NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

‘Two other Englishmen who contributed substantially to the early popular
music of America were James Hook (1746-1827) and William Shield (1748-
1829). Their careers showed a curious parallel, not only in time but in the style
and quality of their work.
William Shield played both violin and viola, was a friend of Haydn in England
and Master of the King’s Music (1817), rewarded by burial in Westminster Abbey.
He has been credited (probably wrongly) with the tune of Auld Lang Syne, which
appears with other borrowed melodies in his opera Rosina. But he was
unquestionably the composer of The Green Mountain Farmer, for which Thomas
(Robert) Paine wrote the words (1798). This was one of the most popular
patriotic songs of its day.
Other songs by William Shield to achieve success in America, as indicated by
various pirated editions, were Johnny and Mary, The Streamlet, When Bidden to
the Wake or Fair, My Friend and Pitcher and When First I Slipp’d My Leading
Strings (all published here in 1789); The Cheering Rosary, A Smile from the Girl
of My Heart and The Heaving of the Lead (1793); Ere Around the Huge Oak
(1794); Old Towler (1796) Whilst with Village Maids I Stray and The Waving
Willow (1797). The Wolf was a favourite in England, as were The Post Captain
and The Thorn, published in America early in the nineteenth century (possibly
even before 1800)’
Spaeth goes on to say that Shield’s songs continued to be sung in America
into the 1820s and 1830s.
Another American writer, Julian Mates, who was more concerned with Shield’s
stage works, wrote:
‘Two of the elements necessary to a comic opera are original music and
songs relevant to the action. As the eighteenth century progressed these
elements were added, and “If we would look for sparks of brilliance (in the late
eighteenth century) we must turn to the comic operas and the operatic farces….
comic operas is not a development of ballad opera, but “in reality a separate form
of dramatic art”
Typical of the comic opera is John O’Keeffe and William Shield’s ‘The Poor
Soldier’. It’s first performance in England was in 1783, and two years later it
arrived in America, where not a year went by until after 1800 that the Old
American Company alone did not perform it’
Shield, who in later life was comfortably off, was unable or unwilling to change
his style to a more modern one and following a dispute with the Covent Garden
manager he retired in 1797, but he did continue composing glees and songs for
use in the theatre. He also turned his talents to writing on theoretical matters,
publishing two anthology-textbooks of music; ‘An Introduction to Harmony’
(London 1800) and ‘The Rudiments of Thoroughbass’ (London 1815) which
discuss such matters as how to harmonise folksongs. Shield composed music for
popular approval not posterity. He is considered not to have been a natural
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