Mildred Jane Hill (June 27, 1859 – June 5, 1916) was an American songwriter and musicologist, who composed the melody for "Good Morning to All", later used as the melody for " Happy Birthday to You".

Biography

Mildred Jane Hill, born in

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville is the List of cities in Kentucky, most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeastern United States, Southeast, and the list of United States cities by population, 27th-most-populous city ...

, was the oldest of three sisters, Mildred, Patty, and Jessica. She learned

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

from her father, Calvin Cody, and Adolph Weidig. It has been reported that Mildred Hill was a kindergarten and Sunday-school

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...

, like her younger sister Patty. Prof. Robert Brauneis, after extensively researching the Hill family, has concluded that she was not a kindergarten teacher. She moved into music, teaching, composing, performing, and specializing in the study of Negro spirituals. Hill and her sister were honored at the Chicago World's Fair (1893) for their work in the progressive education program at the experimental kindergarten, the Louisville Experimental Kindergarten School. She wrote about music using the

pen name A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...

Johann Tonsor, and her 1892 article "Negro Music", suggesting that the existing body of black music would be the basis of a distinctive American musical style, influenced Dvořák in composing the New World Symphony. Hill died in

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, in 1916, long before her song became famous. She is buried with her sister in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. Mildred Hill's manuscripts and papers are held by the

University of Louisville The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public university, public research university in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. Chartered in 1798 as the Jefferson Seminary, it became in the 19t ...

Music Library in

"Happy Birthday to You"

While teaching at the Louisville Experimental Kindergarten School, the Hill sisters wrote the song "Good Morning to All"; Mildred wrote the melody, and Patty the lyrics. The song was first published in 1893 in ''Song Stories for the Kindergarten'' as a greeting song for teachers to sing to their students. ''Song Stories for the Kindergarten'' had over 20 editions, and the words were translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Swedish. " Happy Birthday to You" first appeared in print in 1912 using the melody of "Good Morning to All" with different lyrics. Its popularity continued to grow through the 1930s, with no author identified for the new lyrics, nor credit given for the melody from "Good Morning to You". Based on 1935 copyright registrations by the Summy Company, and a series of court cases (which all settled out of court), the sisters became known as the authors of "Happy Birthday to You". In September 2015, a federal judge declared that "Happy Birthday to You" is in the public domain.

Legacy

Hill and her sister were posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 12, 1996.

Notes

References

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