Songs of Stephen Foster [antikvár]

A A MERICAN CHILDREN are familiar with some of the best known ^ /\\ songs of Stephen Foster, and they will find in the pages of this ^ book many more which they will enjoy learning and singing. The songs are simple and lovable, and they belong to the whole world; for all hearts are alike in feeling tenderness, merriment, joy, sympathy, and love of home, and must have some beautiful way of expressing these feelings, such as we find in song. But sometimes we forget the giver in the gift. We have accepted these songs as belonging to us; let us not forget the composer, who also belongs to us, and whose simple and kindly nature is so beautifully revealed in his music. Stephen Collins Foster was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1826, when it was a small town. On the day he was born two great Americans died: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, second and third presidents of the United States. Stephen began to compose music in his early teens—his father wrote, when he was a youth, of "his strange talent for music"—but the great part of his composing was done between 1846 and 1864. He was only thirty-seven years old when he died. This collection contains forty-one songs, selected from the two hundred or more compositions which he wrote. The best of these songs, perhaps ten or twelve in number, have outlived all exigency of time and circumstance and have joined those other ageless examples of art which only genius can produce. The music of this collection has been taken directly from the first published editions, without alteration except a few corrections in wording, spelling and punctuation, as well as changes in key in certain songs to bring them within the range of youthful voices, and some rearrangement of voice lines in the choruses to conform to modern printing. how to sing the songs In singing the songs questions of style may become puzzling. A few suggestions may be helpful.