Book Review: Sheet Music of the Confederacy: A History
Sheet Music of the Confederacy: A History. By Robert I. Curtis. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2024. Softcover, 496 pp. $95.00.
Reviewed by William (Bill) Stallings
General Robert E. Lee reportedly once said, “I don’t believe we can have an army without music.” Yet, despite Lee’s purported statement—one likely endorsed by the soldiers and civilians on both sides—only a handful of historians have tackled scholarly studies of music during the Civil War. Books like Singing the New Nation: How Music Shaped the Confederacy by E. Lawrence Abel (2000), Stephen Cornelius’s Music of the Civil War Era (2004), Battle Hymns: The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War (2012) by Christian McWhirter, and Music Along the Rapidan: Civil War Soldiers, Music, and Community during Winter Quarters, Virginia (2014) by James A Davis, all provide students of the conflict with a much fuller picture of the impact music had on soldiers on the front lines and civilians on the home front. Adding to this growing body of Civil War music studies is Robert I. Curtis’s Sheet Music of the Confederacy: A History.
Curtis’s personal collection of over 500 pieces of music, which covers a span of 30 years of collecting, serves as the primary source foundation for his study. The book also makes extensive use of additional archives, including the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the Historic American Sheet Music Collection at Duke University, along with other private collections.
Organized chronologically and in two parts, Sheet Music of the Confederacy takes readers through the history of southern-themed and Confederate sheet music from the early 19th century through the Spanish-American War, and even contains some songs published in other countries. The book’s sequential arrangement helps readers better understand the context in which the songs originated and shows how their lyrics and themes changed over time.
Of particular interest is Curtis’s in-depth look at how Confederate sheet music played an integral role in inspiring, establishing, supporting, driving, reconciling, healing, and remembering for Southerners from the antebellum period through the surrender of their armies and beyond. Curtis explains how printed sheet music foreshadowed future events and highlighted sectional issues that began decades before the actual outbreak of war. With music being the primary form of auditory entertainment for most people of the period, sheet music flew off of printing presses, and then off of store shelves by the thousands. The popularity of certain songs found in the era’s sheet music ensured they received reviews and made news in local newspapers and magazines, thus spurring sales. Played in family parlors, at public gatherings, and by military bands in camps, on the field of battle, as well as in concerts for the soldiers and civilians, music lifted the heaviness of war, encouraged perseverance, and instilled hope.
The book also covers the process of music publishing in the Civil War South, which included the composition, publication, pricing, marketing, and distribution of sheet music, a process still largely in use today; albeit with different media. The printing of sheet music in the South started out slowly, but picked up momentum during the Civil War. However, as the war dragged on, a shortage of supplies like ink and paper significantly impacted the amount of music that made it into stores. Publishers attempted various creative ways to adapt to scarce resources. Some printers reduced the size and thickness of the paper they used, while others utilized ink substitutes.
The lyrics and musical notes printed on sheet music were certainly important, but so were the printed cover images. Incorporating emerging Confederate symbols like their flags, as well as battle scenes, popular generals, officers and political figures, and nostalgic camp depictions all became the album cover art of that era. In words and images, sheet music also expressed the daily experiences of common soldiers and civilians showing their challenges and hardships. Sentimental songs describing the loss of loved ones, home, and family were all popular.
As mentioned briefly above, Curtis wisely continues the Confederate sheet music story past the Confederacy’s defeat. White southerners used music to soothe their military loss, heal their bruised pride, and instill a sense of reverence in their attempt to form an independent nation. The Lost Cause theme was nurtured through songs reminiscing about the past and glorifying a South that had now returned as a proud and strong section of the United States. Songs related to reconciliation and reunification appeared, especially as the country prepared for and then fought together for the first time since the Civil War in the Spanish-American War.
Curtis’s depth of research is further evidenced in several appendices discussing additional music topics and in the endnotes and bibliography sections. Sheet Music of the Confederacy: A History makes a valuable contribution to the historiography of Civil War music and is sure to be the go-to source for Confederate sheet music for some time to come.
William (Bill) H. Stallings’s love of music has been a passion of his over the last 46 years. As an undergraduate, he entered Elon College as a music major learning music performance, composition, and theory. Over the years he has played in marching bands, drum corps, jazz bands, dance bands, orchestras, brass quintets, rock & roll cover bands, and contemporary Christian bands. Bill has successfully combined his love for music and history by serving as a ceremonial trumpeter and bugler and as a military history lecturer and exhibitor for the last 31 years at numerous historic sites including the North Carolina Cultural Resource State Historic Sites, museums like Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier, U.S. National Park sites such as Petersburg National Battlefield, and in public schools.
