![]() Heaps, writing in The Singing Sixties, call "The Battle Cry of Freedom" `the type of rousing tune which appears seldom during a period of war and but once in a generation."Ĭomposed in haste in a single day in response to President Abraham Lincoln's July 1862 call for 300,000 volunteers to fill the shrinking ranks of the Union Army, the song was first performed on July 24 and again on July 26 at a massive war rally. Saved Land Browse Interactive Map View active campaignsĪlthough "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is today considered the preeminent Northern war song, Union soldiers were more likely to bestow that honor upon "The Battle Cry of Freedom." Willard A.Stop the Largest Rezoning in Orange County History.Send Students on School Field Trips to Battlefields – Your Gift Tripled!.An Unparalleled Preservation Opportunity at Gettysburg Battlefield.Phase Three of Gaines’ Mill-Cold Harbor Saved Forever Campaign.Save 42 Historic Acres at the Battle of Chancellorsville.Save 343 Acres at FIVE Battlefields in FOUR Western Theater States.Help Save 820 Acres at Five Virginia Battlefields.Help Acquire 20 Sacred Acres at Antietam.Virtual Tours View All See Antietam now!.National Teacher Institute July 13 - 16, 2023 Learn More.USS Constitution In 4 Minutes Watch Video.African Americans During the Revolutionary War.The First American President: Setting the Precedent.To help students learn their parts, we have isolated both parts and put them on our web site. ![]() This divisi is easily achievable, with step-wise movement. But chorally, it is arranged as a 2-part piece with a further simple divisi at the end. This song was as much a military selection as one played and sung around a campfire with whatever instruments were available.Īs a choral piece, this can easily be done in the classroom or in performance in unison singing only part 1. But when it settles into the verse part of the tune, we have added folk instruments of then and now – banjo, guitar, and mandolin. It has a big concert opening and a big ending. Our arrangement captures the feel of an army band expanded to be an orchestra. If you are interested in the original forms, they are readily available on the Internet. Such things were very common, and remain so today as songs are adapted, parodied, and sung rousingly for the polar opposite cause from the original.īecause all sets of original lyrics were not so kid-friendly, we have adapted them for this arrangement. It is interesting to note that while the lyrics were forcefully pro-Union, saying derisive things about the South and its armies, the tune became so popular that people on the Confederate side of the conflict adapted the song with lyrics that were positive for their cause. Selling sheet music was the primary way that composers supported themselves while writing music. If you share this information with your students, discuss the fact that at the time people only experienced music by hearing someone perform it, or by performing it themselves, mostly with sheet music. So much so, that at the peak of its popularity, the publisher was running 14 presses at the same time, all printing the sheet music, and even then they could not keep up with demand. The song quickly caught on with people in the North. This boisterously patriotic song was written by George Frederick Root in 1862 in the midst of America's great Civil War, a terrible few years of our history.
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