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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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"

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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

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

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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.

More on Liebster Jesu … variant in 1819 Swedish psalmbook

D R A F T

Mystery solved! (I think …)

The song referred to in the pioneer reminiscence I referenced in a post on Sept. 7 is Hit O Jesu …" and not the baptismal hymn we sing to the melody LEIBSTER JESU

The reminiscence, in The Augustana Synod: a brief review of its history, 1860-1910 (Rock Island: Augustana Book Concern, 1910): 25-27:

The people were beside themselves with joy (i. e. over the visit of a minister). Services were announced for the following day (a Saturday) in the school-house, and all who could crawl or walk assembled. Many of them had lived there five and six years and during all that time had never heard a sermon. When they began the service by singing psalm 328 : 'Blessed Jesus, at Thy Word we are gathered all to hear Thee' (Hit, o Jcsu, samloms vi att ditt helga ord fa bora) [26] the singing was smothered by sobs and only after some minutes were they able to continue.

Cite and context, including another congregation where "the service was carried out by one of the members. When they were through and on the way home, he called out: 'Hold on, boys; I forgot to read the benediction,' to which they shouted back : 'Save it till next time!'" on Hogfiddle Sept. 7, 2013

http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2013/09/pioneer-swedish-american-church.html

In September I didn't make the distinction between two similar chorales, and wasn't able to get them straightened out in my mind till now. They are:

• "Blessed Jesus, at Thy word." Text: Tobias Clausnitzer; trans. Catherine Winkworth. A gathering hymn. Hymnary.org lists in 119 hymnals. http://www.hymnary.org/text/blessed_jesus_at_thy_word.
• "Blessed Jesus, here we stand." Baptismal hymn by Benjamin Schmolck, trans. Winkworth. 50 hymnals. http://www.hymnary.org/text/blessed_jesus_here_we_stand.

Both hymns, the first words of which are practically identical, most commonly use Ahle's tune LIEBSTER JESU. But Clausnitzer's gathering hymn was also set to a minor-key variant by Carl Wolfgang Briegel (1687) and got into the 1819 psalmbook with that tune.

I am not going to try to straighten out the Sept. 7 post -- the information I got from the sources I consulted at that time was correct as far as it went -- but I will repost this disclaimer there in order to (hopefully) minimize confusion.

Clausnitzer's gathering hymn is printed in my reprint of Johan Henrik Thomander's Svenska Psalm-Boken Af År 1819 with Carl Wolfgang Briegel's melody in E minor, No. 328. This is the hymn the pioneers were so glad to hear when a pastor came through.

I wasn't able to find Schmolck's baptismal hymn. But apparently the 1819 psalmbook used a baptismal text by Franzén, Du som var den minstes vän (No. 341), translates roughly, "You who are the friend of the least [of these]" … sung to melody of No. 126, which is variant of LIEBSTER JESU in in G major.

The 1901 Augustana hymnal and service book has "Blessed Jesus at Thy word" [Catherine Winkworth's translation] to the melodies by Carl Wolfgang Breigel , 1687 (first tune, identified as Liebser Jesu, in D minor), and Johann Rudolph Ahle, 1664 (second tune, identified as Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, in G major), at No. 151.

The 1925 hymnal offers more choices:

• No. 225. Blessed Jesus, here we stand. Schmolk's baptismal hymn. Ahle's melody.
• No. 302. Blessed Jesus at Thy word. Clauswitzer's gathering hymn. Briegels' 1687 melody in D minor.
• No. 357. Now our worship sweet is over. Text (see below) by Hartmann Schenk. Ahle

* * *

From Swedish Wikipedia pages:

Du som var den minstes vän är en doppsalm med fem verser av Frans Michael Franzén, som bygger på texter i Nya Testamentet, framför allt evangeliet om Jesus och barnen. Diktad 1814. | Den sjungs till en koral komponerad av Johann Rudolf Ahle 1664. Samma melodi används till Benjamin Schmolcks psalmtext Jesu, du, som i din famn.

• 1819 års psalmbok som nr 341 under rubriken "Kristligt sinne och förhållande. För föräldrar." [But in the Koralbok, No. 341 refers to No. 126 for the melodi.]

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

* * *

LBW has No. 187 as baptismal hymn, with Schmolk's words, and 248 as gathering hymn w/ Clausnitzer's.

Bkurbs on all three in the 1925 hymnal from Hymnary.org (w/ help from a Lutheran website for the third, which is pretty obscure).

"Blessed Jesus, at Thy word." Text: Tobias Clausnitzer; trans. Catherine Winkworth. A gathering hymn. Hymnary.org lists in 119 hymnals.

Blessed Jesus, at Thy word
Author: Tobias Clausnitzer; Translator: Catherine Winkworth
Tune: LIEBSTER JESU
Published in 119 hymnals

1 Blessed Jesus, at your word
we are gathered all to hear you.
Let our hearts and souls be stirred
now to seek and love and fear you.
By your gospel pure and holy,
teach us, Lord, to love you solely.

http://www.hymnary.org/text/blessed_jesus_at_thy_word.

"Blessed Jesus, here we stand." Baptismal hymn by Benjamin Schmolck, trans. Winkworth. 50 hymnals.

Blessed Jesus, here we stand.
Translator: Catherine Winkworth; Author: Benjamin Schmolck (1704)
Tune: LIEBSTER JESU
Published in 50 hymnals

Dearest Jesus, we are here,
gladly your command obeying.
With this child we now draw near
in response to your own saying
that to you it shall be given
as a child and heir of heaven.

http://www.hymnary.org/text/blessed_jesus_here_we_stand.

Now our worship sweet is over. Apparently a sending hymn, 17th-century German --

"Now our worship sweet is over."
Author: M. Hartmann Schenk
Published in 11 hymnals: American Lutheran Hymnal #d354 -- Evangelical Lutheran Hymn Book with Tunes #d297 -- Evangelical Lutheran Hymnal #9 Image -- Evangelical Lutheran Hymnbook (Lutheran Conference of Missouri and Other States) #d227 -- Evangelical Lutheran Hymnbook (Lutheran Conference of Missouri and Other States) #d247 -- Hymnal: for churches and Sunday-schools of the Augustana Synod #164 Image Songs of Praise #d208 -- Songs of Praise for Sunday Schools, Church Societies and the Home #d213 -- The Hymnal and Order of Service #d358 -- The Hymnal and Order of Service #d359 -- The Lutheran Hymnary Junior ... of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the United Norwegian Lutheran Church of America #d187

http://www.hymnary.org/text/now_our_worship_sweet_is_oer

The Free Lutheran Chorale-Book at http://www.lutheranchoralebook.com/now-our-worship-sweet-is-oer/ has the words:

1. Now our worship sweet is o’er—
Singing, praying, teaching, hearing;
Let us gladly God adore
For His gracious strength and cheering.
Praise our God, who now would save us,
For the rich repast He gave us.

Hartmann Schenk, 1634-1681, was a 17th-century German hymn writer and pastor. Biography, in German, at http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/ADB:Schenk,_Hartmann.

This quote from Hymnary.org, copied and pasted from my Sept. 7 post, spells out the relationship:

LlEBSTER JESU is a rather serene German chorale that is ideally sung in three long lines and in parts with light organ accompaniment. In rounded bar form (AABA') LIEBSTER JESU (also called DESSAU and NURENBERG) was originally one of Johann R. Able's “sacred arias,” first published with Franz J. Burmeister's Advent hymn text “Ja, er ist's, das Heil der Welt" in the Mühlhausen, Germany, Neue geistliche auf die Sonntage . . . Andachten (1664). The tune was later modified and published in the Darmstadt, Germany, Das grosse Cantional (1687) as a setting for a baptism hymn by Benjamin Schmolck that had the same first line as Clausnitzer's text: "Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier." Because several sources say that LIEBSTER JESU was first associated with Clausnitzer's hymn in the 1671 Altdoifer Gesangbuch, it seems probable that the tune name derives from that hymn text.

http://www.hymnary.org/hymn/PsH/280

Otto Malmberg -- & mp3 files of Swedish hummel player in 1980s

Otto Malmberg, of Småland, is considered the last traditional Swedish hummel player. He performed at the Skansen outdoor museum in Stockholm in 1908 and 1917, where sound recordings were made and an iconic picture was taken.

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Photo at left shows German luthier Wilfried Ulrich playing a hummel with picture of Malmberg in the background during Ulrich's 2011 hummel exhibition at Cloppenburg Museum in Lower Saxony.

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Brief notice below of Malmberg's 1917 recordings for Skansen in Fataburen magazine available in the Runeberg digital text collection.

Fataburen / Redogörelse för Nordiska museets utveckling och förvaltning år 1917 / 22 http://runeberg.org/fataburen/1917r/0022.html

Detta är Projekt Runebergs digitala faksimilutgåva av Fataburen, en kulturhistorisk tidskrift eller årsbok som utges av Nordiska museet i Stockholm sedan 1906.

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"Anders Eklund spelar hummel." Södermanlands Spelmansförbunds samlingar. http://www.samlingarna.sormlandsspel.se/?page_id=1184

Eklund was a folk musician, was recorded playing the hummel on Swedish radio in the 1980s: "… 1984 sände SR ett program om hummeln. Magnus Gustavsson och Anders samtalar och Anders spelar låtar på sin hummel. | Dottern Clara Frohm har försett arkivet med en inspelning av radioprogrammet." 20-minute mp3 file w/ interview in Swedish and several tunes. Has nice polska from Småland at 22:55. Also, this info on Malmberg:

Hummel – den äldre folkliga cittran – har få nutida utövare.
Traditionen levde längst i Småland och Otto Malmberg från Ljungby brukar anges som den siste traditionsbäraren. Han spelade på Skansen i 1900-talets begynnelse och var kanske inte var den siste traditionsbäraren, men han var den tidigaste som dokumenterades med en ljudinspelning (Yngve Laurells fonografinspelning).

Links to articles by Anders Eklund(h), "Hummeln – ett bortglömt folkinstrument" in Sörmlandslåten nr 1 1983; and Gösta Klemmings i Sörmlandslåten nr 2 1983.

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Polonäs ur en notbok från Sexdrega. Published on Jan 27, 2013. Anders Eklundh (1947-2007) spelar på hummel. / Anders Eklundh plays on a "hummel" a melody from a notebook from Sexdrega, Sweden. From the LP "Gammelharpa, säckpipa,hummel", 1986. [Uploaded by YouTube user silverbasharpa -- directory w/ several Swedish folk tunes at https://www.youtube.com/user/silverbasharpa/videos.

Pope Francis in Bethlehem ** UPDATED x1 ** footage in Manger Square and Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem

Some fascinating unedited video available of Pope Francis' visit today to Bethlehem …

Welcome Ceremony for the Pope in the State of Palestine. Official Vatican live feed video of the entire ceremony in Manger Square: "Streamed live on May 25, 2014, Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pope Francis is greeted by Mr Mahmud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, at the welcome ceremony upon his arrival in the Country and meets the Palestinian highest personalities." (1:20:26)

Voiceover sounds like it's in Arabic. I'll try to find a description in English of the festivities, which include a mixture of traditional and what sounds like Christian contemporary with an Middle Eastern lilt to it.

Holy Mass celebrated by the Pope in Bethlehem and Regina Coeli. Vatican feed. "Streamed live on May 25, 2014. Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pope Francis presides over the Holy Mass in the Manger Square in Bethlehem followed by the Regina Coeli Prayer. Groups of faithfull from Gaza and Galilee and migrants from Asia attend the celebration." Christmas carol "Angels we have heard on high" (to give it its English words) at 18:09 as mass begins. (2:02:31-28:38:00)

The live blog on the Times of Israel website has detailed coverage, from an Israeli perspective, with embeds of official Vatican video, including the welcoming ceremonies above and live feeds of:

• The mass in Manger Square; and
• A meeting outside the Church of the Nativity with youth from Dheisheh and other refugee camps.

Times of Israel blog is headlined:

Pope ends first day of visit with message of unity, brotherhood

Netanyahu commits to protecting ‘status quo’ at holy sites; Peres, Abbas agree to meet in Vatican; pontiff calls Israeli-Palestinian conflict ‘increasingly unacceptable’

Available at http://www.timesofisrael.com/pope-francis-to-touch-down-in-bethlehem-sunday-morning/#ixzz32l4CvZJw The live blog has other sidelights of the pope's visit to Bethlehem, his departure for Israel and arrival at Ben Gurion airport, for an official welcome to Israel and a helicopter ride with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials to Jerusalem.

Al Jazeera's English-language website has coverage from Arab perspective:

• POPE'S HOLY LAND VISIT CASTS LIGHT ON PLIGHT OF PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS -- a pre-story at http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/24/pope-palestinianchristians.html
• POPE FRANCIS INVITES ISRAELI, PALESTINIAN LEADERS TO VATICAN -- roundup at http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/25/pope-francis-wallpalestine.html

Video of the pope's entire trip to the Holy Land is available on the Vatican's YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7E-LYc1wivk33iyt5bR5zQ.

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Pope Francis in Israel - The First Day. Video from live feed produced by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Service in Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre begins at 4:16.

Live Broadcast [above] from Pope's visit: http://on.fb.me/1jRqEHp

The first day of Pope Francis' visit to Israel began with an official ceremony upon his arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport. The Pope was greeted by President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ministers of the Israeli government.

The Pope then flew by helicopter to Jerusalem's Mount Scopus, where he was welcomed by Jerusalem Mayor, Nir Barkat.

Following his arrival in Jerusalem, Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew met at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to commemorate a meeting of their revered predecessors, Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, which took place 50 years ago in the Holy Land. The meeting of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Francis in Jerusalem is a strong symbolic confirmation of the commitment and determination to continue the path which the two great Church leaders inaugurated half a century ago.

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Ecumenical event on the anniversary of the meeting between Paul VI and Athenagoras. Orthodox religious ceremony begins at 1:05:00; Latin rite choir and recessional from 1:50:00. Streamed live on May 25, 2014. Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew meet in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the meeting in Jerusalem between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras. (2:17:42)

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Lots of highlights on Times of Israel live blog at http://www.timesofisrael.com/pope-heads-to-temple-mount-western-wall-on-last-day-of-trip/. Head and subhead sum it up, again from an Israeli perspective:

Pray for us, Netanyahu asks Francis as papal visit ends

Pope flies back to Rome; PM defends security barrier to pontiff; Francis at Yad Vashem calls Holocaust greatest evil in history; makes unscheduled stop at memorial to terror victims

"Fill-A Me Up" by Pepper Choplin

A cool anthem we started practicing tonight for Pentecost at Atonement ...

As performed with baritone solo by the Motet Singers of Louisville, Ky.

Arrangement from the Netherlands (?) with hand drums backing choir and tenor solo

Sheet music at http://www.jwpepper.com/Fill-A-Me-Up/8060245.item#.U31xe82mebM". Pepper Choplin served 22 years as music minister at Greystone Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C. He has a B.M. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and an M.M. in composition from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Bio at http://www.pepperchoplin.com/.

Latin American baroque, world music, etc.

While the word isn't mentioned in the YouTube notes, you can hear what creolization sounds like in this choral piece by 17th- and early 18th-century Latin American composer Juan de Araujo … it's on the cusp of Spanish renaissance and baroque, but performed with a distinct Latino beat …

Los Coflades de la estleya, by Juan de Araujo.
Crescendo [an early music group in New England] presented in concert in April 2011 works of the Spanish and Latin American Renaissance. This work, by Juan de Araujo (1646 - 1712), the concluding number on the program, is considerably later than most of the music on the program, and reflects the fusion of Spanish renaissance music with the music of the indigenous peoples of Latin America. Salome Sandoval, also playing the vihuela, Jordan Rose Lee, and Diana Brewer are the soprano soloists. [Blurb: Crescendo "brings rarely heard choral and instrumental music, sacred and secular, performed by professionals and talented amateurs, to the communities of northwestern Connecticut, from western Massachusetts, and from eastern New York State."

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Excerpt from Simon Broughton. "Baroque: The Latin American Way." Sinfini Music. 15 March 2013. http://sinfinimusic.com/uk/features/series/classical-connections/latin-american-baroque.

At first the music was dominated by the sacred, polyphonic music of the leading composers from Spain, like Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) who never visited Latin America. Hernando Franco (1532-85), born in Spain, was probably the first notable composer to move to the New World where he became chapel master in Santiago de Guatamala, and, in 1575, in Mexico City. Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (1590-1644), also born in Spain, became chapel master in Puebla in 1629. The polyphonic music is gorgeously beautiful, but at first belongs very much to the European tradition. Things start to get interesting when the Latin and indigenous music starts to mix.

Colonisation was underway all over Latin America, with the Jesuits leading the missions into the areas that are now Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. In the mid-16th century, a Jesuit missionary wrote to his superiors in Europe that with just one orchestra he would be able to convert the whole continent to Catholicism. Sacred music starts to be sung in languages like Quechua (the language of the Incas in Peru) and Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs in Mexico), local dance rhythms start to be heard and the harp takes over from the organ as an instrument of ecclesiastical music.

A new musical identity

You can hear these changes in the music of Juan de Araujo (1646-1712), born in Spain, but who grew up in Lima, Peru and also worked in La Planta (now Sucre), Bolivia. His ‘Los coflades de la estleya’ is fast, rhythmic and clearly related to what would become Afro-Cuban rumba. This piece is a villancico, which exists in both sacred and secular forms, but was often accompanied by local instruments such as rattles and drums.

This Sinfini feature story is a pretty good portal to the whole genre, BTW, with several YouTube clips embedded. The piece titled "Florilegium and Arakaendar Bolivia Choir recording Bolivian Baroque [Vol. 3]" highlights contrasting Spanish and indigenous pronunciations of the word "virgin" in a bouncy little song dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Links to background on period Bolivian music.

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Interview with Broughton on Brian Q. Silver's blog World Music From The Voice of America at http://www.voaworldmusic.com/2010/10/interview-with-simon-broughton-editor.html. Broughton, who is an editor of the Rough Guide to World Music and Songlines magazine in London, draws a useful distinction between world music and "'ethnographic music' -- that is, music in the purely traditional styles of the countries of origin, without undue influence from "world music" and its tendencies toward blending and integration." French are big on ethnographic music.

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Music and Urban Society in Colonial Latin America. Ed. Geoffrey Baker and Tess Knighton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Amazon blurb: "The fields of colonial history and urban music history are growing areas of interest within musicology. This collection of essays proposes a new view of the history of music in colonial Latin America, and will be of interest to social and cultural historians as well as musicologists. Geoffrey Baker is a Senior Lecturer in the music department, Royal Holloway, University of London. … Tess Knighton is a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and is Editor of the Boydell Press's Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music series. …"

Comparative lit scholar from Mauritius on creolization, Germanic languages, St. Augustine & other things that matter

Christopher J. Lee. "Creole: The Original Language" [interview with Françoise Lionnet]. Mail & Guardian Online. 4 Oct. 2013. http://mg.co.za/article/2013-10-04-00-in-celebration-of-creolisation

"Françoise Lionnet is a professor of comparative literature and director of the African Studies Centre at the University of California in Los Angeles. Originally from Mauritius … a Mellon distinguished visiting scholar at Wits University, where she has delivered a series of lectures summarising her work. * * * Christopher J Lee is a lecturer at the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa and in the department of international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand." * * * Mail & Guardian is an online newspaper in South Africa.

Some excerpts:

One of your most recent books is entitled The Creolisation of Theory. What draws you to creolisation as a concept?

The concept of creolisation first emerged in the field of linguistics to describe the creation of new contact languages under colonisation and slavery. It was initially limited to the study of "dialects" and "patois", which were believed to be bastardised forms of communication developed by slaves and indentured servants using the European languages of their masters in the New World. Today, linguists agree that creolisation is a universal phenomenon.

All English and Germanic languages began as creolised languages that continue to absorb new idioms. Globalisation is accelerating this process in new and unforeseen ways. In Africa, Afrikaans and Swahili can be considered "creoles". Swahili is the lingua franca of the Indian Ocean coastline, from Somalia to Mozambique and the Seychelles. It is a language of hybrid cultures, has a 100-year-old poetic tradition, and draws its linguistic resources from other languages.

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Being from Mauritius, how has this background informed your scholarship?

The languages, literatures and oral cultures of my native island have always been a major interest of mine. I was trained in comparative literature and in my first book I wrote about the genre of autobiography, starting with St Augustine of Hippo and ending with contemporary Caribbean, African-American and Mauritian writers.

Augustine was North African and raised under Roman rule. His relationship to Latin, in which he wrote, was similar to that of many other native writers who had to become literate in a colonial language, but retained strong links to their mother tongue. Such issues resonate with me as a multilingual Mauritian.

This question is linked to the fundamental linguistic rights of populations whose forms of oral expression are integral to their identities. These local cultures are not passive recipients of global influences. Rather, they are actively reworking influences from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, producing their own creolised mixes in the process, just as during the colonial era.

The problem, of course, is that "global" languages such as English, French or Hindi can easily displace smaller ones. So, there has to be a political will to support local languages, to encourage local forms of expression, from music to poetry and the visual arts. Kreol is now taught as a required subject in all the public schools in Mauritius. This is an important step toward the democratisation of education.