MY COUNTRY 'TIS OF THEE -- AMERICA: NATIONAL HYMN -- (One of EARLY APPEARANCE IN PRINT Appearance in Print of America's National Hymn, in Evangelical Musick; or The Sacred Minstrel and Sacred Harp United: Consisting of a Great Variety of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, Set Pieces, Anthems, &c., &c., &c.
Harrisburg, PA: HIckok and Cantine, 1834. Hardcover. Oblong, Quarter-bound calf 9 in. x 5 1/2 in. Printed paper over boards. The young divinity student really didn't expect that his half-hour jot-down of some possible ideas, to a German tune, would amount to much, but he was quite mistaken. This cataloguer remembers his home room requirement to sing the song every day in elementary school. Now. As to condition. NOTE: Cover is detached, and title page is missing. Scuffing to boards, and light spotting to pages throughout. Three Verses of "AMERICA : NATIONAL HYMN by Samuel Francis Smith appears on p. 224. First appearance of Smith's words to this widelyemployed tune, in America was 1831; this book was published in 1834. Pen trials to front pastedown ("Dear Mag[?]; Dear Caleb / Greensburg") and to rear pastedown ("Caleb Baughman" in ink, with "Greensburgh" in pencil above in a different hand, as well as other illegible words and scratches. A bit of ancestry research strongly suggests Greensburgh, (Westmoreland County) Pennsylvania. 310 pp. including index. Cover detached - Fair only/Interior contents Good Plus. Item #88370
"...Samuel Francis Smith (1808-1895) became famous as a result of the lines he penned as divinity student at Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts in 1831. In later years he would occasionally complain that all his other activities were customarily overlooked in favour of the result of one brief burst of creativity when he was twenty-two. His labours as a Baptist clergyman, writer and editor are indeed worthy of mention. A product of the Boston Latin School and Harvard College, Smith completed his theological studies in 1832 and went on to pastorates at Waterville, Maine (where he also served as professor of modern languages at Waterville—now Colby—College), and from 1842 at Newton Centre, Massachusetts. From 1842 ,to 1848 he also edited The Christian Review...." "...For all that Smith accomplished in his long career, he would be scarcely known today but for the words that became the unofficial national hymn of the United States. And those he wrote almost by accident. He reported years afterwards that he had in no wise intended to write a national hymn, and did not feel he had done so at the end of thirty minutes jotting on scrap paper. In fact, he laid his finished stanzas aside and nearly forgot them. Weeks passed before he looked at them again and dispatched them into a wider world, into history and the grateful hearts of his countrymen. Actually, he sent his lines only to his friend Lowell Mason (1792-1872), America’s premier music educator and a leading composer, anthologist and conductor...."
"...Mason was seeking songs suitable for schoolchildren. Mason passed these books to Smith, who was a good linguist: ‘I can’t read these, but they contain good music, which I should be glad to use. Turn over the leaves, and if you find anything particularly good, give me a translation or imitation of it, or write a wholly original song—anything, so I can use it’. A patriotic German tune, Hei/ dir im Siegerkranz, especially appealed to Smith as he worked his way through the texts that historic February day. Struck ‘by its simple and natural movement, and its fitness for children’s choirs’, he set about composing new words for the tune, not realising it was already the melody of the British national anthem and of patriotic songs in other European countries and in the United States as well. The tune had been published in Harmonia Anglicana in 1744 (London); the first public performance of ‘God Save the King’ was at the Drury Lane Theatre on 28 September 1745. The tune was printed in the American colonies in 1761 in James Lyon’s Urania (Philadelphia). After independence Americans wrote many new sets of words to the melody, such as ‘God Save America’, ‘God Save the Thirteen Sates’, ‘God Save the President’. and ‘God Save George Washington’"
Price: $125.00