An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 6 | THE SHEET MUSIC INDUSTRY AND PARLOR SONGS 145

Christy’s response is understandable. After benefiting for more than a year

from Christy’s fame and his plugging of the song (whose royalties Foster was

receiving), here was Foster, who in an earlier letter had called himself “a gen-

tleman of the old school,” proposing to renege on a done deal.

The song that prompted this exchange reaches into new expressive territor y.

The persona, a displaced slave, sings of loneliness and longing, having no appar-

ent plan to return to the home for which he yearns. Together the words and tune

convey the emotional weariness that isolation can bring.

Foster’s songs signaled the direction in which minstrelsy was headed by

midcentury. Unlike Emmett, Foster played piano and conceived his songs at the

keyboard. And in songs like “De Camptown Races” and “Old Folks at Home” he

showed a knack for writing minstrel music suited to the talents and tastes of par-

lor performers. In the early 1840s Dan Emmett brought songs drawn from the

countryside and circus into urban theaters. Now, around 1850, Foster had found

an idiom that seemed equally at home on the stage and in the parlor. Foster’s

songs may have earned their initial success on the minstrel stage, but their con-

tinuing popularity was intimately bound to domestic music making.

THE SHEET MUSIC INDUSTRY

AND PARLOR SONGS

In chapter 5 sheet music was described as inexpensive and thus a product ideal for

a democracy. That statement holds true for the years after 1845, even though ear-

lier in the century sheet music had been a luxury. Perhaps it would be better to say

that having started out as a costly enterprise, by the mid-1800s home music mak-

ing involving sheet music and pianos was a pastime accessible to many middle-

class Americans. In the late 1820s the trade was turning out 600 titles per year, but

the number grew to 1,600 annually in the early 1840s and 5,000 in the early 1850s.

The threefold leap between 1840 and 1850 refl ects a burgeoning demand.

The economics of sheet music publishing depended on a variety of factors,

including copyright law. As fi rst written, the law protected only authors who

were American citizens or residents. A foreign hit like “Home, Sweet Home” was

issued by many different publishers because no American edition of the song

could be copyrighted. Therefore, it was cheaper for publishers to print foreign

music than American music, which required them either to purchase rights

from the composer or to pay a royalty on copies sold. The American appetite for

European music owed much to the notion that Old World culture was superior,

but the dollars-and-cents advantage to publishers was also a factor that cannot

be ignored.

While money could be made in the sheet music trade, publishers complained

that the business was risky. Indeed, all but a few of its products lost money.

A notice of 1859 from Oliver Ditson & Co., a highly successful fi rm, emphasized

risk: “Not one piece in ten pays the cost of getting up; only one in fi fty proves

a success.” Success in the trade depended on these exceptions: the composer

whose name helped to sell copies; the stage hit that transferred well to the par-

lor; the vocal or instrumental number that the public took to its heart. W hen one

of their pieces struck pay dirt, publishers did all they could to exploit it, packaging

publishers and

copyright

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