Ett stev på Psalmodikon: Swedish nyckelharpa player Gunnar F. plays traditional melodies on the psalmodikon -- and blows my mind!

Hat tip to Nordiska Psalmodikonförbundet (NPsF) and my sister-in-law Marian Edmund-Paulson for telling me about this guy. He plays the psalmodikon with some the drive and rhythm of Swedish folk music, and it reminds me of the Hardanger fiddles I first heard as a student in Oslo. --

A new member of Nordiska Psalmodikonförbundet, the Swedish psalmodikon players' association has posted a YouTube clip, a photo and a SoundCloud audio clip of a kvällsvisa (night song) and a stev (*a simple four-line melody -- see note below) on the psalmodikon to NpSF's Facebook page at:

https://www.facebook.com/npsalmodikonforbundet.

His name is Gunnar F, and he also plays the nyckelharpa or Swedish keyed fiddle (in fact it appears that it's his primary instrument). And his attack -- the way he hits the downbeat -- gives his playing a lilt, or rhythmic quality, that I'm not used to hearing on the psalmodikon.

It's fascinating, I love hearing it and I want to study it.

So, Gunnar F, if you ever happen to read this: I hope you post more psalmodikon videos to YouTube!

In the meantime, here's his Stev for Psalmodikon on YouTube:

Psalmodikon med Gunnar F. He writes: "Psalmodikon var ett instrument vi växte upp med. Men det var länge sedan …" (trans.: the psalmodikon was an instrument we grew up with. It was a long time ago).

Equally as interesting is a picture that Gunnar F sent the Psalmodikonförbundet. It shows a turn-of-the-century band with a psalmodikon from Jämtland, a district in north central Sweden next to the Norwegian border and not too far east of Trondheim.

It's quite a band! I see a cornet, an accordion, a fiddle, cymbals, what appears to be a small zither (a Finnish kantele, maybe?) and a psalmodikon that's unlike any I've seen before.

Folk psalmodikon with sympathetic strings?

The psalmodikon is held by the woman wearing a headscarf, third from the left in the back row of the picture at the right of the page below, which is a screen grab from NPsF's Facebook page. To enlarge it, go to NPsF's Facebook post and click on the picture. (While you're there, BTW, why don't you click on "Like?" They're doing a lot to revive interest in the psalmodikon.) It's the boxy instrument held by the woman in the back row, third from the left, and it's identified in the cutlines as a jämtländskt psalmodikon. It looks like she played it with a standard violin bow.

I'll leave it to the experts whether this Jämtland psalmodikon is technically a zither or a lute. (A zither is the word the experts use for any stringed instrument without a neck, and a lute is any instrument with a neck, including but not limited to lutes.). If I had to guess, I'd say it's some kind of hybrid. But I think it's clearly a folk instrument.

And it looks like it has sympathetic strings. The Swedes call them resonanssträngar, and I did a fair amount of research on them when I had my copy made of the Rev. Lars Paul Esbjörn's psalmodikon at the Jenny Lind Chapel museum in Andover. (Pictures are available on the Jenny Lind Chapel website -- click on "Flickr" link and open directory of Psalmodikon pictures.)

As near as I can tell, the psalmodikon in Gunnar F's picture has a melody string stretched from a tuning peg at the top of the neck to a bridge toward the bottom of the soundbox. The fretboard is marked with the same white- and dark-colored pattern of whole steps and half steps as other psalmodikons. I count 12 sympathetic strings or resonanssträngar, stretched over the soundbox. I don't think it would be possible to bow any of them, but if they were tuned to the 12 tones of a chromatic scale, they would vibrate sympathetically in unison with whatever note was being bowed on the melody string.

To sum it up in a word or two, the Jämtland psalmodikon in the picture is musically a sophisticated instrument. And look at the detail in the soundhole carved in the shape of a lyre! This is an instrument that clearly has developed considerably from the simple wooden monochord that Johann Dillner described. I think it became more elaborate, both musically and esthetically, by a folk process.

Tunes: Kvällsvisa and a stev on the Psalmodikon

Gunnar Fredelius' SoundCloud account has an audio file of an evening song (kvällsvisa) and a stev, a simple, ballad-like melody played on the psalmodikon (Kvällsvisa och ett stev på Psalmodikon). He writes:

When I was a kid, the psalmodikon was still a natural, common, instrument in some parts of the country, amongst elderly people. Since then it has almost disappeared and most swedes don´t even know what it is. I found out there is an association, Nordiska Psalmodikonförbundet www.npsalmodikonforbundet.se and through them I could buy me an instrument. The picture is of me and my mother.

The first one is not exactly as my mother wrote it. The other is a so called nystev from southern Norway.

As the directory at https://soundcloud.com/gunnar-fredelius makes clear, Gunnar F is an accomplished nyckelharpa player with a deep interest in the older strains of Scandinavian traditional music. What I've heard of his music is modal and rhythmic, and it reminds me of the traditional Norwegian music I enjoyed so much when I heard it played on the Hardanger fiddle in summer school at the University of Oslo. I suspect that some of the pietist Swedish-American pastors I'm writing about now might not appreciate his music, but I plan to keep coming back to it -- there's a lot I can learn by listening to him.

So, Gunnar F, if you're reading this, please keep posting your music to the internet.

__________

* Footnote. A stev, according to Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stev, is a simple "folk song consisting of four line lyric stanzas." It's similar to English ballad measure, or the Common Meter of traditional Anglo-American hymnody. I'm most familiar with them in Norwegian folk music, where they're associated with simple melodies called kvedar. Link here for an arrangement of Kirsten Bråten Berg's Min Kvedarlund (my grove, or garden, of kvedar), the title song from her 1993 album of that name), along with some more background on Norwegian stev melodies and kvedar.

According to Setesdalswiki at http://www.setesdalswiki.no/wiki/Min_kvedarlund, "Min Kvedarlund" is a compilation of "bånsullar [lullabies] og småviser [little songs] etter T. Liestøl, Ingebjørg Liestøl, Jorunn Nomeland, Svein Hovden og Gro Faremo." Setesdalwiki is a local crowd-sourced website for the Setesdal region on the southern coast of Norway.

Shakin' up the Illinois State Museum -- add 1

Text of a letter I just submitted to the Hon. Bruce Rauner, governor of Illinois:

Recently I wrote urging you not to close the Illinois State Museum, and I got this message back: “I appreciate you taking the time to reach out to my office about bobcat hunting in Illinois. … Please know I value your opinion and thank you for sharing it with me. Hearing from people in Illinois gives me a better idea of what is impacting local communities across the state. Knowing those opinions helps me make decisions for you in Springfield.”

I guess it’s nice to hear you say you value my opinion and it helps you make decisions about my local community, but I wasn’t talking about bobcat hunting. I wrote to tell you that closing the State Museum will damage our reputation in the international scientific community.

So, since apparently no one on your staff bothered to read my first letter, I will try again: DO NOT, repeat NOT, CLOSE the ILLINOIS STATE MUSEUM, repeat ILLINOIS STATE MUSEUM. If you do, it will make further research on artifacts in the museum collection, including a juvenile bobcat skeleton found in a Hopewell culture burial site, inaccessible to scientists worldwide, including the anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany whom I referenced in my first letter. If you close the museum, it will look like a CHEAP POLITICAL STUNT, repeat CHEAP POLITICAL STUNT, retaliating against a community that voted against you in last year’s Republican gubernatorial primary. And I know you wouldn’t want to give anybody that impression.

For background, including my original letter and a screen grab of Governor Rauner's full response, see post immediately below dated July 15 --

permalink http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2015/07/shakin-up-springfield-one-constituent.html.

I suspect that the original, in which I discussed the bobcat skeleton at some length (for such a short letter), was run through word recognition software in the governor's office and the form letter for the bobcat bill was assigned to me on the basis of a word frequency count. Hence my repetitions in the second message.

Shakin' up Springfield, one constituent letter at a time

Just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know how much your opinion is valued!

Last week I wrote Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner in opposition to his plans to close the Illinois State Museum. Today I got back this message:

That puzzled me at first, but then I looked up the letter -- a form that I sent to the governor's office and members of the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, who review plans to close state facilities. It said:

According to a July 2 article on the Daily News website of Science magazine, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Angela Perri, zooarchaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, hypothesizes that animal bones from a Hopewell burial site now housed at the State Museum in Springfield belonged to young bobcat which was buried with a shell bead necklace around its neck. “This is the closest you can get to finding taming in the archaeological record,” she told David Grimm, online editor of the AAAS magazine. Perri suggests that the necklace may have been a collar, and the animal may have been “a cherished pet” that was orphaned, adopted by human beings and nurtured as a small kitten. If this hypothesis can be proven, it would be important evidence of how wild animals were domesticated. However, Governor Rauner’s budget threatens that possibility.

“Unfortunately, further work on the bobcat may not be possible,” said Grimm of the AAAS. “The museum where the bones are housed is facing a shutdown due to state budget cuts, and Perri says she can no longer access the samples.”

Dr. Perry is not the only scientist who has made use of the State Musuem. Rainer Schreg, professor of pre- and early history (Ur- und Frühgeschichte) at Heidelberg University in Germany, visited an archaeological dig in Pike County in 2010 and presented a paper on his work in Germany while he was here. Dr. Schreg said recently, the museum “makes an important and multi-faceted public contribution, which is closely linked to research that is fundamental to the understanding of history and landscape in the Midwest. It is nonsense [Blödsinn] to cancel something like this." (My translation.) Science depends on the free exchange of information among scholars worldwide, and closing this museum at this time would cut off an avenue for our archaeologists and historians to exchange ideas with their peers. It would also, as Dr. Schreg suggests, damage our reputation worldwide.

We have heard plenty about the State Museum’s economic impact and its educational value, both for family groups who visit during school vacations and for students who tour Springfield during the spring. And it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of these things. But the museum’s value for scholarly and scientific research is also considerable, and it is placed in jeopardy by any effort to close the facility, even temporarily.

So, in all fairness, I guess they did read the letter. They just didn't read it with comprehension. They must have skimmed through it till they saw the word "bobcat," and sent out the bobcat letter without any further ado.

Link (not lynx) here to Facebook. When I posted Rauner's letter to Facebook, I got back some classic comments. Follow this link to see them.

"Come ye sinners, poor and needy" and BEACH SPRING -- a shape-note folk hymn and Anglo-Celtic pentatonic tune for this week's Prairieland Strings session

Last week Jim Harris, who facilitated the Prairieland Strings when we met on the Springfield College-Ursuline Academy campus, dropped by our session and taught us -- playing by ear, no less! -- a shape-note melody called BEACH SPRING. It's one of those haunting pentatonic Anglo-American melodies, and it's been around since 1844, when Benjamin Franklin White included it in the first edition of his Sacred Harp with a hymn text that begins "Come ye sinners, poor and needy." White is regarded as the composer of the tune, although he probably heard it in oral tradition.

(Tangent: I'm not shouting when I capitalize the name of the tune, by the way. It's a convention that people sometimes use when writing about hymns -- names of tunes go in caps, like BEACH SPRING, and names of hymn texts or first lines go in quotation marks, like "Come ye sinners ..." I'm going to follow the convention here because the tune shows up with so many different texts.)

The tune

According to http://www.hymnary.org/tune/beach_spring, BEACH SPRING has been published in 113 different hymnals. For a long time, we closed our sessions at Ursula Hall playing a copyrighted version of it called the "Servant Song."

So I went home and Googled it. Turns out I found a lead sheet with chords and dulcimer tablature on Tull Glazner's website. Glazner notes that BEACH SPRING appeared in several shape-note tunebooks of the early 1800s:

The most well known of these from "The Sacred Harp" is called "Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy", whose lyrics were written by Joseph Hart in 1759. A related hymn is called "Jesus is Willing". Over the years, many other hymns have been set to this melody, including "Jesus At Your Holy Table", "Come All Christians Be Committed", "Lord Whose Love in Humble Service", and "Healing River of the Spirit". The tune was featured as the theme song for the Ken Burns 1997 PBS documentary about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

And he links to two YouTube videos: (1) of a montage of shape note singing photos set to a background track of "Come Ye Sinners" from the 1991 edition of the Sacred Harp recorded at a shape-note singing convention held in Flora, Ind.; and (2) another version of BEACH SPRING being played on mandola with perfect tempo and dynamics.

A couple of others:

• Beech Spring (The Corps of Discovery), Soundtrack to Lewis & Clark TV series.

• Mountain dulcimer duet by Doc Gardner and Carolyn Marlett

• Beach Spring Hymn tune played on guitar by Brad Sondahl

The text

In its most common form (although not in the Sacred Harp), the hymn text is a composite of a religious text written in 1759 by a Calvinist minister in England named Joseph Hart and an unrelated "floating verse" from American folk tradition.

Hart's verse is:

Come ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love, and pow'r.

And the floating verse, which is treated like a chorus, is:

I will arise and go to Jesus,
He will embrace me in His arms;
In the arms of my dear Savior,
O there are ten thousand charms.

Somehow it all fits together. Lyrics a composite from Hymnary.org.

PLEASE NOTE: There is another American folk hymn melody to which Hart's text is often sung together with the camp meeting chorus. It is a minor-key (or Aeolian modal) tune called RESTORATION, and it was collected -- or composed -- by B.F. White's brother-in-law William Walker in Southern Harmony. Here it is, as sung by the Galkin Evangelistic Team:

"Eating Goober Peas" -- a Civil War novelty song for Prairieland Strings' jam session Tuesday

Last week I was asked by the dulcimer club in Petersburg to tab out "Eating Goober Peas" in DAD tuning, and it's such a fun song I decided to introduce in at Tuesday's session of the Prairieland Strings, meeting at 7 p.m. at Atonement Lutheran Church, 2800 West Jefferson, Springfield. It needs no introduction, but I found a couple of YouTube videos.

But first, a plug: The Petersburg folks have been invited to take part in a Civil War re-enactment during the Illinois State Fair in August. It's an honor, and I'll bet they have a lot of fun. Watch for them.

Two clips below:

• The first is an old video of longtime folk singer Burl Ives and an impossibly young-looking Johnny Cash singing it on a TV show (Johnny Cash's? during the 60s?). Their vocals more than make up for the irritating studio band backing them.

• The second is an audio clip with still pictures, of a performance by the 2nd South Carolina String Band of Gettysburg, Pa. They're a feature at the big re-enactments on the East Coast, and they make a decent effort at recreating the spirit of Civil War-era music with a contemporary folk and old-time string band sound. For what it's worth, I think they square that circle admirably. Always worth a listen.

The fount of all human knowledge at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goober_Peas tells us that "Eating Goober Peas" was first published in 1866 by A. E. Blackmar in New Orleans, with words attributed to A. Pindar and music to P. Nutt. Before you take that too seriously, however, you should know that "Pindar" is another word for the peanut and "P. Nutt" is ... well, take another look at it!

JPEG files of the original are available online in the Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection on the Johns Hopkins University website at https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/12885. Dulcimer players take note -- the original is in D! That means people who aren't high sopranos can sing it.

Var hälsad, sköna morgonstund -- “All Hail to Thee O Blessed Morn” by Philipp Nicolai (and a cite to Wachet auf in 1819 psalmbook)

Posted here so I don't have to keep looking it up: Nicolai's other chorale Wachet auf [Sleepers awake] is No. 496 in Wallin, melody at No. 3. Vakna upp! en stämma bjuder. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vakna_upp!_en_st%C3%A4mma_bjuder

D R A F T

Johan Dillner, Melodier till Svenska Psalmbok

All Hail to Thee O Blessed Morn. Carols By The Fireside - Howard J Foster.

Var hälsad, sköna morgonstund (sung by Andreas Hoas). Swedish Hymnal 1819: no.55, "Var hälsad sköna morgonstund" (Wie schön leuchtet der morgenstern). Sung by Andreas Hoas, Gammalsvenskby (Старошведське, Starosjvedske; in German: Altschwedendorf). Hoas sings in Swedish, with a Estonian-Swedish accent. The melody is flourished with ornaments and melismatic "fill-ins".

Jens Fredborg -- YouTube user -- Vär hälsad, sköna morgonstund - Ett Jesus, än påminner jag -- melody from Den Svenska Koralbok played on keyboard

Lars Mörlid & Peter Sandwall, Christian contemporary duo -- in concert in 2011 Var hälsad sköna morgonstund ("All Hail to Thee" begins at 3:40)

Two Swedish commercial recordings:

• Anita Lindblom -- actress and singer -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDMCpKafMNs

• Gösta Winbergh -- tenor -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFXYK9RstaM

Scandinavian Christmas Traditions http://www.scandinavianchristmastraditions.com/julottainsweden.html

Attending julotta in Sweden is to many Swedish Americans one of the most treasured of memories. Snow is connected with it and sleigh bells and a journey across the countryside in the dark morning hour, brightened by the flickering flames of torches.

Many have memories of a city church within walking distance, and they remember with no less feeling of nostalgia how the snow crunched under the feet and how the light streamed out of the windows as they approached the church.

Julotta in Sweden

Thus, each one of us gathers memories out of the milieu from which we come. But to all of us the message of Christmas and the singing of "Var hälsad, sköna morgonstund" (literally, be greeted beautiful morning hour) constitute common ground. This hymn is still numbered 55 in the revised hymnal of the Swedish State Church, and the manner in which it is sung each Christmas morning indicates clearly that the congregation knows it by heart.

A Minnesota professor of Swedish descent, now deceased, maintained that it was a mistake to sing this hymn in an English translation. It had only one version, according to him, and that was the Swedish. "That is the way I learned it as a child and that is the way I continue to sing it regardless of what the rest of the congregation sings," he would say with an emphatic nod.

“Jul” or Yule, was celebrated long before Christianity came to Scandinavia.

At that time it was an observation of the winter solistice, that from then on the days would become longer and darkness gradually recede.

It was a celebration of light returning.

The word “jul” or Yule means “the change” of “the feast of feasts”, with reference to midwinter reveries celebrated around new years.

There was plenty of mead and plenty of food, indulging in a sort of magic of plenty.

It was believed that it would ensure prosperity and plenty for the coming year.

The “yule night” was loaded with supernatural powers when even the animals could speak.

---

Christmas in Scandinavia is an antidote to darkness, a way to break winter's hold. Nowhere else in the world is it celebrated quite so warmly - or with so much candlelight and food - as in this northern corner of Europe.

"America the Beautiful" -- a song for our July 4 slow jam at Clayville Historic Site, with a YouTube video of a moving performance by Willie Nelson

Blast email I sent out today to the mailing list for our Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music jam sessions. We meet next Saturday morning, July 4, and we'll be tackling "America the Beautiful." So I went on line to find chords, dulcimer tab and video clips. And I struck pay dirt! The YouTube video embedded below is from a historic benefit concert, only a few days after 9/11, and it features a haunting version of the song fronted by Willie Nelson.

First, the video:

Willie Nelson and Ensemble - "America the Beautiful" From the "America: A Tribute to Heroes" telethon, a benefit concert to raise money for New York City firefighters, policemen and others who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. It aired live on 35 broadcast and cable networks on Friday, Sept. 21, only 10 days after the 9/11 atrocity. Clint Eastwood introduced the song, and Willie Nelson sang lead, backed by too many performers to mention by name. Watch it a couple of times -- Willie's vocal is, well, you know ... and you'll have fun picking out the performers for yourself!

Here's the blast email, lightly edited for posting on line --

Hi everybody --

A reminder: Our regular July session of the Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music is from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, July 4, at Clayville Historic Stagecoach Stop on Ill. 125 at Pleasant Plains. Since it's the Fourth of July, Chuck suggested we play "America the Beautiful." So I went looking on line and found chords -- with lyrics -- and a melody line in G.

I also found a wonderful YouTube video of Willie Nelson playing an intro on acoustic guitar and singing it, backed by a whole stage full of first-class performers at a benefit concert 10 days after 9/11. I embedded it on my blog, along with the email message [...]

Be sure to watch it. I can't think of a more appropriate piece of music for the 4th of July!

Here are links to our music for the session at Clayville:

-- To the lyrics and guitar chords -- http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/s/samuel_ward/america_the_beautiful_crd.htm

-- To the mountain dulcimer tab -- http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/files/tab/america_the_beautiful2.pdf

A word about the dulcimer tab. The melody is in G, so it calls for using a capo on the third fret in the usual DAD tuning. But I could no more play that tab than I could fly to the moon! It starts out on the bass string and jumps around all over the place. You're welcome to try it if you don't want to break away from the DAD lockstep, but I also tabbed it out for a DGD tuning and wrote in fret numbers in red ink below the notes. [If you're reading this on line, please note: You can do this yourself. Print out the tab, and write in the numbers below the notes: G is on the 3rd fret, A on the 4th, B on the 5th and so on up to G' on the 10th fret. You'll find one note, a G# between the 10th and 11th frets that isn't on the dulcimer. I just play that riff as A-A-A instead of A-G#-A.] That way I can play it the way a mountain dulcimer was meant to be played. A copy of my tab, with the frets in red, is attached.

A word about the DGD tuning. It's Ionian, which means the key note -- G in this case -- is on the third fret and you skip the 6-and-a-half fret as you play up the scale from 3 to 10. It's easy to retune from DAD, too. All you have to do is to tune the middle string down a whole step -- from A to G -- and you're ready to go. It takes about the same amount of time as it does to put on a capo. Try it, you'll like it.

DGD has a nice sound, too. Try it, like I said, you'll like it.

Hope to see you Saturday!

-- Pete

In case you've always wondered! Here are the intervals of the chromatic C major scale and the traditional church modes -- in 19th century Swedish (1 of __)

D R A F T

First of ____ posts on Johan Dillner's explanation of the intervals of the 12-tone chromatic scale, the old church modes (kyrkotonarter) and how to play them on the psalmodikon.

Here's something that's been driving me crazy, and I think I'm beginning -- finally! -- to get it figured out. So I want to post it here while it's still clear in my mind. Well, sorta kinda clear. I've long suspected that a table in Johan Dillner's Melodierna till Swenska Kyrkans Psalmer (1830) contains the keys to the kingdom, i.e. that it will allow me to understand the intervals of a 19th-century Swedish psalm, or hymn, and how they play out on the fretboard of a psalmodikon.

Dillner said with a little practice, you can learn to play a psalmodikon in a couple of hours. I'm sure he was right. It's a reminder that music theory can get in the way sometimes.

But music theory also helps me understand why major and minor tunes sound the way they do.

It just takes longer. So let's get started.

Here's Dillner's chart (Melodierna xiii). Its headline reads (in translation): "The monochord's classification after Chladni." The psalmodikon, of course, is just a monochord. And Ernst Chaldni was an 18th-century German physicist and musician sometimes known as the "father of acoustics."

It's all right there.

(Trust me on this for a minute or two, while I translate the table with the help of an excellent article on harmonics [Harmonilära] in Swedish Wikipedia and a similarly helpful list in the English-language Wikibooks article on Music Theory and Scales.)

But first, a couple of suffixes we'll need to know: In Swedish, "-iss" after a note means sharp, and "-ess" means flat. So "ciss" (no hyphen between them) is C-sharp, and "cess" is C-flat. And "diss" means D-sharp and "dess" means D-flat ... and so on for the other notes of the scale.

With that in mind, here are the intervals of a C major scale as Dillner explains them. Some will be abundantly clear, especially if you keep in mind that C-sharp is the same as D-flat and so on up the scale. Others may take a while. Still others I'm still not too sure of. But I'm translating all of them, even the ones I don't think I'll ever need to know, because I have a way of coming back to this table as I learn more about music theory and/or 19th-century Swedish hymnody. The intervals are as follows:

1. Unison [also commonly known, in Swedish and English, as Prime]. Since it's the distance between two notes on the same pitch, the interval is C to C.

2. Överstigande Primen, or augmented unison, or prime. The interval is the distance from C to "ciss" or C-sharp.

3. Lilla Secunden, or minor second. The distance from C to D-flat.

4. Stora Secunden, or major second. From C to D. ["Lilla" is the Swedish word for little, and "stora" is the word for big.]

5. Förminskad Terzen, or diminished third. C to E-flat. [And C-sharp to E? I guess it makes sense, but I wasn't a music major and I'm not at all sure about this!]

6. Överstigande Second, or augmented second. C to D-sharp. [My instincts, and Wikibooks, are telling me this is the same as a diminished third. But I'm not sure it matters! Swedish-American pastors and country church choirs out on the Illinois prairie in the 1860s probably weren't too worried about it, in any event.]

7. Lilla Terzen, or minor third. C to E-flat. [This one is important. We'll come back to it when we get to the church modes.]

8. Stora Terzen, major third. C to E.

9. Förminskad Qvarten, diminished fourth. C to F-flat.

10. Rena Qvarten, perfect fourth. C to F.

11. Överstigande Qvarten, augmented fourth. C to F-sharp.

12. Förminskad Qvinten, diminished fifth. C to G-flat. [I'll spare you the joke about the bluegrass band and the diminished fifth of whiskey.]

13. Rena Qvinten, perfect fifth. C to G. [Jack Daniels?]

14. Överstigande Qvinten, augmented fifth. [Y'see, they sent the banjo player out between sets for another bottle, and he came back with an augmented fifth. But I wasn't going to go there!]

15. Lilla Sexten, minor sixth. C to A-flat.

16. Stora Sexten, major sixth. C to A.

17. Förminskad Septiman, diminished seventh. C to B-flat or C-sharp to B.

18. Överstigande Sexten, augmented sixth. C to A-sharp.

19. Lilla Septimen, minor seventh. C to B-flat. [This is an important note -- don't skip over it: In the German notation used in Scandinavia, "B" stands for B-flat and "H" stands for B.

20. Stora Septiman, major seventh. C to H. [See above. In Sweden, "H" stands for B. And "B" stands for B-flat. Don't ask why -- it has something to do with old-fashioned German handwriting, and the story that Bach liked it because he could spell his name on a organ keyboard is just a story.]

21. Förminskad Oktaven, diminished octave. C to C-flat.

22. Rena Octaven, perfect octave. C to C'.

Why does all of this stuff matter? Because the numerical tablature for a psalmodikon -- the sifferskrift -- is written to reflect degrees of the scale: 1 = do, 2 = re, 3 = mi and so on up the diatonic major scale. That's the scale you'd get if you start at middle C and play the white keys on a piano up the octave. But it's not the only scale in Dillner's system -- which is actually the system of modes inherited from the 15th- and 16th-century church.

Essentially the modes were different scales, the ones you get it you start on different white keys of the piano and play up eight tones to the octave. By the 1800s, all but two -- which we know today as the major (Ionian) and minor (Aeolian) -- had dropped out of common practice, although traditional Irish musicians (and some Appalachian dulcimer players) also know the Mixolydian and Dorian even today.

Here's Dillner's school table (skoltablan) of the church mode scales (Kyrkotonarternas Skalor). The major (Ionisk in Swedish) and minor (Aeolisk) are at the bottom. As you study the table, you will see the intervals of the 12-tone chromatic scale are different in each of the modes. As time permits, I will be posting brief explanations and examples of how to read Swedish sifferskrift in the major and minor modes.

References

• Johan Dillner. Melodierna till Swenska Kyrkans Psalmer, Noterade med Ziffror, för Skolor och Menigheten. 1830. Google Books [search under keywords "Psalmodikon, Google Books]. https://books.google.com/books?id=K3w9AAAAcAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s.

• Harmonilära (musik). Wikipedia [Swedish]. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonil%C3%A4ra_(musik)

• Music Theory/Scales and Intervals. Wikibooks. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Music_Theory/Scales_and_Intervals

Next: The psalmodikon and intervals of the major (Ionisk) mode.

President Obama, "Amazing Grace" and some thoughts on bending notes, melisma and the roots of American music

This is probably going to be one of the more oddball bits of commentary on President Obama's powerful eulogy today at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney at Emanuel Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Pinkney and eight members of "Mother Emanuel" were murdered June __ by a self-admitted white supremacist. In the course of his eulogy, Obama dropped his usual professorial manner for a minute or two and sang "Amazing Grace." Not only did he lead the congregation in singing the old Baptist song, but he sang it in the old-fashioned Doctor Watts style of the African American church.

President Obama at Emanuel AME Church, Charleston (C-SPAN)

When I came across the TV coverage of the funeral, I was in the middle of writing a friend about one of my obsessions -- traditional Irish sean nos (old style) singing and the relationship that I believe to exist between Irish and southern Appalachian vocal music. Both have a lot of melisma or ornamentation -- a technical term meaning that the notes are often "bent," so that one word might be stretched out over two or three different notes -- and I was merrily looking up YouTube clips of southern Appalachian singers whose style was highly ornamented.

And then I heard President Obama singing "Amazing Grace" in a highly ornamented style.

So I mentioned it in my email message.

Which is why it starts out with a reference to a post that my friend sent me on the Irish Music Daily website about sean nos, and segues without warning into some of my thoughts about where southern Appalachian music came from and then -- with even less warning -- President Obama's eulogy and the very similar style of ornamentation in old-fashioned African American church singing. I decided to post it to Hogfiddle, not so much because I believe my theorizing has an unusual amount of merit, but because I want to be able to link to the YouTube clips I pulled together for examples of different kind of melisma.

Lightly edited in the interest of coherence, my email message to my friend follows:

Thanks for sharing!

I followed the links from the article you sent me about sean nos and found some really cool YouTube clips by Joe Heaney, Iarla O Lionard and a family group from the North [of Ireland] that I'm not familiar with.

http://www.irishmusicdaily.com/blog/sean-noslisteners-guide

Really good listening!

And it hit a lot of my buttons -- I'm really interested in where our music came from, especially in the southern hill country, and its antecedents in Ireland, Scotland and the North of England. I've got a theory that the way singers bend notes, and work in those swoops and slurs between notes -- melisma is the technical term -- came over to America with the Ulstermen who came to the southern Appalachians in the 1700s.

So I've been happily looking on YouTube for video clips -- they're not all the same, but I think the style of singing is related and I'd be interested to get your take on it. What's the same? What's different?

I promised some YouTube links. Here they are:

Sheila Kay Adams is a traditional singer from western North Carolina, who learned the old ballads from her family (one of them sang for Cecil Sharp in 1915). Her style of singing is as close as we can get today to the old way (which, I believe, is what "sean nos" means in English) ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XBcr49-Rpw

And here she is singing a novelty song called "The Farmer's Cursed Wife." I don't want to make too much of this, but the way she closes her eyes reminds me a little of sean nos singers. Cute song, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PFpKLntC1I

The style of singing survives a little bit in the Primitive Baptist churches down home. Here's a congregation in Kentucky lining out "Amazing Grace" -- where the song leader kind of chants the first line of a verse, and they all join in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jByWbxIg7OI

And here, on the isle of Lewis off the coast of Scotland, is the Scots Gaelic psalmody it's descended from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3MzZgPBL3Q

And then this afternoon when I saw the clips of President Obama singing "Amazing Grace," I was reminded there's something very much like it in the African American tradition. I won't link to to Obama -- I'm sure you've already heard it today -- but here's Mahalia Jackson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJg5Op5W7yw

I wouldn't exactly call Mahalia Jackson a sean nos singer, but I think there's a relationship there. I don't know what it is, exactly, but I feel it in my bones.

Link to video on Facebook of Din klara sol ... at First Baptist Church Moline, with comments and more links to background

My sister-in-law Marian Edmund-Paulson shot a video Sunday when I demonstrated the Jenny Lind Chapel psalmodikon and taught an old Swedish-American hymn, "Again, Thy glorious sun doth rise" (Din klara sol går åter opp), to the congregation at First Baptist in Moline: https://www.facebook.com/debi.ellertsen/posts/10204315181872073.

It's been shared a couple of times, including by the Nordiska Psalmodikonförbundet (Nordic Psalmodikon Association) in Sweden. The picture above is a screen grab from Marian's FB status. Note words of hymn projected on front wall of the sanctuary at upper right of picture.

Pastor is the Rev. Flint Miller.

More on Jean Ritchie -- including a moving obituary in the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader and a 2008 cover of "Pretty Saro" by Sam Amidon

D R A F T

'Saro' from the Sam Amidon album 'All Is Well' -- released on Bedroom Community 2008. Video by Jeremy Blatter. Uploaded on Jan 14, 2008

More about Sam Amidon below.

Lexington Herald-Leader

By far the best obit of Jean Ritchie that I've read appeared Tuesday in the Lexington Herald-Leader, just a few miles up the road (I-75) from Berea. Tuesday's Herald-Leader also carried an editorial "Jean Ritchie: A Righteous Voice of Kentucky." It noted:

If you could take all the sweetness and pain of Kentucky's hills — the green valleys and lilting streams, the evening cool, the history of struggle, oppression and strength — and distill them into a sound, it would be Ritchie's voice.

Her legacy — the songs she wrote and the old songs she saved — will live forever as new generations follow Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Rhiannon Giddens and many others who have borrowed from the Ritchie songbook.

Some of her originals, such as "Black Waters," "Blue Diamond Mines" and "The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore," personalize environmental and economic injustices in a plain yet piercing way that few writers have equaled.

But most of all, the editorial said this:

She and her husband, George Pickow, a filmmaker and photographer who died in 2010, were an accomplished team.

They documented not just the folkways and music of Appalachia and the British Isles but also of traditional cultures around the world. Their extensive work is part of the American Folklife Center's collection.

Ritchie led a remarkable life that ended as it began, according to her son, Jon Pickow, surrounded by her family singing.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/02/3881455/jean-ritchie-a-righteous-voice.html#storylink=cpy ).

I don't read editorials anymore. Most of them move me to heartburn, if they move me at all. But this one moved me almost to tears.

The Herald-Leader's obituary itself had a prosaic news-obituary headline -- "Jean Ritchie, 92, introduced mountain dulcimer music to the world" -- but it was equally moving. Written by John Cheves of the Herald-Leader, it was lyrical in places.

Here's Cheves's description of the Ritchie family singing in earlier, happier days:

Jean Ruth Ritchie was the last of 14 children born to Balis and Abigail Ritchie in a long-ago place where if you wanted to hear any music, you had better be able to produce it yourself.

The Ritchies, nicknamed "The Singing Family of the Cumberlands," were more than able. Accompanied by Balis on the fiddle or mountain dulcimer, the family joined voices on the front porch in the summer, around the fireplace in the winter, at church, at parties, at festivals. They sang of the hangman and his rope and of Mother getting ready for Heaven when He calls and of Baby Jesus born born O born in Betha-lye-hem. NBC broadcast their Christmas 1955 family reunion to a national audience, live from Viper. There was plenty of music.

More than anything else I've read, Clives' obit in the Herald Leader captures the mixture of high artistry, sophistication and down-home simplicity in Ritchie's music.

Ritchie attended Cumberland College and the University of Kentucky before moving to New York City in 1947 to become a social worker. Her after-hours singing and dulcimer playing in coffeehouses quickly won her a following. In this period following World War II, folk music was a popular curiosity for big-city sophisticates.

This was the first of several "folk revivals" to come, and it launched her career. Dulcimers were uncommon in New York before Ritchie arrived. Afterward, it was — and remains — hard to find a music store without one.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/02/3881155_jean-ritchie-who-introduced-mountain.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/02/3881155_jean-ritchie-who-introduced-mountain.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Sam Amidon

http://samamidon.bandcamp.com/ http://bedroomcommunity.net/

Here is what the press has to say about the album:

"sky-scrapingly great ... All Is Well is viscerally stunning, comforting, upsetting, entrancing; as long as he can make art like this, Amidon can skip the formality of 'writing songs' forever" -Stylus Magazine

"With All Is Well, Sam Amidon has crafted a precious gem of a record, all in nuances and shades, with delicate overtones and airy harmonies. Sigurðsson's production is light and subtle yet it gives these songs fantastic depth and contrast without ever overshadowing Amidon's delivery. " -The Milk Factory

"A soaring and beautiful butterfly of an album, rich with tuneful wonder and epic song craft." -MusiqueMachine.com

" A veritable classic, a standard for comparisons in this genre from now on. Not to be missed." -Touching Extremes

"a great leap forward... the trio of artists responsible for the record [...] create a very specific space with these arrangements... a very forward-thinking album... Amidon doesn't just update the old world to the new, but finds the roots of the new world in the old. - Pitchfork

"...something of a revelation. Amidon took a collection of traditional songs, wrote new arrangements and [...] turned them into a bedroom rock classic." -Dusted Magazine

Music

Jean Ritchie, Dec. 8, 1922-June 1, 2015

An obituary and a reminiscence, followed by a Jean Ritchie song I hope to introduce at Saturday's jam session at Clayville Historic Stagecoach Stop on Ill. 125 in Pleasant Plains.

*Jean Ritchie, with Warren May and Alan Mills at Berea College, 2012

Jean Ritchie of Berea, Ky., who arguably did more to take the Appalachian dulcimer into the mainstream of 20th-century American traditional music than anyone else, died Monday at the age of 92. Others knew her far better than I, so I'll just link to her obits in today's Louisville Courier-Journal, sort of a hometown paper for eastern Kentucky, and the New York Times, also sort of a hometown paper for Ritchie since her career as a musician took off in New York City and she lived on Long Island until her husband George Pickow's death in 2010. Recovering from a stroke she suffered in 2009, she returned to Kentucky and lived near Berea. Reported Margalit Fox of the Times:

The youngest of 14 children in a farming family from Viper, Ky., Ms. Ritchie was a vital link in a chain of oral tradition that stretched back centuries. Her recordings and concerts — she appeared on some of the world’s celebrated stages, including Carnegie Hall in New York and the Royal Albert Hall in London — helped keep the music alive for an international listenership.

Over the years Ms. Ritchie performed jointly with some of the best-known names in folk music, including Pete Seeger and Doc Watson. She was closely associated with the Newport Folk Festival, performing at its inception in 1959 and many times afterward.

Jeffrey Lee Puckett of the Courier-Journal noted, quite correctly, that Jean Ritchie was intimately involved with the folk revival of the 1960s, both in Greenwich Village and the Newport Festival. He added:

Nancy Johnson Barker, a longtime friend and musical compatriot of Ritchie's who organizes the annual Kentucky Music Weekend festival at Iroquois Amphitheater in Louisville, described Ritchie as the "premiere folk singer and traditional folk artist" not only in Kentucky but also nationally — and even internationally.

"She's the reason everybody across the country knows about the dulcimer," Johnson said. The albums she recorded "were shared and played and shared again all across the country."

If it weren't for Jean Ritchie, people like me wouldn't be playing the dulcimer.

I met her two or three times, in receiving lines at dulcimer festivals toward the end of her musical career when she was there to receive lifetime achievement awards. We only spoke briefly -- I recall chuckling with her about the way her fellow Kentuckian Homer Ledford made dulcimers out of scrap wood (my Homer Ledford has a butternut top made of wood from old school desks) -- and I noticed she had a good word for everyone who came up to shake her hand. She was down-to-earth, and completely unaffected.

Others knew her far better than I, like I said, but a couple of Jean Ritchie stories have stayed with me. Once at the Swananoa Gathering, I noticed she was using a big floppy pick on fiddle tunes like "Shady Grove" and "Swing and Turn Jubilee." So between sets I went up front where she'd laid her dulcimer across a chair so I could take a look. She'd cut a rectangular pick out of the lid to a Philadelphia Cream Cheese tub. Ever since I've cut up an assortment of cream cheese, Prairie Farms, Jewel and Anderson Erickson Dairy lids for when I play with a pick and noter. Drives other players crazy, but it's my little tribute to her.

My other memory is from Lois Hornbostel's mountain dulcimer week at Appalachian State or Western Carolina about 14 or 15 years ago. It was toward the end of Jean Ritchie's farewell concert, and she set the instrument aside and started singing "Amazing Grace" the way she had learned it growing up in the Old Regular Baptist church. She sang a cappella, and we -- the entire audience of several hundred people -- joined in call-and-response style as she started each verse, "Through many dangers, toils and snares ...," and so on, and we sang it back to her. It was one of the most powerful experiences of pure, simple, unadorned music -- singing from the heart as country Baptists down home would say -- that I've ever been a part of.

"Pretty Saro"

According to Wikipedia (which I am coming to regard as the best repository of all human knowledge), "Pretty Saro" is an "English folk ballad" that "was rediscovered in North America" a hundred years ago by Cecil Sharp and other songcatchers in southern Appalachia. That's about as close to its origins as we'll ever get. Several versions have been collected over the years, mostly in North Carolina.

Jean Ritchie has a distinctive version. In a thread on Mudcat Cafe, she said she learned it from her "older sisters who went to Berea College in Kentucky" and they learned it from Gladys Jamison, director of the college's Glee Club. "I think she was the one who brought 'our' [Ritchie family] version of 'Pretty Saro' to the Glee Club, and from there the girls began singing it at home. This would be about 1925-26, with Kitty and Patty who were older and were at Berea first. And I was born at the end of 1922, so you see have known this song ALL my singing life. I guess that's why people think of it as a Ritchie song. I wish Miss Jamison had shared more on her song sources, but she never did, as I know."

Jean Ritchie sang it during the 1960s with Doc Watson (a North Carolinian who had another version of the song) in concert at the Folk City club in New York. It's still available on the Smithsonian Folkways label, and it is monument of the real American folk music.

Listen to Ritchie's accompaniment on the dulcimer. She isn't playing chords -- she's improvising harmonies and countermelodies, the same way she and her family did at home.

"We never sang "Saro" without harmony -- just made-up, natural harmonies," she said of their singing on the Mudcat thread. "It's gorgeous, to use a modern adjective! It's one of those tunes calls for harmony, and almost everything one sings sounds great. I used to sing what we called a 'low tenor,'...made a lovely bottom for the song."

There is dulcimer tab available on line at

http://barbfeick.com/vaudeville/Tabs/Dulcimer/DAD/PrettySaroDAD_DAA.pdf

... and it looks like it's pretty close to Jean Ritchie's version of the traditional song. (I'm not 100 percent sure -- I haven't played it -- but it looks OK on paper. If you play the dulcimer you might want to retune to DAA, though, since the melody is tabbed out on the A string.) The very best way to learn it -- and get a feel for her lovely, simple harmonies -- is to pick up a copy of Jean Ritchie's "Dulcimer Book" (1963).

"The Dulcimer Book" is the book most of us learned to play from back in the day, and it's still in print. Look for it online at Amazon.com, Folkcraft, McSpadden and other outlets. Her tab has fret numbers -- no chords, the dulcimer wasn't (and IMO still isn't) a chordal instrument -- and standard notation. It's in C instead of D, but if you tune the dulcimer to CGG or DAA, you can follow the fret numbers till you know it by ear and the instrument will transpose to whichever key you tune it to.

__________

* Jean Ritchie was the guest of honor at a gallery reception for industrial arts professor Allan Mills' exhibition of antique Kentucky dulcimers at Berea College in the fall of 2012. From left, in picture above: A caretaker whose name I didn't get, Jean Ritchie, luthier Warren May of Berea and Mills.

"Again, Thy glorious sun doth rise" / Din klara sol går åter opp -- a Swedish psalm in the Augustana Synod's 1901 hymnal

Over the summer, I demonstrated a 19th-century Nordic box zither called the psalmodikon, and taught the Swedish-American hymn "Again, Thy glorious sun doth rise" (Din klara sol går åter opp) to the congregations at First Baptist Church Moline and the United Methodist Church in Colona. Facebook video from Moline here and from Colona here. Following are notes and background for my presentations, with ideas for future performances suggested by my experience.

Background information on the hymns I play during Sunday services and video clips of one of them, which I'll teach as it might have been taught in a 19th-century Swedish-American singing school. I'll use a northern European folk zither called a hummel a mountain dulcimer, my primary instrument, and a psalmodikon modeled after one used by the Rev. Lars-Paul Esbjorn, first Swedish pastor at Andover and a founder of Augustana College, in the museum at Andover's Jenny Lind Chapel.

It's a work in progress. So far I've been doing: (a) an offertory on the dulcimer; and (b) a re-enacted lesson based on my workshop "Pastor Esbjorn's Singing School" in April at the Founders' Day celebration of the 155th anniversary of the Augustana Synod and the 165th anniversary of the Lutheran congregation in Andover.

[For the offertory I've tried both the hummel I bought in Germany -- which is more historically authentic -- and the mountain dulcimer. But until I master the hummel, I've decided I'd better stick with the dulcimer! I can play it faster, with more oomph than was customary in 19th-century Lutheran hymnody, and I decided in Moline that we badly needed a little more oomph.]

So far it seems to be jelling, and I think people in the congregations enjoy it. I've been proposing two parts to my presentation, honed down to fit into a Sunday morning contemporary or informal traditional service.

1. Offertory: Medley of Swedish-American hymns:

• "Children of the Heavenly Father" [three tunes made it too long for the offertory in a smaller church, but I'm open to swapping "Children" for the "Sweet By and By" below]
• "For the Beautiful Land Above the Sky" (aka "In the Sweet By and By")
• "Again, Thy Glorious Sun Doth Rise" (a chorale from the Svenska Psalmboken of 1819)

  [I've been saying a word or two about how the Swedes loved Anglo-Anerican revival hymns like the "Sweet By and By," and suggesting that everyone listen up to the second tune, since they'll be learning it in a few minutes. As soon as the ushers reach the back of the church, I segue into the last phrase of "Thy Glorious Sun." It seems to be working out pretty well.]

I have written elsewhere about "Children of the Heavenly Father" and a Swedish-American favorite the immigrants knew as "For the Beautiful Land Above the Sky." It's a Swedish translation of "The Sweet By and By," one of a number of Anglo-American gospel songs that found their way into Swedish tradition even before the immigrants came to America.

Says Gracia Grindal, an emeritus professor of hymnology at Luther Seminary who has studied the old Swedish-American Augustana Synod, "the Gospel songs which were so dear to Swedish Augustana made it into the English hymnals they produced, not only because they were American songs, but also because they were beloved Swedish songs as well."

2. Teaching Din klara sol ... / "Again, Thy Glorious Sun Doth Rise"

A Swedish psalm tone or chorale variant -- i.e. a Swedish variant of an 18th-century German chorale.

Says the English-language version of Wikipedia, "Din klara sol går åter opp is a song with lyrics by Johan Olof Wallin, from 1814. Being a Christian morning hymn about Sunrise, it was a common morning prayer song in the Swedish Elementary school for decades. Johan Georg Christian Störl is often credited as composer of the tune." The Augustana hymnals identify the chorale as Störl's Nun danket all und bringet Ehr, but Swedish Wikipedia notes that it is now assigned instead to the 1710 songbook Neubezogenes Davidisches Harpen und Psalter-Spiel [Newly Published David's Harp and Psaltry] and merely says it is of German origin at that date.

More quibbles on the German source of the psalm tone under heading below.

Here it is in standard notation:

Augustana Synod Hymnal and Service Book for Churches and Sunday Schools (1901).

Here's what it sounds like in Swedish.

• Performed by the Adolf Fredriks Bachkör [Bach choir], directed by Anders Öhrwall. The melody is German and from 1710," says YouTube user stigekalder (Niels Brandtz), who also maintains a website of Bach quotations. "Possibly the composer is Johan Georg Christian Störl (1675-1719). The text is in the Swedish Psalm Book."

• And an instrumental by Rejmyre Musikkår, the town band in Reijmyre, with some very subdued congregational singing, at an open-air service on Ascension Day in the spring of 2011.

The hymn has long been a favorite in Sweden, where it was sung in the schools until recent years. (Sweden had an established Lutheran "state church" until the year 2000, so singing a hymn in school wasn't an issue.)

In 2014, the Sverige Vår Historia (Sweden, Our History) Facebook community posted the hymn and asked members if they had sung it in school, and 35 or 40 recalled it fondly. "Before classes began," said one. "To a tired old pump organ that puffed up the tones." Another was more positive about the "piano-organ" in her classroom, as "there sat fröken (referring to the teacher by her title, lit. Miss) playing it while we sang. Sounds like 100 years ago, but only half that long!"

A Swedish-American musical icon

It was part of the iconography of the old Augustana Synod. Here's an excerpt from Carl Wilhelm Andeer's Augustana-folk: Några Bilder och Karaktärer ur vårt Kyrkliga Arbete (trans.: Augustana People: Some Pictures and Character [sketches] from our Church Work), published in Rock Island by the Augustana Book Concern in 1911, p. 5. Google eBooks.

A very loose translation:

When they came forward

It was a Sunday morning in the year 1869. The sun had just come up over the eastern horizon, shining on the drops of dew like diamonds.

The little immigrants' train, consisting of two prairie schooners, found their way through the juicy grass and overgrown bushes of the prairie.

Thy glorious sun doth arise
I thank you, my God
With power and courage
I raise a happy sound
Etc. etc.

The song of the psalm rang out so beautifully through the fresh morning air. One could hear their faith in God and reliance on him that lay under and in the song.

Andeer's book was written for young readers, many of whom by 1911 would have grown up speaking a creolized Swedish-American dialect at home but learning to read and write English instead of Swedish in the public schools. Along with the exercise in written Swedish, he obviously hoped to instill in the youngsters a sense of their heritage as Swedish-American immigrants as well as a cherished song from the old country.

A German psalm tone, but whose?

Older Swedish hymnals, including the Augustana Synod's "black" hymnal of 1925 and its predecessor in 1901, assigned the text to Wallin and the melody, which it identifies as Nun danket all und bringet Ehr, to Johan Georg Christian Störl. Click here to hear Nun danket all und bringet Ehr sung at the Christus- und Garnisonskirche in Wilhelmshaven. But recent Swedish psalmbooks, including that of 1986, merely cite a songbook of his and identify the melody as "tyskt ursprung 1710" [German origin, 1710].

I can't always hear these tune family resemblances, but Hymnary.com identifies the usual melody or psalm tone for this text as GRÄFENBERG by Johann Crüger (1647). Without more to go on than my untrained ear, I can't say so with any assurance, but I don't think the Swedish melody sounds very much like Crüger's.

Johann Georg Christian Störl, according to the German version of Wikipedia, was an organist and head kappelmeister in Stuttgart at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. He published editions of the Württembergische Choralbuch [Wurttemberg Chorale Book] in 1692, 1710/11 and 1721. The second edition is titled Neubezogenes Davidisches Harpfen- und Psalterspiel, oder Neu-aufgesetztes Württembergisch-vollständiges, nach der genauesten und reinsten Sing- und Schlag-Kunst eingerichtetes Schlag- Gesang und Noten-Buch [Newly Published David's Harp and Psaltry, or, Newly Translated Complete Wurttemberg Book With the Most Accurate Singing and Artistic Vocals and Notes].

So it looks like Störl edited the book where the Swedish psalm tone first appeared, but the newer Swedish psalmbooks are about right in saying it's a German tune that originated in 1710.

Sifferskrift and the psalmodikon

A psalmodikon (pron. sal-MOWD-i-kion) was a one-stringed box fiddle, fretted like a mountain dulcimer, that Swedish and Norwegian pastors used during the 1800s to teach the songs in their new hymnals, or psalmbooks. (Swedes and Norwegians use the same word, "psalm," for psalms and hymns.) I posted a brief explanation to this blog in February. In addition, the Jenny Lind Chapel has pictures of my psalmodikon and Pastor Esbjorn's (click on album labeled "psalmodikon") taken in connection with its Founders Day celebration in April 2014.

While some pastors played from standard musical notation, the psalmodikon was designed to be used with with tablature called ziffor-noter (in early 19th-century Swedish), siffernoter or sifferskrift. *Sifferskrift [lit. "number writing" or numerical notation] was a system of tablature that enabled people who couldn't read standard musical notation to puzzle out a new hymn or gospel song. The Swedish version was developed by Johannes Dillner in 1830. Din klara sol in sifferskrift:

Dillner, Melodierna till Swenska Kyrkans Psalmer (1830)

An audio clip by the Nordiska psalmodikonförbundet.

A selection from their CD. NPsF is a revival group in Stockholm. In comments, viewer Ann-Sofie Nilsson writes, "My grandmother Klara used to play and sing this song for me when I was a child, her brother Sigvard was the last one in a long line of psalmodikon builders in our family he was the 7 or 8 generation. I never thought that I would hear someone play it again thank you so much it was lovely."

__________

* "Sifferskrift" is the Norwegian form of the word [siffernoter in Swedish]. I use it for convenience, because most people who play the psalmodikon in this country, including a group affiliated with the Sons of Norway chapter across the river from Moline in Bettendorf, have a Norwegian form of the instrument and play music written for a predominantly Norwegian-American group in the upper Midwest.

Hallelujah Chorus with flash cards in Quinhagak, Alaska

Quinhagak is a Native (Yup'ik) village on Kuskokwim Bay of the Bering Sea in western Alaska.

Hallelujah Chorus - Quinhagak, Alaska. Hallelujah Chorus - Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat 5th Grade - Quinhagak, Alaska www.kuinerrarmiut.com.

According to Wikipedia, Quinhagak is a major archaeological site for the study of Yup'ik culture, with artifacts dating back to 1350 AD. Today it "hosts a commercial fishing industry and cannery" that attracts seasonal workers in the summer. Wikipedia adds:

Most Quinhagak households practice subsistence hunting and gathering in addition to any wage work they are able to find, utilizing the village's excellent location for salmon and trout fishing, bird, caribou, and moose hunting, and berry picking. Much of the work available is government-funded (through the Lower Kuskokwim School District, which runs the local school, or through the Native Village of Kwinhagak) or seasonal (commercial fishing and/or canning).

It's a long way to the lower Kuskokwim from Fishamble Street in Dublin, but think Georg Frideric Handel would be proud of what these kids, and their elders, have done with his music.

Going out to Clayville to play "Going Down to Cairo" (among other tunes) this weekend at Clayville's spring festival

Blast email sent this afternoon to my Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music and Prairieland Strings lists.

Hi everybody --

We're on the schedule to play at the Clayville Spring Festival from 1 to 4 p.m. (or till we decide to wander off and get a bratwurst or something) Saturday and Sunday. If you've done this before, you know playing a festival isn't a performance. It's very relaxed, and a lot of fun. If you haven't, don't worry -- this festival is very neighborly, and playing a festival is the best way I know of to start getting some experience playing for the public. Either way, bring a chair if you want to sit down. We'll just find a spot somewhere under a tree. Admission is $5, but it's waived if you're carrying an instrument case. Park in the visitors' lot just west of Clayville Historic Site, on Ill. 125 at Pleasant Plains, and tell the folks at the ticket booth you're here to play with the Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music.

One of the tunes we've been playing lately is "Going Down to Cairo," performed in the YouTube clip linked below by Gary Sizemore of Tallequah, Okla., and band. He plays it a little differently than we do, especially on the B part, but it's all good -- and it's all old-time fiddle music.

[...] Our next indoor session is the Prairieland Strings slow jam from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, May 21, at Atonement Lutheran Church, 2800 West Jefferson in Springfield. Yikes! That's next week!

DULCIMER PLAYERS NOTE: Mike Anderson, master dulcimer player of Jacksonville, has some times available for individual lessons in June and July. They're $16 for a 30-minute session, and they're the best way I know to get started off right, or bump your skills up to the next level. Details on his website at http://dulcikid.com/Summer.html.

Swedish-American liturgy of 1901, 1925 Augustana Synod hymnals

AUGUSTANA HERITAGE ASSOCIATION GATHERING VIII Closing Worship - Jun 24, 2012 - at Gustavus Adolphus College. [This is basically the liturgy carried over from the Church of Sweden.]

AHA FESTIVAL WORSHIP- TRINITY LITURGICAL SETTING from the Swedish which then was published in English in 1901 and 1925. Celebrant-Retired Bishop Don Sjoberg, First National Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and current President of the Augustana Heritage Association; Liturgist-Retired Pastor Bill Strom; Preachers-Retired Bishop Herbert Chilstrom, First Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Rev. Dr. Barbara Lundblad, Joe R Engel Professor of Preaching, Union theological Seminary, New York City and Pastoral Associate, Advent Lutheran, New York City.

The preservation of the Swedish Lutheran traditions of the Augustana Synod in congregations, colleges, seminaries, and institutions has been the goal of the Augustana Heritage Association in Gatherings like this one in 2012 at Gustavus, an institution founded by and continuing in relationship with Augustana pastors and congregations.

Over 650 participants worshiped in Christ Chapel at this Gathering with wonderful leadership from Organist, Dr. John Swanson, preservationist of Augustana liturgy and hymnody.

Regina Fryxell's setting in the Service Book and Hymnal of 1958

YouTube user Swedishlutheran https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClG50rvcBYrWQNTJPM-eOyA

D R A F T louie louie

D R A F T

Toots and the Maytals

"You Have Won The Victory" -- a Full Gospel Baptist Church anthem

I clicked on this powerful contemporary African American gospel choir anthem tonight on a Facebook page called Support for Erica DiGiovanna Trinh. It solicits prayers, donations and other support for one of my students at Springfield College in Illinois, who is fighting an aggressive brain tumor.

You Have Won The Victory/The Anthem - Full Gospel Baptist Church - Lyrics. Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship International Ministry of Worship - The Anthem/You Have Won The Victory - Lyrics from their 2013 album - One Sound

Information on the Full Gospel Baptist Church movement at http://www.fullgospelbaptist.org/.

"Danny Boy" -- links, lyrics and YouTube videos of a classic for Saturday's session at Clayville

Today's blast email to Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music and Prairieland Strings lists.

We've been looking for lead sheets and copyright-free dulcimer tablature for "Danny Boy" lately, and I think I've found something we can play (with the usual revisions and general noodling around) at our sessions. A version of Clapton's song chart and chords in D is available on line, along with other lead sheets and tablature. Here are links to:

• Lyrics w/ chords -- Eric Clapton's version: http://www.bellandcomusic.com/support-files/danny-boy.pdf.
• Lyrics w/ chords -- a simpler version by the Brobdingnagian Bards, a "Celtic Renaissance duo" of Austin, Texas: http://www.thebards.net/music/lyrics/Danny_Boy.shtml.
• Dulcimer tab w/ chords by Ron Zuckerman, who does tab for several dulcimer clubs down South: http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/files/tab/danny_boy.pdf

As usual, we'll probably have to do a little adjusting to make the hot-off-the-internet arrangements work together.

A couple of YouTube Clips:

Eric Clapton -- finger-style acoustic guitar:

John McDermott, the Scottish-Canadian baritone -- a cappella:

Swenska Mässan in Dillner's Melodierna till Swenska Kyrkans Psalmer

in Johan Dillner. Melodierna till Swenska Kyrkans Psalmer: Noterade med Ziffror, för Skolor och Menigheten. Stockholm, 1830. Google eBooks. (I have two more pages -- 199 and 200 -- saved with this one on a Microsoft Word document in my Dillner folder.)

For an English text of the Swedish revision of 1917, see The Mass in Sweden: Its Development from the Latin Rite from 1531 to 1917 by Eric Esskildsen Yelverton (London: Harrison and Sons, 1920), pp. 155ff. The Kyrie is at p. 159. Available in Google eBooks https://books.google.com/books?id=T09CAAAAIAAJ&dq.

"Never Going Back Again" -- classic Fleetwood Mac song for acoustic guitar and (hopefully -- just maybe) mountain dulcimer?

D R A F T

Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks - Never Going Back Again HD

One of several instructional videos on YouTube:

Never Going Back Again Guitar Lesson. Says Eric Branner, "Get tabs here under transcriptions. http://www.blackforrestmusic.com Check out my new book while you're there! This is a classic fleetwood mac finger pickin tune. Such a great song, and great practice for bringing out a syncopated rhythm. Let me know if you have any questions or requests!"

And another, in a brighter "Nashville tuning" that has a dulcimer-ish sound to it ...

Guitar tutorial: Nashville Tuning - Never going back. Kevin Fleming. "Learn how to finger pick Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood mac's song Never Going Back with this guitar tutorial. This song is played with an alternate tuning and a guitar strung in nashville tuning style." Song begins at 9:00.

Hat tip to one of my students, Gina Atterberry, who was listening posted a link to Facebook saying she was listening to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album. Which inspired me to track down the album and find the song. My copy of the CD was lost in the clutter in my basement.

"Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" -- a bluegrass gospel song for this week's Prairieland Strings session

A month or two ago, Dan brought in some sheet music/dulcimer tab he found online for "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," a fine old gospel tune in the public domain. Written in 1887 by Anthony J. Showalter and Elisha Hoffman, it has become a bluegrass gospel standard. Let's play it at this week's "third Thursday" session of the Prairieland Strings, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Atonement Lutheran Church, 2800 West Jefferson.

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Don't forget the "Fake It Till You Make It" workshop on playing in jam sessions from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, April 18, in the barn at Clayville Historic Stagecoach Stop, Ill. 125, Pleasant Plains.

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That tab that Dan brought us is available on the EverythingDulcimer.com website. Link here for a PDF file. If your computer is squirrelly about opening PDF documents, go to http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/, open the Tablature menu and scroll down the directory to "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." The tab you want is by Robert Sutton (and it's easy to find since his is the only tab for that title)!

If you don't recall what it sounds like, we can fix that right now. Here's a pretty good bluegrass version on YouTube. It features the East Tennessee State University Bluegrass Pride Band with guest vocalist Joshua Argo (an ETSU bluegrass student) at the Bluegrass On Broad festival in Kingsport, Tenn.

Notice how some of the group sing "Leaning on Jesus" in harmony while the others are just singing "Lean-ing" in the chorus. In our sheet music, the phrase is written as two half notes. I don't know how you'd write that harmony part in standard notation, but as long as the singers are listening to each other (which is crucial in bluegrass harmony), it all comes together.

"Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" has been around forever (well, at least since 1887), and it's been covered by artists ranging from Iris Dement, Twila Paris and the Gaithers to the Stanley Brothers, Chet Atkins, the Statler Brothers, George Jones, Andy Griffith, the Dillards, the Louvin Brothers, the Sons of the Pioneers, Al Green, Mahalia Jackson and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. They're all on YouTube, along with many others.

The song works in a wide variety of musical styles. Here's Barry Wilson singing it in 2008 at Kansas City Baptist Temple:

And here's a clip from the 1943 movie "A Human Comedy," showing GIs singing it on a World War II troop train.

According to Wikipedia, Showalter thought of the melody and refrain when he was comforting two of his students whose wives had recently died. "When writing letters of consolation, Showalter was inspired by the phrase in the Book of Deuteronomy 33:27 "The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." He asked Hoffman to do the rest of the lyrics.

"At the Lamb's High Feast We Sing"

OpenHymnal.org has sheet music http://openhymnal.org/Pdf/At_The_Lambs_High_Feast-Sonne_Der_Gerechtigkeit.pdf

At The Lamb's High Feast We Sing. First Lutheran Church, West Barnstable, Cape Cod

Sonne der Gerechtigkeit — ("At the Lamb's High Feast We Sing") — unison voices, organ, brass quintet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RzmgUcvjOk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RzmgUcvjOk (embedding disabled)

Originally the tune to a 15th-century secular folk song ("Der reich Mann war geritten aus," or "The rich man had ridden out"), "Sonne der Gerechtigkeit" was adopted by the Bohemian Brethren for the 1566 hymnal, Kirchengeseng, where it was set to a text beginning "Sun of Righteousness." The adoption of a sacred text to secular music — contrafactum — was common in the medieval era and often the work of Catholic friars. (A similar 19th-century example of contrafactum is the setting of William Chatterton Dix's text "What Child is This?" to the English folk tune "Greensleeves.")

"Sonne der Gerchtigkeit" is commonly used to accompany the hymn, "At the Lamb's High Feast We Sing." The text refers to the ancient custom of administering to new Christians the sacraments of baptism and holy communion at the first Easter Sunday mass following their catechumenate. Vested in white robes, they were admitted for the first time to the "banquet of the Lamb" — the eucharistic feast. Robert Campbell (1814-1868), a Scotsman who converted to Roman Catholicism, translated the seventh-century Latin text to English.

This video is a demo of the sheet music available from Con Spirito Music. Visit conspiritomusic.com.

Gotteslobvideo (GL 481): Sonne der Gerechtigkeit

"Groundhog" -- an old southern Appalachian children's song for Clayville-Prairieland jam sessions

Since the first of April fell on a Wednesday, our schedule of slow jams is a little cockeyed this month. Plus we have the "Fake It Till You Make It" workshop coming up at Clayville Historic Stagecoach Stop. So I'll post our schedule here for the rest of the month.

• Tuesday, April 7, 7-9 p.m. at Atonement Lutheran Church, 2800 West Jefferson, Springfield. Our "first Tuesday" Prairieland Strings jam. That's only three days from now. Yikes!

• Thursday, April 16, 7-9 p.m. at Atonement. The "third Thursday" jam. It's only a little more than a week later, since the first was on a Wednesday.

• Saturday, April 18, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the barn at Clayville. "Fake It Till You Make It" workshop. FREE OF CHARGE! Basic jamming skills. Beginner-friendly but focused on developing skills for playing in a group with other instruments. I'll introduce a couple of new ideas, but I hope we can all share tips on how we learned -- what worked for us.

Here's a tune that's a lot of fun, and one that's easy for newbies to master. It's called "Groundhog." It was one of the very first tunes I learned on a mountain dulcimer back in the day in East Tennessee. Since it's a song instead of a dance tune, people just play it straight through. (Instead of AABB it's more like AAAA till you run out of verses.) It's commonly played in G or A, but we'll play it in D.

A lead sheet with notation, chords and dulcimer tab for "Groundhog" is in Steve Seifert's "Join the Jam." And Sr. Margaret Mary, a music teacher has a slightly different version with notation, chords and dulcimer tab on the EverythingDulcimer.com website at http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/files/tab/ground_hog.pdf. Link below for a set of lyrics.

NOTE: The printed music for Steve's version and Sr. Margaret Mary's are a little different, but I can practically guarantee they'll sound just fine together after we've played through them a couple of times.

Here are some YouTube clips:

Ground Hog - Peter Feldmann. Uploaded Feb. 2, 2013. Played on a "catskin" banjo (well, that's what they call them -- but see below) made by a master craftsman in North Carolina.

Feldman, who has recorded children's songs and other folk music, adds:

I learnt this song from Frank Proffitt, of Reese, NC, back in 1962. Franks was a fine singer, banjo and guitar picker, as well as a maker of fretless banjos and mountain dulcimers. I got a banjo from Frank in 1963. Its head is ground hog skin, so it could not be more appropriate to use for this fine old folk song. We spent four days together in Chicago when Frank came up for a visit. He told me the best banjo head skin was cat skin, but that his wife frowned on his shooting them ... groundhog was his fall-back position.

It probably should be added here that mountain people, no doubt including Frank Proffitt, have a dry sense of humor.

If the song is known to at all, it's in this version sung by Doc Watson and family in a 1990 recording for Smithsonian Folkways:

Lyrics as Doc Watson recorded them are available on line at http://lyrics.wikia.com/Doc_Watson:Groundhog

Johann Walther -- misc. links and cites to 1819 psalmbook

Jens Fredborg playlist on YouTube -- piano https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0PdtFNbg6wJBNhDmQO7qTNK2haDH9MDD.

Swedish Wikipedia http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Walter

• Dig vare lov, o Jesus Krist (1695 nr 125, 1819 nr 62, 1986 nr 431) ur hans koralbok från 1524
• Med lust och glädje tänker (1986 nr 324) skriven 1552
• Sitt öga Jesus öppnat har (1819 nr 103) och samma melodi som till:
• I dödens bojor Kristus låg efter Christ lag in Todesbanden (1695 nr 163, 1986 nr 467)
• Som skimret över hav och sky (1986 nr 178) tonsatt 1541 Svensk text av Anders Frostenson ©
• Vi på jorden leva här (1819 nr 26)
• Vi tror på en allsmäktig Gud (1695 nr 4, 1819 nr 17, 1937 nr 26)

Geystliche gesangk Buchleyn http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geystliche_gesangk_Buchleyn

• Dig, Helge Ande, bedja vi (1695 nr 182, 1819 nr 135, 1986 nr 362) med ursprung i en medeltida "leiser", allmän på 1200-talet.
• Gud trefaldig, statt oss bi (XXXIIII, 1695 nr 189, 1819 nr 22, 1986 nr 336) processionssång från 1400-talet. Finns på Wikisource
• Lov vare dig, o Jesu Krist (1819 nr 62)
• Vi på jorden leva här (III, 1695 nr 398, 1819 nr 26, 1937 nr 153)
• Vi tro på en allsmäktig Gud (1695 nr 4, 1819 nr 17, 1937 nr 26)

Gud trefaldig, stå oss bi

Fredborg: Dig vare lov, o Jesus Krist - Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev23rukZiI8

Lista över psalmer i 1819 års psalmbok i Svenska kyrkan: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_%C3%B6ver_psalmer_i_1819_%C3%A5rs_psalmbok_i_Svenska_kyrkan

Lord keep us steadfast in Thy word / Behåll oss vid ditt rena ord. http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beh%C3%A5ll_oss_vid_ditt_rena_ord

Behåll oss vid ditt rena ord är en tysk psalm, Ach, bleib bey uns HERR JEsu skriven 1571 av Nikolaus Selnecker, översatt av Jesper Swedberg 1694 till en psalm med titelraden "Ack, bliv hos oss, o Jesu Krist". Enligt 1937 års psalmbok var första versen skriven omkring 1540 av Philipp Melanchthon. ... I 1697 års koralbok och 1939 års koralbok används samma melodi som till psalmen Så är fullkomnat, Jesus kär (1695, nr 160) som är svensk och från 1697. I Den svenska psalmboken 1986 används en melodi av Martin Luther från 1542 som används för O Gud, behåll oss vid ditt ord (1695, nr 295).

1819 års psalmbok som nr 120 med titelraden "Ack, bliv hos oss, o Jesu Krist", under rubriken "Jesu andliga världsregering och vård om sin stridande församling".