Henry Clay Work & George Frederick Root: A Comparison/Contrast, Application Essay Example

According to Charles Hamm, writing in Yesterdays: Popular Songs in America, the Civil War era which roughly covers the latter years of the Antebellum Period and up to the early years of the First Reconstruction Period during the Presidency of Andrew Johnson, as a result of the devastation brought about by the war (especially in the Deep South) in terms of casualties and the loss of an institution known as human slavery, deep and intense feelings were aroused in the people, “feelings that remained strong and an important part of American life” well into the first decades of the twentieth century (397).

One way in which these feelings were expressed and eulogized was through music which as Hamm notes reflected the times of the Civil War with great intensity, so much so that the events themselves became intertwined with the music (398). Hamm also adds that some of this music became tightly interwoven with the stories of the lives of the listeners who had personally experienced “the pleasure and pain, the love and longing, the despair and delight, and the sorrow and resignation” (399) of the war which endured for four years between 1861 and 1865 and brought victory for the Union and destruction for the Confederacy.

During the turbulent years of the Civil War, two American composers stood out among their contemporaries–Henry Clay Work (1832 to 1884), and George Frederick Root (1820 to 1895), both of whom were highly skilled and sensitive songwriters and were responsible for composing almost every popular musical piece offered by the music publishing house of Root & Cady during the war with Root as the brother of one of the founders of the publishing house (Hamm, 401). Mostly written for piano and guitar, the numerous songs composed by Work and Root includes “Kingdom Coming” and “Battle Cry of Freedom” in 1862; “Just Before the Battle, Mother” and “Brother, Tell Me of the Battle” in 1864; “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp” and the ever-popular and tuneful “Marching Through Georgia” in 1865 (Hamm, 501) which incidentally was featured in the 1939 film Gone With The Wind.

Both of these men came from similar economic and educational backgrounds with Work, often ranked as the “preeminent composer of one of American music’s crucial genres, the Civil War song,” hailing from Quincy, Illinois, where he received a common primary and secondary education in the public schools (“Henry Clay Work”), and Root who called Sheffield, Massachusetts home and where he spent his boyhood working on his father’s farm and attending the local public school (“Piano Prodigy George Frederick Root”).

Musically speaking, both Work and Root appear to have been born with musical talent and ability with Work possessing “a strong inclination toward music from the start” (“Henry Clay Work”) and Root boasting of a fondness for music since early childhood and the ability to “play any instrument he could get his hands on” until reaching the age of thirteen when he “rejoiced that he could play one instrument for each year of his life” (“Piano Prodigy George Frederick Root”).

However, one major difference between the two men is that Work was wholly self-taught and honed his musical skills by practicing during his off-hours as a printer’s assistant on a melodeon (“Henry Clay Work”), while Root studied piano under organist and choirmaster A. N. Johnson in the city of Boston, where he became “so proficient on the piano that his employer set him to playing church services” (“Piano Prodigy George Frederick Root”). Interestingly, despite the lack of a formal education and music lessons, Work allegedly was able to compose his songs “directly by setting movable musical type (thanks to his skills as an apprentice printer) without writing them down in notation or playing them on a piano.” However, as George Frederick Root observes in his autobiography, “Mr. Work was a slow, painstaking writer, being from one to three weeks upon a song,” but when “the work was done, it was like a piece of fine mosaic, especially in the fitting of words to music” (“Henry Clay Work”).

Since both Work and Root were at the height of their creative powers during the Civil War, the songs they composed greatly appealed to the masses and especially those who had suffered the horrors of war and whose memories of past events were still fresh in their minds following battles like Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor and long after the Confederacy of President Jefferson Davis surrendered to the Union in April of 1865, thus bringing an end to the “Old South.”

Two of Henry Clay Work’s most popular and best-selling songs were “Kingdom Coming” (1862) and the proverbial favorite “Marching Through Georgia” (1865), both being published by Root & Cady. Oddly enough, “Kingdom Coming” appears to have been expressly written as a sort of slave narrative or a song of black celebration in regards to life as a slave on the vast plantations in the Deep South and how the white Master of the plantation might react upon hearing of the news of approaching Union forces.

Written in “the ersatz black dialect of minstrelsy” or as a typical uneducated slave might pronounce certain English words, “Kingdom Coming” was perhaps one of the first Civil War songs to serve as the impetus for a huge advertising campaign designed by Root & Cady which consisted of “plain posters and advertisements that read simply “Kingdom Coming” and “more detailed publicity supporting sales of the sheet music” (“Henry Clay Work”). Whomever was responsible for this advertising campaign was obviously well-versed in public relations because “Kingdom Coming” turned out to be highly successful and popular throughout the Union and particularly in the Confederacy. “Kingdom Coming” was also popular with whites in the North and was often sung around slave campfires and in shanty towns; some sources have suggested that “Kingdom Coming” was a favorite tune among the slaves in Louisiana. In addition, some of the verses in “Kingdom Coming” refers to the biblical celebration of the Jubilee which many slaves equated with President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 which in effect freed every slave in the United States (“Henry Clay Work”).

Compared to “Kingdom Coming,” Work’s “Marching Through Georgia” was composed expressly for the victorious people of the Union via its theme concerning “the devastating campaign of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman” in late 1864 as he “laid waste to the city of Atlanta and then cut a swath of destruction” sixty miles wide and one hundred and twenty miles long “as his troops marched toward Savannah” and the coast of the Atlantic Ocean (“Henry Clay Work”). With a motif founded on a rousing march beat, “Marching Through Georgia” was not much appreciated in the Deep South, due to “deliberately rubbing Yankee salt into one of the sorest wounds of the Civil War,” being the fall of the “Old South” and the great city of Atlanta (“Henry Clay Work”).

Two of George Frederick Root’s most popular and best-selling songs was “Battle Cry of Freedom,” composed in 1862 while the bloody Battle of Antietam raged in the state of Maryland, and “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,” composed in 1865 near the conclusion of the so-called War Between the States. According to Root himself, “Battle Cry of Freedom,” much like Work’s “Marching Through Georgia,” was composed with the Union in mind and was born when Root “heard of President Lincoln’s second call for troops one afternoon while reclining on a lounge in my brother’s house.” At the time, Root imagined this piece as a rousing military ballad that could be sung by the troops before and during battle as a kind of call to “rally ’round the flag,” in this instance the Stars and Stripes. Root adds that one day, a close family friend asked him for “something to sing at a war meeting” that was to be held at the local courthouse; apparently, the song caught on, for as Root notes, “The song’s effect on troops was so electric that some commanders ordered their soldiers to sing it while going into battle” (“Piano Prodigy George Frederick Root”).

In contrast to “Battle Cry of Freedom,” Root’s “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp” was written with Union prisoners of war in mind, due to the full title of the song being “Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! or the Prisoner’s Hope,” first published by Root & Cady in 1864 and made available to the general public in early 1865 (“Piano Prodigy George Frederick Root”). The opening verse of this song concerns a Union prisoner sitting in his cell and thinking of his mother far away at home, and amid some tears, the chorus rings in “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching/Cheer up, comrades, they will come/And beneath the starry flag we shall breath the air again/Of the free land in our own beloved home” (“Piano Prodigy George Frederick Root”). Ironically, Root’s lyrics were close to the truth because on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia to Union General U.S. Grant which effectively brought the war to an end.

As composers of Civil War-era songs and music, Henry Clay Work and George Frederick Root could be described as musicians and composers for the people and as being responsible for “drawing into the Civil War’s political and military events a vast majority” of common men and women from all over the nation and especially those who served during the bloodiest military event in the history of America. Work and Root could also be described as patriots and wartime heroes despite that fact that neither ever served a single day in the military.

Bibliography

Hamm, Charles. Yesterdays: Popular Songs in America. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979.

Henry Clay Work. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Web. 2013. 17 Jan. 2013. http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-Sp-Z/Work-Henry-Clay.html

Piano Prodigy George Frederick Root. Web. 2013. 17 Jan. 2013. http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/piano-prodigy-george-frederick-root-11630384