Performing Arts: Alexander's Ragtime Band

On February 27, 1860, in Cooper Union's Great Hall, Abraham Lincoln delivered his "right makes might" speech. Nearly 140 years later, in that same auditorium, the Performing Arts Library presented its public programs during the first two years of the renovation of the Library's Lincoln Center building. As part of the programs-in-exile, Songfellows, a quartet which grew out of the Metropolitan Opera Chorus, was asked to perform Civil War Songs songs on a program titled Songs of an Emerging Nation. Songfellows are: tenor Mukund Marathe; tenor Gregory Davidson; baritone Jared Stamm; bass Ross Crolius; pianist Robert Rogers; and director Ross T. Crolius. The Library presented this program at the Great Hall on June 5, 1999. Five sections, plus an encore, comprised the evening:

Civil War Songs
"We Are Coming, Father Abraam, 300,000 More," by Stephen C. Foster, 1862
"The Battle Cry of Freedom," by George F. Root, 1862, featuring Mr. Davidson
"Aura Lee," by George R. Poulton (arranged by R. Shaw and A. Parker), 1855
"Tenting on the Old Camp Ground," by Walter Kitteridge, 1862

Foster's Ladies
"Open Thy Lattice, Love," S.C. Foster, 1844
"Nelly Bly" (arrangements by John Tasker Howard and N. Clifford Page), 1850
"Sweedy She Sleeps, My Alice Fair," 1851
"Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," 1854, featuring Mr. Marathe

Election and Campaign Songs
"The White House Chair," by S.C Foster, 1856
"Little Mac, Little Mac, You're the Very Man," by S.C. Foster, 1864, featuring Mr. Crolius
"Put the Right Man at the Wheel," by Will S. Hays, 1876, featuring Mr. Davidson
"William Will," by Charles E. Ives, 1896, featuring Mr. Crolius

Songs of a Sentimental Age
"I Took Her to the Ball," by W.S. Hays, 1877, featuring Mr. Marathe
"My Love," op. 33, no. 2, by Horatio W. Parker, 1893
"Too Late for Love," by T. Frank Allen, 1880, featuring Mr. Stamm
"For You and Me," by C.E. Ives, 1896
"Pilgrims of Love" from Sweethearts, by Victor Herbert, 1913

Irving Berlin: The Lower East Side
"When Johnson's Quartet Harmonize," by Irving Berlin, 1912
"If You Don't Want My Peaches, You'd Better Stop Shaking My Tree" (arrangements by Linda Dowdell), 1914
"How Do You Do It, Mabel, on Twenty Dollars a Week?" 1911
"Yiddisha Nightingale," 1911

Encore
"Alexander's Ragtime Band," by Irving Berlin