Stephen Foster

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Stephen Foster (1860)

Stephen Collins Foster (born July 4, 1826 in Lawrenceville , Pennsylvania , † January 13, 1864 in Manhattan ) was the most famous songwriter in the United States of his time . Many of his songs - including Oh! Susanna , Camptown Races , Swanee River and Beautiful Dreamer - are still known over 150 years after Foster's death and remain an integral part of American culture.

Childhood and youth

Foster was born in Lawrenceville , which later became part of Pittsburgh , and grew up as the youngest of ten children in a relatively wealthy family. His education included a month of college but little formal arts education. Even so, he had published a few songs before he turned twenty; his first composition was the "Tioga Waltz", which he composed in 1839; however, the first to appear was Open Thy Lattice Love , at the age of eighteen.

Foster was influenced by two men during his youth: Henry Kleber and Dan Rice . The former was a classically trained musician who opened a music store in Pittsburgh and was one of Foster's few formal music teachers, while the latter was a blackface performer , clown, and singer who made a living on traveling circuses . These two very different musical worlds influenced the young Foster equally. Although he was respectful of the more civilized salon songs of his day, he and his friends would often sit at the piano all night, writing and singing minstrels . Eventually, Foster learned to combine these two genres to create some of his best work.

Activity as a composer

Oh! Susanna by Stephen Foster (1826–1864), arrangement for voice with piano accompaniment
Old Folks at Home, sung by Ernestine Schumann-Heink (recording: 1918)

In 1846, Foster moved to Cincinnati and became an accountant at his brother's steamship factory. While living in Cincinnati, Foster had his first major hit, Oh! Susanna , who became the anthem of the California gold rush of 1848 and 1849. In 1849 he published Foster's Ethiopian Melodies , which included the song Nelly Was A Lady , made famous by the Christy Minstrels.

That year he returned to Pennsylvania and signed a contract with the Christy Minstrels. Now his most famous songs were created: Camptown Races (1850), Nelly Bly (1850), Old Folks at Home ("Swanee River", 1851), My Old Kentucky Home (1853), Old Dog Tray (1853), Old Black Joe ( 1853), Hard Times Come Again No More (1854), and Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair (1854), which was related to his wife, Jane Denny McDowell Foster.

Many of Foster's songs were very popular in the minstrel show tradition of the day. Although the appearance of black-faced singers was the only entertainment medium known to him that he could use, he tried to keep the lyrics of the songs free of foul and offensive expressions and to adapt them to the tastes of the more educated audience. He influenced the white performers of his songs not to make fun of the slaves but to get their audiences to feel compassion for them.

Although his songs often dealt with life in the southern states, Foster himself had little experience of his own, since he had only visited New Orleans in the south in 1852 during his honeymoon.

Foster tried to make a living as a professional songwriter and can be considered a pioneer in this regard because this "profession" did not exist in the modern sense at the time. Foster received hardly anything from the income that his works brought to the sheet music printers, because at that time there were only small commissions for musical copyright and low license fees for composers. Many publishers often printed their own editions of Foster's melodies and didn't even pay for Foster. He only got $ 100 for Oh, Susanna .

Foster moved to New York City in 1860 . About a year later, his wife and daughter left him to return to Pittsburgh. From 1862 his musical star began to decline, and with it the quality of his new songs also declined. In 1863 he began to work with George Cooper, whose lyrics were often humorous and adapted to the tastes of the musical theater audience. The American Civil War was also ruinous for the music entertainment market.

Death and memory

Foster died on January 13, 1864, at the age of 38. He lived impoverished in the North American Hotel at 30 Bowery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and still owned 38 cents. In his pocket was a scrap of paper with only the enigmatic "Dear friends and meek hearts" written on it. He was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania . Beautiful Dreamer , one of his most popular works, was published shortly after his death.

His widow died in 1903.

His brother Morrison Foster was largely responsible for the compilation of his works and wrote a short biography about Foster. His sister Ann Eliza Foster Buchanan married a brother of President James Buchanan .

Foster was honored with a building on the University of Pittsburgh campus called the Stephen Foster Memorial , which houses a museum. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 .

Foster's life has been filmed several times, so u. a. 1939 by Sidney Lanfield ( Swanee River ) with Don Ameche in the role of Stephen Foster.

literature

  • Wilburn W. Austin: “Susanna”, “Jeanie” and “the old folks at home”. The songs of Stephen C. Foster from his time to ours . UIP, Urbana, Ill. 1987, ISBN 0-252-01476-6 .
  • Calvin Elliker: Stephen C. Foster. A guide to research . Garland, New York 1988, ISBN 0-8240-6640-5 .
  • Ken Emerson: Doo Dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture . Da Capo Press, New York 1998, ISBN 0-306-80852-8 .
  • John T. Howard: Stephen Foster. America's troubadour . Crowell, New York 1953.
  • Harold V. Milligan: Stephen Collins Foster. A biography of America's folk-song composer . Gordon, New York 1977, ISBN 0-87968-313-9 (repr. Of the New York 1920 edition)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Foster, Stephen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Foster, Stephen Collins (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American songwriter
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1826
PLACE OF BIRTH Lawrenceville , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1864
Place of death Manhattan , New York