Stephen Foster's "Ah! May the Red Rose…
April 1850 CE
This song is written in the style of a parlor ballad—a genre of popular song at this time intended to be performed at a slow tempo and to communicate a sentimental quality.
In 1846, Foster had moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and become a bookkeeper with his brother Dunning's steamship company.
He had written his first successful songs in 1848–1849, among them "Oh! Susanna", which had become an anthem of the California Gold Rush.
In 1849, he had published Foster's Ethiopian Melodies, which included the successful song "Nelly Was a Lady" as made famous by the Christy Minstrels.
A plaque marks the site of his residence in Cincinnati, where the Guilford School building is now located.
He then returned to Pennsylvania and signed a contract with the Christy Minstrels.
It is during this period that he writes most of his best-known songs: "Camptown Races" (1850), "Nelly Bly" (1850), "Ring de Banjo" (1851), "Old Folks at Home" (known also as "Swanee River", 1851), "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853), "Old Dog Tray" (1853), and "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (1854), written for his wife Jane Denny McDowell.
Many of Foster's songs are of the blackface minstrel show tradition popular at the time.
Many of his songs have Southern themes, yet Foster never lives in the South and will visit it only once during his 1852 honeymoon.
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