Notes on the Program

Music filled the air in and around Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Jefferson was an accomplished violinist who reportedly practiced several hours a day as a young man and was a voracious collector of fashionable European compositions – everything from Corelli sonatas to Scottish folk tune arrangements. Jefferson’s wife and daughters were also accomplished amateur keyboard and guitar players, and his brother Randolph was known to play his fiddle on Mulberry Row, home to some of Monticello’s enslaved residents.

What is more remarkable is the number of Black fiddlers, both free and enslaved, who had a connection to Monticello. It should come as no surprise that Sally Hemings’s sons with Thomas Jefferson, all enslaved by their father, were accomplished fiddlers. While Jefferson took great care to not reveal his familial connections to Beverly, Madison, and Eston, and thus likely never directly taught them to play, musical talent was in their DNA. Jefferson likely made sure his sons had access to instruments and opportunities to hone their craft.

Youngest son Eston would go on to become one of the most famous musicians Chillicothe, Ohio has perhaps ever known. His band there consisted of fiddle, clarinet, and bass viol and was active from about 1837 to 1851. Their rendition of Money Musk was the stuff of legends – no surprise, given that Thomas Jefferson scribbled this same tune in one of his music books, a sign that it was one of his favorites. That trio also played Wesson’s Slaughterhouse, a tune that is lost to us now, but could easily be related to the popular Playford dance tune “Slaughterhouse.” Like every dance band of the day, they also played the Virginia Reel, which is not really a tune, but rather a choreography that can be danced to nearly any reel. A popular choice, and one found in the Monticello Music Collection, is Lord Macdonald’s Reel.

More information about the repertoire of the Eston Hemings Band may be inferred from the repertoire of the Hunter Boys, a band with similar instrumentation that was popular in Chillicothe just two decades later. They played Roger of Coverly (a European “cousin” of the Virginia Reel), Home, Sweet Home (a tune found in the Monticello music collection more than once), and various popular dances like the waltz and varsobiana (a Polish dance with elements of the waltz, mazurka, and polka – Put Your Little Foot being the most popular American example).

In nearby Knox County, Ohio, another family of fiddlers was making their mark. The Snowden family band consisted of five siblings playing fiddles, banjos, percussion, guitar, and various other instruments. The band included two young girls, which was very unusual for the time. Snowden’s Jig was a tune Dan Emmett learned from the Snowden family. Emmett is commonly known as the composer of “Dixie,” a tune now properly attributed to the Snowdens.

Two successive generations of Hemings family women married into the Scott family of Charlottesville. The patriarch of this family, fiddler Jesse Scott, was the son of Anika Cumba, a Pamunkey Indian, and a white man, Governor Charles Scott of Kentucky. Jesse trained the next two generations of fiddlers in his family, including sons Robert, Thomas, and James, and grandson Robert Scott, Jr.

The Scott family band usually consisted of three fiddle players, though Robert, Jr. sometimes played cello. The Scott family band played all over Virginia for college graduations, picnics, and balls, and reportedly entertained every sitting U.S. president for decades. Thomas Jefferson would stop by their Main Street home to listen to the family band play on his way to check on the construction of his University of Virginia.

Jesse Scott played for Lafayette’s visit to Charlottesville in 1824, perhaps performing Lafayette’s Quickstep, a piece composed in 1824 and found in the Monticello Music Collection. In a nod to that visit, we are also performing an excerpt from La Marseillaise in a charming arrangement by Lafayette’s daughter.

The only surviving photograph of the family band comes from the Cool Spring Barbeque Club, a regular gathering of white Congressmen, mayors, doctors, judges, and merchants on the property of R.T.W. Duke, once a Confederate colonel.

Among the popular tunes of the day associated with the Scott family band were Auld Lang Syne and Marlborough Has Left for the War (we know this tune as “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”). They also played the most popular opera dances of the day, including tunes from Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable and Auber’s La muette de Portici. Meyerbeer’s Valse infernale from the former became very popular outside the opera stage due to Franz Liszt’s virtuosic piano transcription.

Jefferson collected a great deal of Scottish music during his lifetime – Lochabar was one of his favorite tunes. He also collected an almost absurd number of published minuets, stitching together several small volumes into one massive book. On an empty page, he scribbled a melody for Fitzhugh’s Minuet, quite similar to one of the published works in the book, Calvert’s Minuet. It’s likely that Jefferson is the composer of this melody, using the “Calvert” model to sketch out a melody of his own in honor of fellow Virginian William Fitzhugh, a friend and amateur flute player.

Elsewhere in Virginia, Black fiddler Sy Gilliat was regularly employed by the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg and was the most popular fiddler in Richmond. Described as “the most prominent member of the black aristocracy” by Samuel Mordecai, Gilliat almost cerrtainly plaed for the balls and dancing parties attended by Jefferson’s wife and daughters. His repertoire included a Minuet di la Cour and the congo, a dance of African or West Indian origin.

~ David McCormick