shirley

These films are all biographical dramas, though each takes considerable creative license with Foster's story. 

One of his most beloved works, "Beautiful Dreamer", was published shortly after his death. 

Stephen Foster was featured on the obverse of a silver half dollar minted in 1936 in honor of the Cincinnati Musical Center.

ACHIEVEMENTS Composed approximately 200 songs, becoming the first professional American songwriter.

Penned some of America's most enduring and recognizable songs, including "Oh! Susanna," "Camptown Races," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Old Folks at Home (Swanee River)," and "Beautiful Dreamer."

Developed a unique American musical style by blending European parlor music with minstrel show influences.

His music became a significant part of the American cultural fabric and continues to be performed and cherished today.

Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Sources (1) University of Pittsburgh Library (2) Classic Cat (3) Interlude

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