Steven Foster

Total words: 1495

Introduction
     Stephen Collins Foster was the ninth child of William and Eliza T. Foster. He was born on July 4, 1826, in a white cottage high on the hillside above the Allegheny River in Lawrenceville, east of Pittsburgh. Foster's life has become part of American legend. It was once said that Foster detested school and so was poorly educated (www.pitt.edu). In reality, as a young boy Stephen Foster was more interested in music than any other subject. As the child of a middle-class family in the era before tax supported public education, he was tutored privately, and then he was schooled at private academies in Pittsburgh and in Pennsylvania. Foster showed distaste for learning and recitation, but he was a great reader and eventually became a literate, well-educated person by the standards of his day (www.pitt.edu). In relation to this paper, Stephen foster was very music literate also.

Stephen Foster "the dreamer"
     Young Stephen was the ninth child of the William and Eliza Foster. The Foster's were very well known people in western Pennsylvania, because they were active in both political and commercial affairs. William Foster senior was mayor of Allegheny, where he settled after leaving Lawrenceville. William Foster junior was an engineer and Morrison Foster was deeply involved in politics and business. However, Stephen was different from the other children. He was a dreamer, and above everything else, he loved music. He learned to play the flute and the violin, and he could pick out tunes on the piano. Stephen's family wanted him to be more involved in other studies other than music. When Stephen went off to boarding school he promised that he would not pay any attention to his music until after eight o'clock in the evening. The family kept on trying to make Stephen conform to the accepted, conventional pattern, closing their eyes to the talent that would some day make his name a household word throughout the world (Doo-Dah, Emerson, Ken)

Teen Year's
     As a teen, foster enjoyed the friendship of young men and women from some of the most prosperous and respectable families. Foster's earliest music roots began during these year's of his life. Stephen, his brother Morrison, and his close friend, Charles Shiras, were all members of an all-male secret club called Knights of the S. T. they met twice a week and one of their main activities was singing. One of Foster's earliest songs "Oh! Susanna", was composed by the group. His first published song, "Open thy Lattice Love", appeared when Stephen was only eighteen (www.pitt.edu). At age twenty, Stephen went to work as a bookkeeper for his brother Dunning's steamship firm in Cincinnati. There he also sold some of his songs and piano pieces to a local music publisher and had his first big hit with "Oh! Susanna." In 1850, foster already had twelve songs in print and he returned to Pittsburgh, married Jane Denny Mac Dowell, and launched his career as a songwriter.

Professional Songwriter
      Although still an amateur songwriter, Foster realized that the minstrel stage was the answer to getting an audience to enjoy his music. After "Oh! Susanna" became a national hit following its performance by the Christy Minstrels in 1848, the song was widely used by more than two-dozen music publishing firms, who earned tens of thousands of dollars from sheet music sales (www.pitt.edu). With the success of the minstrel groups it was assumed that Foster was making a lot of money, but the truth is that he only made a mere one hundred dollars from a single firm in Cincinnati. "Oh! Susanna" was a failure financially, but it taught Foster two important lessons: one, his potential to earn significant sums from songwriting and, two, the need to protect his artistic property. During 1848 and 1849, at least eight more of Foster's songs were published, including "Uncle Ned" and "Nelly was a Lady." Foster's early success made him quit his bookkeeping job in Cincinnati and return to Pittsburgh. On December 3, 1849, he signed a contract with the New York music publisher, Firth, Pond, & Co, which officially began his professional career (Doo-Dah, Emerson, Ken).
In reality, Foster was not a musician without direction in his life, he was a pioneer. There was no music business, as we know it. Sound recording was not invented until thirteen years after his death and radio was sixty-six year's after his death. There was no way of earning money except through a five to ten percent royalty on sheet music sales of his own editions by his original publisher, or though the outright purchase of a song by a publisher. There was no way to know whether or not he was being paid for all the copies his publisher sold. Also, there were no attorneys specializing in authors' rights and copyright law protected far less than it does today (Doo-Dah, Emerson, Ken). Stephen Foster also reformed minstrelsy during this time by writing texts suitable to refined taste, instead of extremely offensive words. Foster also began using the term "plantation song" for his new compositions. Soon foster dropped dialect altogether from his texts and eventually referred to his songs as "American melodies." The structure of these songs made them proper for both the minstrel stage and the parlor (www.pitt.edu).
Negro Minstrelsy
Foster wrote ballads and dances for pianists as well as minstrel songs, often referred to as "Ethiopian" songs. The text in these songs depicted African American slaves as simple, good-natured creatures. Negro minstrelsy originated about 1830 but it really did not reach its full development until some years later. In those days, the popular form of entertainment and was also the means of quickly spreading from place to place, the popularity of the latest song hits. Christy's troupe, which was formed in 1842, made the greatest contribution to this form of art ("Stephen Collins Foster", Merit audio visual). Prizes were sometimes offered by publishers to encourage the composing of minstrel songs. Foster's first contribution to Negro minstrelsy was in 1847, when he sent in "Down South Where the Cane Grows", written during his bookkeeping days in Cincinnati. The song was not accepted as a prizewinner, but it was interesting enough to catch the eyes of the publisher offering the prize to seek to copyright it. The first of Foster's minstrel songs to be published was Louisiana Belle, which appeared in 1847 and W.C. Peters, the publishers, took out the copyright with no mention was made of the composer. A great number of Foster's songs were never attributed to him for the very fact that the publishers secured the copyright; among these was the popular "Uncle Ned." (www.pitt.edu).
Final Days and Death
     During the end of Foster's career the Civil War was raging on. After William junior's death the family died out. Before Foster would pass away he and his friend George Cooper would write songs together. It is said that Foster was in the last stages of alcoholism before he died (www.bobjanuary.com). Foster and Cooper collaborated the last year of Stephen Foster's life. Cooper stated that while Foster was addicted to drink, he was never intoxicated during their months of song writing (www.bobjanuary.com). George Cooper wrote the lyrics to over fourteen of Foster's songs, which have not survived the years. Foster and Cooper had a strictly music relationship. The difference between cooper and foster was that cooper was still in his youth where as foster was at the end of his life. The songs they composed during their relationship were sold as they were written. Foster's publishing house, Firth & Pond, had cut off relations with him just about the time that he went to New York. The exact causes for this are not known, but it is speculated that Foster's continuing alcoholism was the reason. Not much is known about Foster's death, but (Harold V. Milligan's) biography of Foster describes the way he was found before his death. "Steve never wore any night clothes and he lay there on the floor naked and suffering horribly. He had wonderful big brown eyes and they looked up at me with an appeal I can never forget. He whispered, 'I'm done for', and begged for a drink...We put his clothes on him and took him to the hospital. In addition to the cut on his throat and bruise on his head, he was suffering from a bad burn on his thigh, caused by the overturning of a spirit lamp used to boil water. This had happened several days before and he had said nothing about it. All the time we were caring for him, he seemed terribly weak and his eyelids kept fluttering." This marked the end of the American legend Stephen Foster.

Works Cited

Emerson, Ken, Doo-Dah!: Stephen Foster and the rise of American popular culture. New York: Simon & Schuster, c 1997

Merit Audio Visual (Firm), Stephen Collins Foster, New York: Merit Audio Visual, 1988.

--------, "Stephen Collins Foster", (www.pitt.edu/foster.htm), 7/24/2004.

--------, "Stephen Collins Foster", (www.bobjanuary.com/foster/st8.htm), 7/24/2004

Crawford, Richard, An Introduction to America's Music. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, c 2001

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