1820–1895 · United States · Romantic
George Frederick Root (1820–1895) was an American composer and music educator. He became famous through songs of the American Civil War, including Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! and The Battle Cry of Freedom. People consider him the first American to write a secular cantata. The site has his The Vacant Chair and There's Music in the Air.
George Frederick Root was born on August 30, 1820, in Sheffield, Massachusetts. He was named for the German composer George Frideric Handel. At 18 he left his farming community and set off for Boston with his flute, hoping to find a place in an orchestra.
For a while he served as a church organist in Boston. Root's teaching job at the New York Institute for the Blind began in 1845, and it was there that he met Fanny Crosby. The two of them created some fifty to sixty well-liked secular songs. Among his children, Grace W. Root and Frederic Woodman Root (two at the least) went on to compose as well.
In 1850 Root toured Europe to study, staying in Vienna, Paris and London. Back home he taught music in Boston alongside Lowell Mason, and afterwards in Bangor, Maine. In Bangor he directed the Penobscot Musical Association and chaired its 1856 convention, held at Norumbega Hall.
Between 1853 and 1855 Root helped Lowell Mason and William Bradbury found the New York Normal Musical Institute, a school for future music teachers. After 1855 he travelled most summers, giving lessons at music-education conventions across New England. His teaching drew on a form of Pestalozzi's method, and he had a key role in how American music education grew in the mid and late 19th century. He was also an adherent of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Once back from Europe, Root started writing and publishing sentimental popular songs. Several of them became famous as sheet music, among them There's Music in the Air, The Hazel Dell and Rosalie the Prairie Flower, some made with Fanny Crosby. His New York Times obituary says that they were known throughout the country before the Civil War. He published as Wurzel, the German word for his surname, to benefit from the popularity of German composers of the 1850s, and to keep his reputation as a serious composer apart from his popular songs.
Apart from popular songs, Root wrote gospel songs like those of Ira Sankey. He also gathered and edited choral volumes meant for singing schools, Sunday schools, church choirs and musical institutes. William Bradbury had Root's help in 1853 with The Shawm, a book of hymn tunes and choral anthems that contained the cantata Daniel: or the Captivity and Restoration. In 1860 Root put together The Diapason, a church music collection.
Root composed cantatas, both sacred and secular; one popular example is The Haymakers (1857). Audiences in both Europe and America enjoyed his cantatas all through the nineteenth century. The first was The Flower Queen: or The Coronation of the Rose, written in 1851 to a libretto by Fanny Crosby. It won instant success with singing schools throughout the country. Many regard The Flower Queen as the earliest secular cantata by an American composer.
Root went to Chicago, Illinois, in 1859 and joined his brother's publishing firm, Root & Cady. The Civil War brought him great success as the writer of martial songs. They included The Battle Cry of Freedom, Just before the Battle, Mother, The Vacant Chair (words by Henry S. Washburn) and Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!, also titled The Prisoner's Hope. His song The First Gun is Fired, the earliest about the war, came only two days after the fighting started at Fort Sumter.
Altogether Root scored at least 35 hits in wartime, some bellicose and some ethereal. People sang and played them at home and at the front. Troops took up Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! on the march, while The Battle Cry of Freedom became familiar even in England. Once the war ended, Root was elected an honorary Companion, 3rd Class, in the Loyal Legion, a military order of the United States.
The first University of Chicago gave Root a doctorate in music in 1872. He died on August 6, 1895, in his summer house on Bailey Island, Maine, and lies in Harmonyvale Cemetery, North Reading, Massachusetts. The Songwriters Hall of Fame admitted him in 1970.
Root's output covers sentimental popular songs written before the Civil War, martial songs of the war years, gospel songs, choral collections for church and school, and cantatas. He used the name Wurzel to separate his serious reputation from popular and minstrel songs.
Root's melodies lived on after him. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! supplied the tune for Jesus Loves the Little Children, with words by C. Herbert Woolston, and for God Save Ireland. The Vacant Chair gave its melody to Life's Railway to Heaven and sometimes to To Jesus' Heart All Burning.
The site has three editions: There's Music in the Air for mixed choir (SATB), There's Music in the Air for voice and piano, and The Vacant Chair for voice and piano. All three are marked at the level 'Intermediate+'.