Popular Song in the Nineteenth Century Derek B Scott

Abstract

Derek B. Scott reminds us in the introduction to this book that ‘[it] was in the nineteenth century that distinctive commercial popular styles of song developed’ (p. ix). A popular song was one that sold well but it was possible to write an ‘unpopular popular song’ (p. ix). Scott goes on to examine the five styles of popular song of the century based on the site, genre, or style of their performance: the salon, operetta, blackface minstrelsy, music-hall, and cabaret. Quite rightly, Scott asserts these studies are interdisciplinary, even intersectional, crossing the boundaries of a variety of fields including social and cultural history and economics. In the rest of the introduction Scott discusses the salient features of each of the five forms of popular songs and offers some useful examples including the salon song The Rose of Tralee from 1847 and its supposed origin written by a ‘rich Protestant in love with a poor Catholic girl called Mary O’Connor’ (p. xi). In a discussion of songs from blackface minstrelsy, Scott examines the use of different forms of syncopation in the repertory, citing an example from an anonymous song from 1848, Buffalo Gals.