Sunday, October 28, 2012

Related? German chorale Der Tag, der ist so freudenreich and Norwegian carols I denne søde juletid and Et lidet barn så lysteligt

I know it from Bukkene Bruse's Den Fagraste Rosa / The Loveliest Rose , and they in turn got it from Kirsten Bråten Berg (see the YouTube clip posted here Oct. ___). They explain, "Melodien til denne høytidsstemte Brorson-salmen har vi etter Kirsten Bråten Berg. Den minner svært mye om den første tonen vi bruker på 'Et lidet Barn saa lystelig'." (Their translation, which omits the reference to Brorson, is, "We learned the melody for this hymn from folksinger Kirsten Bråten Berg. It is quite similar to the first melody we used in the previous tune.") The two melodies *are* similar, and I believe they must be related in oral tradition. Both would appear to be in the same tune family as Bach's organ prelude and chorale Der Tag, der ist so freudenreich (BVW 605 and 294 respectively) although I haven't found anything yet that nails down the relationship(s).

Suffice to say (for now) that the Norwegian songs go back to a very early stratum of northern European Christmas songs.

Hymnary website has lyrics at http://www.hymnary.org/hymn/ELH/150 from Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary

Author: H. A. Brorson, 1694-1764 Translator: C. Døving, 1867-1937 Tune: DER TAG, DER IST SO FREUDENREICH Arranger: C. C. N. Balle, 1806-55
First verse, in Doving's translation, is as follows:
In this our happy Christmastide
The joyful bells are ringing;
To praise be all our pow'rs applied,
God's grace and mercy singing;
In Him by whom the world was made,
Now in the lowly manger laid,
Rejoice we in the spirit;
Thy praise, O Savior, we will sound
Unto the earth's remotest bound,
That all the world shall hear it.
There are eight more verses.

Another Hymnary.org listing at http://www.hymnary.org/text/der_tag_der_ist_so_freudenreich attributes it to Martin Luther and gives several German text-only instances in PDF format. Adds: "Dies est laetitiae, In ortu regali. [Christmas.] This Christmas hymn or carol, which Luther spoke of as a work of the Holy Spirit, seems to be of German origin, and is probably not earlier than the 14th century."

Gleaned elsewhere on the Web:

I denne søde juletid (In This Our Happy Christmastide). Karaoke video med alle 7 vers med dansk og engelsk tekst spillet af Erling Jan Sørensen.

J.S. Bach - Der Tag, der ist so freudenreich. Hans-Andre Stamm performs Bach on the Trost organ of the Stadtkirche in Waltershausen.

In the Missouri Synod's 1941 hymnal as "Hail the Day So Rich in Cheer" (No. 78). Companion to the 1941 edition says the hymn - the text - comes down from the Latin Dies est laetitiae ... "James Mearns thinks it is of German origin. He further states that Luther spoke of this hymn as a work of the Holy Spirit. It is found in Latin and German versions, but the author and the original text cannot be determined" (64).

Some old notes on Brorson's Danish text reprinted in the online Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary Handbook, which translates the title as "In this our happy Christmastide":

GLORY to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14). Under the following title the hymn appeared in 1732, as the last of A Few Christmas Hymns, etc. The seventh stanza was added in the edition of Troens rare Klenodie, 1739. The hymn was included in the hymnal of Pontoppidan, but not in the Evangelisk kristelige Psalmebog. Concerning this hymn Skaar says: “It may be regarded as the best of all hymns of Brorson. In times of great trial, when the songs of joy were blended with weeping and sighing, this hymn has given expression to the innermost feelings of the heart and it has likewise been sung as the hymn of triumph upon the deathbed. A pious woman found in this hymn great comfort in the hour of death and passed through her last struggle with these words upon her lips: ‘Now Christ is mine, I can depart to be with Him for ever’” (seventh stanza). In his estimate of Brorson’s Christmas hymns, L. Maltesen says: “No one has before or since sung in such a manner concerning Christmas;” and the Swedish hymnologist Söderberg refers to it as follows: “Brorson excels especially as the Christmas psalmist, and some of his hymns to the nativity of Christ have virtually become folksongs.” Rudelbach expresses it in this manner: “Brorson’s Christmas hymns sound like heavenly music.” They are permeated with deep sincerity and holy zeal. (Notes on Brorson may be found under No. 179.) Our English translation is by Rev. Carl Døving, 1908. [Dahle, Library of Christians Hymns]

An meditation by Kirsten Weiss Mose of the diocese of Copenhagen in Kirken i København Oct. 2010 on I denne søde juletid and Brorson's text:

’I denne søde juletid’ er let at misforstå. Ikke mindst fordi den begynder, som den gør. Umiddelbart kan man nemlig så let forbinde ordene om den søde juletid og den rette fornøjelse fra salmens første linjer med en let traver. Og misforståelserne bliver ikke mindre oplagte, fordi den så ofte synges på melodien til ’Et lidet barn så lysteligt’. Men i virkeligheden giver salmen et af de fineste salmebud på en forklaring af, hvorfor vi fejrer, at Jesus blev født, og hvordan det gøres.

Monday, October 22, 2012

D R A F T - 'Kentucky Made': Celebration of historic dulcimers at Berea College

Editor's note [OK, OK, we're in a new day, so I guess it's a blogger's note]: A collection of historic dulcimers, and replicas made by Dr. Alan Mills of Berea College, is on display this month in the Doris Ulmann Gallery on campus in Berea. Sunday he gave a gallery talk to introduce the exhibition, titled “Kentucky Made: The Art and Craft of the Mountain Dulcimer.” The event was part of the college's 39th Celebration of Traditional Music, supported by the L. Allen Smith Memorial Fund.

The three-day celebration also featured performances, a live taping of a TV show and master classes by Galax-style dulcimer artist Phyllis Gaskins of Virginia, who was this year's L. Allen Smith Performer. Attending the gallery talk Sunday afternoon were 75 people, including Jean Ritchie, and Stephen Siefert demonstrated the unique sound of the instruments.

I'm drafting an article for Dulcimer Players News on Mills' exhibit and his work making replicas of historic dulcimers by "Uncle Ed" Thomas, Jethro Amburgey, John Tignor and Homer Ledford, as well as displaying dulcimers by contemporary luthier Warren May whose shop is catty-corner across the street from the college in downtown Berea. In the meantime, I'm putting some of my own pictures on line to illustrate the gallery talk. The Latin-looking gobbledygook is "lorem ipsum" dummy text used in publication design. I'm using it to separate the pictures until I get a chance to come back and write the blog post.

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Warren May and Alan Mills chat with Jean Ritchie.

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Alan Mills shows a Homer Ledford dulcimer made of wood from Berea College's Howard Hall.


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Stephen Siefert plays a dulcimer made by "Uncle Ed" Thomas.


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An overflow crowd packed into Berea's Doris Ulmann Gallery. (Pictures at left and below.)


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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Directory of mountain dulcimer tab

A dozen links at http://grandolddulcimerclub.org/ put up by Nashville Grand Old Dulcimer Club -- looks like it's been up there a while, but it's a very handy portal page, and I'm posting it here so I don't lose it.
http://home.usit.net/~sandyc/dulcimertab.html

Monday, October 08, 2012

Big band jazz arrangment of Min Kvedarlund with vocalist Kirsten Bråten Berg backed by the Arendal Big Band

An arrangement of the title track of Kirsten Bråten Berg's 1993 CD, Min Kvedarlund ("my grove of traditional songs"). A lund is a grove or garden, and kvedar were traditional singers who specialized in stev, i.e. "a type of monostrophic folk poetry in special metrical patterns sung to traditional and mostly very old tunes" (Nils Grende, A History of Norwegian Music, trans. William H. Halverson and Leland B. Sateren [Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press, 1991]: 74. There! Aren't you glad you know?) I haven't been able to find liner notes, but I think the song is is a composition of Berg's based on at least two stev songs, which are typically very short, consisting of one four-line stanza.

The YouTube clip has a pretty good translation of the title:

Setesdal, Garden of Ancient Songs, Kirsten Bråten Berg/Arendal Big Band. Uploaded by egilso on Oct 12, 2010. KBB performs with ABB in Arendal Kulturhus 14.08.10. Vocals: Kirsten Bråten Berg. Director and arranger: Fred Sturm.

Arendal Big Band's website (in Norwegian) at http://www.arendalbigband.no/. According to Wikipedia, Arendal is a city of 41,000 on the south coast of Norway. A lot of immigrants on East Coast came from Arendal, "as a great deal of Norwegian sailors, trimmers, shipbuilders and carpenters from Arendal settled in areas of New York such as Brooklyn, the Staten Island neighborhood of Port Richmond, and several industrial centers in Northern New Jersey such as Jersey City, Bayonne, Perth Amboy and Elizabeth." Kirsten Bråten Berg was born in Arendal. She now lives in Stetesdal, an inland area to the northwest.

LATER (July 19, 2015). While I was doing something else, I came across an audio file on YouTube at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNQhDbtuKdg of the original CD track, apparently copied from a later compilation called Nordisk Sang (Nordic Song), which is where I first heard it. "Min Kverdarlund" by Ale Møller, Hallvard T. Bjørgum, Kirsten Bråten Berg & Tellef Kvifte. Haunting piece of music.

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

"Star of the County Down" / KINGSFOLD - hymn tune arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams

As usual, Wikipedia has all the basics:
"Star of the County Down" is an old Irish ballad set near Banbridge in County Down, in Northern Ireland. The words are by Cathal McGarvey (1866–1927) from Ramelton, County Donegal.[1] The tune, a pentatonic melody, is similar to that of several other works, including the almost identical English tune "Kingsfold", well known from several popular hymns, such as "Led By the Spirit". The folk tune was the basis for Ralph Vaughan Williams' Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus.
It is commonly played both as a reel and a waltz. Some Irish sessions play both, "3x waltz time, followed by 3x march time in a set."

The melody is also that of "Dives and Lazarus" -- an English folksong Child ballad 56 in Francis James Childs' authoritative 19th-century collection. Some YouTube versions below: (1) the waltz; (2) two clips of "Dives and Lazarus," one by English guitarist Martin Simpson and one by Maddy Prior, formerly of Steeleye Span; (3), the hymn setting by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams to the text "I heard the voice of Jesus say ..."; and (4) Williams' instrumental theme and variations on "Dives and Lazarus."

Karen and Cort play Star of the County Down Swannanoa. Uploaded by Poodlepups on Aug 17, 2008. Karen and Cort "Dangerman" perform at the Swannanoa open mike during dulcimer week.

Dives and Lazarus - Martin Simpson

Maddy Prior - Dives and Lazarus

I Heard The Voice Of Jesus Say. Uploaded by jamjar30002000 on May 21, 2010. Part of an afternoon of worship at Prince George Winyah Episcopal Church, Georgetown, SC. www.pgwinyah.org

Vaughan Williams "Dives and Lazarus" - Stokowski conducts. Vaughan Williams's Five Variants of "Dives and Lazarus" for Strings and Harp ... This performance also comes from New York, given by the CBS Radio Orchestra on 7 February 1954 under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. He was a fellow student of Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music in the 1890s and a long-time champion of the composer's music.