Singing SHEAR History: A Commentary and Music Sampler

Abstract

In 1965, Samuel Eliot Morison ended thirty-six of the sixty-two chapters in his Oxford History of the American People with a song extract or other music he found emblematic of the period discussed.' Each of his musical examples is in the broad sense of referring to specific events, issues, or attitudes of the past. Some of Morison's examples are also in the further sense that they can be documented-words and music-from contemporary sources in the same way that historians document any other bit of new information. Ten of Morison's musical extracts fall within the SHEAR period of concern, but these are only a sampling of the many topical song texts scattered through American newspapers, songsters, songbooks, broadsides, manuscripts, and occasionally even sheet music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. (A songster is a pocketsize book of song texts. songbook may or may not be the same size, but it provides music for its texts.) Although topical song texts printed with their music are rare in most historical periods, a search through printed music and music manuscripts of the fifty years preceding their appearance will often turn up from one quarter to one half of the for texts that have only an indicated tune. Music of the last two-hundred years poses a few problems for music readers today-natural signs may be missing or syllables may not be under the right notes. An is one that has a contemporary, documentable connection to a specific historical song text. In a few cases such an association may be complete, with words and music found together in the eighteenth or nineteenth century (figures 1, 2, 5, and 6 following). More often there is only an indicated (figures 3 and 4 following). Sometimes a text title and some of the lines or the pattern of versification provide useful clues. All too frequently there is no musical clue of any kind, though it may be easy to find unrelated music that fits the words. Whatever the evidence for an tune, it must be tested by reuniting the text and tune for singing. Only if documented words and music fit together easily, without manipulation, can we be confident that we have matched a topical text with its associated tune (people made mistakes even in the old days). Even if the words and music fit together easily we must bear in mind that a historical song text may have had more than one in early America.3 Associated tunes are a vital part of the history of any song. Many song texts that seem clumsy in print or manuscript sound fine when sympathetically sung to their associated music (We shall Overcome is a pertinent recent example). Sometimes the choice of a tune has significance. For example, A Life on the Vicksburgh Bluff is both a Confederate topical song and a satirical parody of Henry Russel's sentimental, romantic, and very successful A Life on the Ocean Wave published in 1838. Furthermore, the overnight popularity of Tip and Ty (or Tippecanoe and Tyler Too) is more easily understood on hearing it as a song with its excellent bouncy tune and its built-in sing-along refrains. Tip and Ty is a very easy tune to learn by ear or from notation. And the music is a perfect match for Tip and Ty's satirical, expandable text that permitted, nay urged, singers to add their own lines.5 Tip and Ty may be nearly unique for its reputation among American political songs. (Only Ma, Where is My Pa? from the Cleveland-Blaine campaign of 1884 seems as often remembered by historians.) In fact, Tip and Ty might also be usefully considered the first American top-hit song-more akin to such twentieth-century novelty hits as Music Goes Round and Round, or Three Little Fishes (essentially nonsense songs for grown-ups)than to the general run of political songs, which are often dismal. The enormous popularity of Tip and Ty raises the question whether Van Buren's supporters were discomfitted by hearing Tip and Ty and did any of them write of such misgivings? …