150 PART 1 | FROM COLONIZATION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR
timing section text comments
I hear her melodies like joys
gone by,
Sighing round my heart o’er
the fond hopes that die:
Sighing like the night wind and
sobbing like the rain,
Waiting for the lost one that
comes not again:
Oh! I long for Jeanie, and my
heart bows low,
Never more to fi nd her where
the bright waters fl ow.
3:05 coda Another statement of the introduction
serves as a coda, or tag.
note This performance follows one of the many versions of the song found in sheet music publications,
this one for voice and fully notated guitar accompaniment (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1854). Only
the fi rst two of Foster’s three stanzas are sung.Listening Guide 6.3 “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” STEPHEN C. FOSTERListen & Refl ect
- How does Foster’s song refl ect the social values evinced by parlor songs in antebellum
America? - In what ways does the performance support those ideals?
OTHER SONGS OF SEPARATION AND YEARNING
While songs of the later nineteenth century praise the triumphs of technology—
steam engines, bicycles, balloons, and automobiles—many pre–Civil War songs
tend to prefer the past. Stephen Foster’s “The Voice of By Gone Days” (1850), for
example, announces that then was better than now and claims the sound of
that older voice as a tonic for the “weary hearted.” The reason is that the singer’s
beloved, like Foster’s Jeanie, has died—or, as these lyrics would have it, she has
gone to join the angels’ “bless’d and happy train.”
Poets and songwriters searched for subjects that would trigger nostalgic
yearning, and one device was to focus on inanimate objects rather than people.
Henry Russell’s “Woodman, Spare That Tree” (1837), which sets a text by George
Pope Morris, is an example. The English-born Russell both wrote and performed
his own songs, perfecting his art in the United States during the 1830s. An accom-
plished keyboard performer, Russell accompanied his singing on a low-backed
upright piano, which allowed him to face the audience. In his autobiography
he named the statesman Henry Clay, known for his power to hold an audience
spellbound, as his main inspiration.“Woodman, Spare
That Tree”CD 1.19172028_06_132-161_r3_ko.indd 150 23/01/13 8:19 PM