Help Identifying a 19th Century Composer

Cafe Society
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I’m looking for some help identifying a late 19th Century American children’s music composer.

An acquaintance of mine is doing some research on a Japanese school song called “Aogeba Toutoshi”. Specifically, he was researching the origins of the song. Apparently the original composer was never credited for it, and as the song was so old, everyone in Japan assumed that the song was Japanese in origin.

It turns out that the original composition was an American children’s song called “Song for the Close of School”. Miraculously, my acquaintance was able to locate the song in a song book from that era with the very quaint title of:

“The Song Echo: A Collection of Copyright Songs, Duets, Trios, and Sacred Pieces, Suitable for Public Schools, Juvenile Classes, Seminaries, and the Home Circle” by Henry Southwick Perkins

The book is scanned in Google Books, and the song in question is here:

http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=HdlEAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA141#v=onepage&q&f=false

The lyrics are credited to a T. H. Brosnan, but the music credits are merely the initials “H.N.D.” The full name is never given in the book (and H.N.D has only one more composition called “One By One” appearing in it). My acquaintance has done much searching over the Internet, and hasn’t been able to find the answer anywhere (granted English is not his first language).

So my question is, are there any music historian or music scholar dopers who would happen to know the identity of this mystery composer? It’s kind of a long shot I know, but this is the “Straight Dope”, where odder and more trivial questions have been answered.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

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I just finished paging through that songbook, and I have a theory: my theory is that H.N.D. is actually a pseudonym for Henry Southwick Perkins, who’s the author of this book. He’s credited, as such, with a certain number of the songs, but other songs are credited to “H” or “P” or “*” and it looks to me like he’s gone to some lengths to hide how extensive his authorship of the songs actually is. For example, there’s a song credited to “Henri Espie,” which seems to me an obvious allusion. I wonder too if “H.P. Danks” is also Henry Perkins.

Why would he do that? I’m not sure, but perhaps it was a way to make the songbook look like a compilation from a variety of sources – without being on the hook for any royalties.

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Wow! That never occurred to me, and I do agree with you that it seems like a very likely possibility.

My acquaintance would probably not pick up the “Henri Espie” allusion. I’ll let him know your theory and see what he thinks.

Thank you very much for your answer!

I love this place.

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I can’t help with that, but has he tried looking up TH Brosnan and looking for acquaitances? The only TH Brosnan I could find from around that period of time is a Timothy H. Brosnan from Ogdensburg, NY. It could be anyone though I guess.