Songs in Their Time

Introduction

Songs and people find each other. How they find each other changes over time, but the songs are always present, weaving in and out of the history and stories, stages and poetry of their time. Song sheets and sheet music played a large part in bringing songs to the people in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and some found their way into collections at the Booth Family Center for Special Collections.

These collections hold innumerable love songs. For the most part you won’t see those in this exhibition. There are songs with racial, gender and political overtones that we would find completely inappropriate today. You won’t see those here either. There are many, many songs about mothers—so many, in fact, that C. Henry was moved in the 1800s to pen "Oh! Write Me a Song of My Father," pleading that some balance be restored.

There are also songs about industry. Oil, coal and steam were beginning to benefit and disrupt the everyday, and songs gave people a way to vent their elation, frustration or fear. There are songs about patriotism, moral virtue, and heroic exploits. Broadway musical songs of all sorts spread, often via sheet music, from New York to pianos and vocalists across the country.

The songs here speak to their time and, in one way or another, they speak to what was happening on this campus. See here a few ways in which their themes intersect with the daily life of Georgetown.

“Oh! Write Me a Song of My Father”
Words and music by C. Henry. New York: H. De Marsan, ca. 1850s
American Song Sheet Collection, GTM-GAMMS240




“Three Bells”
New York: H. De Marsan, 1860
American Song Sheet Collection, GTM-GAMMS240

and

   

Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
Philadelphia: David McKay, 1884
Open to “Song of Myself 33”
Rare Book Collections PS3201.1884b

In 1853 the ship SS San Francisco sailed out of New York on her way to California. She ran into a terrible storm two days out, which completely disabled her and took the lives of over 100 of her passengers. Two ships sighted her but sailed by without attempting rescue. The ship Kilby did render aid, and managed to take some passengers on before the ships were torn apart in the storm. This song, and Walt Whitman’s verse in “Song of Myself” regarding “the large hearts of heroes,” refer to the Scottish ship Three Bells and Captain Robert Crighton, who stood by the San Francisco for three days in the storm before finding a way, with another ship called the Antarctic, to rescue all aboard.

“God Bless America”
Words and music by Irving Berlin. New York: Irving Berlin Inc., 1939.
George H. O’Connor Papers GTM-850501

“Oil on the Brain”
Song and Chorus by Eastburn. Philadelphia: J. Marsh, 1864.
Helen King Boyer Collection, GTM-GAMMS257