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Hard Times Come Again No More
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Browse piano sheets by Stephen Foster on Zen Virtual Piano. Stephen Foster was born on 4 July 1826 in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and showed an early interest in music but received little formal training. His mother remembered him as a boy marching about with a feather in his cap and pounding on a drum while whistling “Auld Lang Syne.” 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 minstrel show songs, and from songs sung by Black labourers at the Pittsburgh warehouse where he worked for a time. Sisters’ songs, church services and warehouse singing all fed his ear, so his influences came from several different worlds. In 1839 his brother William thought Stephen would benefit from the supervision of Henry Kleber, a German-born music dealer in Pittsburgh, and under Kleber he was exposed to music composition. He published his song “Open Thy Lattice, Love” in 1842, and in 1846 he went to Cincinnati as a bookkeeper. By early 1850 he had left Cincinnati and the steamboat business and returned to Allegheny City, where he lived in his brother William’s house, determined to make a career as a songwriter. Little formal training and a determination to write songs for a living make a self-directed apprenticeship easy to imagine. In 1849 he entered into a contract, now lost, with the New York music publisher Firth, Pond & Co. He was commissioned to write songs for Edwin P. Christy’s minstrel show, and the most famous, “Old Folks at Home” (1851), also called “Swanee River,” appeared originally under Christy’s name; Foster’s name appeared on the song after 1879. That so famous a song first went out under another man’s name suggests how loosely credit could travel in that trade. The University of Pittsburgh’s biography calls him one of the first American songwriters to earn a living through composition alone, and adds that his songs depicting African Americans have been controversial since they were written. In 1857, in financial difficulties, he sold all rights to his future songs to his publishers for about $1,900, and the profits from his songs went largely to performers and publishers. Selling every future song for a single sum, while the profits went mostly to others, sets the fame of the songs beside a very different ledger. In New York he continued to write sentimental parlor songs, including “Beautiful Dreamer” (1862), and he died there on 13 January 1864. Parlour songs and minstrel numbers from one pen, with controversy attached to part of the work, make his legacy hard to sum up in one phrase.
Browse piano sheets by Stephen Foster on Zen Virtual Piano.
Stephen Foster was born on 4 July 1826 in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and showed an early interest in music but received little formal training. His mother remembered him as a boy marching about with a feather in his cap and pounding on a drum while whistling “Auld Lang Syne.” 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 minstrel show songs, and from songs sung by Black labourers at the Pittsburgh warehouse where he worked for a time. Sisters’ songs, church services and warehouse singing all fed his ear, so his influences came from several different worlds.
In 1839 his brother William thought Stephen would benefit from the supervision of Henry Kleber, a German-born music dealer in Pittsburgh, and under Kleber he was exposed to music composition. He published his song “Open Thy Lattice, Love” in 1842, and in 1846 he went to Cincinnati as a bookkeeper. By early 1850 he had left Cincinnati and the steamboat business and returned to Allegheny City, where he lived in his brother William’s house, determined to make a career as a songwriter. Little formal training and a determination to write songs for a living make a self-directed apprenticeship easy to imagine.
In 1849 he entered into a contract, now lost, with the New York music publisher Firth, Pond & Co. He was commissioned to write songs for Edwin P. Christy’s minstrel show, and the most famous, “Old Folks at Home” (1851), also called “Swanee River,” appeared originally under Christy’s name; Foster’s name appeared on the song after 1879. That so famous a song first went out under another man’s name suggests how loosely credit could travel in that trade. The University of Pittsburgh’s biography calls him one of the first American songwriters to earn a living through composition alone, and adds that his songs depicting African Americans have been controversial since they were written.
In 1857, in financial difficulties, he sold all rights to his future songs to his publishers for about $1,900, and the profits from his songs went largely to performers and publishers. Selling every future song for a single sum, while the profits went mostly to others, sets the fame of the songs beside a very different ledger. In New York he continued to write sentimental parlor songs, including “Beautiful Dreamer” (1862), and he died there on 13 January 1864. Parlour songs and minstrel numbers from one pen, with controversy attached to part of the work, make his legacy hard to sum up in one phrase.
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Common questions
In Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, on 4 July 1826.
New York’s Firth, Pond & Co. was his publisher; in 1857, in financial difficulties, he sold all rights to his future songs to his publishers for about $1,900.
Yes. Commissioned to write songs for Edwin P. Christy’s minstrel show, he wrote “Old Folks at Home” (1851), also called “Swanee River.” It appeared originally under Christy’s name, and Foster’s name appeared on it after 1879.