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250 The National Music of America.
butions, the dejected thirteen came to the conclusion that not one of the poets and composers had produced a work that could be called national, or that was likely to become so. The committee reached this depressing conclusion after about three months of hard labour.
That which a public call and a public reward could not evoke, sprang up by accident ; an old hymn-tune underwent two or three metamorphoses, and behold, a Union war-song was made ! The original hymn-tune is claimed by Mr. William Steffe, a popular Sunday-school composer, as his own.
In one of the old Methodist hymnals of about a half century ago, we find the following hymn-tune with " Glory Hallelujah " words: |
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