The Soundtrack.
The songs and their stories.
Image credit: “musicians marching,” n.d., 7986.F.13, The Library Company of Philadelphia, https://www.librarycompany.org
Before we get started, a quick note about song choice.
The songs included in this Book Soundtrack are not intended to be indicative of the full scope of political music used in the United States between 1788 and 1865. Harnessing Harmony focuses on telling the story of identifiably conservative uses of political music during this time, and this Book Soundtrack only loosely seeks to represent the range of voices represented in the book. Decisions on what songs to include mostly revolved around our personal capacity to perform them, whether a tune happened to inspire workable new musical ideas from us, and, in some cases, the centrality of a song to the book’s narrative. We do not endorse all the values or perspectives portrayed in these songs, many of which, like racism, misogyny, and colonialism are not relics of an American past but still part of a large and evolving American story.
Log Cabin March
The 1840 presidential election produced a remarkable outpouring of campaign music, particularly from supporters of the Whig party’s nominee William Henry Harrison. This example is sourced from the elaborately illustrated music sheet that features on the cover of Harnessing Harmony.
The version of “General Harrison’s Log Cabin March & Quick Step” offered here begins with the sounds of a brass band but soon shifts into a very different sonic space. To learn more about how Americans used and consumed presidential campaign music before the Civil War, check out chapter three of Harnessing Harmony.
2. Jefferson and Liberty
This song was first published early in 1801 to celebrate the impending victory of Thomas Jefferson and the Republican Party in the presidential election of 1800. It was not a campaign song, exactly, since it was produced after voting was completed. However, its initial printings did appear before the final outcome of this extremely close election had been determined by the House of Representatives (the public’s vote produced a tie in the electoral college).
At least three songs called “Jefferson and Liberty” were written to mark this moment. The version used here, authored by Alexander Wilson, was the most popular of the three. It takes its melody from an older Scottish tune called “Willy was a Wanton Wag,” which spoke to Wilson’s heritage as a recently arrived immigrant from Scotland , and it casts President John Adams’ Federalist administration as a “reign of terror” that “now is o’er.”
While Federalist elites like Joseph Hopkinson (who wrote “Hail, Columbia”) or Francis Scott Key (who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner”) were apt to write these sorts of patriotic songs for the American people, Republicans like Jefferson rarely wrote such songs themselves. Republicans more typically received songs from their supporters instead... like this one. To learn more about the difference between how Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans approached political songs, check out chapter one of Harnessing Harmony.
3. Hail, Columbia
Still a well-known patriotic tune today, “Hail, Columbia” was authored in 1798 by a young Federalist party lawyer named Joseph Hopkinson. Hopkinson wrote the song by attaching lyrics to an already popular melody known as “The President’s March,” which had originally been composed for George Washington’s first presidential inauguration.
Produced in a moment of intense partisan polarization, Hopkinson hoped his song would remind Americans that national unity was an important precondition for American liberty. Republican opponents disputed the song’s implication that the United States was best served by submitting itself to the wisdom of its elected leaders. But Federalists like Hopkinson never truly accepted the legitimacy of Republican party opposition, dismissed their criticisms of “Hail, Columbia” as un-American, and maintained that real patriots had always loved “Hail, Columbia” from its first performance. The Book Soundtrack version of the song retains a sense of the Federalists’ confidence.
To learn more about “Hail, Columbia” (and the Federalist party musical tradition it fit into), check out chapter one of Harnessing Harmony.
4. Ça Ira
“Ça Ira” was in its time–and remains today–one of the most widely-known French Revolutionary anthems. Though written earlier, its revolutionary reputation was cemented amid preparations for the first Festival of the Federation in Paris (the antecedent to Bastille Day in July 1790). With its bright, upbeat melody, “Ça Ira” became emblematic of those who wished to express a hopeful view of the French Revolution, even if the song’s lyrical flexibility also gave rise to a number of less optimistic versions as well.
Americans were initially receptive to the French Revolution, seeing it as an impressive extension of their own. But American opinion on the French Revolution split on news that French liberté had descended into a violent Reign of Terror. Jeffersonian Republicans tended to urge the United States to forge closer relations with France anyway, as a kindred revolutionary republic (and they paraded about singing songs like “Ca Ira” and “La Marseillaise”). However, those aligned with the Federalist Party tended to favor forging closer relations with Britain (over France). Federalists felt Britain offered a comparatively more civilized, ordered, and respectable model of a constitutional republic for Americans to emulate (at first) and eventually surpass. For Americans in the 1790s, to sing a French-associated tune like “Ça Ira” sent a clear signal about where they stood on all these issues and more. To find out more about the role of music in these conflicts, check out the introduction, prologue, and chapter 1 of Harnessing Harmony.
5. Hunters of Kentucky
Samuel Woodworth wrote “Hunters of Kentucky” in 1819, a few years after the War of 1812 but still in celebration of General Andrew Jackson’s military victory against the British at the Battle of New Orleans. Subsequently, the song was repurposed to vaunt Jackson’s presidential campaigns in 1824 and 1828.
The song’s lyrics misleadingly attribute American victory at the Battle of New Orleans to a handful of white volunteer soldiers (i.e. the “Hunters of Kentucky”) alongside Jackson as their charismatic leader. In the process, it puts forward an exclusionary, patriarchally white male vision of the American “people” comprised of rough-hewn but patriotic citizens who didn’t need to be improved to be great. The book soundtrack version of “Hunters of Kentucky” tones down some of the overtly masculine energy of the original, even if the catchiness of the song remains front and center.
To learn more about how songs like “Hunters of Kentucky” fit into the political milieu of the time, check out the prologue of Harnessing Harmony.
6. The Star-Spangled Banner
Famously, as Francis Scott Key watched US defenses withstand the British bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, he scrawled down a set of verses that would later become the United States’ national anthem. That Key would choose to write a song like “The Star-Spangled Banner” in that moment was partly due to the unique inspiration of his circumstances. But it was also in keeping with a longer tradition of patriotic music writing that Federalist elites like Key had been partial to for decades, and that would survive in various forms for much longer. Establishing and following this musical trajectory is central to Harnessing Harmony as a whole. But to learn more specifically about the partisan political context of Key’s composition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” check out chapter one in particular.
“The Star-Spangled Banner” is the present-day official national anthem of the United States, not “just” a historical tune, and it currently lies in the middle of deeply felt disputes over its meaning and use. Our track is constructed around a digitally reversed version of the melody, under which is placed an entirely new instrumental composition. As we hear it, the track strikes a balance between being both celebratory and questioning at the same time.
A short coda at the end of the track features an un-reversed version of the melody (as you would typically recognize it) on top of a reversed version of the rest of the track.
7. See, the Conqu’ring Hero Comes!
When the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia was established in 1820, their goals were to create a fund for “the relief and support of decayed musicians and their families” and to promote “the cultivation of skill and diffusion of taste in music.” However, they did not see themselves as a charity and did not pursue these goals purely out of the goodness of their hearts. Instead, their support of musicians whom they hoped would be capable of improving the public’s musical tastes was tied to a larger project of cultural stewardship, one that was designed to reinforce the wisdom of elite leadership in the face of a democratizing culture.
The first public concert of the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia was held on April 24, 1821, in the Grand Saloon of Washington Hall (located on the West side of 3rd Street, near Spruce). The program opened with a full orchestra rendition of the overture from Étienne Méhul’s The Two Blind Men of Toledo (1806) followed by a performance of George Frideric Handel’s “See, the Conqu’ring Hero Comes!”–the third act chorus from the oratorio, Judas Maccabaeus (1747). Handel’s chorus melody was later reused in many ways, perhaps most recognizably as the basis for the popular Eastertime hymn “Thine Be the Glory, Risen Conquering Son.” Performed by the Musical Fund Society at their first concert alongside works by Beethoven, Rossini, and Romberg, “See, the Conqu’ring Hero Comes!” was a piece that showed off the group’s desire to highlight the grandeur of the sound they could create with an advertised one-hundred vocal and instrumental performers on stage. To learn more about the politics of early American musical organizations like the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, check out chapter two of Harnessing Harmony.
8. Get Off the Track!
“Get Off the Track!” by The Hutchinson Family Singers was perhaps the most popular abolitionist song in the United States before the Civil War. It was written in 1844 after The Hutchinsons’ performed in the White House only to be frustrated at the fact that the proslavery politicians in attendance seemingly managed to appreciate their music without noticing (or caring about) its antislavery message. Afterwards, The Hutchinson Family published “Get Off the Track!” explicitly as “a song for emancipation” to make sure no one would miss the point. At the same time, it is notable that white abolitionists like The Hutchinson Family Singers were unconcerned about pairing their antislavery anthem to the popular blackface minstrel melody, “Old Dan Tucker.” To learn more about what it was like to be a fan of The Hutchinson Family Singers, check out chapter four of Harnessing Harmony.
The Book Soundtrack version “Get Off the Track!” evokes the dreamy optimism of many white abolitionists (like the one profiled in chapter four of the book), who were convinced that the world would inevitably, at some point, recognize the righteousness of their cause.
9. Old Hundred
The melody of the “Old Hundred” hymn has roots going back to 16th-century Europe and is still one of the most recognizable Christian melodies today. In antebellum America the tune was inescapably familiar to everyone.
“Old Hundred” makes its most evocative appearance in chapter four of Harnessing Harmony when a white abolitionist describes how a Black congregation in Savannah, Georgia, sang this hymn to celebrate news of emancipation at the end of the Civil War. “The effect of ” the congregation’s singing, the observer explained, “was grand & thrilling, & I never listened to a chorus in an oratorio that sounded more sublime.”
Today most people will recognize “Old Hundred” via the verse beginning: “All people that on earth do dwell.” However, it was commonly sung to a variety of different lyrics and no mention is made of the version used by the congregation in Savannah. In interpreting “Old Hundred” for the Book Soundtrack we substituted the words provided in The Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music (1822), which connects to the book’s discussion of early American musical organizations in chapter two.
Credits
Compositions, arrangements, production, and performances by Running Notch
Featured vocals, some guitars, and production by Billy Coleman