FOSTER, STEPHEN COLLINS American composer, was born July 4, 1826 at Pittsburgh, Pa. In 1852 he "concluded ... to pursue the Ethiopian business without fear or shame" and "to establish my name as the best Ethiopian song writer." This he said to E. P. Christy, who, with Foster's consent, originally figured as author and composer of "The Old Folks at Home," and whose minstrel troupe helped to popularize Foster's songs in America and Europe, among persons of all classes and qualities alike.
He was born of prosperous middle-class parentage of mainly Scotch-Irish stock. With the exception of two years spent at Athens Academy, some restless months at Jefferson college, and the period (1846-50) when he was employed as a bookkeeper in Cincinnati, he spent most of his life in Pittsburgh. In July 186o, he finally took up his residence in New York city, where his death, due to an accident, occurred on Jan. 13, 1864.
His musical inclinations appeared at the age of six. His first recorded attempt at composition ("Tioga Waltz" for an ensemble of flutes!) occurred about 1840. More promising was the senti mental song "Open thy lattice, love" (1842). Significantly enough, he became the star-performer of a boyish "Thespian Society" in negro-minstrel jingles (in trade jargon called Ethiopian), but Pittsburgh with its meagre fare of better music was sterile soil for higher creative attainments, especially since Foster, though enjoying great music never felt stirred to serious study of com position. Nor did his father, who in 1841 commented on Stephen's "strange talent" and "devotion to musick," ever comprehend that Nature beckoned for its serious cultivation. Hence, Foster's technical equipment remained very slender, but it sufficed for his purposes and was supported by a keen ear for imperfections in first ideas.
Foster invented no new type of song, but with his occasionally magic gift for felicitous turns of melody or phrase, he outshone numerous competitors in his two chosen fields of simple song, then equally in vogue—the sentimentalized drawing-room "ballad" and the "Ethiopian" song. To the absurdities of the "Ethiopian" song he contributed freely, for example his once enormously popular "De Camptown Races" (185o), but the best of his ne groid songs contain something vitally distinctive. In them, to quote his competent biographer H. V. Milligan, "the negro ceases to be a caricature and becomes a human being. ... In this type of song, universal in the appeal of its naïve pathos, he has never had an equal.... This is not the negro of `Jump Jim Crow' and `Zip Coon' but of Uncle Tom's Cabin." By 185o the popularity of his songs prompted Foster to derive a living from professional song-writing. During the next four years his vogue spread with incredible rapidity, but also by then he had practically sung his song, though half of his 175 com positions, generally to his own words, were yet to come. They yielded substantial royalties, but after 186o Foster apparently preferred to sell his songs outright for a few dollars. This trapped him into song-factory methods ; for instance, almost all of his 40 odd compositions of 1863 are pot-boilers. Most of his songs merely humoured the market and became historically negligible. Among the exceptions, however, the following possess the power and function of imperishable American folk-songs : "Uncle Ned" (1848), "Nelly Bly" (1849), "Swanee River" or "The Old Folks at Home" (1851), "Massa's in the cold, cold ground" (1852), "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853), "Old Dog Tray" (1853) and "Old Black Joe" (186o). (0. G. So. )