Lula Is Gone: A Song History

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Stephen C. Foster wrote both the words and the music of "Lula Is Gone," a song for voice and piano issued in 1858 by Firth, Pond & Co. of New York, with a decorative title engraved by the Boston firm Greene & Walker.[1] The publisher deposited it for copyright on April 19, 1858.[2] A companion song, "Where Has Lula Gone?", followed that September, and the Library of Congress holds a manuscript of it in Foster's handwriting.[3]

A square piano with its lid raised, standing on four turned legs with a lyre-shaped pedal support

Jonas Chickering, Square Piano, wood, various materials, ca. 1850. Shown as a piano of the song's era; it has no connection to the song.

According to Evelyn Foster Mornweck's family chronicle, Confederate publishers reprinted Northern sheet music during the Civil War with no regard for Union copyrights, and Walter R. Whittlesey of the Library of Congress reported that "Lula Is Gone" was among the Foster songs that seemed most popular in the Confederacy.[2] Maureen Sellers includes it in Songs Of The Civil War, a 60-page book of mountain dulcimer arrangements, all in DAD tuning, of songs popular during the American Civil War, published by Fingers Of Steel.[4]

Our book that contains the song "Lula Is Gone"

Sources

  1. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Lula is gone: song".
  2. University of Pittsburgh, Center for American Music: "Lula Is Gone".
  3. University of Pittsburgh, Center for American Music: "Where Has Lula Gone?".
  4. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Songs Of The Civil War".
  5. Image: Jonas Chickering, Square Piano, wood, various materials, ca. 1850. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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