Psalmodikon -- misc. notes on resonance strings (resonanssträngar)

UPDATE Sept. 26 (or thereabouts). Word comes from Keill Tofters, who is writing a book about Esbjorn, that the instrument would be tuned like a nyckelharpa: "Gällande stämning av resonanssträngar tror jag att man (som när vi stämmer resonanssträngar på nyckelharpa) försöker stämma dem i oktavens alla toner. Då medljuder resonanssträngar. Om man spelar t.ex. tonen G på spelsträngen, så medljuder den resonanssträng som är stämd i G. På detta sätt får man starkare och vackrare ton." My translation (with a hat tip to Google): "The current tuning of sympathetic strings , I think that (as when we tune resonant strings to the nyckelharpa) we try to tune them in all the octave tones. Then sound (vibrate) the sympathetic strings. If you play for example the note G on the string board, so the resonant string tuned in G sounds with it. In this way, you get stronger and more beautiful tone."

While I have edited my estimates below of how many strings there are on the instrument (with incorrect guesses stricken out and the correct number inserted after it and underlined), I don't want to change my speculation about alternative tunings, especially those that might be derived from the hummel; the museum descriptions I turned up had anywhere from three to 14 sympathetic strings, and I think the instruments with fewer than five to eight strings would have to be tuned to fifths and octaves like a hummel -- or American dulcimer. But I am now completely satisfied that Pastor Esbjorn would have tuned his psalmodikon to a chromatic scale as Tofters suggests.

A mystery: Lars Paul Esbjorn's psalmodikon in the Jenny Lind Chapel is set up with a playing string over the fretboard at the center of the instrument and what look like eight or nine 10 unfretted strings at the side of the fretboard (see picture below). One of them, I believe, could have been double-stopped along with the melody string as a drone. But the rest of them look like a player wouldn't be able to reach them with a bow, so they must have vibrated sympathetically like the resonance strings on a Swedish nykelharpa or a Norwegian hardingfele.

So here's the mystery: How could you tune the psalmodikon so you wouldn't be retuning all nine 11 (counting the melody) strings every time you changed keys?

Esbjorn's psalmodikon in Jenny Lind Chapel, Andover, Ill.

Psalmodikons with extra strings weren't all that uncommon in Sweden, judging from the descriptions of the 19th-century instruments on display in Swedish museums, but apparently they weren't standardized, either. It seems to me, from what I've read of Stig Wallin's "Schwedische Hummel," that the Swedish instruments were influenced by the box zithers formerly played in Sweden. So that suggests one possibility -- was the psalmodikon tuned in fifths and octaves like a hummel?

But there's a psalmodikon in a museum in Uppsala that may have belonged to Johan Dillner (provenance uncertain, tho') that looks to me like it may have been keyed like a nyckelharpa. If so, could the resonance strings have been tuned to the notes of a scale? That's how a nyckelharpa is tuned.

My best guess is that different makers would have approached the problem differently, modeling their drones or resonance strings after whatever instruments they were familiar with. The instruments described below have anywhere from four to 16 resonance strings. But it's only a guess.

At any rate, I've been Googling around about psalmodikons, hummels and nyckelharpas lately. My unedited notes follow in Swedish and English (or what passes for English in Google's translation utility) in italics … all of which, taken together, raise as many questions as they answer.

Wikipedia (Swedish) http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalmodikon has the basics:

"Ett psalmodikon är ett musikinstrument som utgörs av en långsmal resonanslåda med en till tre strängar spända över en greppbräda mellan ett strängstall och en snäcka. Kallas ibland för psalmonika. I Gagnef, Dalarna, finns fler exemplar med tre stämskruvar - dock monterades ibland två strängar av för att förenkla inlärningen. Avancerade modeller kan ha upp till 12 bordunsträngar." [A psalmodikon is a musical instrument consisting of a narrow resonance box with one to three strings taut over a fretboard between a string and a stable shell . Sometimes referred to psalmonika . In Gagnef , Dalarna , there are more copies with three tuners - however sometimes mounted two strings to facilitate learning. Advanced models can have up to 12 drone.]

And an English-language Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalmodicon" (note spelling with a "c") has a footnote that seems to describe the Esbjorn pslamodikon almost to a T: " Francis William Galpin (1937). A Textbook of European Musical Instruments: Their Origin, History and Character. Williams & Norgate, Limited. - The Norwegian and Swedish Psalmodikon, of somewhat the same outline, was introduced by Johan Dillner (c. 1810) for accompanying the Church hymn-singing; it has one melody string of gut and eight sympathetic strings of metal." I don't think they were that standardized, though. Certainly the ones I've seen described in museums (see below) have anywhere from 5 to 11 or 12 strings.

Interesting that the playing string would be gut and the bourdon strings metal. Why would that be?

The Swedish Wikipedia page notes, BTW, that, "Instrumentet var även populärt vid husandakter i hemmen och bland kringresande predikanter" (The instrument was also popular at husandakter in homes and among itinerant preachers.). "Husandakter" would be home services, by my translation, or conventicle prayer meetings held in someone's home.

DigitaltMuseum http://digitaltmuseum.se/things/psalmodikon/S-UM/UM09772 has pix of Dillner's psalmodikon in Upplandsmuseet in Uppsala

Pix can be enlarged on DigitaltMuseum webpage (Creative Commons)

Thumbnail history of Dillner and detailed description of the instrument in the museum at Uppsala:

Psalmodikon. Experimentmodell av trä. Ljust brunbetsat och på kortsidorna svartbetsat trä. Resonanslåda med plats för 16 resonanssträngar, tre tonsträngar. Däröver fästes med haspar på sidorna en träklaviatur med tangenter av björk, vissa svartmålade. Påspikad bräda med klistrad lapp för tontecken. Avbalkningsbrädan försedd med metallklamrar och med nottecken i blyertsskrift. Svartmålade stämskruvar. Ljudhål dels S-formade dels hjärtformade. På fastklistrad pappersetikett på sidan står skrivet med bläck: "av Prosten Dillner / Östervåla / Anno 1800". [Psalmodikon. Experimental Model of wood. Bright brunbetsat {brown stain} and the short sides black stained wood. Resonance Box with space for 16 sympathetic strings, three strings. Above that is fastened with hasps on the sides with a träklaviatur {wooden keyboard} keys of birch, some black painted. Påspikad [nailed to] board with sticky patch tontecken {tone characters, e.g. A, B, H, C, D, etc.?} Avbalkningsbrädan {partition board} fitted with metal staples and with musical notes in pencil writing. Black Painted tuners. Sound hole partly S-shaped partly heart-shaped. On the glued paper label on the page is written in ink: "The dean of Dillner / Östervåla / Anno 1800".] Provenance is missing, however: "Uppgifter om proveniens sakanas."

That superstructure reminds me of the keys on a nykelharpa, so I Googled around to see how the sympathetic, or resonance strings, are tuned on that instrument.

Nyckelharpa. http://www.nyckelharpa.org/tips/for-beginners/tuning-the-resonance-strings/ -- American Nykelharpa Association has this:

In the most common configuration, the resonance strings are tuned up the scale starting at G# for the lowest sounding string, located nearest the C playing string, and up to G for the highest sounding string, located nearest the A playing string. So the twelve resonance strings sound G#, A, Bb, B, C, C#, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G from low to high.

Also a page on tuning the playing strings and a PDF file that covers both.

Hardingfele. http://www.hfaa.org/Home/articles-on-the-hardanger-fiddle/a-guide-to-tunings-on-the-hardingfele. Karin Løberg Code of Hardanger Fiddle Association of America has detailed information on traditional tunings. The regular tuning, used for 81 percent of tunes transcribed in Norsk Folkemusikk - Hardingfeleslåtter (NFMHS) is: a.d'.a'.e" for playing strings and [(b).d'.e'.f#'.a'] for the sympathetic strings.

QUESTIONS:

• Could Esbjorn's psalmodikon, with its eight resonance strings, have been tuned to a C major octave -- sort of like a nyckelharpa?

• Or was it tuned to octaves and fifths like a hummel?

It has seemed to me, and Stig Walin more-or-less confirms in "Die Schwedische Hummel," that as psalmodikon makers branched out from the very simple box zither that Dillner describes in his books, they were influenced by the hummels that were still being played in parts of Sweden during the early 1800s. Certainly the overall shape of the instruments shows that influence. Could the drone strings have been tuned like a hummel, too?

If Walin says anthing about how the drones were tuned, I haven't found it. But here's what he says about the psalmodikon in general terms:

Um 1830 begann der unglaublich schnelle Siegeszug des Psalmodikons über das Land.1 Das Instrument wurde von den mächtigen Erweckungsbewegungen der 40er Jahre und der folgenden Jahrzehnte in Gebrauch genommen. Trotzdem aber hätte sich das Tonwerkzeug nie so schnell ausbreiten können und wäre bei der tra­ ditionsverbundenen Landbevölkerung nie zu sofortiger Anwendung gekommen, wenn nicht der Boden von dem verwand­ ten älteren Zithertypus Hummel so gut vorbereitet gewesen wäre. Als ein belieb­ tes Werkzeug einer rein profanen Musik­ pflege (einschliesslich des Tanzes) muss­ te die Hummel vielerorten als schwer sündbelastet betrachtet und deshalb bei­ seite gestossen oder einfach zerstört wor­den sein,2 um statt dessen vom Psalmo­ dikon ersetzt zu werden,3 das von An­fang an ein Instrument für Gottesdienst und Hausandacht war. [Around 1830 began the incredibly quick triumph over the Psalmodikons the areas.1 The instrument was of the mighty revivals of 40's and the following decades taken in use. but still the Tonwerkzeug [sound, i.e. music, tool] would have never been so fast can spread and would be at the traditionsverbundenen [tradition-bound] rural population never come to immediate application , if not the ground would have been so well prepared by the pretext th older zither type Hummel . As a tool to ANY tes a purely secular music care (including dance ) must te the Hummel have been in many places considered as serious sin burdened and therefore joined in page or simply destroyed by 2 instead of Psalmodikon , 3 which was from the beginning a tool for worship and prayer house .]

Stig Walin, Die Schwedische Hummel: Eine Instrumentenkindliche Untersuchung. Stockholm: Nordiska Museet, 1952. Ethnomusicology http://allourmusic.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/wallin_hummel/.

Interesting tangent (at least to me): Bourdon is the French word for bumblebee!

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Some details about home services I haven't seen elsewhere from Swedish history of psalmodikon in Wikipedia:

Instrumentet började användas i Danmark under 1820-talet, och spreds sedan till övriga Norden och Baltikum. Mest känt är prästen Johan Dillners (1785–1862) psalmodikon från 1830, som användes i en del av Sveriges fattigaste församlingar i stället för orgel. Dillner använde psalmodikonet för att lära ut de nya melodierna i Haeffners koralbok, och gav ut dem i siffernotskrift 1830 (Melodierna till Swenska Kyrkans Psalmer, Noterade med ziffror, för Skolor och Menigheten). Han sade att han kunde lära vem som helst att hantera ett psalmodikon på bara två timmar. Instrumentet var även populärt vid husandakter i hemmen och bland kringresande predikanter. Under senare delen av 1800-talet ersattes oftast psalmodikonet av orgelharmoniet. [The instrument was first used in Denmark during the 1820s , and then spread to the other Nordic countries and the Baltic states. Most famous is the priest Johan Dillner (1785-1862) psalmodikon 1830 , which was used in some of Sweden's poorest parishes instead of organ. Dillner psalmodikonet used to teach new songs in Haeffners koralbok , and published them in numerical notation, 1830 ( The melodies to Swenska hymns , quoted by ziffror , for Schools and the congregation ) . He said he could teach anyone to manage a psalmodikon in just two hours . The instrument was also popular at husandakter in homes and among itinerant preachers. During the latter part of the 1800s was replaced mostly psalmodikonet of the harmonium.]

Cf. the description of the lay readers' conventicle in Moberg's "The Emigrants" ...

Misc. descriptions of psalmodikons in museums (w/ varying numbers of bourdon strings -- all translations, such as they are, by Google):

• Malmö Museums. http://carlotta.malmo.se/carlotta-mmus/web/object/21994 Psalmodikons, string zither, with long, narrow resonance box made of wood. Fingerboard with 30 bands, melody string missing, with 11 sympathetic strings. The resonance box has a round and two crescent-shaped sound hole. Waisted rim at the round sound hole in the wider part of the resonance box.
• Kulturen Lund. http://carl.kulturen.com/web/object/24388 Notes: KM 23594th Psalmodikons m. strings fr. V. Karaby, Harjagers hd. conn. by Blecker, Lund. 10:00 With sympathetic strings. String Games and Stable missing.
• Musik- och Teatermuseet, Stockholm http://old.musikochteatermuseet.se/samlingar/detalj.php?l=sv&iid=1127&v=2007-10-31 16:23:31&str= 1 melody string 16 inner resonance strings Rectangular corpus of neck-like upper part.
• _________________. http://instrument.statensmusikverk.se/samlingar/detalj.php?l=sv&iid=762&str=19 Flared sides, botten.1 melody string 4 outer sympathetic strings, possibly internal resonance strings.
• Upplandsmuseet http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/91617/upmu_object_UM01766.html Psalmodikon av ljust lackat träslag med mörkare fläckar, förmodligen av bets. Avbalkningsbräda med vissa partier svartmålade. Metallklamrar åtskiljer varje avbalkningsdel. Ristade tontecken. Ovan dessa ristade notbokstäver. Stämskruvar svartmålade. Endast melodisträngen (av tarm) är bevarad, men strängfästen visar att tolv resonanssträngar funnits. Stall saknas. Ett runt ljudhål och två halvrunda ljudhål. [Psalmodikons of brightly painted wood with darker spots , probably beet . Avbalkningsbräda with some parts painted black . Metal brackets separating each avbalkningsdel . Carved tontecken . Above these carved notbokstäver . Tuners painted black . Only the melody string ( of gut) is preserved , but the string mounts shows that twelve sympathetic strings existed. Stall missing. A round sound hole and two half- round sound hole.] From Hälsingland. Pix show tuners at end like Esbjörn's in Jenny Lind Chapel.

But my original hunch, for what it's worth, is that the bourdon strings would have been tuned like a hummel, since a lot of Swedish psalmodikons look like their shape is influenced by the hummel.

Creole architecture -- pix on New York Review of Books blog

Nathaniel Rich, "Remnants of New Orleans," Review of Creole World: Photographs of New Orleans and the Latin Caribbean Sphere by Richard Sexton. NYR Gallery (22 August 2014) http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/aug/22/remnants-new-orleans/.

[Lede:] “While it actually resembles no other city upon the face of the earth,” wrote Lafcadio Hearn of New Orleans, “it owns suggestions of towns in Italy, and in Spain, of cities in England and in Germany, of seaports in the Mediterranean, and of seaports in the tropics.” There’s no better illustration of this than the photographs of Richard Sexton. For four decades Sexton has been playing a transcontinental game of Concentration, pinballing between New Orleans and the cities of the Creole diaspora—Havana, Quito, Cartagena, Cap-Haïtien—documenting resonances in architecture and style. His photographs have now been collected in the gorgeous Creole World: Photographs of New Orleans and the Latin Caribbean Sphere, and are on display this fall in a free exhibition at the Historic New Orleans Collection.

e.g. pix of downtown street scenes in Havana, Cap Haitien and Bourbon Street, housing blocks in New Orleans and Panama City ...

Modes matter: "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" in a minor key (and a bonus track of Cyndi Lauper playing dulcimer)

On Huffington Post UK at http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/21/girls-just-wanna-have-fun-major-minor_n_5697550.html, a minor-key remake of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." Here's the YouTube clip:

Says HuffPo UK's blurb,

Yes, if you want to imbue Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 hit 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun' with a deep sense of sadness and irony, simply shift it from its original major key to a minor one.

It's the work of the very talented young Chase Holfelder, who's producing an ongoing series in which he takes major songs and transposes them to minor. ...

Agreed. Here, by way of comparison, is the 1983 original by Cyndi Lauper. Video on CyndiLauperVEVO channel:

I don't know if I ever noticed it before, but there's no lack of irony there, either.

Bonus track (w/ dulcimer, no less): YouTube heading: Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time (Live on Caroline Rhea show in 2003). The dulcimer, if I had to guess, is probably in some kind of alternative tuning, but the melody is basically Ionian:

Prairieland Clayville downloadable flier

Prairieland Strings/Clayville
Pioneer Academy of Music

Beginner-friendly amateur jam sessions

If you have a dulcimer, a
 guitar, banjo, fiddle, autoharp, tin whistle or any 
other musical instrument 
that you want to learn, or you haven’t touched 
in years – or if you 
want to make music with
 other people at a steady, moderate pace in a 
relaxed, beginner-friendly
 atmosphere – the Springfield area has two “slow jams” designed for rank beginners and novice players. They are free of charge and open to the public:

• Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music. 10 a.m. to noon, first Saturday of the month, Clayville Historic Site, Ill. 125, Pleasant Plains.

• Prairieland Strings. 7 to 9 p.m., first Tuesday and third Thursday of the month, Atonement Lutheran Church, 2800 West Jefferson (Ill. 125), Springfield.

Our goal is to bring together amateur players to learn new tunes and enjoy the fun of making music together in a friendly, non-competitive atmosphere. While our groups started with dulcimer players who wanted to jam with other instruments, we welcome all instruments and players of all skill levels. The more variety, the better we like it!

We mostly play old-time American fiddle tunes, gospel and folk hymns, traditional Irish, show tunes – and practically anything else that strikes our fancy. We’re not about the fine points of technique as much as sharing our knowledge, having fun and making music with each other.

We also 
offer occasional song-
sharing circles and free 
workshops at Clayville called “Fake It Till You Make It: Getting to Know Your Instrument and Playing in a Group.”

For information, email Peter Ellertsen of Springfield, who coordinates the jams, at hogfiddle @ gmail.com, phone (217) 793-2587.

---

To make a flier, follow these steps (more or less) Exact procedure will vary, depending on your word processing software:

1. Set your margins at 0.5 inches all way around.
2. Copy and paste the text into a word processing document.
3. Copy the pictures, paste them into the text and wrap the text around them.
4. Size the text (in other words, blow it up) as follows: headline 36 point; subhead 24pt; body copy 12pt.
5. Find a lonely bulletin board, and put up the flier.

Clip art © Philip Martin, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. http://www.phillipmartin.info/clipart/homepage.htm.

Miscellaneous news clips: ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton on ethnic heritage, paradox, popular culture, Lake Wobegon, Jell-O salad and multicultural Santa Lucia girls

Verbatim quotations. (Quotation marks in the indented blockquotes are those of the original newspaper story.) Posted here and quoted at length in case the newspapers don't keep archiving them indefinitely.

Ann Rogers. "New Lutheran Bishop Focuses on Gospel." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 19 August 2013 http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2013/08/19/New-Lutheran-Bishop-Elizabeth-Eaton-focuses-on-gospel/stories/201308190182#ixzz3CDeHE29f.

Bishop Elizabeth Eaton has a quick sense of humor, which is helpful because she often contends with an image of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America crafted by radio humorist Garrison Keillor, whose Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church is firmly rooted in quaint small town America and Scandinavian heritage.

Both of those are beautiful, said the woman just elected presiding bishop of the 4-million-member denomination. But an influx of Latino members is a bright spot in the otherwise declining ELCA. The congregation she led for 15 years in Ohio had crack houses for neighbors. Lutherans, she said, need to bring Jesus to whoever is living next door, using both old-time hospitality and newfangled social media.

"Just tell people to check us out. We're open Sundays," she quipped, then checked her words.

"We are also seeing that Sunday morning is a really bad time for many people. Maybe we have to be more flexible about making it possible for people to come."

Eaton, 58, is a native of Cleveland who has been bishop of ELCA's Northeastern Ohio Synod since 2006. … Post-Gazette story mentions loss of 500,000 members since vote on gay rostered clergy, but puts the membership issue in the context of an overall need by mainline churches for attracting young families, more sophisticated use of technology, etc. Including a wonderful quote about the printing press:

About half the churches in her synod have websites.

"We have one with no indoor plumbing," she said. "The last really effective Lutheran use of new technology was the printing press. People don't look in the phone book any more. If you want people to find your congregation, you need a website."

Popular culture … reaching beyond ethnicity …

When her college-age nephew told her that he didn't believe in God, she asked him to describe the God he didn't believe in, she said. After listening to his description of a wrathful, anti-science, anti-intellectual deity, she told him, " 'I don't believe in that God either.' We got to the point where I was able to say this is the God I believe in, this is why Jesus makes sense in my life."

Her nephew hadn't been raised among people who believe in the sort of God he described, she said. It's a stereotype that arises from popular culture more than from the church. She said that one of her young adult daughters tells her own peers that they're intellectually lazy when they say things like that.

"She'll say 'You are letting that [view] seep in from the culture. That wasn't what you experienced growing up,' " Bishop Eaton said.

Messiah Lutheran Church in Ashtabula, where she served from 1991 to 2006, was originally so ethnically Swedish that worship in English didn't start until the 1930s. Yet, by the time she arrived, church members were marrying their black neighbors. Gay couples and their families began to attend. The congregation was welcoming. Now, she said, little black and Filipino children wear traditional Swedish costumes for the Santa Lucia festival at Christmas.

Brackets in the original.

---

"Elizabeth Dias. "Meet the Woman Who Will Lead Evangelical Lutherans: ‘Religious but Not Spiritual’" Time 18 August 2013. http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/18/meet-the-woman-who-will-lead-evangelical-lutherans-religious-but-not-spiritual/.

Many people might not know what makes the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America unique. How would you explain the denomination?

If people even know what a Lutheran is, most people are stuck on the lovely homespun caricature developed by Garrison Keillor in Prairie Home Companion and Lake Wobegon and all that. We often have parodies of ourselves where we say that all we do is eat different kinds of Jell-O and green-bean casserole. That is no longer true about us. Our growing edges in this church are African national congregations and Latino congregations, which is bringing a whole new wonderful flavor to the Lutheran potluck, theologically and culturally.

* * *

You support the decision to allow partnered gay clergy, but you also believe that the church should make room for people who don’t. Why?

Lutherans have a history of living with paradox. There are some things that are nonnegotiable for us. But there are other things that it is possible for people who love Jesus holding the same faith together, can have very strong, very sharp disagreements, but it does not have to lead to disunity. Things like marriage or the ordering of government or certain political positions, we can and we do disagree, but we agree on the cross.

We want to be a place that says we can disagree on things that are vitally important but still listen to each other and see in the other a brother or sister in Christ, and more importantly, someone for whom Christ died.

---

T.K. Barger. "Bishop Eaton Stands for Inclusion." Toledo Blade 1 February 2014 https://www.toledoblade.com/Religion/2014/02/01/Bishop-Eaton-stands-for-inclusion.html

[lede] The presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or ELCA, is Ohioan Elizabeth Eaton, who moved to Chicago to take office at the beginning of the year. She works for the larger community, but her roots are strong. When asked if she had words specifically for Toledoans, she said, “What I'm really concerned about are those people in Toledo, some of them root for Michigan. I want to say to my brothers and sisters in Toledo, don't go to the dark side, come back, come back to Ohio State.”

* * *

One more question had to be asked. With the presiding bishop the ultimate authority, in a way, in the church, what's the deal with green bean casserole at potluck dinners?

“Oh, geez, I'm not supposed to talk about that anymore,” Bishop Eaton said. “That's a caricature of northern central European, you know, Garrison Keeler [of the NPR show A Prairie Home Companion]. This is what we eat, so you can find it at a lot of potlucks.” She gave an example of a church staff member who is a lifelong Lutheran, but her Puerto Rican heritage doesn't include the dish. “In the Garrison Keillor understanding of what Lutherans are like, that's not who we are, and we have a need to understand that's not who we are anymore.”

But she also said, “Anything that has cream of mushroom soup as an ingredient is probably something that we can do.” Look for variety—and a mushroom or two—on Bishop Eaton's plate at the many church dinners she'll attend as presiding bishop.

---

Brian Albrecht, "Rev. Elizabeth Eaton ready to take the plunge as first female bishop of ELCA" [Cleveland] Plain-Dealer 23 August 2013 http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/08/rev_elizabeth_eaton_ready_to_t.html.

She expects to be challenged by such issues as the declining membership of the church, and all Christian churches, with the increasing secularization of society. Eaton said the ELCA needs to respond to that problem by reaching out to a younger and more diverse audience.

“Our church is overwhelmingly European-American. We’re a very white church,” she said. “We really need to find a way to open up space and make room for people who are not in the traditional European/Lutheran mode to have a voice and power and leadership in the church.”

She hopes that ELCA churches can “re-engage” their communities. “Connect with them and tell them there is a God who loves and cares deeply about you and your life, and here’s a place where you can find meaning,” she said. “We don’t have to go overseas to be missionaries anymore.”

Eaton is realistic about the challenge. “Sometimes I have an image of the church as an aircraft carrier,” she said. “To change the direction of an aircraft carrier takes a lot of time and a lot of space.

“I don’t think there can be some miraculous turn-around of an organization this large, and with this many moving parts.”

Eaton said she will miss her role as an area bishop who could go out each Sunday and visit the local congregations. “And hey, potlucks are great!,” she added.

Some hometown ties will endure. Eaton swore that when she goes to Chicago, “I will never be a White Sox fan, nor will I ever root for the Bulls.”

As for the long-term future of the church, beyond her tenure as bishop, Eaton said, “I don’t think I’m a really great future thinker. I’m just going to leave that in God’s hands.

“I just hope that we don’t cling too tightly to what we have or what we know, so that we’re not able to be open to what’s going to emerge,” she added.

Eaton said she isn’t worried about the future church, even though “I don’t know what it’ll look like. It’s God’s church, not mine.”

Is that faith? Optimism? “Yes,” she replied.

---

ELCA Presiding Bishop-elect Elizabeth Eaton sits down to talk with Windy City LIVE - WLS-TV -- 3 Oct. 2013 ABC7 Chicago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SvaOAlL_Ts

This interview aired on October 3, 2013. [My notes: Paradox. beauty in diversity ... We're a church where everyone is welcome, so we would say. We also hold fast to this notion -- it's not orginal to us, it's original to God, obviously -- that we're loved by a God who wants to lavishly, unconditionally love every one of us. And that's a gift that we have, and since we have been loved in this way we're free then to love the world and serve the world. e.g. malaria So our church Q. Pope Francis - missionary church that reaches out to minorities, gay, etc., even nonbelievers -- gay clergy -- When we say we welcome everyone, I think that's very important. That was a costly decision for us, but if it's the right decision, then no cost is too high. But when we say we welcome everyone, we also welcome those who disagree with that decision. They are fully members of our church, because we can agree on the cross of Jesus Christ. Q what do you say to critics who say h is a sin ... [5:15] q. decline in attendance? A. I think the church for a long time has had a privileged place in our society and our culture and it was taken for granted, I would say in the 50s that it was not only your religious duty, it was your civic duty to be in a faith community. And that's not the case any more. We're not the only game in town, and so we've need to be more ready to be missionaries once again, and to tell people this is a place where you're accepted and you're loved unconditionally and freed in that love, you can go out and make a difference in the world.]

Val Warner (left) and Ryan Chiaverini

Misc. psalmodikon notes -- Psalmodikon in Småland; Statens Musikverket bibliography on Siffernotskrifter; more by Kiell Tofters on L.P. Esbjörn; and website for fiddle duo lydia and Andrea

Lofgren, Lyle and Elizabeth. A Brief Extended History of the Logfren/Johnson/Swenson Families Who Settled Near Harris, Minnesota (2003) http://www.lizlyle.lofgrens.org/LofgrenFam/FamHist1.html.

Item in Lofgren family genealogy at http://www.lizlyle.lofgrens.org/LofgrenFam/FamHist3.html

Lena Stina Pettersdotter (Jan. 21, 1835 - Jan. 21 1912)= Carl Johannesson (Jan. 27, 1829 - Nov. 6, 1904)

* * *

Julie Karlsson wrote in 1955:

My mother owned a psalmodikon [a one-string, bowed instrument with frets like a mountain dulcimer. It was considered acceptable for accompanying psalms, whereas the violin, because it could be used for dancing, was not permissible -- Lyle], with numbers and notes. She played and sang psalms and songs to it. When someone was ill in the neighborhood and she expected them to have joy of it, she brought the psalmodikon and went there to play and sing for them. She was alert as long as she lived. Her last illness lasted 12 days. She fell and broke her femur, but she was clear in her mind into her last moment. Her last words were: ”Söte Frälsare, Herre Jesus” [Sweet savior, Jesus -- Lyle]. My parent worshipped the words of the Lord and the mass. If we stayed home from church, we had to read the text of that Sunday. (Translated by Göran Lundkvist).

In introduction to the genealogy, __________ says:

The only old ancestors I know about were stuck for at least 5 generations in Elghult, a parish about 6 American miles from Målerås. The name means "moose thicket" (location 3 in Småland). There are no elk in Sweden, although there are caribou, called reindeer, in the far north. They do have moose, though, and elg is the Swedish word for moose. Our word "moose" is an Ojibwe Indian word (plural is moose-ug), so if Swedes had been a little quicker in settling the New World, moose would be called elk, which would be really confusing. Europeans were not notably observant. The American Robin doesn't look much like the European Robin, and "deer" comes from German Tier, meaning "animal." Where was I? Oh, yes. Elghult consisted of several large unprosperous farms, but, as of 1900, it also had eight glass factories. There was no rail service, so I don't know what they did with the glass. Maybe they piled it up and waited for customers to come.

---

Statens musikverk (Music Development and Heritage Sweden), has a 3-page PDF file listing material on the psalmodikon at http://musikverket.se/musikochteaterbiblioteket/files/2013/02/Siffernotskrifter.pdf.

Siffernotskrifter
Förteckning av Inger Enquist
I arkivet finns sammanlagt åtta arkivkartonger tryckta siffernotskrifter. Innehållet i varje sådan volym har förtecknats för sig. Därutöver finns ett fåtal handskrivna siffernotskrifter. …

[lists 8 "volumes," some comprising several books, including Oscar Ahnfelt's Melodierna i sifferskrift till Andeliga sånger, Dillner, etc.

Statens musikverk, Torsgatan 21, Stockholm: "Its mission is to promote a wide-ranging musical offering throughout the country, distinguished by excellence and artistic regeneration, and to preserve and bring to life theatre, dance and music heritage." Funds an arts council, etc. Maintains Musik- och teaterbiblioteket:

Depth, knowledge and happy music making – opening the door to the worlds of theatre, music and dance.

This is one of the oldest and largest specialist libraries of its kind in Europe, accessible to all. The evolution of performing arts and the history of music are reflected in this extensive collection of books. Sheet music for beginners and professionals, for all settings and genres, is also widely available. There is drama – manuscripts and printed editions – in several different languages.

The rich collection of older publications, manuscripts and archives includes both theatre and musical material, amongst others the original manuscripts of several important Swedish composers and more than half a million photographs from the world of theatre.

---

FOLKVÄCKELSENS BEGYNNELSE I UPPLAND MED OMNEJD Med särskild inriktning på Östervåla

44-page PDF file by Kiell Tofters on the bygdeband website

Abstract [?]

Lars Paul Esbjörn var en väckelse- och läsarpräst, som verkade både i Sverige och Amerika. I Östervåla tjänade han under både 1830-talet och 1860-talet. Under 1840-talet verkade Esbjörn i Hille utanför Gävle. Under 1850-talet var han i Amerika och startade församlingar, skolor och det svensk-lutherska samfundet Augustanasynoden. Esbjörn var en del av ett sammanhang, vi kallar det för kontext. För att förstå Esbjörns liv och verksamhet både i Sverige och Amerika, beskriver jag i denna uppsats hur väckelsen under 1830-, 1840- och 1850-talen växte fram och rörde sig i östra Svealand – Uppland, Stockholm, Västmanland – och södra Norrland – Gästrikland och Hälsingland. Esbjörn verkade under sin Sverigetid i Uppland och Gästrikland, men också i Hälsingland och Stockholm.

In this case, "folk revival" doesn't mean music. It's more like the revival, or "awakening," in the Great Awakening(s) in America.

---

lydia and Andrea, Scandinavian fiddle duo at http://www.lydia-andrea.com

Blurb: About lydia & Andrea. Andrea and lydia [who spells her name with lower-case letters] have been playing Swedish-style fiddle together for the past decade, and have recently returned from an intense 2012–13 academic year studying in the center of the nyckelharpa universe, at the Eric Sahlström Institute. ... Much of their shared repertoire comes from central regions of Sweden, with a smattering of Norwegian and Danish and beyond, and their original compositions.

Interesting note on nykelharpa: "The nyckelharpa is the national instrument of Sweden, first known from a painting on a church wall dated to about 1350. It has 16 strings: 3 melody strings and 1 drone string that are played with a bow, and 12 sympathetic (resonance) strings, altogether encompassing a 3-octave range. On lydia's nyckelharpa there are 37 wooden keys (nyckel means "key"), each of which plays a single note on a single string. …" Links to American Nyckelharpa Association.

Eighth of January ("Battle of New Orleans"), a new (old) fiddle tune for Clayville, Prairieland Strings

Coming up this week are the Prairieland Strings (7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday), the Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music (10 a.m. to noon Saturday) and, over at Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site, the annual Bluegrass (a.k.a. Traditional Music) Festival all day Saturday. Why don't we have our session at Clayville and head on over to New Salem afterward? New Salem has been good to us -- over the years we've attracted quite a few new members by playing at the bluegrass festival, and they could use the support.

For the occasion(s), I'd like to highlight a tune we introduced at our last session of the Prairieland group in mid-August. It's called the "Eighth of January," a.k.a. the "Battle of New Orleans," and there's a lot of history to it. There's even a local connection (well, kinda, sort of) between New Salem and the actual historical battle, which was fought almost exactly 100 years ago on Jan. 8, 1815. I'll point it out below.

To get us started, here's Johnny Horton singing "Battle of New Orleans" on the Ed Sullivan Show, complete with some hijinks with a (stuffed?) alligator:

With its original title "Eighth of January" it's a staple in bluegrass jams, but it's a fine old, very intricate fiddle and clawhammer banjo tune. It's also made to order for dulcimers, hammered and mountain alike.

In the YouTube clip below Rich Carty, owner of the Highlands Folk Music Center in New Jersey, talks about mountain dulcimer technique, but he also shares his thoughts, honed by 33 years of playing, about how a dulcimer played well can fit in with other stringed instruments. Carty begins from 0:00 to 0:52 by playing the melody through twice at a moderate tempo: Well worth listening to even if you don't aspire to be a virtuoso mountain dulcimer player, for his sense of how all the instruments in an old-time jam session blend together.

Mountain dulcimer tab is available in Steve Siefert's Join the Jam. I'm not able to find any on line. A lead sheet with chords is available on the Kitchen Musician website at http://www.kitchenmusician.net/giftunes/8th-jan.gif. It's written for hammered dulcimer, but it has chords, melody line and everything else (except tab for those who are wedded to the DAD dulcimer lockstep) that anybody could ask for.

The Kitchen Musician is an extremely valuable source for folk musicians and anybody who loves trad Irish music by Sarah Johnson, who plays hammered dulcimer and has been writing a music column for Smoke and Fire for re-enactors, buckskinners, etc., for a long time. She has books (those old-fashioned things with ink on paper) of Turlough O'Carolan, Irish slow airs, Scots fiddle tunes, all kinds of older British, colonial and early American music.

Also an "Alpha List of Downloadable Music for Hammered Dulcimer, Fiddle, Tinwhistle, Recorder, etc." at: http://www.kitchenmusician.net/pages/kmmusicalpha.html. Along with the Carolan and beautiful Irish slow airs, she lists a three-part "Back of the Schoolbus Suite" with such musical masterworks as "Found a Peanut" and "The Worms Go In, the Worms Go Out." Hey, they're in the oral tradition.

A couple of "Eighth of January" performances

Hank Williams Sr., here recorded on a vintage radio show as Jerry Rivers And The Drifting Cowboys:

Here's a high-octane bluegrass version by Rhonda Vincent & the Rage at the Dumplin' Valley Bluegrass Festival in Kodak, Tenn.:

And here's a nice solo on clawhammer banjo by YouTube user Ron Hudiberg:

For what it's worth, I like the nice, relaxed tempo of that clawhammer banjo the best.

A little bit of local (and not-so-local) history

"Eighth of January" originated nearly 200 years as a fiddle tune commemorating the Battle of New Orleans on Jan. 8, 1815. In the online Fiddler’s Companion, another indispensible source of information, Andrew Kuntz explains:

This victory, by a small, poorly equipped American army against eight thousand front-line British troops (some veterans of the Napoleonic Wars on the Continent), came after the peace treaty was signed and the War of 1812 ended, unbeknownst to the combatants. The victory made Jackson a national hero, and the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans was widely celebrated with parties and dances during the nineteenth century, especially in the South. Around the time of the Civil War, some time after Jackson's Presidency, his popular reputation suffered and ‘Jackson’s Victory’ was renamed to delete mention of him by name, thus commemorating the battle and not the man.

(Link here and scroll down.)

The lyrics were written in 1936 by a high school history teacher in Arkansas named Jimmy Driftwood, as Kunz delicately puts it, "supposedly to make the event more interesting to his students." The version we've all heard was by country novelty singer Johnny Horton, who topped the charts with it in 1959.

If you're interested in local history or want to know more about that "kinda, sort-of" local angle I mentioned, check out my piece on how the Rev. John Berry, pastor at Rock Springs Presbyterian Church and father of Abraham Lincoln's parter in what we now call the first and second "Berry-Lincoln stores" at New Salem State Historic Site, served in the Battle of New Orleans. It's titled "What does an old fiddle tune have to do with Rev. John Berry’s service in the War of 1812?" in the New Salem interpreters' newsletter, The Prairie Picayune" in the fall of 2009. I posted it Oct. 24, 2009.

"Björnen sover" (the bear is sleeping), Prairieland Strings, Aug. 21

Blast email sent out to my Prairieland Strings and Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music lists tonight.

Hi everybody --

Our "third Thursday" session of the Prairieland Strings is from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 21, at Atonement Lutheran Church, 2800 West Jefferson. Bring your copy of Steve Seifert's "Join the Jam." Let's just go around the circle and either: (a) pick some tunes we already know; or (b) go around the circle and pick some tunes we don't already know.

---

"Björnen sover," the song in the headline, is sung to the same tune as "Gubben Noak" (Old man Noah), a famous drinking song by Sweden's Carl Michael Bellman, who was a lot like Robert Burns and wrote about the same time. Clips are posted at: http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2013/09/gubben-noak-at-augie-1870s.html.

---

Be forewarned, though: I've got some extra copies from my presentation at Bishop Hill of a Swedish children's song called "Bjørnen Sover" (the bear is sleeping), and I'm *very* tempted to introduce it. (That's pronounced be-YORN-en SOW-ver, by the way.) It's a bouncy little tune, it's fun to play and it's very, very simple. Steve Smith of Asheville, N.C., has mountain dulcimer tab -- with notes and chords -- on the Everything Dulcimer website at:

http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/tab/index.php

Scroll down to "Bjørnen Sover" and click on the PDF link, but I've got plenty of copies. If your computer doesn't have the right plug-in for the sound file (mine doesn't), here's a nice version in Danish, with cute graphics:

I'll post some more about it to Hogfiddle. The song is Swedish, but it's a favorite with young children in Norway and Denmark, too. The words (in Swedish) are:

Björnen sover, björnen sover
i sitt lugna bo
han är inte farlig, bara man är varlig
men man kan dock, men man kan dock
honom aldrig tro.

Which translates, literally, as: The bear is sleeping, the bear is sleeping, in his calm den. He is not dangerous, if only one is careful, but one can never, one can never trust him. I would sing it like this:

The bear is sleeping, bear is sleeping
In his quiet den.
The bear may not harm you,
But he should alarm you.
You can never
Never ever
Never trust a bear.

OK, OK, it isn't great literature! But the words do fit the melody.

It's also a circle game. There's a good description on the website PYP PE with Andy [Vasily], who teaches pays ed in the Primary Years Programme at an international school in China:

The game Björnen sover when translated into English means, "the bear is sleeping". It is a great game involving running, dodging, and music. The games starts off by selecting a person to be the sleeping bear. This person lays down with a circle of students holding hands and walking around the sleeping bear. I used a CD with the sleeping bear song and played it while the kids walked clockwise around the person pretending to be the bear. Slowly the bear begins to wake up and stretch then comes to their knees and feet. The entire time the students are still walking in a circle around the bear. Once the bear makes its move to start running the students scatter. The student that the bear catches becomes the next bear and the process repeats.

Warnings!!! The kids love being the bear and will try and be caught on purpose. …

I'll post a couple of videos to Hogfiddle. Hope to see you Thursday!

-- Pete

Pennsylvania Dutch Kirchenleute and German chorales; scheitholt said "the instrument of choice" among Lutherans

A very good analysis of Pennsylvania Dutch chorale books of the 18th and 19th centuries by Daniel Jay Grimminger, a Lutheran pastor (NALC) and musicologist at Kent State. Deals with issues of retention, acculturation, etc. I think it's particularly valuable because Grimminger is clearly influenced by Pennsylvania folklorist Don Yoder.

• Daniel Jay Grimminger, Sacred Song and the Pennsylvania Dutch, Eastman Studies in Music 94 (Rochester, New Yor: University of Rochester Press, 2012), 2.
  

• Also this: "… chorales had a rhythmic vitality that combined the modes of earlier music with the emerging tonality [of the Reformation era]. … Later, in the eighteenth century, these rhythms would lose their syncopation to give way to the lyricism of the day, but the significance of the genre by that time had been cemented into place." (2)

• Rooted in chant, too, thus "allowing the German people to participate in a new art form that developed side by side with the German language. This was also true for the melodies. While many of them were entirely new creations, others were based on German religious folk song or Gregorian chant melodies (including Luther's 'Komm Schöpfer helper Geist' from the chant 'Veni Creator Spiritus')." (2) [Paren. in original.]

• Here's the publisher's description from eBay:

  The Pennsylvania Dutch comprised the largest single ethnic group in the early American Republic of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet like other ethnic minorities in early America, they struggled to maintain their own distinct ethnic identity in everything that they did. Eventually their German Lutheran and Reformed customs and folkways gave way to Anglo-American pressure. The tune and chorale books printed for use in Pennsylvania Dutch churches document this gradual process of Americanization, including notable moments of resistance to change. Daniel Grimminger's Sacred Song and the Pennsylvania Dutch is the only in-depth study of the shifting identity of the Pennsylvania Dutch as manifested in their music. Through a closer examination of music sources, folk art, and historical contexts, this interdisciplinary study sheds light on the process of cultural change that occurred over the course of a century or more in the majority of Pennsylvania German communities and churches. Grimminger's book also provides a model with which to view all ethnic enclaves, in America and elsewhere, and the ways in which loyalties can shift as a group becomes part of a larger cultural fabric. Daniel Grimminger holds a doctorate in sacred music and choral conducting, as well as a PhD in musicology. He also holds a master of theological studies degree and is a clergyman in the North American Lutheran Church. Grimminger teaches at Kent State University and is the pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Millersburg, Holmes County, Ohio.

  … and Grimminger's bio, also from eBay:

  Dr. Daniel Jay Grimminger is a lifelong member of the Paris Community. He holds a Ph.D. (University of Pittsburgh), Doctor of Church Music (Claremont Graduate University), and a M.A. (Trinity Lutheran Seminary). He has served as the archivist for Israel's Lutheran Church in Paris and as assistant archivist for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America at Columbus. He currently teaches at Mount Union College in Alliance and resides on the old Charles Lutz Farm.

Grimminger's Ph.D. dissertation at Pitt, PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH TUNE AND CHORALE BOOKS IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC: MUSIC AS A MEDIUM OF CULTURAL ASSIMILATION (2009), is available on line at:

http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/7613/1/grimminger_dissertation_etd_may2009down.pdf

The dissertation doesn't seem to have his discussion of chorales, which is excellent, IMHO. Intro has terms defined, incl. "chorale book," "tune book," "hymn" and "Pennsylvania Dutch," xvi-xviii. He follows Don Yoder in preferring it to "Pennsylvania German," and explains why.

Scheitholt

In the dissertation, Grimminger has this to say about the scheitholt, as he calls it:

… The instrument of choice among the rural Pennsylvania Lutherans to accompany their folk music, the Scheitholt was a homemade six-string zither of wood that could be held on the lap or placed on an empty chest or box while being played. [75] More often than not this Deitsch dulcimer had a heart or a tulip carved into the body of the instrument. There is some evidence to suggest that the Dutch used it at times to accompany hymn singing in the home and provide soft music at intimate social gatherings.

 One scholar suggests that the instrument was also used at dances and the many different kinds of “frolics” when neighbors would help each other complete their work tasks. [76] Just as the organ accompanied the church chorales, so the Scheitholt (see figure 4) played folk music and accompanied the singing of memorized folk pieces, passed on orally from generation to generation. [77]

A recently discovered Scheitholt from 1861 has both a carved tulip and heart; its case contains a repertoire list that the owner wrote in pencil. While this example is a later one, it resembles earlier extant exemplars. [78] The simple construction and sound of the Scheitholt was a contrast to the sound of instruments that the Anglo-American would have enjoyed, especially the piano, which the Dutch could not afford or fully appreciate in rural areas. It was in the countryside of Pennsylvania that folk music evolved to express every day Dutch life. [79]

In Songs along the Mahantongo, Walter Boyer and his colleagues identify several topical categories of secular Dutch folk songs used in the Mahantongo Valley during the nineteenth century: songs of childhood, courtship and marriage, the farm, the Schnitzing party, the tavern, American life, and a New Year’s blessing. [80]

Most of the songs in all of these categories served the purpose of comic relief, providing a contrast to the German chorale tradition in the church, something this dissertation examines in more detail in later chapters:

The humorous dialect songs had and still have a highly-honored place among the rural people, but through the years the literary hymns, earlier in German and now in English, of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches to which the majority of our people belong, have remained also a precious heritage from the lands of Luther and Zwingli. So we have secular or ‘worldly’ songs, and religious songs—for the Pennsylvania Dutchman strikes a neat balance between the sacred and secular. [81] … (35-38)

References in quoted passage:

75 Richard Raichelson, “The Social Context of Musical Instruments within the Pennsylvania German Culture,” Pennsylvania Folklife 25, 1 (1975): 42.

76 Ralph Lee Smith, “A Great Scheitholt with Some Remarkable Documentation,” Dulcimer Players News 32, no. 3 (2006): 32-33. See also Raichelson, “The Social Context.”

77 Several sources document the folk song tradition of the Pennsylvania Dutch: Songs along the Mahantongo: Pennsylvania Dutch Folksongs, eds. Walter E. Boyer, Albert F. Buffington, and Don Yoder (Lancaster, PA: The Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center, 1951); Albert F. Buffington, Pennsylvania German Secular Folksongs (Breinigsville, PA: The Pennsylvania German Society, 1974); Don Yoder, Pennsylvania Spirituals (Lancaster, PA: Pennsylvania Folklife Society, 1961).

78 Smith, 32-33. The particular Scheitholt, which is the topic for Smith’s article, has a list of repertoire recorded in the instrument’s case. Most of it is in English, showing that this instrument might have been owned by an Anglo- American, or more likely by an assimilated Dutchman.

79 This is not to say that no Dutchmen had pianos. Some Moravians had (and made pianos) although this was because of their own unique music culture, which they continued to import from Europe via printed music and instruments. See Jewel A. Smith, “The Piano among the Moravians in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Music, Instruction, and Construction,” The Music of the Moravian Church in America, ed. Nola Reed Knouse (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008): 228-251.

80 See Songs along the Mahantongo: Pennsylvania Dutch Folksongs, eds. Walter E. Boyer, Albert F. Buffington, and Don Yoder (Lancaster, PA: The Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center, 1951).

81 Boyer, Buffington, and Yoder, Songs along the Mahantongo, 15.

Hymn sung at organizational meeting of Zion Norwegian Lutheran Church, Brooklyn, Oct. 26, 1908

So at 12:06 p.m. today I email my paper to Historic Preservation (see conference program here -- I'm one of three presenters in a breakout session on "Immigration and Migration") and get the rest of my life back! The paper is "Quad-City Creoles? Blended European and Anglo-American Musical Traditions in Swedish-American Cultural Institutions, 1848–1925," and that's all I'm going to say about it now. I'm done with it for a while.

One of the things I've been wanting to do while I was struggling with edits and University of Chicago footnote style is to post a hymn I found last month at a "cousins' reunion" in the Catskills. It was sung when my grandfather's church in New York City was organized.

And here, finally, it is.

Our grandfather (bestefar in Norwegian) was the Rev. Johan Peter Ellertsen, of Zion Lutheran Church in Brooklyn. We gathered July 24-27 at the Koinonia retreat center in Highland Lake, N.Y.

We brought memorabilia, and one of the items we shared was a program booklet from Zion's 25th anniversary in 1933. It mentioned a hymn that was sung at the first organizational meeting in 1908. It's called "In Jesus’ Name Our Work Must All Be Done," and it was entirely unfamiliar to me.

Anyway, some of us were gathered around a keyboard going through Bestefar's hymnal (see picture at right above), the 1913 edition of Lutheran Hymnary. So I tracked down in the index of first lines, and asked the folks at the keyboard to play it.

Music seems to run in the family -- Bestefar's father and perhaps his grandfather were cantors in Bergen, and at Koinonia I learned that Bestemor's family, from an industrial town called Sarpsborg in southeastern Norway, claims descent from the Johann Walther who edited Martin Luther's early congregational music.

In fact, later on that weekend we celebrated the family tradition by singing some of Walther's arrangements, including Christ lag in Todesbanden ("Christ Jesus lay in death's strong bands"). But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back to the hymn from Zion in Brooklyn.

When I heard it played on the keyboard, it sounded minor. (I think it's in F minor from looking at the music, but Hymnary.org says it's in A-flat major. It's written with four flats, anyway, and that's enough to give an amateur 60s-vintage folk musician like me who only plays in D, G and E-minor a serious headache! I'll leave its modality to others to straighten out.) Major or minor, it was serious music. Somber.

"In Jesus’ Name Our Work Must All Be Done" is No. 247 in the 1913 hymnary jointly published by the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Synod, Hauge's Synod and the United Norwegian Lutheran Church of America and edited by the noted choral director F. Melius Christiansen, then newly arrived at St. Olaf College.

It isn't exactly feel-good, happy-clappy church music. The first verse:

In Jesus' name
Our work must all be done
If it shall compass our true good and aim,
And not end in shame alone;
For ev'ry deed
Which in it doth proceed,
Success and blessing gains
Till it the goal attains.
Thus we honor God on high
And ourselves are blessed thereby;
Wherein our true good remains.

But it is appropriate for the organizational meeting of a new congregation.

The words are by J. Frederiksen (1639) and music from Thomas Kingo's Gradual (1699). I'm not able to find anything on Frederiksen, but Kingo was a 17th-century Danish bishop and hymnwriter who was very influential in the Danish and Norwegian churches down to the 20th century. According to Hymnary.org, the tune name is I JESU NAVN, and it was arranged by 19th-century Norwegian folksong collector and composer Ludvig Lindeman. So it has as good a pedegree as anything in the Norwegian-American tradition.

It's available on line through the Internet Archive at archive.org. But I'm posting JPEG files from Bestefar's hymnal. To enlarge, click on the JPEGs above and at right.

I'm also posting the part about the 1908 meeting from the anniversary program.

* * *

Twenty-fifth Anniversary, Zion Norwegian Lutheran Church, 63rd Street and Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, October 29th, 1933.

Grace and peace! During the summer of 1908, Rev. Johan Ellertsen, upon call from the Home Mission Committee of the Eastern District of the Norwegian Synod of America, made a thorough canvass of South Brooklyn from 19th to 60th Streets and, through the assistance of Rev. C.S.C. Everson, brought about the organization of Zion Norwegian Lutheran Church, of Bay Ridge, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. George Simpson, 430 48th Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. Eighteen men were gathered together on that memorable Tuesday evening, October 26th, 1908. The meeting opened with the singing of “In Jesus’ Name Our Work Must All Be Done,” Scripture reading and prayer. With Rev. C.S.E. Everson presiding the group present declared its willingness to organize themselves into congregation to be known as Zion Norwegian Lutheran Church of Bay Ridge. The present constitution of the Church, with a few minor changes of later date, was then accepted.

Hendrik Hertzberg and Henry Louis Gates Jr. on "wildly creative creolization," race, American foundational myth(s) and the "tragic dimension of the American condition"

Hendrik Hertzberg and Henry Louis Gates Jr., “The African-American Century.” New Yorker 29 April 1996 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/04/29/the-african-american-century (7 August 2014).

American myth is "A pretty story; and, like all folk tales, this one tells a kind of truth. But the reality is more complicated, darker (in more ways than one), more painful, and, ultimately, more heroic. The myth ignores the tragic dimension of the American condition, the dimension that challenges the moral seriousness of American thinkers and makes American art and culture, high and low, the most dynamic and pervasive on the planet—makes American culture American, in fact. Not all Americans’ ancestors came here to escape tyranny; many were brought here in furtherance of tyranny. …"

On music:

An observer from 1900 transported forward in time to this century’s end would be astonished at the ubiquity of the black presence in artistic, cultural, and quasi-cultural endeavors of every kind, from the frontiers of modern art (born when Picasso laid eyes on African masks), through the written word (more books by and about African-Americans will be published this year than appeared during the whole of the Harlem Renaissance), to the iconography of mass marketing (with Michael Jordan looking down from giant billboards like some beneficent Big Brother). The prime example, of course, is music, the most accessible of the arts. In 1900, ragtime was only just coming into its own, beginning the long and steady fusion of African-American themes and forms with those of European origin. In the early decades of the century, Negro music came to dominate the new technologies of sound recording and radio so thoroughly that, in 1924, an alarmed music establishment sought out a syncopationally challenged bandleader by the comically apt name of Paul Whiteman and designated him “the King of Jazz.” But jazz and its offshoots could not be so easily tamed. The wildly creative creolization of African-American and European-American strains produced a profusion of mulatto musics—one thinks of Ellington and Gershwin, Joplin and Stravinsky, Miles Davis and Gil Evans, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Springsteen—that spread their dominion across the whole world.

Economically, however, African-Americans remain left out. ...

Ernst Olson, History of the Swedes of Illinois (1908) and miscellaneous notes for IHPA's Conference on Illinois History -- including a link to Purdue OWL summary of Chicago/Turabian style

"Purdue OWL," of course, has nothing to do with nocturnal birds. It's Purdue University's Online Writing Lab. Link here for its entries on University of Chicago style:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/01/

---

Sixteenth Annual Conference on Illinois History, September 25–26, 2014, Prairie Capital Convention Center Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum Springfield, Illinois. Sponsored by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. http://www.illinois.gov/ihpa/Involved/Documents/2014.Conference.pdf

Immigration and Migration [3:30-5 p.m., Friday, Sept. 26]
Moderator: Mark Johnson, Illinois Historic Preservation Agency
“Quad-city Creoles: Blended European and Anglo-American Musical Traditions in Swedish-American Cultural Institutions, 1848– 1925,” Peter Ellertsen, Independent Scholar

“The Great Migration, 1915-1919: The Impact on Chicago and East St. Louis,” Ronald E. Howell, Independent Scholar

“Progress and Social Mobility among Chicago Heights Italians, 1910–1940,” Louis Corsino, North Central College; Kerby Kniss, North Central College; Marcella Wirtz, North Central College

---

Ernst Olson, ed. History of the Swedes of Illinois (Chicago: Engberg-Holmberg, 1908) https://archive.org/details/historyofswedeso00olsorich

Bishop Hill workshop Aug. 2 on psalmodikon and Swedish-American music -- ** UPDATED w/ Plan B ** -- cf. what I planned, what we did

LATER (October 2014) -- The text below is the news release and flier I sent out promoting the workshop. As you can see, I had planned to show dulcimer players how to play the tablature that pastors used to teach harmony singing to rural congregations both in Sweden and the United States. But when the workshop began, I learned that no one in the audience played the dulcimer. So I thought a minute, and went to a Plan B. Link here for a writeup of what we actually did in the workshop and here for tablature and sheet music of some of the songs that Swedish-American immigrants knew and loved. I am now putting together another workshop, titled "Pastor Esbjorn's Singing School," for the 155th anniversary of the founding of the old Swedish-American Augustana Lutheran Synod at Jenny Lind Chapel in Andover. The Rev. Lars Paul Esbjorn, of Andover, was one of the synod's founders.

Ever wonder what the psalmodikons in the museums at Jenny Lind Chapel and Bishop Hill sounded like? How they were played? What were some of the songs the pioneer immigrants brought over from 19th-century Sweden? Want to sing them or play them on a dulcimer – or another modern musical instrument?

The Bishop Hill Heritage Association will sponsor a workshop Saturday, Aug. 2 (re-scheduled from May 10), on how Swedish immigrants learned to play hymns on the psalmodikon. The workshop will be at 2 p.m. in the Dairy Building, 410 N. Erickson St., Bishop Hill. It is free and open to the public.

* * *

Pete Ellertsen, a retired teacher and amateur musician of Springfield, will demonstrate how Swedish-American pastors of the 1840s and ’50s used the psalmodikon (pronounced “sal-MOW-di-kon”) to teach harmony singing from the Svenska Psalmbok of 1819 in rural congregations where everyone might not read music. The instruments, which looked like a modern dulcimer, were inexpensive and easy to play. Ellertsen, who plays the mountain dulcimer, has a replica of the psalmodikon in Bishop Hill’s Steeple Building museum.

Workshop participants will learn how to read psalmodikon tablature, known as “siffor-noter” (number notes) and convert it to sheet music; and how to sing simple melodies and play them on the mountain dulcimer or another musical instrument. All skill levels and all instruments are welcome. This workshop is partially funded by the Illinois Arts Council.

2 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 2, Dairy Building, Bishop Hill

---

Links to tab and sheet music …

• "Children of the Heavenly Father" (my article w/ tab) http://dulcimersessions.com/?p=297
• Wikipedia page on "Gubben Noak" http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gubben_Noak
• Project Runeberg text of Bellman's "Gubben Noak" http://runeberg.org/fredsang/135.html
• "Bjørnen Sover" dulcimer tab http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/tab/BjrnenSover.pdf
• Bishop Hill Calendar of Events (scroll to Aug. 2) http://bishophillheritage.org/news-events/calendar/

Permalinks re: Bishop Hill and Andover …

• http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2012/09/psalmodikon-in-steeple-building-at.html

• http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2013/08/peter-hedlund-psalmodikon-bishop-hill.html

  http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2013/09/lars-esbjorns-psalmodikon-at-jenny-lind.html

• http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2013/12/1819-swedish-psalmbook-reprint.html

Misc quotes on history, Clayville, "Prairie Dreams"

Since historical reconstruction is a rational process, only justified and indeed possible if it involves the human reason, what we call history is the mess we call life reduced to some order, pattern and possibly purpose. -- G. R. Elton

See more quotes at: http://hnn.us/article/1328#sthash.9JweKlhW.dpuf

"A Memoir of Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton." Jeremy Bennett. http://www.clarealumni.com/s/845/1col.aspx?sid=845&gid=1&pgid=857

---

Rachel Otwell. "The Past Comes Alive With Clayville Theater" WUIS-FM, University of Illinois Springfield. Aug. 31, 2012. [audio w/ stills] https://wuisnews.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/the-past-comes-alive-with-clayville-theater/

Nondescript dulcimer at 0:35 to 1:32, player quoted at 0:50.

Penny Zimmerman Wills. "Our History: Clayville to revive play about its founding" June 7, 2014. State Journal-Register http://www.sj-r.com/article/20140607/News/140609598

Olle i Skratthult -- miscellaneous links

Very informative tribute page by Carl at Catfish's Closet http://www.catfish1952.com/Olle.html with links to sound files, other pages. Pix, including this playbill …

For more on the play and mp3 files, see below.

---

Internet Archive has mp3 files at https://archive.org/details/HjalmarPetersonPt.03_936 … w/ following notes

SONGS RELATING TO HJALMAR PETERSON
Tracks 01-25: various artists
Tracks 01-06: Värmlänningarna
Tracks 07-11: F. A. Dahlgren
Tracks 12-13: Olle's Swedish Potpourri
Tracks 14-26: Songs from the Swedish Potpourri
Tracks 27-27: Carl Michael Bellman

NOTES -- Selections 01-06 are from F. A. Dahlgren's musical drama "Värmlänningarna" (The People of Värmland), which Peterson's company frequently performed. Selections 07-11 are also by Dahlgren, who contributed seven songs to Peterson's first songbook, published in 1908. Selections 12-24 were recorded by Hjalmar Peterson as part of the "Swedish Potpourri" that he released in 1916 with piano accompaniment and in 1917 with orchestral backing. Selection 25 was sung by members of Peterson's company.

Swedish-American audiences were mainly interested in theatrical productions dealing with Swedish country life such as the popular musical "Värmlänningarna" (The People of Värmland). The libretto for "Värmlänningarna" was written by F. A. Dahlgren. The music was written by Andreas Randel or adapted from traditional sources. This six-act melodrama, written in 1846 and set in the province of Värmland, was a love story about a young peasant couple who, with considerable difficulty, overcome hostile parents and local convention. Audiences identified closely with the hero and heroine, seeing in the plot the sorts of difficulties familiar in their own lives.

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrik_August_Dahlgren says: "Dahlgren is best remembered for writing two Swedish folk songs. He and Anders Fryxell wrote the lyrics to Ack Värmeland, du sköna (O Värmland, you lovely). He was the sole author of Å jänta å ja' (And the girl and I).[1] Dahlgren also wrote the musical drama "Värmlänningarna" (The People of Värmland), a popular work for over one hundred fifty years." Fredrik August Dahlgren … was a member of the Swedish Academy (1871 - 1895), graduate of Uppsala University.

---

WorldCat http://www.worldcat.org/title/olle-i-skratthult-singssjunger-nikolina-flickan-pa-bellmansro/oclc/44214166

Olle i Skratthult sings/sjunger "Nikolina" & "Flickan på Bellmansro"

Author: Olle, i Skratthult; Olle i Skratthult Project.
Publisher: Minneapolis : Olle i Skratthult Project, 1976.
Edition/Format: Music : 45 rpm : Swedish
Database: WorldCat
Summary: Swedish language comic songs performed by Hjalmar Peterson (who performed under the name of Olle i Skratthult), remastered from 78 rpm recordings made in the 1920s.

Minnesota Historical Society Library St. Paul, MN 55102

Bellmansro was a tavern or restaurant on Djurgården island in Stockholm, located next to a bust of Carl Michael Bellman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellmansro">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellmansro

---

Excerpt from Anne-Charlotte Harvey. "Performing Ethnicity: The Role of Swedish Theatre in the Twin Cities" -- essay in Swedes in the Twin Cities : Immigrant Life and Minnesota's Urban Frontier, ed. Philip J. Anderson and Dag Blanck. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001.

---

Cf. "Toby," a red-headed American rustic in vaudeville and tent shows, with a long set of antecedents on the British stage, pp. 129-44 in William L. Slout, Theatre in a Tent Wildside Press LLC, 2008 - 232 pages http://books.google.com/books?id=P1CYZkW9UFIC&dq=toby+rustic+comedian&source=gbs_navlinks_s

"Cultural Hybridity Reconsidered: Religious Visual Culture and the Dutch Republic" by Els Stronks, Utrecht University

http://www.journalofdutchliterature.org/cgi/t/text/get-pdf5c13.pdf?c=jdl;idno=0302a01

Cultural Hybridity Reconsidered: Religious Visual Culture and the Dutch Republic

Els Stronks, Utrecht University. Journal of Dutch Literature 3.2 (2012).

In the last decades, historians such as Willem Frijhoff, Peter Burke and Benjamin Kaplan have focused on interconfessional encounters in friendships, marriage and trade in the Dutch Republic. They have argued that these encounters were stimulated by the freedom that emerged because the principle of freedom of con- science – understood as freedom of thought – emerged as a positive ideology during the Dutch Revolt. An extraordinary equilibrium was established because Calvinism was the dominant religion but never became the (official) state reli- [5 els stronks] gion.1 This resulted in a relatively tolerant society that even served as a refuge to migrants from surrounding countries. Newly developed and shared cultural practices have been highlighted as a form of accommodation of these interconfessional encounters. The absence of a domi- nant religion generated the sort of climate in which different confessional tradi- tions appeared to intermingle and influence each other with little friction, provid- ing an ideal setting for the integration of Catholic and Protestant religious subcultures and practices. The cultural responses to the word-image controversy between Protestants and Catholics in particular have proven to offer a key oppor- tunity to explore when, why and to what extent people were willing to reconcile theological differences to combine elements from their own religious cultural practices with those of another, to create new practices.(4-5)

The concept of ‘cultural hybridity’ was introduced by Homi Bhabha to focus the attention on the cross-fertilisation of distinct cultural practices. In Bhabha’s view, the mutual intermingling of cultures results in the development of something new (a ‘third space’) out of the existing subcultures and in the sharing of values, conventions and norms.11 Ever since Bhabha introduced the concept in postcolo- nial theory, it has been widely used. In his Cultural Hybridity, Burke inventoried the four strategies found in approaches toward the mutual intermingling of cultures, being rejection and segregation (leading to conflicts and stagnation) versus adap- tation and acceptance (leading to reconciliation and progress). Burke also signals the tendency to see cultural hybridity as a progressive force – he even admits to cultural hybridity reconsidered 7 els stronks having such a preference himself, even though he acknowledges that progressive- ness is not inherent to Bhabha’s original notion of cultural hybridity.12 This tendency is indeed found in many studies based on the conceptual frame- work of cultural hybridity, even if it is frequently seriously discussed. (6-7)

Misc. links re: Augustana synod, Augie -- including a bio of Anna Hoppe and a TOC for Hemlandssånger ** UPDATED x1 ** reference to Peter Johnson of 1925 hymnal committee

Hemlandssånger: Utgifna af Augustana-Synoden. Rock Island: Lutheran Augustana Book Concern, [1891]. Wikipedia has TOC, w/ this intro:

Hemlandssånger är en kyrkosångbok utgiven av Augustanasynoden i USA med första upplagan 1891. Den innehåller sånger med svensk text och musik och var avsedd för svenska invandrare som ofta samlades i olika samfund till gudstjänster på svenska. Utgivare var Lutheran Augustan Book Concern, Rock Island, Illinois.

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemlandssånger_1892

---

Bio of Anna Hoppe, 1889-1941, at http://www.hymnary.org/person/Hoppe_AB w/ list of hymns and MIDI files.

Leaving school after eighth grade, Hoppe worked as a stenographer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She began writing patriotic verses in early childhood; by age 25 she was writing spiritual poetry. Some of her poems appeared in the Northwestern Lutheran, a periodical of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, of which she was a member. These came to the attention of Dr. Adolf Hult of Augustana Seminary, Rock Island, Illinois, who influenced her to write her Songs for the Church Year (1928). Several hymnals included her work, which was usually set to traditional chorale melodies, although she also made a number of translations. Hoppe said of her work:

"Many of my hymns have been written on my way to and from church and to and from work. I utilize my lunch hours for typing the hymns and keeping up correspondence…still I find a minute here and there in which to jot down some verse."

--www.hymntime.com/tch/

A blog at http://wordwisehymns.com/2010/08/02/today-in-1941-anna-hoppe-died/ by Robert Cottrill has more, re: her Christmas carol "Precious Child, So Sweetly Sleeping" and a translation from Gerhardt.

And http://www.projectwittenberg.org/etext/hymnals/tlh/weepest.txt has text of "O'er Jerusalem Thou Weepest" in the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal (Concordia), No. 301. Mel.: Freu dich sehr, Genevan Psalter, 1551.

---

Peter Johnson: b. 1870. Sweden. Member of Augustana Synod. (1925 hymnal, p. 886)

"A Brief History of First Lutheran Church." FirstLutheran Church -- Love Grows Here. St. Paul, Minnesota, 2007. http://www.lovegrowshere.net/whoweare/historyofflc.html

Located on the EastSide of St. Paul, MN in the Historic Swede Hollow Neighborhood

Musically rich years at First Church were memorable under the direction of Peter Johnson and Gerhard Alexis and later Robert Pearson. Peter Johnson and Gerhard Alexis were on the hymnal committee and had composed original tunes for several hymns.

Johnson is credited with helping edit The Junior Hymnal, Containing Sunday School and Luther League Liturgy and Hymns for the SUnday School and other grthatings: Authorized by the Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod. Rock Island: Augustana Book Concern, 1928. -- "The editors are also indebted to Professor Peter Johnson of St. Paul Minn., for assistance in the editing and proofreading of the music."

290. Arr. hymn by Ernest Ryden to melody from J.L.F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, " On Wings of Song"

---

Catalogue of Augustana College and Theological Seminary, 1891-92. Rock Island: Lutheran Augustana Book Concern, 1891. p. 24 [also p. 45 below right]. http://www.mocavo.com/Augustana-College-Catalogue-Volume-1891-01/989978

---

History of the Swedes of Illinois, Volumes 1-3 edited by Martin J. Engberg -- Google eBooks

---

The Swedish Element in Illinois: Survey of the Past Seven Decades : with Life Sketches of Men of Today (Google eBook) Ernst Wilhelm Olson Swedish-American Biographical Association, 1917 - Illinois - 703 pages

page 184 at right

page 189 below omitted text in last sentence reads "…the last decade, though the great bulk of the output is still Swedish."

"A Brief History of First Lutheran Church." FirstLutheran Church -- Love Grows Here. St. Paul, Minnesota, 2007. http://www.lovegrowshere.net/whoweare/historyofflc.html

Clayville jam postponed -- and a couple of video clips that show different artists filling in the notes and swinging (syncopating) the melody of "Shortnin' Bread"

Last night I heard back from Clayville, and we're able to postpone our first-of-the-month Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music jam session, originally scheduled this week, till Saturday, June 14, from 10 a.m. till noon. in the barn at Clayville Historic Site, Ill. 125 at Pleasant Plains. We polled the group Tuesday night in Springfield, and that's the best time for the most people.

After Tuesday's session, I got on YouTube and found some arrangements of "Shortnin' Bread" that I think will give us some ideas on how to "swing" the tune -- in other words, to syncopate it so we're not just plodding along in quarter notes. Here they are:

History of "Shortnin' Bread" - 4 versions (Paul Chaplain +)

Posted by YouTube user GeoSilverAway, who has a lengthy explanation:

Originated in the Old South USA. First generally popularized by Lawrence Tibbett in the early 20th century. Then sung by Nelson Eddy in 1937/38. In 1938 it was a big charted hit for The Andrews Sisters. Then done by many others like Fats Waller (1941) and Paul Robeson.

In the 1950s, rock and roll singers started picking it up - The Collins Kids, Tony Crombie ... The reason it attracts so much attention now is the hard rock recording by Paul Chaplain and his Emeralds in 1960. It wasn't a big hit but has now rightfully become a legend. The Bellnotes also released a rock version that year. Meanwhile back in England it achieved better hit status sung by the vocal trio The Viscounts. (They can be seen on YouTube singing Let's Twist Again) I have also found a definitive rock instrumental recording by The Fabulous Playboys, who appear to be a US surf group.

Selections in the video:

1. Andrews Sisters
2. The Viscounts, UK #16
3. Paul Chaplain and his Emeralds. US Billboard #82 and Cashbox #55.
4. The Fabulous Playboys instrumental

"If some of the words aren't clear," adds GeoSilverAway, "it involves the 'lid' on the skillet, and one of the children is 'most dead, meaning almost."

A really cool North Carolina string band jamming at a festival

Says YouTube user Dean Barber, "Asheville, N.C.-based Chicken Train was performing at Clifftop 2012 last week over a box of their CDs. Sales were brisk because their music making was topnotch. That's John Hermann on banjo and John Engle on fiddle. Meredith McIntosh is on guitar. Not sure who was on bass, but she was solid. ..."

Song history

Like everyone else, I thought "Shortnin' Bread" was from the old blackface minstrel shows. But it wasn't. Instead, it was written around 1900 by popular Indiana newspaper poet James Whitcomb Riley, who was considered an unofficial poet laureate in the late 1800s but is now known for regional poems like "When the Frost in on the Punkin" (pumpkin). Wikipedia notes that "Shortnin' Bread" has been covered by artists ranging from the Beach Boys to Mississippi John Hurt and Donald Duck (in a 1948 animated cartoon).

Dulcimer tab

• http://www.prairiedulcimerclub.org/tunes/ShortninBread.pdf Prairie Dulcimer Club

• http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/tab/shortnindul.pdf EverythingDulcimer.com

Both have been posted to the internet, so we're free to make copies for personal use. The Prairie Dulcimer Club's version is written pretty much in quarter notes, while the version on Everything Dulcimer tries to show a little bit of the syncopation by writing the same phrases in quarter notes and eighth notes. Whichever one you follow, you'll want to "swing" it a little by accenting the first and third beats, so it sounds almost like it's in 2/4 time, and put in some extra strums of your own as you get more comfortable with the tune.

Clayville and Prairieland Strings tune for June -- "Cumberland Mountain Deer Chase"

Editor's note -- Pictures at left and below show members of the Prairieland Strings/Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music playing in front of the Broadwell Tavern May 18 at Clayville's spring festival. Courtesy of Fred Crawford.

We're back to holding our "first Tuesday" and "third Thursday" meetings of the Prairieland Strings at Atonement Lutheran Church -- thanks to all for putting up with the inconvenience while I was recuperating from pneumonia last month.

Our new tune for June is "Cumberland Mountain Deer Chase."

Our schedule for June is as follows:

• Prairieland, "first Tuesday": 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, June 3, at Atonement Lutheran Church, 2800 West Jefferson, Springfield.

• Clayville Academy jam session: 10 a.m. to noon, June 7, in the barn at Clayville Historic Site, Ill. 125 at Pleasant Plains.

• Prairieland, "third Thursday": 7 to 9 p.m., June 19, at Atonement.

"Cumberland Mountain Deer Chase" -- also known as "Cumberland Mountain Deer Race" and/or "Cumberland Mountain Bear Chase" -- is a lively up-tempo tune that sounds like it might be an old, old fiddle tune. But it isn't. It's a novelty song that Uncle Dave Macon, one of the first stars of the Grand Ole Opry, made popular in the 1930s and 40s. Folk singer and banjo virtuoso Pete Seeger covered it in several albums later, and it has gone back into oral tradition as a high-octane banjo tune.

According to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Macon, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., got his start in life "as a farmer and teamster (hauling goods with a mule and cart)," and broke into show biz in vaudeville and medicine shows. He started cutting records in the 1920s, and joined the Opry almost as soon as it went on the air in 1926. He was a fine musician, but he's best known today for novelty numbers.

Wayne Erbsen of Native Ground Music in Asheville, N.C., has lyrics for "Cumberland Mountain Deer Chase" in his instruction book Clawhammer Banjo for the Complete Ignoramus, and he's posted lyrics to his website at http://nativeground.com/cumberland-mountain-deer-chase/.

Away, away we’re bound for the mountain
Bound for the mountain, bound for the mountain
Over the mountain, the hills and the fountain
Away to the chase away.

Rover, Rover, see him, see him
Rover, Rover, catch him, catch him
Over the mountain, the hills and the fountain
Away to the chase away.

Now we’re getting right for the race
The hounds and the horses all in the pace
Over the mountain, the hills and the fountain
Away to the chase away.

All night long till the break of dawn
Merrily the chase goes on
Over the mountain, the hills and the fountain
Away to the chase away.

Uncle Dave Macon sang the parts about the hounds really fast, then slowed down for a verse about the deer -- who's panting and getting winded by this time -- and picked up again as he returned to the hounds and horses. (It isn't in Erbsen's version.) As you listen to him in the YouTube clip below, see if you're not reminded of "English Country Garden," an English morris dance tune collected by Cecil Sharp and arranged for piano in 1918 by Percy Grainger.