182 PART 2 | FROM THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH WORLD WAR I
pity,” were popular. In these numbers, “dishonor was always presented as the
equivalent of death, which usually accompanied it in some form about the fi fth
verse.” A song that comes close to Marks’s description is “A Bird in a Gilded Cage”
(1900). The female subject of this song dishonors the institution of matrimony by
marrying “for wealth, not for love,” and in the second of its two verses, she dies.
The narrator pictures a cemetery, then muses on the “tall marble monument”
marking the unfortunate woman’s grave:And I thought she is happier here at rest,
Than to have people say when seen:
[Chorus:] She’s only a bird in a gilded cage,
A beautiful sight to see....Songs from a new group of song writers and performers may have paved the
way for “My Gal Sal.” A generation of African Americans writing in the 1890s
brought fresh energ y to the music of Tin Pan Alley, helping to overturn some of
the trade’s inhibitions with unconventional subject matter and an intoxicating
new musical style: ragtime, one of the subjects of chapter 10.QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REVIEW
- In what ways do Sousa’s marches belong to the popular music culture of
their time, and in what ways do they affirm the values of classical music, as
described in chapter 5? - How do gospel hymns reflect new developments in late nineteenth-century
American society, and how do they affirm continuities from earlier eras? - W hat new elements altered the sheet music industry after 1890? How do
changes in the entertainment industry reflect larger changes in turn-of-the-
century U.S. society as a whole? - After 1890, a hit song could be hugely profitable for its publisher. Do turn-of-
the-century popular songs reflect this newly commercialized environment,
and if so, how?
FURTHER READING
Jasen, David. Tin Pan Alley: The Composers, the Songs, the Performers, and Their Times: The
Golden Age of Popular Music from 1886 to 1956. New York: D. I. Fine, 1988.
Marks, Edward B. They All Sang: From Tony Pastor to Rudy Vallee. New York: Viking, 1934.
Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century
Evangelicalism, 1870–1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Schlereth, Thomas J. Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876–1915. New
York: HarperCollins, 1991.
Sousa, John Philip. Marching Along: Recollections of Men, Women, and Music. 1928. Reprint.
Westerville, Ohio: Integrity Press, 1994.
War fi eld, Patrick. “John Philip Sousa and ‘The Menace of Mechanical Music.’” Journal of
the Society for American Music 3, no. 4 (November 2009): 431–64.
————. “The Sousa March: From Publication to Performance.” In John Philip Sousa, Six
Marches, edited by Patrick Warfi eld, xiii–xxxvii. Music of the United States of America- Middleton, W I: A-R Editions, 2010.
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