Joseph Webster
Musician · 1819–1875 · Manchester, New Hampshire
Best known for
Composer
Joseph Philbrick Webster was a nineteenth-century American composer whose tune for “In the Sweet By and By” (1868) is one of the most-recorded hymns in American religious music, and whose Civil War-era ballad “Lorena” remained in the popular repertoire for more than a century after his death. Trained as a singer, he turned to composition after losing his voice and went on to write more than a thousand songs from his adopted home in Elkhorn, Wisconsin.
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- Born February 18, 1819, in Manchester, New Hampshire.
- Studied with Lowell Mason and George James Webb during a three-year course of music study in Boston beginning in 1840.
- Began his career as a touring singer; a bout of bronchitis ended his vocal career and pushed him toward full-time composition.
- Wrote more than 1,000 hymns, parlor ballads, and patriotic songs over his lifetime.
- Composed the music for “Lorena” (1857), the parlor ballad that became one of the most-sung songs of the American Civil War on both sides of the conflict.
- Composed the music for “In the Sweet By and By” (1868), set to lyrics by Sanford Fillmore Bennett; the hymn entered standard country, bluegrass, and folk-revival repertoire and has been recorded countless times.
- Settled in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, where he remained until his death on January 18, 1875, at age 55.