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Francis Boott (composer)
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Name
Francis Boott
Role
Music composer
Died
March 1, 1904
Education
Harvard University
Francis Boott (June 24, 1813 in Boston, Massachusetts – March 1, 1904 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American classical music composer of art songs and works for chorus.
Boott was born of British parentage. He was educated at Samuel and Sarah Ripley's school in Waltham, where Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the tutors, and at Round Hill School, followed by Harvard College from which he graduated in 1831. In the 1850s, following the death of his wife, Boott took his young daughter Elizabeth (Lizzie) (1846–88) to Florence, Italy, where he studied harmony with Luigi Picchianti.
Boott became an honorary professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. He was friends with others in the Anglophone community in Florence, including Henry and William James, the Brownings, Isa Blagden and Constance Fenimore Woolson. Francis Boott and his daughter Lizzie Boott lived at the Villa Castellani in the Bellosguardo heights. Lizzie became a painter, and married the painter Frank Duveneck, who went to live with her and her father in the villa. The novelist Henry James visited them there and used the villa as a model for Italian villas in his Roderick Hudson and The Portrait of a Lady.
In 1888 Boott returned to America, and continued to compose music.
He died on 1 March 1904 at the age of 91 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Boott bequeathed $10,000 to Harvard University as a prize fund for the best 4-part vocal work written by a Harvard student. In 1960 the amount was increased to $15,246 through capital gains. The prize continues to be awarded by the Harvard University Department of Music.
Music
Boott's first six songs appeared in 1846 under the pen name of Telford; Upton described them as "quite undistinguished". In 1857 eight songs were published, followed by many individual songs in the following years. Boott composed at least 140 songs during his long life, as well as a handful of duets, choral works, part-songs, and instrumental works. He also composed hymns for church services, many of which were included in the hymnal for King's Chapel in Boston.
While his melodies and piano accompaniments are considered "commonplace, with little harmonic interest", his choices of texts were sophisticated, embracing the literary world of his time. In 1857 John Sullivan Dwight wrote that his songs are "not strikingly original, but graceful and facile, much to be preferred to the popular sweetish, sentimental type".
Musical compositions
Songs for voice and piano
under the pseudonym Telford:
Six Songs, 1846, G. P. Reed Publishing
The Convict's Lullaby (Henry Kirke White); revised 1874, S. Brainard's Sons, publisher
It is O'er (Mrs. Jameson)
Lass of Northmaven (from The Pirate)
Byron's Farewell (Lord Byron)
Tirana Española; revised 1874, S. Brainard's Sons, publisher
My Home and Thee
The Blind Man's Bride (Ballad) (Caroline Sheridan Norton), G. P. Reed, 1846; revised 1874, S. Brainard's Sons, publisher
Cleveland's Farewell (Sir Walter Scott), G. P. Reed, 1846
under his own name
Florence, 8 songs, Oliver Ditson, 1857
Sands o' Dee (Charles Kingsley)
Stars of the Summer Night (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
The Night is Clear and Cloudless (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Ring Out Wild Bells (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
Break, Break, Break, at the Foot of Thy Stones, O Sea (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
From the Close-shut Window (Lowell)
Battle of the Baltic (Campbell)
I am Weary with Rowing (William Wetmore Story)
Six Songs (Bret Harte), Oliver Ditson, 1870
The Heathen Chinee
Chiquita
Twenty years
Jim
Flynn of Virginia
Upon the Stanislow
Our Young Folks: Six Little Songs, G. D. Russell publisher, 1870
(Unknown song)
The Rivulet (Lucy Larcom)
Lady Moon (Lord Houghton/Richard Monckton Milnes)
Little Nanny (Lucy Larcom)
Swing Away (Lucy Larcom)
Berrying Song (Lucy Larcom)
Three Songs, G. D. Russell publisher, 1870
Violet (Colonel John Hay), 1825
We Two (Jean Ingelow), 1840
The Lighthouse-keeper's Child (Thomas Hood), 1849
Two Barcaroles (Luigi Catani), Ditson
The Honeymoon, 1884
A Year After, 1886
other single songs, all published by Oliver Ditson unless noted
Aftermath (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), 1873
Ah! When the Fight is Won (Recitative and Air) (from Lowell's R.G.S. Memoriae Positum), 1892
A Letter (Frederick Locker-Lampson), 1876
Anacreontic (as sung by Mrs. Wilson Eyre) (Leigh Hunt), 1876
The Angelus (Frances L. Mace), 1883
At the Garden Gate (Frank Dempster Sherman), 1891
Ave Maria, 1873
After Absence (Lilla Cabot Perry), 1893
Aftermath (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Baby's Shoes (Julia Ward Howe), W. H. Boner & Co., 1870
Battle of the Baltic (unknown author), 1857
The Bell Buoy (Rudyard Kipling), 1901
Bells on the Wind (Mrs. F. M. Ritter), 1880s
Beyond the Smiling and the Weeping (with optional mixed quartet) (Horatius Bonar), 1876
The Black Friar (unknown author), 1858
The Bobolink (G. P. Lathrop), 1877
Bring Me No Cup (On a Motif from Lethe) (unknown author), 1891
Bring the Bowl which you Boast (unknown author), 1858
Broken Rhythm: My Oars Keep Time (H. Trusta/Elizabeth Stuart Phelps), 1850s, reissued 1876
Castibelza (after Victor Hugo), 1885
Changed (from Longfellow's Aftermath), 1873
Coming (words from Marigold Leaves) (unknown author), 1875
The Confession (Praed), 1873
The Cumberland (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), 1863
The Destruction of the Assyrians (from Hebrew Melodies) (Lord Byron), 1888
Dormi, Jesu! The Virgin's Cradle-hymn (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), 1859
Douglas, Tender and True (Miss Mulock), 1884
Echoes (Christopher Pearse Cranch), 1877
Egyptian Serenade (George William Curtis), 1887
The First Cricket (William Dean Howells), 1876
The Fisherman's Song (Rose Terry Cooke), 1870
Flow On, Sad Stream (William Wetmore Story), 1876
Garden of Roses (William Wetmore Story), 1863
Gipsies Song (unknown author), 1857
Goodbye (Samuel G. Goodrich), 1858
Guild the Engineer (Ballad) (unknown author), 1873
Heigh-Ho! (Christopher Pearse Cranch), William A. Pond & Co. publisher, 1870
Here’s a health to King Charles (William Makepeace Thackeray), 1867
Home (Last Words in a Strange Land) (James Thomas Fields), 1880
How to Put the Question (Mrs. Caroline Spencer), S. Brainard's Sons publisher, 1870
If You Love Me (L. Clark), 1890
I know not if Moonlight (unknown author), 1883
In Memory of Oliver Wendell Holmes (Samuel Francis Smith), C.W. Thompson & Co. publisher, 1899
In the Cathedral (Katherine Saunders), Arthur P. Schmidt publisher, 1881
In the Summer Even (from Rohan's Ghost" by Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford), 1876
Into my Heart a Silent Look (Edward Bulwer-Lytton), 1885
Jenny Kissed Me (Leigh Hunt)
King Macbeth (song for baritone) (Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton/Owen Merideth), 1870
Kyrie Eleison (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), 1857
Laus Deo (with chorus ad lib) (John Greenleaf Whittier), 1868