There's Music In The Air: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

“There's Music in the Air” is a parlor song with music by George F. Root and words by Fanny Crosby.[1][2][3] Both worked at the New York Institution for the Blind, where Root taught music and Crosby, a former pupil there, taught until 1858.[4] They had already scored a success together with The Flower Queen; or, the Coronation of the Rose, a cantata for female voices issued by Mason Brothers in 1852 and described by Bridwell Library as the first secular cantata written in America.[5] The song is sometimes linked to that cantata, but none of the sources consulted here places it there; library catalogs treat it as a separate piece of sheet music.[6][7]

Finely stippled drawing of a figure playing a harp beside a lake, with companions resting among trees

John Martin, A Man Playing a Harp with other Figures beside a Lake, brown wash with graphite, 1820. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

Sources differ slightly on the date. Song of America lists the song as published in 1854,[1] while the dated copies examined here are Boston editions from about 1857: one from Henry Tolman & Co. for voice and piano,[6] and one from Russell & Richardson that also offered a setting for vocal quartet.[7] Crosby's three verses follow a single day from early morning through midday to dusk, each closing with a refrain about the sound of harps, and they move from pictures of nature toward quiet religious comfort.[3]

The song lasted well beyond the parlor. Root's tune turns up in at least six hymnals and song collections printed between 1898 and 1914, among them Male Chorus No. 2 (1898), The Chapel Hymnal (1899) and The Assembly Hymn and Song Collection (1914), and editors sometimes set other words to it.[8] Crosby's text was still being reprinted in the twenty-first century, in the 2008 collection Blessed Assurance: Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby.[3]

Find books with There's Music In The Air for sale →

Sources

  1. Song of America: "There's Music in the Air".
  2. Songwriters Hall of Fame: "George F. Root".
  3. Hymnary.org: "There's Music in the Air" (text).
  4. Britannica (Students): "Fanny Crosby".
  5. Bridwell Library Special Collections, SMU: "Crosby, The Flower Queen".
  6. University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries Digital Collections: "There's music in the air".
  7. The Morgan Library & Museum: "There's music in the air / by Geo. F. Root ; song.".
  8. Hymnary.org: "There's music in the air" (Root) (tune).