The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-06-13
SONGS OF THE PEOPLE.
How the Airs Which We Hear on the
Street Obtain Vogue.

Springfield Republican.
How does a popular song become the
vogue? How do measles become the
vogue? All that can be said is that every
body has them. You read with sort OF
skepticaI curiosity that a song with an abb
surd title has broken out IN England. and
that all efforts to quarantine it have failed.
You think of it in an irnpersonal way as
you do of an outbreak of ia grippe" in
Russia. A week or two passes. Suddenly
you notice that all the boys on the street
are trying to whistle new tune-such an
abominable, ordinary tune that you Won
der why any one having whistled it once
should care to whistle it twice. Then
some morning, as you come down
town. you accidentally notice that the
street cars are iingIing along Inerrily to
the lnsidious strains of the new disease
Without any volition on your part your
lips pucker and you unconsciously begin
to whistle gently. Your neighbor stares
reproachiully at you and moves as far
away as possible. 1t is no use, he has
caught the dangerous air, and he too will
wake up the next morning with it on the
BRAIN. In about three days you begin to
loathe that tawdry melody as Kelley
graduate loathes gin, but your struggles
are useless. 1t clings to you like the
deadly Punch in the presence of the
passengaire," whose terrors Mr.. Clemens
has so graphically depicted. Then one
blessed day comes relief. The maIarial
atmosphere has lifted and the plague has
moved on to poster the life out of people
In the hackwoods districts. Then all is
peace and happiness until the next cpl
demic. Such is the natural history of
popular air.
There are certain qualities that 4 song
must have, but these once given you can
no more tell what song will meet with
popular favor than you can tell where
the lightning Will next strike. What a
song must have is a catchy melody and a
little fun or pathos and these supplied, all
the rest Is luck-and advertising. a great
deal depends upon the advertising. One
very good way of introducing songs is to
have popular minstrel sing them. If
they have any life at all they will take in
this way. Sometimes song will lie on
the shop shelves absolutely uncalied for
for halt dozen years, and then be taken
up by some popular singer and become
the rage. The place to gauge the success
OF song is at the music stores. They
commonly keep abreast OF the demand,
but try their best not to get stuck when
the boom SUBSIDIES bOom-ta-ra. of course,
Is meant. The music store people COM
monty hear the popular songs on the
street for several days before the demand
for copies begins.
Who is it that composes these songs
which reach hundred times as many ears
as the most popular of the strains Of Bee
thoven, Schumann or even Chopin? As a
rule they are not cultivated musicians.
Their melodies are simple and their har-
monies simpler still. Itis said that one of
the most popular of them, White, of whose
marguerite" 10000 copies have been
sold, used TO pick ont the airs on the vio-
lin and then have some one else write the
accompaniment. Sometimes even less
originality is required. No one can have
forgotten how the haunting, ethereal
strains Of the trio of Chopin's funeral
march were brutality degraded to do ser
vice as Somebody's Coming for Twilight
Call" Oh Temporal, oh mores! A dirSe
that might have served for the requiem of
a universe, and this paltry knave could see
nothing in it but Somebody's Coming for
a Twilight Call" Alas, that such things
should be.
Of course, in addition to ephemeral
tunes there are many standard songs that
really reach the popular heart like 1.-THE
Old Folks at Home Home, Sweet
Home, Annie Laurie" and a host OF
sweet and tender peoples melodies that
linger lovingly in the minds of musi-
clans. And once in a while strain of
weli-known song-writer, like Lassen's
thine Ewes so Blue and Tender. twill win
few admirers in that great public which
is so much larger than the little classical
world that contemptuously ignores it,
That the taste of this public can ever be
| really changed no one but fanatic will
believe. So long as 1.-The Mystery in
Scarlet" and Lovers Once, but Strangers
Now" and Mrs. Mary Jane Holmes pleas,
ing romances outseil Henry Esmond"
| and 'Middlemarch," so long will people
| revel at 5 cents revel in There's Grape
on the Door" and Sweet Vioiets'' and
Annie Rooney" and "Boom-de-re," when
they might just as well be singing, "Hark,
Hark. the Lark" and The Two Grena-
diers' and who Is Sylvia" And the
millennium will probably be pretty well
advanced before popular song writers
cease to be divided, as Bulow uncharitably
divides operate composers. into those
who add 70 the repertory of the barrel
organ and those who borrow from the
repertory of the barrel organ.