babylon has fallen

[Hank Trent]

Re: babylon has fallen

Its provenance prior to filing for copyright on November 11, 1863 (I believe what it says in hand writing at the link) is unknown thus far.

Um, didja see post #14 where it was offered for sale by Root & Cady in the New York Times in August of 1863?

Now that certainly doesn't mean it was common (it coulda been a dud that nobody bought), or that it was actually on sale (they coulda had problems getting copies printed and they just refunded any orders received), or any number of things. But it is an earlier reference to it.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[33rdaladrummer]

Re: babylon has fallen

Here's the sheet music for "Kingdom's Coming...as sung by the First Tennessee Opera Troupe," published by Blackmar and Bro. in Augusta, Georgia. But does this allow us to know whether or not the song was popular in the south?

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/sheetmusic/conf/conf02/conf0247/

[toccoa42]

Re: babylon has fallen

The topic being Copyright, not Patent, that particular CW version of "Babylon Has Fallen" was issued in 1863, while apparently the copyright was not approved and recorded til many months later. I wonder if folks getting the sheet music waited until 1864 to play it?

Exactly. Copyright. Thank you.

Also, copyright law today is very different from copyright law past. Prior to about 25 years ago (or so), copyrights had to be applied for through your publisher, effective immediately upon publication, noted by the copyright symbol, for 28 years, and had to be renewed every 14 years thoughout your life as an author. Today, all you have to do is set your hand to a work, and immediately it is copyrighted.

I have no historical support or provenance, but I would imagine that music, especially that set to folk tunes, was frequently NOT copyrighted immeadiately upon publication, as Danny indicates; it had to be submitted to the proper authorities first for copyrighting, according to the US Copyright Law of 1790. There was nothing stopping anyone then, as now, from self-publishing and distributing sheet music BEFORE it was copyrighted. The difference being, NOW, of course, is that it's copyrighted immediately upon either creation or publication, take your pick.

The fact that there is a issue date of 1863, and a copyright date of 1864, puts it square in the middle of the Civil War era. Did anyone play it? Beats me. But the fact that it WAS distributed and published meant that someone somewhere played it (someone had to WRITE IT, didn't they?) during those years, even if only to decided they didn't like it.

[33rdaladrummer]

Re: babylon has fallen

"But the fact that it WAS distributed and published meant that someone somewhere played it."

I don't think anyone is arguing that it would have never been played in any camp during the war. But is it overplayed in situations where we are trying to "reenact" history today?

Ask 10 people what their favorite fife and drum tune is and half of them will probably say Hell on the Wabash. It definitely falls into the "someone somewhere played it" category, but its popularity today likely has more to do with how popular it became after the war. The sheet music is in one civilian fife and drum manual that was published in 1862, and that's it.

If the 97th Reg. String Band had never recorded "Babylon" or if "Hell" weren't on just about every Civil War fife and drum CD, they wouldn't be as popular as they are today.

On the other hand, take minstrel tunes, which were once underrepresented in the hobby, and today are quite popular with reenactors. There are many confederate reenactors who know all the words to Old King Crow and Dandy Jim but could not recite the first two verses of The Bonnie Blue Flag to save their lives.

[toccoa42]

Re: babylon has fallen

I don't think anyone is arguing that it would have never been played in any camp during the war. But is it overplayed in situations where we are trying to "reenact" history today?

Maybe. No way to tell without a veteran to ask, and they're gone. We have only provenance to go by, but provenance never indicates how many plays per hour a certain tune received. The fact that it (or any tune with a provenance that we can agree upon as accurate, regardless of the actual played frequency) is good enough for me. It's all you really have to go by, isn't it?

[Hank Trent]

Re: babylon has fallen

The relative popularity of Year of Jubilo and Babylon are both discussed in this book, Songs of the Civil War by Irwin Silber, but unfortunately the page is not online that has most of the entry on Babylon. Is it a reliable book and if so, anyone have access to that page in hard copy?

The fact that it (or any tune with a provenance that we can agree upon as accurate, regardless of the actual played frequency) is good enough for me. It's all you really have to go by, isn't it?

Well, there are quite a few things that indicate relative popularity: how many copies of the sheet music were sold, how many times a song was mentioned as being sung as well as how often it was used as a literary reference, how common parody versions were, things like that. I think there's a lot more than a simple binary: existed, didn't exist.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[toccoa42]

Re: babylon has fallen

Well, there are quite a few things that indicate relative popularity: how many copies of the sheet music were sold, how many times a song was mentioned as being sung as well as how often it was used as a literary reference, how common parody versions were, things like that. I think there's a lot more than a simple binary: existed, didn't exist.

I agree. But all we can really make is a supposition about a particular tune's popularity then; unlike now, when we know that a modern tune is too damned popular because we're sick of hearing it on the radio/iPod. We know because we've heard it. We can only make an assumption about songs that far in the past.

Will was talking about a song being overplayed now, realitive to it possible popularity then. In the end, we really don't know; we can only make a best guess, given the sources that you also mention, are well as whether a tune simply existed, or not.

[33rdaladrummer]

Re: babylon has fallen

In the 1990s it was acceptable for entire companies of confederates to wear "captured" sky blue trousers. Sure, we have documentation of this actually happening in the war, but how common was it?

Using the same line of reasoning we can randomly pick any tune for which sheet music was published during the war and play it, but wouldn't it be worth the effort to do a little research and play something that would be recognizable to the veterans?

Why can't we apply the same standards to music that we apply to uniforms? Sure, we're "guessing" how common RD2s were etc., but we do the best we can.

[Hank Trent]

Re: babylon has fallen

I agree. But all we can really make is a supposition about a particular tune's popularity then; unlike now, when we know that a modern tune is too damned popular because we're sick of hearing it on the radio/iPod. We know because we've heard it. We can only make an assumption about songs that far in the past.

Will was talking about a song being overplayed now, realitive to it possible popularity then. In the end, we really don't know; we can only make a best guess, given the sources that you also mention, are well as whether a tune simply existed, or not.

But we're only making a supposition about today, too. You're supposing that because you've heard a song on the radio a lot, everyone else has too. Honestly, I doubt that's true. People have different listening tastes, some listen to the radio more than others, and so forth. You could try to say what songs I personally have heard way too often on the radio, but I bet you'd be dead wrong.

So if you needed to make a broad statement about how popular a song was among various groups in America today, you'd still need to use the same sampling techniques, statistics and supposition.

Are you picturing a hobby in which each reenactor portrays a specific individual from the past, with exactly that person's likes, dislikes, and so forth? Yes, you're right, the only way to find out all that massive and specific information would be to ask that person, and of course that's impossible. It would be impractical even if we were portraying specific living people, and it's certainly impossible when the people are dead.

So since that's not possible, I think the next best thing is to fill in the gaps with what was typical. And then we're right back to the use of demographics, statistics, etc., whether we're portraying people who are living or dead.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[toccoa42]

Re: babylon has fallen

So since that's not possible, I think the next best thing is to fill in the gaps with what was typical. And then we're right back to the use of demographics, statistics, etc., whether we're portraying people who are living or dead.

That's pretty much my point. I just disagree with the use of these tools to attempt to prove that something did not exist, when we don't know for sure that it did not, when sketchy anecdotal evidence exists. I'm not saying that all things sketchy should always be allowed or used, just that their use must be prefaced with the caveat that the provenance is suspect.

[toccoa42]

Re: babylon has fallen

Are you suggesting that things you can't support should be undertaken provided you caveat the suspect provenance ?

Not that you should, but if you do, preface it as suspect. Sorry, I'm not the absolutist that you are. There is no room for maneuver.

[Danny]

Re: babylon has fallen

...Why can't we apply the same standards to music that we apply to uniforms?...

This is getting so silly. Music wasn't issued by the Gov't.

Most published music was obscure. We find the manuscripts and know the dates, but mediocre or bad music was, well, mediocre or bad. No P/E/C there.

By niche reenacting standards; an obscure published song is not more authentic than a better-known folk title (spiritual, chanty, work song) from the era. They are both out. See how music, an art form with emotional component, will resist our typical methods of determining period use or not.

One thing for sure, safe is to sit in your Shebang and whistle Dixie :)

Dan Wykes

[33rdaladrummer]

Re: babylon has fallen

"This is getting so silly. Music wasn't issued by the Gov't."

Neither were jaguar skin trousers.

[Danny]

Re: babylon has fallen

...Neither were jaguar skin trousers.

Fortunately for us .

Dan Wykes

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: babylon has fallen

This is taking an untoward turn. As much as I've enjoyed beating up on Danny in the past when I thought he was way wrong, I hope I haven't gotten so much in the habit as to fail to recognize those occasions when he's right.

Here we have a work, clearly put before the public in 1863 by a popular composer and a commercial publisher, following on a major hit the previous year and other popular compositions. Given its lyrics, I doubt it was sung in the south (maybe with different words?), but apart from that I think we're coming awfully close to overdoing our standards. Do you want every singer to document it to a particular regiment or post-63 event? What if no one's documented any specific song to that particular regiment or event? Do we then assume that no one sang?

Interesting quote about Work from the site I mentioned earlier (http://www.pdmusic.org/work2.html):

One day early in the war a quiet and rather solemn-look-
ing young man, poorly clad, was sent up to my room from
the store with a song for me to examine. I looked at it and
that at him in my astonishment. It was "Kingdom Coming,"
--elegant in manuscript, full of bright, good sense and com-
ical situations in its "darkey" dialect--the words fitting the
melody almost as aptly and neatly as Gilbert fits Sullivan--
the melody decidedly good and taking, and the whole exactly
suited to the times. "Did you write this--words and music?"
I asked. A gentle "Yes" was the answer. "What is your
business, if I may inquire?" "I am a printer." "Would
you rather write music than set type?" "Yes." "Well, if
this is a specimen of what you can do, I think you may give
up the printing business." He liked that idea very much,
and an arrangement with us was soon made. He needed
some musical help that I could give him, and we needed just
such songs as he could write. The connection, which con-
tinued some years, proved very profitable both to him and
to us. This was Henry C. Work, whose principal songs
while he was with us were "Kingdom Coming," "Babylon
is Fallen," "Wake, Nicodemus," "Ring the Bell, Watch-
man," "Song of a Thousand Years," "Marching Thro'
Georgia" and "Come Home, Father."
Mr. Work was a slow, pains-taking 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 fit-
ting of words to music. His "Marching Thro' Georgia" is
more played and sung at the present time than any other
song of the war. This is not only on account of the intrinsic
merit of its words and music, but because it is a retrospective.
Other war songs, "The Battle-cry of Freedom" for example,
were for exciting the patriotic feeling on going in to the war
or the battle; "Marching Tho' Georgia" is a glorious re-
membrance on coming triumphantly out, and so has been
more appropriate to soldiers' and other gatherings ever since.
George Frederick Root (1820-1895) from his book The Story of a Musical Life

I have a question about the performance of Work's songs that I'm hoping one of you musicians can help me with. Today he's undercut by his massively "incorrect" dialect lyrics. But -- and believe it or not, this occurred to me while reading those for "Corporal Schnapps" -- wouldn't this have undercut sales in the day? Not because they were considered offensive, but it seems way harder to memorize lyrics that consist half of nonsense versions of corrupted English. Do you think people might have more or less substituted real English for some passages?

Just curious.