SPOTLIGHT ON HISTORYSPOTLIGHT ON HISTORY
Francis Hopkinson, Music Amateur
P
erhaps the most devoted musical amateur in
eighteenth-century America was Philadelphia
native Francis Hopkinson, the University of
Pennsylvania’s fi rst graduate, a law yer and judge
by trade, a patriot, and a signer of the Declaration
of Independence. Hopkinson began playing the
harpsichord at age seventeen, in 1754, hand-copying
European songs and instrumental pieces, and by
the early 1760s was good enough to join professional
musicians in concerts. As an Anglican, Hopkinson
served for a time as organist of Philadelphia’s Christ
Church, taught psalmody, and compiled sacred
tunebooks for congregational singing. Music was
Hopkinson’s springboard for entry into Philadel-
phia’s musical life, where, given the scarcity of pro-
fessional performers, his ability and social position
made him welcome.
In 1781, the last year of fi ghting in the American
Revolution, Hopkinson produced a patriotic pas-
tiche for solo singers, chorus, and orchestra called
America Independent, or The Temple of Minerva, for
which he fi tted his own verses to music by others,
including George Frideric Handel. But his musical
ambitions also reached further, into the realm of
original composition. As early as 1759 he was com-
posing songs in two parts—with a keyboard accom-
paniment in which the right hand doubles the
singer’s melody and the left hand supplies a simple
bass line—modeled on British songs he had copied
out on his own.
For his Seven Songs for the Harpsichord or Forte Piano
(Philadelphia, 1788), dedicated to George Washing-ton, Hopkinson wrote both words and music. A pref-
atory note declares: “I cannot, I believe, be refused
the Credit of being the fi rst Native of the United
States who has produced a Musical Composition”—a
claim referring to the nation born offi cially in June
1788 when the ninth state ratifi ed the Constitution
of the United States of A merica.K Francis Hopkinson (1737–1791).Military uses for music may be divided into four categories: morale building
(or esprit de corps), camp duties (which included signaling), public ceremonies,
and recreation. On the fi rst count, an eighteenth-century European general
noted music’s power to impart energy that lifts the spirit. Just as people could be
inspired “to dance to music all night who cannot continue two hours without it,”
he wrote, musical sound could help troops “forget the hardship of long marches.”
Music also proved a practical way to regulate camp duties. As armies increased
in size, they became more cumbersome to control. Warfare required large
groups of soldiers to be moved in an orderly way, and drum cadences worked
better than oral commands. By the 1600s European armies had developed172028_02_044-062_r3_ko.indd 53 23/01/13 8:13 PM