1930. It is not quite clear who actually wrote this song. It was

discovered by John A. Lomax who heard it sung by a Texan saloon keeper, recorded it, and published it in his 1910 edition of _Cowboy Songs_. Only after Guion had arranged it did it become a national favorite over the radio, its popularity no doubt immensely enhanced by the widely circulated story that this was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s favorite song. Guion’s concert arrangement for full orchestra of “Turkey in the Straw” is also of interest. This folk tune—sometimes known as “Zip Coon”—first achieved popularity on the American musical stage in the era before the minstrel show. It was published in Baltimore in 1834 and first made popular that year by Bob Farrell at the Bowery Theater. After that it was a familiar routine of the black-faced entertainer, George Washington Dixon. Several have laid claim to the song, but it is most likely derived from an English or Irish melody. Other arrangements and transcriptions by Guion include “Nobody Knows De Trouble I’ve Seen,” “Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” “Ride Cowboy Ride,” “Short’nin’ Bread,” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Guion has also written several compositions of his own in which the folk element is pronounced. One of these is named _Alley Tunes_, three musical scenes from the South. Its most famous movement is the last, “The Harmonica Player,” but the earlier two are equally appealing for their homespun melodies and vigorous national identity: “Brudder Sinkiller and His Flock of Sheep” and “The Lonesome Whistler.” Another pleasing orchestral composition by Guion is a waltz suite entitled _Southern Nights_. Johan Halvorsen Johan Halvorsen was born in Drammen, Norway, on March 15, 1864. After attending the Stockholm Conservatory he studied the violin with Adolf Brodsky in Leipzig and César Thomson in Belgium. In 1892 he returned to his native land. For many years he was the distinguished conductor of the Oslo National Theater. His admiration of Grieg (whose niece he married) directed him toward musical nationalism, a style in which many of his most ambitious works were written. He was the composer of three symphonies, two rhapsodies, a festival overture, several suites, and a number of peasant dances all for orchestra. He died in Oslo on December 4, 1935. The _Andante religioso_, in G minor, for violin and orchestra, is a richly melodious and spiritual work which has gained recognition with semi-classical orchestras. But Halvorsen’s most popular composition is the _Triumphant Entry of the Boyars_, for orchestra. The boyar or boyard was a military aristocrat of ancient Russia, a tyrant as notorious for his cruelty as for his extravagant way of life. Halvorsen’s vigorous, colorful march has an Oriental personality. It opens with a stirring march subject for clarinet against a drone bass in cellos and double basses, and it highlights a fanfare for trumpets and trombones. George Frederick Handel George Frederick Handel was born in Halle, Saxony, on February 23, 1685. After studying the organ in his native city he settled in Hamburg where he wrote, and in 1705 had produced, his first operas, _Almira_ and _Nero_. A period of travel and study in Italy followed, during which he was influenced by the Italian instrumental music of that period. In 1710 he was appointed Kapellmeister in Hanover. In 1712 he settled permanently in England where in 1727 he became a British subject and Anglicized his name. He became one of England’s giant figures in music, first as a composer of operas in the Italian style, and after that (when the vogue for such operas died out) as a creator of oratorios. For several years he was the court composer for Queen Anne and royal music master for George I. In 1720 he was appointed artistic director of the then newly organized Royal Academy of Music. In the last years of his life he suffered total blindness, notwithstanding which fact he continued giving public performances at the organ, conducting his oratorios, and writing music. He died in London on April 14, 1759 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Handel was a prolific composer of operas, oratorios, orchestral music, concertos for solo instruments and orchestra, sonatas, compositions for harpsichord, and chamber works. He was greatest in his religious music, in the deservedly world-famous oratorio _Messiah_, and in such somewhat less familiar but no less distinguished works as _Judas Maccabaeus_, _Samson_, _Solomon_, and _Israel in Egypt_. His greatest music is on such a consistently high spiritual plane, is filled with such grandeur of expression, and reveals such extraordinary contrapuntal skill that it does not easily lend itself to popular consumption. But one passage from the _Messiah_ is particularly famous, and especially popular with people the world over; it is probably the most celebrated single piece of music he ever wrote, and while originally for chorus and orchestra, is familiar in innumerable transcriptions for orchestra or for band. It is the sublime “Hallelujah Chorus,” about which the composer himself said when he finished writing it: “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God himself.” This grandiose choral passage, a miracle of contrapuntal technique, is undoubtedly the climactic point of the entire oratorio. When the _Messiah_ was first heard in London on March 23, 1743 (a little less than a year after its world première which took place in Dublin, Ireland, on April 13, 1742) the awesome immensity of this music made such an impression on King George II, in the audience, that he rose spontaneously in his seat and remained standing throughout the piece. The audience followed their king in listening to the music in a standing position. Since then it has been a custom in performances of _Messiah_ for the audience to rise during the singing of the “Hallelujah Chorus.” The _Harmonious Blacksmith_ is Handel’s best known composition for the harpsichord. This is the fourth movement of a harpsichord suite, No. 5 in E major, which the composer wrote in 1720; but most frequently it is played apart from the rest of the movements as a self-sufficient composition. The title _Harmonious Blacksmith_ was created not by the composer but by a publisher in Bath, England, when in 1822 he issued the fourth movement of the suite as a separate piece of music. There happened to be in Bath a blacksmith who often sang this Handel tune and who came to be known in that town as the “harmonious blacksmith.” The Bath publisher recognized the popular appeal of a title like “Harmonious Blacksmith” and decided to use it for this music. The story that Handel conceived this tune while waiting in a blacksmith’s shop during a storm is, however, apocryphal. The _Harmonious Blacksmith_ begins with a simple two-part melody which then undergoes five equally elementary variations. The _Largo_, so familiar as an instrumental composition in various transcriptions, is really an aria from one of Handel’s operas. It was a tenor aria (“_Ombrai mai fu_”) from _Serse_ (1738) in which is described the beauty of the cool shade of a palm tree. In slower tempo it has become, in its instrumental dress, a broad, stately melody of religious character with the simple tempo marking of _Largo_ as its title. The _Water Music_ (1717) is a suite for orchestra made up of charming little dances, airs and fanfares written for a royal water pageant held on the Thames River in London on July 19, 1717. A special barge held the orchestra that performed this composition while the musicians sailed slowly up and down the river. The king was so impressed by Handel’s music that he asked it be repeated three times. In its original form, this suite is made up of twenty pieces, but the version most often heard today is an adaptation by Sir Hamilton Harty in which only six movements appear: Overture, Air, Bourrée, Hornpipe, Air, and Fanfare. Joseph Haydn Franz Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, on March 31, 1732. From 1740 to 1749 he was a member of the choir of St. Stephen’s in Vienna, attending its school for a comprehensive musical training. For several years after that he lived in Vienna, teaching music, and completing various hack assignments, while pursuing serious composition. In 1755 he was appointed by Baron Karl Josef Fuernberg to write music for and direct the concerts at his palace; it was in this office that Haydn wrote his first symphonies and string quartets as well as many other orchestral and chamber-music works. From 1758 to 1760 he was Kapellmeister to Count Ferdinand Maximilian Morzin. In 1761 Haydn became second Kapellmeister to Prince Paul Anton Esterházy at Eisenstadt, rising to the post of first Kapellmeister five years after that. Haydn remained with the Esterházys until 1790, a period in which he arrived at full maturity as a composer. His abundant symphonies, quartets, sonatas and other compositions spread his fame throughout the length and breadth of Europe. After leaving the employ of the Esterházys, Haydn paid two visits to London, in 1791 and again in 1794, where he directed orchestral concerts for which he wrote his renowned _London_ symphonies. At the dusk of his career, Haydn produced two crowning masterworks in the field of choral music: the oratorios _The Creation_ (1798) and _The Seasons_ (1801). Haydn died in Vienna on May 31, 1809. Haydn was an epochal figure during music’s classical era. He helped to establish permanently the structures of the symphony, quartet, sonata; to arrive at a fully realized homophonic style as opposed to the contrapuntal idiom of the masters who preceded him; and to arrive at new concepts of harmony, orchestration, and thematic development. He helped pave the way for the giants who followed him, most notably Mozart and Beethoven, who helped carry the classical era in music to its full flowering. To his musical writing Haydn brought that charm, grace, stateliness, beauty of lyricism that we associate with classicism, and with it a most engaging sense of humor and at times even a remarkable expressiveness. Most of Haydn’s music belongs to the serious concert repertory. He did write some music intended for the masses—mainly the Contredanses, German Dances and Minuets which, after all, was the dance music of the Austrian people in Haydn’s time. Haydn’s _German Dances_ and Minuets are especially appealing. The former was the forerunner of the waltz, but its melodies and rhythms have a lusty peasant quality and an earthy vitality; the latter was the graceful, sedate dance of the European court. Twelve of Haydn’s _German Dances_ and twelve of his Minuets (the latter called _Katherine Menuetten_) were written in the closing years of his life and published in 1794; they were intended for the court ball held at the Redoutensaal in Vienna where they were introduced on November 25, 1792. The _German Dances_ here have sobriety and dignity, and are often filled with Haydn’s remarkable innovations in melodic and harmonic writing; the Minuets are consistently light and carefree in spirit. The _Gypsy Rondo_—often heard in various transcriptions, including one for violin and piano by Fritz Kreisler—comes from the Piano Trio No. 1 in G major, op. 73, no. 2 (1795) where it is the concluding movement (Rondo all’ ongarese). It is in Hungarian style, vivacious in rhythmic and melodic content; it is for this reason that Haydn himself designated this music “in a gypsy style” and Kreisler’s transcription bears the title of _Hungarian Rondo_. Of Haydn’s more than one hundred symphonies the one occasionally given by pop orchestras is a curiosity known as the _Toy Symphony_. Actually we now know that Haydn never really wrote it, but it was the work of either Mozart’s father, Leopold, or Haydn’s brother, Michael. But it was long attributed to Joseph Haydn, and still is often credited to him. This little symphony in C major, which is in three short movements, was long believed to have been written by Haydn during his visit to Berchtegaden, Bavaria, in 1788 where he became interested in toy instruments. The symphony uses numerous toy instruments (penny trumpet, quail call, rattle, cuckoo, whistle, little drum, toy triangle, and so forth) together with three orthodox musical instruments, two violins and a bass. Joseph Haydn was also the composer of Austria’s national anthem, “_Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser_.” He was commissioned to do so in 1797 by the Minister of the Interior to help stir the patriotic ardor of Austrians; it was first performed in all Austrian theaters on the Emperor’s birthday on February 12, 1797. The Emperor was deeply impressed by the anthem. “You have expressed,” he said, “what is in every loyal Austrian heart, and through your melody Austria will always be honored.” Haydn himself used the same melody in one of his string quartets: as the slow second movement in which it receives a series of variations. It is for this reason that this quartet, in C major, op. 76, no. 3, is popularly known as the _Emperor Quartet_. Victor Herbert Victor Herbert was born in Dublin, Ireland, on February 1, 1859. He received a sound musical training at the Stuttgart Conservatory, following which he studied the cello privately with Bernhard Cossmann in Baden-Baden. For several years after that he played the cello in many German and Austrian orchestras. His bow as a composer took place with two ambitious works, a suite and a concerto, both for cello and orchestra. They were introduced by the Stuttgart Symphony (the composer as soloist) in 1883 and 1885 respectively. After marrying the prima donna, Therese Foerster, in 1886, Herbert came to the United States and played the cello in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, his wife having been engaged by that company. He soon played the cello in other major American orchestras, besides conducting symphonic concerts, concerts of light music, and performances at important festivals. In 1893 he succeeded Patrick S. Gilmore as bandleader of the famous 22nd Regiment Band, and from 1898 to 1904 he was principal conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony. After 1904 he was the conductor of his own orchestra. Herbert won world renown as a composer of operettas for which he produced a wealth of melodies that have never lost their charm or fascination for music lovers. His first produced operetta, _Prince Ananias_, in 1894 was a failure. But one year later came _The Wizard of the Nile_, the first of a long string of stage successes Herbert was henceforth to enjoy. From then on, until the end of his life, Herbert remained one of Broadway’s most productive and most significant composers. Many of his operettas are now classics of the American musical stage. Among these are: _The Fortune Teller_ (1898), _Babes in Toyland_ (1903), _Mlle. Modiste_ (1905), _The Red Mill_ (1906) and _Naughty Marietta_ (1910). A facile composer with an extraordinary technique at orchestration and harmonization, and a born melodist who had a seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of beautiful tunes, Herbert was a giant figure in American popular music and in the music for the American popular theater. He died of a heart attack in New York City on May 26, 1924. Victor Herbert produced a considerable amount of concert music—concertos, symphonies, suites, overtures—most of which has passed out of the more serious repertory. A few of these concert works have enough emotional impact and melodic fascination to enjoy a permanent status in the semi-classical repertory. Potpourris from the scores of his most famous operettas—and orchestral transcriptions of individual songs from these productions—are, of course, basic to any pop or semi-classical orchestra repertory. For Herbert’s greatest songs from his operettas are classics, “as pure in outline as the melodies of Schubert and Mozart” according to Deems Taylor. _Al Fresco_ is mood music which opens the second act of the operetta, _It Happened in Nordland_ (1904). Herbert had previously written and published it as a piano piece, using the pen-name of Frank Roland, in order to test the appeal of this little composition. It did so well in this version that Herbert finally decided to include it in his operetta where it serves to depict a lively carnival scene. _The American Fantasia_ (1898) is a brilliantly orchestrated and skilfully contrived fantasy made up of favorite American national ballads and songs. It is the composer’s stirring tribute to the country of his adoption. The ballads and songs are heard in the following sequence: “Hail Columbia,” “Swanee River,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Dixie,” “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.” This composition comes to an exciting finish with “The Star-Spangled Banner” in a Wagnerian-type orchestration. The operetta _Babes in Toyland_, which opened in New York on October 13, 1903, was an extravaganza inspired by the then-recent success on Broadway of _The Wizard of Oz_. Herbert’s operetta drew its characters from fairy tales, _Mother Goose_, and other children’s stories, placing these characters in a rapid succession of breath-taking scenes of spectacular beauty. The complicated plot concerned the escape of little Jane and Alan from their miserly uncle to the garden of Contrary Mary. They then come to Toyland where they meet the characters from fairy tales and Mother Goose, and where toys are dominated by the wicked Toymaker whom they finally bring to his destruction. Principal musical numbers from this score include the delightful orchestral march, “March of the Toys,” and the songs “Toyland” and “I Can’t Do the Sum.” _Dagger Dance_ is one of the most familiar pieces in the semi-classical repertory in the melodic and rhythmic style of American-Indian music. It comes from Herbert’s opera _Natoma_, whose première took place in Philadelphia on February 25, 1911. This spirited Indian dance music appears in the second act, at a climactic moment in which Natoma, challenged to perform a dagger dance, does so; but during the performance she stabs and kills the villain, Alvarado. _The Fortune Teller_ whose New York première took place on September 26, 1898, is an operetta that starred Alice Neilsen in the dual role of Musette, a gypsy fortune teller, and Irma, a ballet student. Against a Hungarian setting, the play involves these two girls in love affairs with a Hungarian Hussar and a gypsy musician. Hungarian characters and a Hungarian background allowed Herbert to write music generously spiced with Hungarian and gypsy flavors, music exciting for its sensual appeal. The most famous song from this score is “Gypsy Love Song,” sometimes also known as “Slumber On, My Little Gypsy Sweetheart,” sung by Sandor, the gypsy musician, in tribute to Musette. _Indian Summer: An American Idyll_ (1919) is a tone picture of Nature which Herbert wrote in two versions, for solo piano, and for orchestra. Twelve years after the composer’s death, Gus Kahn wrote lyrics for its main melody, and for fourteen weeks it was heard on the radio Hit Parade, twice in the Number 1 position. _The Irish Rhapsody_ for orchestra (1892) is one of several concert works in which Herbert honored the country of his birth. This work is built from several familiar Irish ballads found by the composer in Thomas Moore’s _Irish Melodies_, published in 1807. “Believe Me if All These Endearing Young Charms” comes immediately after a harp cadenza. This is followed by a variation of “The Rocky Road to Dublin,” “To Ladies’ Eyes,” “Thamma Hulla,” “Erin, Oh Erin,” and “Rich and Rare Were the Gems She Wore.” An oboe cadenza then serves as the transition to “St. Patrick’s Day.” The rhapsody ends with “Garry Owen” set against “Erin, Oh Erin” in the bass. _Mlle. Modiste_, introduced in New York on December 25, 1905, is the operetta in which Fritzi Scheff, once a member of the Metropolitan Opera, became a star of the popular musical theater. This is also the operetta in which she sang the waltz with which, for the rest of her life, she became identified, “Kiss Me Again.” Fritzi Scheff was cast as Fifi, an employee in a Parisian hat shop. Her lowly station precludes her marriage to the man she loves, Capt. Etienne de Bouvray. An American millionaire becomes interested in her, and provides her with the funds to pursue her vocal studies. Fifi then becomes a famous opera star, thereby achieving both the fame and the fortune she needs to gain Capt. Etienne as a husband. Early in this operetta, Fifi tries to demonstrate her talent as a singer by performing a number called “If I Were On the Stage,” in which she offers various types of songs, including a polonaise, a gavotte, and a waltz. The waltz part was originally intended by Herbert as a caricature of that kind of dreamy, sentimental music and consisted of the melody of “Kiss Me Again” which he had written some time earlier, in 1903. On opening night the audience liked this part of the number so well, and was so noisy in its demonstration, that Herbert decided to feature it separately and prominently in his operetta, had new sentimental lyrics written for it, and called it “Kiss Me Again.” This, of course, is the most celebrated single number from this operetta, but several others are equally appealing, notably one of Herbert’s finest marches, “The Mascot of the Troop,” another waltz called “The Nightingale and the Star,” and a humorous ditty, “I Want What I Want When I Want It.” The operetta, _Naughty Marietta_—first New York performance on November 7, 1910—was set in New Orleans in 1780 when that city was under Spanish rule. The noble lady, Marietta (starring the prima donna, Emma Trentini) had come to New Orleans from Naples to avoid an undesirable marriage. There she meets, falls in love with, and after many stirring adventures wins, Captain Dick Warrington. A basic element of this story is a melody—a fragment of which has come to the heroine in a dream. Marietta promises her hand to anybody who could give her the complete song of which this fragment is a part, and it is Dick Warrington, of course, who is successful. This melody is one of Herbert’s best loved, “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life.” Other favorites from _Naughty Marietta_ are “I’m Falling in Love With Someone,” “Italian Street Song,” the serenade “’Neath the Southern Moon,” and the march, “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.” _Pan Americana_ (1901) is a composition for orchestra described by Herbert as a “_morceau caractéristique_.” He wrote it for the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 (where President McKinley was assassinated). The three sections are in three different popular styles, the first in American-Indian, the second in ragtime, and the third in Cuban or Spanish. _Punchinello_ and _Yesterthoughts_ (1900) are two evocative tone pictures originally for piano from a suite of pieces describing the natural beauties of scenes near or at Lake Placid, New York. Herbert orchestrated both these numbers. _The Red Mill_, which came to New York on September 24, 1906, was an operetta starring the comedy team of Fred Stone and David Montgomery in a play set in Holland. They are two Americans stranded and penniless at an inn called “The Sign of the Red Mill.” When they discover that little Gretchen is in love with Capt. Doris van Damm and refuses to marry the Governor to whom she is designated by her parents, they come to her assistance. After numerous escapades and antics they help her to win her true lover who, as it turns out, is the heir to an immense fortune. The following are its principal musical episodes: the main love duet, “The Isle of Our Dreams,”; “Moonbeams”; and the comedy song, “Every Day Is Ladies’ Day for Me.” The _Suite of Serenades_, for orchestra (1924) was written for the same Paul Whiteman concert of American music at Aeolian Hall on February 12, 1924 in which Gershwin’s _Rhapsody in Blue_ was introduced. This is a four movement suite which represented Herbert’s only attempt to write directly for a jazz orchestra, and parts of it are characterized by jazz scoring and syncopations. Herbert wrote a second version of this suite for symphony orchestra. In the four movements the composer skilfully simulates four national styles. The first is Spanish, the second Chinese, the third Cuban, and the fourth Oriental. Another familiar orchestral suite by Herbert is the _Suite Romantique_ (1901). Herbert’s vein for sentimental melody is here generously tapped. The four movements are mood pictures named as follows: “_Visions_,” “_Aubade_” (a beautiful solo for the cellos), “_Triomphe d’amour_” (a glowing love duet), and “_Fête nuptiale_.” _The Woodland Fancies_, for orchestra (1901) also consist of four evocative and pictorial mood pictures, this time inspired by the Adirondack mountains where Herbert maintained a summer home and which he dearly loved. Here the four movements are entitled: “Morning in the Mountains,” “Forest Nymphs,” “Twilight,” and “Autumn Frolics.” There are individual songs from several other Herbert operettas that are part of the semi-classical repertory in orchestral transcriptions. Among these are: “The Angelus” and the title song from _Sweethearts_ (1913); “I Love Thee, I Adore Thee” which recurs throughout _The Serenade_ (1897); “A Kiss in the Dark” from _Orange Blossoms_ (1922); “Star Light, Star Bright,” a delightful waltz from _The Wizard of the Nile_ (1895); and “Thine Alone” from the Irish operetta, _Eileen_ (1917). Ferdinand Hérold Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold was born in Paris on January 28, 1791. He began to study music when he was eleven. From 1805 to 1812 he attended the Paris Conservatory where his teachers included Adam and Méhul. In 1812 he received the Prix de Rome. Following his three-year stay in Rome he settled in Naples where he was pianist to Queen Caroline and had his first opera, _La Gioventù di Enrico_, produced in 1815. After returning to his native city he completed a new opera, _Charles de France_, which was successfully produced in 1816 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris where, from this time on, all his operas were given. Hérold wrote many serious operas before turning to the field in which he earned his importance and popularity, the opéra-comique. His first work in this genre was _Marie_ in 1826; his most successful, _Zampa_, in 1831. He also enjoyed a triumph with his last opéra-comique, _Le Pré aux clercs_, produced in