Add the publishers forgetting to add the title’s anti-litigious hyphen to “battle cry” and you get a comically mercenary piece of art. The authors are so obviously ripping off Root’s original, but also double-down on trying to borrow from the reputation of other songs by referencing both of the Confederacy’s most popular anthems: “Dixie” in the first line and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” in the third. We’ll rally round the bonny flag, we’ll rally once again The Union and Confederacy didn’t honor each other’s copyright laws, but Schreiner nevertheless made two superficial adjustments to be safe: the hyphen in the title and the recasting of “Shouting the battle cry of freedom” to “Shout, shout the battle cry of freedom.” Otherwise, the chorus is basically an inverted version of the original:ĭown with the eagle and up with the cross Schreiner & Son, the Confederacy’s most prolific and beleaguered wartime publishing house, in 1864. Of course, both Union and emancipation were anathema to Confederates, but southern music publishers just couldn’t ignore a melody as good as “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” The result was a handful of pro-Confederate rewrites, but none enjoyed the success of “The Battle-Cry of Freedom,” published by J. We know it worked because both sides did exactly that-with Democrats using the song as a pure statement of Unionism and abolitionists pairing it with “John Brown’s Body” as a major abolitionist anthem. Writing for a northern audience not yet officially committed to emancipation, Root made the song vague enough that die-hard unionists and abolitionists could project their own ideologies onto the lyrics, without otherwise changing the song’s meaning. He would write more overtly abolitionist songs down the road but there’s a clever subtlety to his use of “freedom” here. Root was an avowed and public abolitionist, so his version of “freedom” surely did not include slavery. The latter point is especially relevant, as the song never defines “freedom” but repeats the phrase “battle cry of freedom” over and over again. In 4 short lines it hits 4 key elements of the Union cause: preserving the Union, fighting treason, protecting the flag, and spreading freedom. While we rally round the flag boys, rally once again, The verses primarily describe Americans rallying from various parts of the nation to join the Union Army, “shouting the battle cry of freedom.” The real meat is in the chorus, which pairs a rousing melody with a concise declaration of purpose: By the end of the war, “The Battle Cry of Freedom” was one of the North’s primary anthems and still holds a prominent place in our collective Civil War memory (most recently featured in the climax of Spielberg’s Lincoln). Suffice it to say, George Frederick Root, the Civil War’s most successful songwriter, took inspiration from Abraham Lincoln’s call for 300,000 volunteers in the summer of 1862 and the resulting tune instantly became a major hit in the Union armies and on the home-front. I wrote an article for the New York Times Disunion blog about the original “Battle Cry” back in 2012, so I won’t recount the song’s history here. So, let’s compare the two and see what we find. A lot of people wrote their own versions of the song, but the most popular contrafactum (as musicologists call songs with the same melody but different lyrics) was probably a Confederate version by Hermann L. Thus, although I’ve already blogged about three Root & Cady songs ( here, here, and here), I thought it would be fun to write a little about the firm’s biggest hit, “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” But I think I’ll do it with a twist. Those of you who read Battle Hymns probably picked up on my fondness for Root & Cady, since the firm embodied my central idea of Civil War Americans using popular music to reflect and influence public opinion. In intellectual terms, it means I’m starting to think about Civil war music more deeply-something I haven’t really done since I wrote my book a few years ago. In practical terms, this means I’m blogging a little less, at least for now. It will likely appear in the fall edition of Chicago History and I’ll probably expand it into a longer piece down the road. I’m currently neck-deep in an article on the mid-19th Century Chicago music publishing firm, Root & Cady. “The Battle-Cry of Freedom.” Music by Hermann L. “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” Written by George Frederick Root.
0 kommentar(er)
