There was a lot of great feed back today about the Hutchinson Family's song-"Get Off the Tracks". Many of them were even humming the tune as they came into class.
Today we looked at the lives of two composers who were both actively playing and writing music at the same time and in some of the same circles. Stephen Foster and Fanny Crosby both were very popular song writers, and wrote many tunes that are still familiar to us today, but they lived very different lives. Both faced many hardships and difficulties in life, and both faced them in different ways.
Stephen Foster wrote songs like "Camp town Races" and "Oh Susanna". Although he and his music were very popular, he seemed to live under a lot of financial and emotional stress. He died tragically at the age of 38, with $.38 to his name.
Fanny Crosby went blind when she was 6 weeks old, due to an inexperienced doctor, but she lived with joy and a strong determination to experience things despite her handicap. She started out writing popular songs like Stephen Foster, but after truly coming to Christ when she was 30, she began writing many of the hymns we sing today. She wrote over 8,000 hymns, and died when she was 95.
Manchester, NH based fine arts program for homeschool students
