Hard Times Come Again No More Duet

maio 20, 2022 Enviar um comentário

Difficult Times Come Again No More

Words and music by Stephen Foster, 1855

	What financial practices fabricated this era particularly decumbent to "difficult times"? Overspeculation; banks and state governments printing currency without bankroll by golden and silverish; child labor; no rubber measures in factories and mines. How did these practices filter downward to regular folks? Unemployment; loss of savings in bank failures; loss of homes, farms when debts couldn't be repaid, etc.
	What groups were trying to "sup sorrow with the poor" and reform some of the "hard" conditions? Dorothea Dix; abolitionists; temperance workers, etc. What practice is verse three'due south "pale drooping maiden" referring to? Employment of children and young women in factories.
	What would happen to the poor and others who fell upon hard times in the early on 1800s? People were imprisoned for debt, lunacy, feeblemindedness; relied on family, church.
	What are some of the mortiferous diseases of the early 1800s that could go out families singing a "chant ... around the lowly grave"? Cholera, typhoid, typhus, xanthous fever, etc. What has become of those diseases today? How are we protected against these diseases? Sanitation, sewers, clean water, clean air, industrial safety, antibiotics, vaccination, antiseptic surgery.
	What are the "safety nets" for difficult times today? Unemployment, health insurance, disability, welfare, effective medical treatments. How effective are they? Who all the same falls through the "cracks" today? What "hard times" should we exist helping others through that we aren't? Homelessness, mental disease and retardation, people without wellness insurance, etc.

Although originally equanimous as a parlor vocal, "Hard Times" has been absorbed into mainstream folk music and is often performed with folk instruments. In this recording, the solo fiddle introduction and the elementary guitar accompaniment bring out the sorrowful images presented by the text.

Jay Ungar and Molly Mason achieved international acclaim when their performance of Jay's composition, "Ashokan Farewell," became the musical hallmark of Ken Burns' The Civil War on PBS. The soundtrack won a Grammy and "Ashokan Farewell" was nominated for an Emmy.

In recent years Jay and Molly take reached an ever widening audience through their appearances on Smashing Performances, A Prairie Home Companion, their own public radio specials, and through their work on film soundtracks such as Brother's Keeper, Legends of the Fall, and a host of Ken Burns' PBS documentaries.

View the lyrics for "Hard Times Come Again No More."

View the published score.

Stephen Collins Foster

This song was originally advertised as "just the song for the times." When Stephen Collins Foster began writing it in 1854, at that place was widespread unemployment and a cholera outbreak in Pittsburgh, where he lived. Composed in the months post-obit the publication of Charles Dickens's Hard Times, information technology is likely that Foster was inspired non simply by the current hardships that surrounded him just also by the novel.

Even before the publication of the novel, "hard times" had become a popular phrase to depict the challenges of the period. Foster himself used the words in "My Old Kentucky Dwelling" in 1853 to describe a slave being sold down the river from Kentucky to the Deep South, a potent invocation of the horrors of slavery in the decade leading up to the Civil State of war (however, it was non necessarily a condemnation of the institution of slavery; meet "My Old Kentucky Domicile"). The yr 1854 also witnessed violence erupt between pro- and anti-slavery activists following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and allowed new states to vote to become "slave" or "free."

Although it may accept been "but the song for the times" when it was written, Foster's characteristically vague lyrics have made it a perennial classic. The vocal is not geared toward a specific economical class. Foster's invitation to "sup sorrow with the poor" is welcoming of everyone from the poor to the wealthy who sympathize with or relate to their plight. He refers to "life's pleasures" and "its many tears," as well as the "the vocal, the sigh of the weary," without ever specifying a crusade of weariness. Such vagueness nigh universal emotions—sadness, weariness—have made the song relevant in a variety of contexts.

"Hard Times Come Again No More" has been recorded by hundreds of artists over the years, including Johnny Cash, Arlo Guthrie, Emmylou Harris, and Rufus Wainwright. The song inspired Dolly Parton's "Hush-a-good day Difficult Times" in 1980. Information technology has spoken to people in times of economical hardship, war, labor strikes, ceremonious rights activism, and pandemics.