Songs of the Early Nineteenth Century Part 1: Early Song Lyrics and Coping with Life

Abstract

This is a study of serious American songs written primarily in the four decades before the Civil War and meant to reach a wide audience, an audience that made no particular distinctions between what we now classify as the art song versus the popular song. These are works that exhibit a grave and pensive frame of mind and examine a grave if not somber subject. They are not satirical, nor do they feature gaiety or hints at light-heartedness. Their themes revolve about home, loved ones, the beloved, the adversities of adult life, death, and the hope for an afterlife. Part I of the investigation, published in this issue, focuses entirely upon the lyrics, not the music, of these songs. Part II, which will follow in a later issue of American Music, will concern itself with the melodies, their meaning, and relation to the lyrics. One should avoid the temptation of painting the views of antebellum men and women in stark black or white. Despite the forbidding questions that divided Americans during the three decades before the Civil War--slavery, states' rights, agrarian versus industrial intereststhere were significant values that the public held in common. Aside from divisive issues, such as those just cited, antebellum American society shared the belief, for example, that a person's full personal development required an assent to commonly accepted standards of right and wrong.