Thomas Moore, "The Meeting of the Waters"

Lesley Nelson Burns at the Contemplator has this background: "Inspired by a visit with friends to the Vale of Avoca (in County Wicklow), Thomas Moore wrote these words to an old Irish air, The Old Head of Dennis." It's an old melody, and the tune was published in "Irish Melodies" in the 1820s. Several good versions (and a couple of awful ones) on YouTube:

RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. ANÚNA, soloist Michael McGlynn & Linda Lampenius (violin) join the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (Conductor John Finucane), Ireland's leading orchestra, for Michael McGlynn's arrangement of "The Meeting of the Waters". This was recorded at the National Concert Hall, Dublin in July 2010.



The Wolfe Tones have a cover called the "Vale of Avoca" -- on YouTube with nice pix



thread at Mudcat Cafe "Tune Req: Meeting of the Waters"
has dates of Thomas Moore's "Irish Melodies," also relationship (or lack thereof) of his air -- "The Old Head of Denis" -- and a Scottish pipe also titled "The Meeting of the Waters" but with a different melody. links to an early version of Andrew Kuntz' "Fiddlers Companion" w/ tune families, etc. AS ALWAYS, THE MUDCAT THREAD IS A VERY GOOD SOURCE

Lyrics at http://www.free-scores.com/download-sheet-music.php?pdf=8805

PDF file for voice and piano at http://www.free-scores.com/download-sheet-music.php?pdf=8805

Parody "The Meeting of the Waters of Hudson & Erie" by Samuel Woodworth http://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=6690 http://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=6690 There is not in the wild world a Valley so sweet ...


Yet it is not that Wealth now enriches the scene
Where the treasures of Art, and of Nature, convene
'Tis not that this union our coffers may fill
O! no - it is something more exquisite still

'Tis, that Genius has triumph'd and Science prevail's
Tho' Prejudice flouted, and Envy assail'd
It is, that the vassals of Europe may see
The progress of mind, in a land that is free

"Shenandoah Falls"

Big Hungry Joe - oldtime American trad band of Copenhagen practicing for a dance gig at Kattinge oldtime music festival in Denmark. Uploaded by r810s on Sep 1, 2010. Jesper Delurian, illustrator and band member, at http://www.jesperdeleuran.dk/



Stringfield hammered dulcimer duo of Springfield, Mo.: Gail Morrissey, Barry Smith & Victoria Johnson on DU Uncut. A tune learned from the teaching of Ken Kolodner...



Lead sheet at http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/tunes.htm by Jennifer Wrigley in John Lamancusa's collection of Old Time Fiddle Tunes at Penn State. See also Lamancusa's "State College Old Time Music Jam" page at http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/jam.htm. Chords and lead sheet (with mandolin tab) on the www.traditionalmusic.co.uk website.

Background. From Andrew Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion (link here and scroll down):

SHENANDOAH FALLS. Old-Time, Breakdown. A Major. Standard tuning. AABB (Johnson): AA'BB (Phillips). Clyde Curley and Susan Songer, in notes to The Portland Collection, traces the tune. Vermont fiddler Pete Sutherland learned it from West Coast musician Carol Robinson, originally from Sebastapol, who herself learned it as an untitled reel from a mandolin player named 'Cookie', once a fellow student with her at Sonoma State College. It is thought Sutherland titled it, perhaps thinking it reminiscent of Bill Monroe's bluegrass composition "Shenandoah Breakdown." Source for notated version: Pete Sutherland (Vermont) [Phillips]. Johnson (The Kitchen Musician No. 2: Occasional Collection of Old-Timey Fiddle Tunes for Hammer Dulcimer, Fiddle, etc.), 1982 (revised 1988 & 2003); pg. 15. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes), vol. 1, 1994; pg. 219. Songer (Portland Collection), 1997; pg. 182. Dancing String, Randy Zombola - "Snowflake Breakdown" (1986). Epact Music, Pete Sutherland - "Eight Miles From Town" (1982). Marimac 9031, Sutherland, Pete - "Eight Miles From Town" (1986). Marimac 9043, Boiled Buzzards - "Fine Dining" (1991).

X:1

T:Shenandoah Falls

M:C|

L:1/8

R:Reel

N:From a transcription by John Lamancusa, by permission http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/tunes.htm

Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion

K:A

cd |: “A”e2 ef edcB | AB c2 “D”d4 | “A”c2 cd cBAc | “E”BAGF E2 cd |

“A”e2 ef edcB | AB (3cBA “D”d4 | “A”cBAc “E”BA G2 |1 “A”A4 A2 cd :|2 “A”A6 G2 ||

|: “Bm”F4 B3B | A2 (B2B4) | “A”ABcA BcAB | cAB(c c)B A2 |

“Bm”F4 B3B | A2 (B2B2) Bd | “A”cBAc “E”BA G2 |1 “A”A4 A3G :|2 “A”A6 ||

A well regarded contra dance tune. See Laura Lengnick's essay "So You Wanna Play Dance Music?" at http://www.fiddledance.net/index_files/Dance_Music_Essay_Lengnick.pdf

God's work, our hands - a note from Benedictine spirituality

Emailed March 1 by Fr. Steven Janoski, Director of Campus Ministry, Benedictine University Springfield ...

Campus Ministry Minute
Janoski, Steven A.
To: #All Springfield Campus Faculty; #All Springfield Campus Adjunct Faculty; #All Springfield Campus Staff; #All Springfield Campus Student
Cc:

Once upon a time, the ancients tell, past the seeker on a prayer rug came the beggars and the broken and the beaten. The pray-er was appalled and looking up to heaven cried out, "Great and loving God, if you are a loving God, look at these and do something!" And the voice came back from heaven, "I did do something. I made you."

A spirituality of work is that process by which I finally come to know that my work is God's work, unfinished by God because God meant it to be finished by me.

(from “The Spirituality of Work” by Sr. Joan D. Chittister, OSB, 1995)

Liz Green "Sisters of Mercy"

One of the tracks on MoJo CD Leonard Cohen Covered Audio on soundcloud.com ... very striking accompaniment on keyboard.

Audio here: Sisters Of Mercy (Liz Green)

Posted by Peter Wrench in a review of Cohen's CD Old Ideas on the No Depression website:

For me, the best Cohen cover ever is still REM's storming take on 'First We Take Manhattan', and there's nothing quite in that league here. But honorable mentions in particular for Liz Green's intelligent rethinking of 'Sisters Of Mercy' to a piano accompaniment; Bill Callahan's questing stab at 'So Long Marianne'; and Diagrams' transformed - and lovely - 'Famous Blue Raincoat' And I was particularly taken by the Miserable Rich's version of 'The Stranger Song', after thinking I was going to hate it when it started. ...

Wrench's bottom line: "So, well worth a listen. Think of it as a CD for £4.50 with a free magazine and you'll even persuade yourself you're getting a bargain."

Liz Green playing keyboard ... accompanying herself on "French Singer." Cuts off abruptly, but there's another clip with the whole song (but terrible lighting and shot from behind so you can't see her). Sort of an ostinato accompaniment.

New Salem: Aeolian (minor) and Mixolydian dulcimer modes - "On Jordan's Stormy Banks," Idumea, "Shady Grove" and "Going to Boston"

Prominent among the preachers on the platform was Rev. John M. Berry. He would give out the hymn, read it, line it, and, in a strong voice, lead the singing himself, the people joining in one after another. "On Jordan's stormy banks I stand" and "How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent word" were favorites. ... After this he announced the text and began to preach. He did not time his sermons, neither did the people turn uneasy glances toward their camps.
-- Alice Keach Bone, Rock Creek Church: A Retrospect of One Hundred Years (1922).

Do you think tunes in a minor key are sad and major tunes are happy?

If so, think again.

Here's a group of Sacred Harp singers earlier this month in Waco, Texas, belting out a minor-key version of a folk hymn that was sung at Rock Creek campground in frontier days:



Do these people sound sad?

They may be rushing the tempo a little, but Sacred Harp singers tend to do that. The main thing is they're singing the song -- variously known as "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand" or "The Promised Land" -- as it was sung in the 1800s, as we can be fairly certainly it was sung at Rock Creek, and they're singing it in a minor key.

Saturday at New Salem we're going to learn "The Promised Land" in the Aeolian, or minor, mode, as it was printed in 1835 in a shape-note tunebook called The Southern Harmony. The words are by an English cleric of the 1700s named Samuel Stinnett, and the melody is by Matilda Durham, a singing school teacher from South Carolina. It was by far one of the most popular shape-note melodies of the early 19th century.

"On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand" is one of four tunes we'll learn. Two others will be in the Aeolian, and one will be Mixolydian. We'll also review "Old Joe Clark," another Mixolydian tune that most mountain dulcimer players already know (although perhaps without realizing it's a modal tune). But first we'll have to look at the modes. There are four that are commonly used:

• Ionian. The most common mode, corresponding to a major scale. Almost everything from "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" to a Beethoven symphony is played in a major key descended from the Ionian mode.
  
  
• Aeolian. Musicians call it the natural minor, at least as long as they're taking music theory in school. "Greensleves" and the Irish song "Shule Aroon" are Aeolian.
  
  
• Mixolydian. A lot of the grand old southern Appalachian fiddle tunes are Mixolydian, and it's a staple in traditional Irish music as well. It's related to the African American blues scale as well, although musicologists differ on exactly how and why.
  
  
• Dorian. Sometimes called the "mountain minor." It's common to Irish music, in songs like "Pride of the Springfield Road," and a lot of high lonesome Appalachian songs. Also some very lovely ballads.

There's a lot written about the modes, and a lot of it is frankly confusing. Some of it, I think, is just flat wrong.

But basically, they're just different scales we play on a dulcimer. How simple can that be?

The best explanation I've seen for dulcimer players was in the late Jean Schilling's Old-Time Fiddle Tunes for the Appalachian Dulcimer (1973). She played with old-time string bands in East Tennessee, and she respected the spirit of the music. She also was willing to let the mountain dulcimer be a dulcimer:

In many ways, the dulcimer's limitations are actually its strengths. Nothing captures the haunting and plaintive quality of the older pentatonic ballads and archaic-sounding fiddle tunes better than an instrument bound to the simple modal scales. Too, the continual droning -- the incessant hum or wail behind a fragile melodic line -- affords the dulcimer a temperament very unlke more sophisticated chromatic instruments.

Here's how she explained the modes on a dulcimer:

Though I used a number of different tunings right from my start as a dulcimer player, it took years for me to figure out what was meant by the various tuning modes and the strange Greek words used to describe them. I simply referred to a favorite song used in each tuning, such as: "Oh, yes! That's the 'Old Joe Clark' tuning. What a revelation to find that each mode and its associated Greek name simply tells what fret the scale for that mode begins on! For example, the Mixolydian mode begins its scale -- or 'DO' note -- at either the open note (the zero fret) or the seventh fret, and can be in any key you choose within the limitations of the strings on your dulcimer. The Ionian mode, another major key ... tuning, begins its scale at the third fret. Two minor modes are the Aeolian, beginning at the first fret, and the Dorian starting at the fourth fret.

How about the strings other than the melody strings in each of the modes of tuning? They are chosen so as to provide a harmonious sound with a full strum across the fingerboard at each fret in the scale.

I would rather just say the the Mixolydian scale starts with its keynote on the open fret -- since its keynote is called sol in the shape-note traditions I sing in -- but otherwise, Schilling had it nailed. The modes are scales that begin on a certain fret, and the tunings are designed to sound good with them. They're related, but they aren't the same thing.

The tunings we'll use Saturday, DAC and DAD, are also designed to let us play everything in D. Since the Appalachian dulcimer is diatonic -- which means its frets play a particular scale, without extra sharps and flats, just like the white keys of a piano -- we retune the dulcimer so D sounds at the right place on the fretboard for each of the modes. It works like this:

• Since the Mixolydian scale starts on the open melody string, we tune it to D. That gives us a D Mixolydian scale from the open D string to the octave at the seventh fret. The drone strings remain at low D and A.
  
  
• Since the Aeolian scale starts on the first fret, we tune the melody string to C. That gives us a minor scale from the first to eighth frets.
  
  
• The Ionian scale starts on the third fret, so we tune the melody string to A. D is on the third fret, and the scale is from the third to the 10th frets.
  
  
• The Dorian scale starts on the fourth fret, so we tune the melody string down to G. That gives us a Dorian scale starting on D at the fourth fret and going up to the octave at the 11th fret.

Here are some YouTube clips of the songs we'll learn -- or review -- Saturday morning:

D Aeolian (tune DAC)

"Idumea" or "Am I Born to Die?" Another shape-note hymn --- If you saw the movie Cold Mountain, it was the haunting melody used as background music for the scenes depicting the Battle of the Crater. It's sung by an ethnomusicologist and former punk rocker named Tim Ericksen and traditional Sacred Harp singer Cassie Franklin of North Alabama:

Tim Eriksen - Am I born to die ? [Idumea]. From a CD of songs from Cold Mountain.

"Shady Grove" is an old fiddle tune in Jean Ritchie's Dulcimer Book, and it's kind of a signature tune of hers. I found two clips on YouTube, one from a folk festival at the Pine Mountain Settlement School and one from an old TV show hosted by Pete Seeger:

Jean Ritchie at Appalachian Family Folk Week 2007. Hindman, Ky. June 14, 2007.



Rainbow Quest: Jean Ritchie - Shady Grove. From Pete Seeger's TV show during the 1960s.



Jean Ritchie also has a lovely version of "Barbry Ellen" in her book, and it's available on line at http://youtu.be/9l3VePGR-QA.

D Mixolydian (tune DAD)

"Going to Boston" is a fine old A mixolydian fiddle tune that also got cleaned up as a play party tune. Or maybe it was a play party tune that crossed over to the world of oldtime string bands. According to Andrew Kuntz' Fiddlers Companion (click here and scroll down), it was collected in the 1910s in Kentucky and Indiana, so it was clearly in the oral tradition in the lower Midwest. Anyway, Jean Ritchie popularized it in folk music circles. We transpose it to "D for dulcimer." but it's still Mixolydian because its scale starts on the open melody string.

Mark Gilston, of Austin, Texas, has two instructional videos of the tune, which he learned from Jean Ritchie's book. Quite a bit of good advice on how to use a noter, etc., plus some ideas on chording that I wouldn't bother with but you may want to check out for your own playing. I'm not familiar with Gilston, but the "Going to Boston" videos do look pretty good. He also has a website at http://markgilston.com/.

Dulcimer Lessons with Mark Gilston - Going to Boston Part 1. There's also a Part 2. Each is about 10 minutes, and they'll take you through not only the song but points of technique. Gilston also has a very cool Kokopelli jamming with him.

"Old Joe Clark" is also in Jean Ritchie's book, but here's another version in case you want to hear to set the melody in your head before you play it. It's not exactly the same, but close enough.

old joe clark on banjo(clawhammer). Posted by longbowbanjoAL, from Alabama.

Video from Munnharpe and Langeleik Festival in Fagernes, 2012

Anders Erik Roine 3 (langeleik) Munnharpe festival, Fagernrs 2010



Anders Erik Roine on Munnharpe and langeleik festival, Fagernrs, Norway 2010.
Андерш Эрик Роине на фестивале мунхарпы и лангелейка, г. Фанернес, Норвегия 2010.


#3 Erik Roine, Hallgrim Berg and Brotagutad'n munnharpa and langeleik



#3 Erik Roine, Hallgrim Berg, Knut Aastad and Ole Aastad on Munnharpe and langeleik festival, Fagernes, Norway 2010. New CD release http://www.grappa.musikkonline.no/shop/displayAlbum.asp?id=40368

Халгрим Берг,Эрик Роине и братья Кнут, и Оле Аастад выступают на фестивале мунхарпы и лангелейка, г. Фанернес, Норвегия 2010. Презентация нового альбома http://www.grappa.musikkonline.no/shop/displayAlbum.asp?id=40368


Performance at Munnharpe and langeleik festival, Fagernes, 2010



From YouTube user ____: You will listen few tunes. The first one is is a Norwegian folksong Kråkevisa. The second tune is an Estonian folk tune, called "Raska på" at the concert. It is Bagpipes player's surname, but in Norwegian "Raska på" means hurry up.

Veronika Søum - Jew's harp (munnharpa)
Sigbjørn Høidalen - Jew's harp (munnharpa) and flute
Katariin Raska - Bagpipes
Olav Wendelbo -hammer harp

Звучит несколько мелодий, сначала норвежская "Kråkevisa".
Следующая эстонская, объявленная как "Raska på. Раска это фамилия исполнителя на волынке, а по норвежски "Raska på" означает поторопись.

Veronika Søum - варган
Sigbjørn Høidalen - варган и флейта
Katariin Raska - волынка
Olav Wendelbo - цитра (hammer harp)

Norsk Langeleikforum - in Gjøvik

http://www.langeleikforum.no/

Norsk Langeleikforum - in Gjøvik. They have a mouth harp (munnharp) and langeleik festival in September. Last year's festival flier below ...



Marit Steinsrud listed as contact person. She and husband Stein Villa are active in the Nordic Harp Meeting and are profiled on its website

Directory of langeleik videos at http://zomobo.net/langeleik