Phil Trier, 1823-2012

Phil Trier, founder of the Old Town School of Music and a major influence in bringing Sacred Harp singing to the Midwest, died June 14. In an email to Chicago singers, Ted Mercer said he "was instrumental in the founding of the Chicago Sacred Harp Singers," when he "presided over a momentous gathering at the Old Town School of Folk Music in November, 1983." He was 89. From Trier's obituary in today's Evanston Review, a subsidiary of the Chicago Sun-Times. The obit appears to have been written by his family. Some excerpts:

Phillip served as Music Director at Lake Forest Academy from 1954 until 1971. He taught courses in music and the humanities and directed the Glee Club, the instrumental ensembles and the beloved annual Carol Service. During his tenure at the Academy he composed five dramatic musical works for his students, including A Walden Fantasia and Young Goodman Brown. He also made numerous arrangements and compositions for his choir including a song cycle of poetry by Robert Frost that brought the poet to Lake Forest for the Academy’s Centennial.

During this time he also began to compose operettas for his own family and friends, especially the folksinging Armstrong Family of Wilmette. These works were performed locally for schools and community centers as well as at the Fox Hollow Folk Festival in upstate New York and included adaptations of well-known folktales such as Rumplestiltskin and The Rootabaga Tales of Carl Sandburg.

Phillip was choirmaster and organist at many churches on the Northshore. He served at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Deerfield for over a decade. He also served at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Lake Forest, St. Timothy’s, The Congregational Church of Winnetka, and The First Baptist Church of Waukegan. In addition to traditional church music Phillip was instrumental in starting a group of “shape note singers” at the Old Town School of Folk Music in 1982, the Chicago Prairie Sacred Harp Singers.

In addition to his academic and church compositions Phillip composed widely in a variety of genres. Among his works are song cycles on poetry of Emily Dickinson, e.e. cummings, Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost, sonatas for viola, tuba, bassoon, and hammered dulcimer. a string Quartet, a brass Septet, a set of Preludes for piano based on the months, and an organ sonata. His “Crazy Inventions”, based on the Bach Two-Part Inventions and Prelude and Fudge for accordion, based on Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in d minor, were frequently performed by him to much acclaim.

And this ...

To his friends he is best remembered as the founder of the feast, the best party-giver on the Northshore. Phillip called these gatherings “musical soirees” and anyone who played an instrument was expected to bring it along and share in the musical festivities. There was also the summer solstice to look forward to when Phillip with his accordian, the Armstrong family with the bagpipes, and assorted neighbors with drums and whistles would arrive at the Gilson Park lakefront to sing up the sun at dawn. (A belated note of thanks to the Wilmette police who kindly looked the other way during this strange once-a-year ritual.)

Prairieland Dulcimers - "Cherokee Shuffle" and "Crooked Ridge"

Emailed over the weekend to people on the Prairieland Dulcimer Strings mailing list:

Hi everybody --

Our next meeting, the regular "third Thursday" session for June, is from 7 to 9 p.m. next Thursday, June 21, at Atonement Lutheran Church, 2800 West Jefferson in Springfield. We'll work on some new songs -- and maybe review one or two we've done before, since we have newbies who will want to learn them -- then go around the circle calling favorites during the second hour.

Thursday will be Mike and Kathe's last session with us before they move to Michigan, and Mike will be teaching two new tunes , "Cherokee Shuffle" and "Crooked Ridge." Mike introduced them this week, and they're grand tunes that were composed recently (which means they're not in the public domain) but have gotten to be favorites in dulcimer jams nationwide. "Cherokee Shuffle" is a bluegrass and old-time breakdown (usually played in A but sometimes also in D, even before the mountain dulcimer crowd got ahold of it), and "Crooked Ridge" is by Pam Kirby, who recorded with the Simmons family for McSpadden Dulcimers Inc.

So you can get an idea what they sound like, here are a couple of YouTube clips of a kid from Kentucky named Ashley Evans playing them chord-melody style:

-- Cherokee Shuffle: http://youtu.be/JqpdJJ-g41k

-- Crooked Ridge: http://youtu.be/ZEuogxdenSA

Her arrangements seem pretty close to the tab that Mike found for us.

Finally, while I was on YouTube I went looking for a musical tribute to Mike and Kathe's new home, and I found this from a neighboring state:

-- Football song: http://youtu.be/PXwv3JAWCoQ

But there isn't any dulcimer tab for it. Maybe that's a good thing!

The Church's Desolation as a dulcimer tune

During Friday's open mike at the Dulcimerville music camp in Black Mountain, N.C., I played a shape-note folk hymn called "The Church's Desolation" [Sacred Harp 89] on my Jethro Amburgey dulcimer. While I can't always hear the resemblances in tune families, this one is clearly related to "Barbry Allen." I played it as an instrumental, since I was most interested in demonstrating how good the old folk hymns sound when played on the Appalachian dulcimer in open modal tunings (CGG on my Amburgey). But, as I said Friday night, the words tell a powerful story and the tune is powerful in its own right.
Here's "The Church's Desolation" as sung in January at Southwestern Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, posted to YouTube by user stratfield42 of the Texas Sacred Harp Singers. His channel has a number of high-definition videos at singings in Texas. I've only looked at a few of them, but they seem to be a very good introduction to contemporary Sacred Harp singing at its best.



Words, from The Sacred Harp at http://fasola.org/ (click on "Indexes" and keep scrolling down to where it's indexed under "The"):

89 The Church’s Desolation
Tune: J. T. White, 1844
Words:
Meter: 8s,7s Double Iambic (8,7,8,7,8,7,8,7)

Well may Thy servants mourn, my God,
The Church’s desolation;
The state of Zion calls aloud
For grief and lamentation.
Once she was all alive to Thee
And thousands were converted,
But now a sad reverse we see,
Her glory is departed.

And has religion left the Church
Without a trace behind her?
Where shall I go, where shall I search,
That I once more may find her?
Adieu, ye proud, ye light and gay,
I’ll seek the brokenhearted,
Who weep when they of Zion say,
Her glory is departed.

Some few, like good Elijah stand,
While thousands have revolted,
In earnest for the heav’nly land
They never yet have halted.
With such religion doth remain,
For they are not perverted;
Oh may they all through men regain
The glory that’s departed.

ONLINE EDITIONS

The 1911 edition is available on line in the IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library on the International Music Score Library Project website (at http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/5/5a/IMSLP167291-PMLP214197-Sacred_Harp_James_ed_1911.pdf
Joe James, in his authoritative footnotes to the 1911 edition, says: "We have been unable to find the name of the author of the words. While they appear in the earliest song books in the United States, none of them, so far as we could find, has given the author of the hymn or the date of composition."

The Digital and Multimedia Center of Michigan State University Libraries has the 1860 edition at http://archive.lib.msu.edu/AFS/dmc/ssb/public/all/sacredharp/harp.html and http://digital.lib.msu.edu/collections/index.cfm?TitleID=610  -- it has two verses in the middle that do not appear in the 1911 or 1991 Denson revisions.

Benedictine spirituality -

Retrieved from my faculty email account:

Campus Ministry Minute

Janoski, Steven A.
Sent: Mon 5/21/2012 6:55 AM
To: #All Springfield Campus Faculty; #All Springfield Campus Adjunct Faculty; #All Springfield Campus Staff
Cc:

“I cannot go on thinking that nodding to neighbors in the parking lot is hospitality. I cannot fool myself into thinking that being nice to those who are my kind and my class suffices for the moral dimensions of hospitality.”

(from Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today by Joan D. Chittister, OSB, page 130)

Fr. Steven Janoski
Director of Campus Ministry
Benedictine University at Springfield
1500 N. Fifth St.
Springfield, IL 62702

DNA study suggests mixed racial origins of Melungeons in East Tennessee

http://news.yahoo.com/dna-study-seeks-origin-appalachias-melungeons-201144041.html

 NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps from Turkish slaves or Gypsies.

Now a new DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy attempts to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking. The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin.

And that report, which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn't sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry. ...

And so on ... confirms what's been hypothesized for a long time. Some good quotes from 19th-century court cases on racial categories, attitudes of the time ...

"Old Ship of Zion" (The Happy Sailor)

Dr. B.J. Reagon last performance wSweet Honey in the Rock. Dr.. Bernise Johnson Reagon's last performance with Sweet Honey in the Rock. Performing 'Old Ship of Zion' live at a concert at the Warner theater in Washington, D.C.

Rev C.L Franklin(Aretha Franklin's father) - "The Old Ship Of Zion"

Sacred Harp 388 The Happy Sailor Coker UMC Hour 3 San Antonio Texas 1991 Denison Revision.mp4

From John Bealle's liner notes to a CD of the National Sacred Harp Convention singing their version of the song - “The Happy Sailor” (388) [led by] Seth Holloway, Nashville TN

C. J. Griggs (1911) | Arr. B. F. White (1859) Seth Holloway is in the music business in Nashville and was chair of the Young People’s Convention when the singing was hosted in that city. He is descended through his mother Sarah Smith from the singing Beasley family of Marion County, Alabama. His uncle Joe Beasley (1929- 1995) made some important recordings of Sacred Harp beginning during the 1950s that were recently released on compact disk. Beasley moved from Alabama to New York City and was a pivotal figure in the Sacred Harp revival there during the years before his death in 1995. In Beasley’s honor, a scholarship fund has been established that is awarded to young Sacred Harp singers to help with college expenses. _ Benjamin Franklin White (1800-1879) was the chief compiler of The Sacred Harp. In 1842 he moved his family from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to Harris County, Georgia. It was there that White, having contributed in some now-unknown capacity to William Walker’s Southern Harmony, set about to compile his own book. Along with The Sacred Harp, his chief contribution to religious song was the founding of the Southern Musical Convention (1845), thereby setting in motion the practice of democratically-organized singing conventions that has endured continuously since then. _ The tune of this song was arranged by B. F. White for the 1859 edition of The Sacred Harp; singer C. J. Griggs of Atlanta contributed the second and third verses. Griggs was a steadfast supporter of old sacred songs through the period when many turned to gospel music, and served J. S. James as assistant president of the United Convention in its early years. _According to James, the author of the original verse of the text is unknown. Both text and tune have circulated widely in variants under the title “The Old Ship of Zion,” notably as an African-American spiritual. As a spiritual, the most famous printed setting is surely the transcription by Lucy McKim in the book Slave Songs of the United States (1867), pp. 102-3. See: Jackson, Spiritual Folksongs, song #210. Information on C. J. Griggs is from the 1911 James footnote to “The Happy Sailor.” Joe Beasley’s recording is the Joe Beasley Memorial Sacred Harp Album: Northwestern Alabama 1954~1976~1977~1978, produced by Jean Seiler, 1999.

John Beale 2003 Liner notes. Traditional Musics of Alabama, Volume 3: 2002 National Sacred Harp Singing Convention. CD. Alabama Traditions 203, produced by the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture. http://www.arts.state.al.us/actc/vol3all.pdf

A HISTORY OF U.S. ARMY BANDS
Subcourse Number MU0010
EDITION D
US Army Element, School of Music
1420 Gator Blvd, Norfolk, VA 23521-5170
a 3 Credit Hoursa
Edition Date: October 2005
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/armybands.pdf

* * *

13. BANDS OF THE WEST

a. During the era after the Civil War, the country expanded westward. New posts were established throughout the great frontier. Although regimental bands were abolished by the Army Act of 1869, the Army carried music with it to the West. Regimental commanders continued to maintain bands. These bands usually consisted of men detailed for that purpose. They were paid from the regimental fund or by subscription.

b. Post life was lonesome and unexciting with few chances to experience culture. Leading parades, performing for dances, providing concerts and escorting funerals brought a certain amount of pomp, entertainment, and culture to remote areas. Every evening, when not in the field, the band gave an hour concert in front of the regimental headquarters. Army bands were present at many historic events. In 1869, the 21st Infantry Band helped to celebrate the joining of the nation with the golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah.

c. Bands played for ceremonies marking the end of campaigns and hostilities. After Geronimo surrendered, he and the other Indian prisoners were sent to an Indian reservation located in Florida. On September 8, 1886, the Fourth Cavalry Band assembled on the parade ground at Fort Bowie and played as the prisoners were escorted from Fort Bowie to be loaded aboard a train for Florida.

d. On January 21, 1891, General Miles' Army staged a final grand review at the Pine Ridge Agency to mark the end of the Ghost Dance Uprising. On this occasion, the First Infantry Regimental Band provided the music.

e. During this period, Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan commanded the Division of the Missouri (1869 to 1883). Many of the same officers serving under him during the Civil War now had commands in his division. Among them was Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer. As mentioned earlier, both Sheridan and Custer loved music and knew the effect of music upon their troops. As a result, bands found themselves at the front once more.

f. LTC Custer insisted on a band for the Seventh Cavalry. The musicians were given gray mounts (horses). This was the traditional color for musicians. Sheridan used the color gray for his bands during the Civil War. This presented an additional requirement for the band; each bandsman also had to be a superb horseman. In order to keep the hands free while playing, the musician controlled the horse with his knees. It was a difficult enough task for the musician to perform while the horse was standing still or at a walk. This problem was only compounded when playing at the charge.

g. The mounted band of the Seventh Cavalry accompanied Custer on many campaigns. Playing Garry Owen, the band led his charge at the Washita River in 1868 and again in 1873 on the north bank of the Yellowstone below the mouth of the Bighorn.

h. By 1876, a number of Congressional acts provided the Army with 40 chief musicians, 60 principal musicians, 10 chief trumpeters, 240 trumpeters, and 628 musicians. All the positions of chief trumpeter or trumpeter were assigned to the 10 cavalry regiments (1 chief trumpeter and 24 trumpeters per regiment).

i. In garrison, the trumpeters were posted on a rotation basis to the guardhouse. They played the daily calls which so regulated post life, even causing one lieutenant's wife to write, "We lived, ate, slept by the bugle calls."

j. In the field, one bugler reported to the regimental commander as orderly bugler of the day. Once a command or signal was given on the march, the bugler played the appropriate call for that command or signal. After a pause, he repeated the last note. The original call that was sounded became the preparatory command. The repeated last note became the signal of execution. In addition, a call which ascended the musical scale indicated movement to the right of the line or column while a call which descended the scale indicated movement to the left of the line or column.

k. An additional duty of the orderly bugler of the day was messenger for the regimental commander. Trumpeter John Martin (Giovanni Martini, originally a drummer for Garibaldi during the wars to unite Italy) was the orderly bugler of the day at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. His life was spared when sent back with a message from Custer's Adjutant (LT W.W. Cooke) to Colonel Benteen requesting the ammunition packs brought forward. In 1879, Martin was called to Chicago to give testimony at the court of inquiry investigating the events at the Little Big Horn.

l. The musical and non-musical requirements of the bands and field musicians often put them on the front lines and exposed to fire. However, they responded to these duties as they had during the Civil War. Some of the musicians earned the Medal of Honor for their individual actions. For example, Trumpeter John E. Clancy, Light Battery E, First Artillery, received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Wounded Knee Creek, December 29, 1890.

m. In 1899, an effort was made to improve military musical units by selecting suitable men for regimental bands from recruits at depots or by special enlistment. n. In 1894, a War Department general order authorized one sergeant and 20 privates per band, plus the chief musician or leader.

o. Though no record dating before 1889 indicates any standard instrumentation for Army bands, a list of the instruments issued to each regiment for the use of its band during the period 1889-1895 gives some indication of the instrumentation of the times. This list included the following: D-flat piccolo, concert flute, E-flat clarinets, B-flat clarinets, E-flat cornets, B-flat cornets or flugelhorns, E-flat altos, B-flat trombones (valve or slide), B-flat baritone, E-flat basses, snare drum, bass drum, and cymbals. a. On February 15, 1898, an explosion sank the USS MAINE in Havana Harbor killing 266

"Early in the Morning" - in Slave Songs of the United States (1867)

Early in the Morning - Andrew Calhoun

Sea Island Spiritual found in "Slave Songs of the United States," published 1867.
"Walk 'em easy round the heaven [3x]
Till all living may join that band."
Video by Muriel Poehler, Royalton, MN 4/20/2009

Calhoun is a Chicago singer-songwriter who specializes in Sea Island spirituals and Anglo-Celtic traditional music. From his website: "Veteran Chicago area folksinger/songwriter Andrew Calhoun is joined in performance by his daughter Casey, adding vocals and interpretive dance. Casey's pure, distinctive voice takes the lead on songs by artists from Anais Mitchell to Frank Loesser, and adds new dimensions of harmony and call-and-response to Calhoun originals, Scottish ballads and folksongs, and rare 19th century African-American spirituals. Casey, an accomplished dancer, moves to Mary Oliver's poetry and Dave Carter's music in this striking, joyful combination of complementary talents."

"The Buffaloes" - a regimental song of the 10th Cavalry from the 1880s (and 1960s) - and snippets of camp life in Spanish-American War

Wikipedia entry on 10th_Cavalry_Regiment_(United_States) has the text as a "Regimental Song of the Tenth Cavalry Regiment from about 1885. Sung to the tune of Stephen Foster's "Camptown Races"):

We’re fighting bulls of the Buffaloes,
Git a goin’ – git a goin’
From Kansas’ plains we’ll hunt our foes;
A trottin’ down the line.
Our range spreads west to Santa Fe,
Git a goin’ – git a goin’.
From Dakota down the Mexican way;
A trottin’ down the line.
[CHORUS:]
Goin’ to drill all day
Goin’ to drill all night,
We got our money on the buffaloes,
Somebody bet on the fight.

Cited to “Official 4ID History 4th Infantry Division Homepage: History". United States Army. 2 August 2010. Archived from the original on 29 January 2010. Retrieved 9 February 2010; and "Official 4ID History 4th Infantry Division Homepage: History - 1-10 Cav". United States Army. 2012-02-28. Both links broken.

Song is also available linked to a History of the 1st Cavalry Division webpage by Cavalry Outpost Publications ® and Trooper Wm. H. Boudreau, "F" Troop, 8th Cavalry Regiment (1946 - 1947): 10th Cavalry Regiment - Organizational Legacy - "Ready And Forward" ... identified as "Regimental Song of the 10th Cavalry Regiment." No date.

Spanish-American War

• From Salt Lake Tribune, April 20, 1898, as the 24th Infantry was preparing to ship out for the Spanish-American War:

  One soldier had his kid spread out on the floor of the veranda in front of his barracks. It contained besides the usual camp equipment, a cracked blue mug with a gilt label, "From One Who Loves You" running diagonally across its face. An inscription on the photography gave Mobile, Ala., as the place where it was taken, and as the soldier rolled up his belongings he softly hummed:

  "Down Mobile, down Mobile,
  How I Love 'at pretty yellow gal,
  Down Mobile." (Clark 234)

  Michael J. Clark, "Improbable Ambassadors: Black Soldiers at Fort Douglas, 1896-99." Buffalo Soldiers in the West: A Black Soldiers Anthology. Ed. Bruce A. Glasrud and Michael N. Searles. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. 221-41.

• Writing in The Atlantic in 1903, Oswald Garrison Villiard says:

  As soon as the army settled down in the trenches before Santiago, smuggled musical instruments -- guitars, banjos, mouth organs, and what not -- appeared among the negro troops as if by magic, and they were ever in use. It was at once a scene of cheerfulness and gayety, and the officers had their usual trouble in making the men go to sleep instead of spending the night in talking, singing, and gaming. In the peaceful camp of the Third Alabama, in that state, the scenes were similar. There was always "a steady hum of laughter and talk, dance, song, shout, and the twang of musical instruments." It was "a scene full of life and fun, of jostling, scuffling, and racing, of clown performances and cake-walks, of impromptu minstrelsy, speech-making, and preaching, of deviling, guying, and fighting, both real and mimic." The colonel found great difficulty in getting men to work alone. Two would volunteer for any service. "Colonel," said a visitor to the camp, "your sentinels are sociable fellows. I saw No. 5 over at the end of his beat entertaining No. 6 with some fancy manual of arms. Afterwards, with equal amiability, No. 6 executed a most artistic cake-walk for his friend." It must be remembered here that this colonel's men were typical Southern negroes, literate and illiterate, and all new to military life.

  Oswald Garrison Villard, "The Negro in the Regular Army, Atlantic Monthly, 91, 1903, 721-729. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/VilNegr.html.

"Ain't I Glad I Got Out of the Wilderness" - played by Michigan troops in Civil War

http://bentley.umich.edu/research/guides/civilwar/introduction.php Ida C. Brown, "Michigan Men in the Civil War" Introduction: Subject Guides and Indexes, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan Frequently at the end of a march a new camp was set up, the men working "very briskly . . . levelling the ground, felling trees, putting up tents, digging wells [and] building log huts." Quite as frequently before the day was ended an order came "to strike tents and be ready to move in two hours." At the end of the two hours "the tents were down [the men] were on the move again, the band playing 'Ain't I glad to get out of the wilderness.'" Perhaps at the end of this march no camp was built. The men spread their blankets on the ground for the night but not sleeping, as one soldier said, "until we had told so many stories and joked, so much that I nearly laughed myself to death."

Old-time and Irish session links - the basics

http://home.comcast.net/~saustin98/lark/ Vashon Celtic Tunes of Seattle lead sheet, chords and MIDI file http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/tunes.htm Old Time Fiddle Tunes A collection of fiddle tunes from old recordings and workshops, transcribed by John Lamancusa of Penn State

"Life Let Us Cherish" / "Freut euch des Leb­ens"

Then he took his fiddle out of its box. He played for a long time in the twilight, while Laura and Mary sat close to him and Ma rocked Carrie nearby... - He played 'The Campbells Are Coming, Hurrah! Hurrah!' Then he played 'Life Let Us Cherish.' And he put away the fiddle ... -- On the Banks of Plum Creek, Chapter 26, "Grasshopper Eggs"

-- Pioneer Girl: Fact and Fiction of Laura Ingalls Wilder

The University of North Carolina has a copy of Hans Georg Nägeli, Life Let Us Cherish. With variations by Mozart. published in New York by W. Dubois in 1818. Several copies attributed to Mozart in the Levy collection at Johns Hopkins.

The best playing music is on the ABC Notation website ... it's in G instead of F, and there are several websites that will transpose it down to "D for dulcimer."
Nancy Cleaveland has the best background on the song at her Pioneer Girl: Fact and Fiction in Laura Ingalls Wilder website:

"Life Let Us Cherish" was originally a song entitled "Freut Euch des Lebens," written in 1796 by Swiss poet Johann Martin Usteri and composer Hans Georg Nageli. It became immensely popular in America as "Life Let Us Cherish." ...

With lyrics and a MIDI file. Cleaveland has a lot of period music in her INDEX OF SONGS FROM THE "LITTLE HOUSE"® BOOKS.

"Freut euch des Lebens" by German pop singer Edith Prock

The Dictionary of Music and Musicians on Wikisource has this: "LIFE LET US CHERISH. A favourite German song, commencing 'Freut euch des Lebens,' the author of which is Martin Usteri of Zurich ; first published in the ' Gottinger Musen- almanach ' for 1 796 without the author's name. The music was written in 1793 by Hans Georg Nageli. It is used as subject for the elaborate variations which form the last movement of Woelfl's celebrated sonata called ' Non plus ultra.' [R.M.]"

"The Regular Army O" - Harrigan and Branham

A very early Broadway show tune with lyrics by Edward Harrigan and music by David Braham, in 1874 before the theaters on Broadway in lower Manhattan were known as "Broadway." Became a favorite of regular army troops, who wrote some of their own lyrics to it. (See the thread DTStudy: The Regular Army, O (Harrigan & Braham) on Mudcat Cafe. Chorus ends: "... The drums they roll, upon my soul, for that's the way we go / Forty miles a day on beans and hay in the Regular Army, Oh."

YouTube has Molly's Revenge A Regular Army O (beginning at 2:21). At the Performing Arts Center of Pacific Grove< Calif., during the November 2011 Celtic Winter's Eve.

Sheet music (in F# minor?) in Levy collection at Johns Hopkins. ABC file in A (= F#m?) at abcnotation.com ...

"Rory O'Moore" / and a wonderful version of "March of the Kings of Laois" on TG4

A 19th-century Anglo-Irish music hall song by Samuel Lover, set to an old tune commemorating Rory O'Moore (Ruairí Ó Mórdha) of Co. Laois, who took part in the rebellion of 1641, known now as the March of the King of Laois. Gen. Benjamin Grierson set lyrics criticizing Stephen A. Douglas to the music hall version during the election of 1860.

Lissa Schneckenburger LIVE at KCAW in Sitka - Rory O'More.

Lissa Schneckenburger and Bethany Waickman perform "Rory O'More" live during the Good Day Radio Show, 11-12-10, at Raven Radio, KCAW in Sitka, Alaska.

Sung by the Wolfe Tones /w lyrics at http://youtu.be/EJDS6ASW0ok ... cf. March of the King of Laois/O'Sullivan's March by Lorinda Jones, harp; Larry Green, fiddle; and Cathy Wilde, uillean pipes, at http://youtu.be/hSuVXmd18W4.

Benjamin Grierson used it for a campaign song in 1860 - William H. Leckie and Shirley A. Leckie, Unlikely Warriors: General Benjamin Grierson and His Family (Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1984). 41-41.

In Meredosia, the task of writing verses for campaign songs, sung to old, well-known tunes, fell to Ben, who relished the assignment. He was especially proud of one entitled "Douglas's Record, or Political Gymnastics," set to the tune of "Rory O'More" and including this refrain: "O! Stephen A Douglas is a wonderful man / In political gymnastics he leads the van / Most notable feats he performs with great ease / On all sides of all questions everybody to please" [n38 Ben to Alice, June 1, 1860]

Sheet music for the song by Samuel Lover, for voice and piano (with an interesting accompaniment w/ block chords used as a drone) in The Ideal Home Music Library, Vol. 9, Sentimental Songs, ed. Albert Ernest Wier (New York: Scribners, 1913) at http://sheetmusicpoint.com/collections/i/the-ideal-home-music-library/. Also in Digital Tradition with MIDI file, ABC notation and mountain dulcimer tab available for those who want it. Lover was an Anglo-Irish songwriter - bio on Wikipedia.

And here's where the music hall tune comes from, the "March of the Kings of Laois," as performed on button box and keyboard in a pub session for RTE TG4's Geantraí show:

Lissa Schneckenburger's tutorial on singing with fiddle accompaniment, backing her voice with two-note chords ...

Schneckenburger's latest CD dance has Rory O'Moore plus a lot of contradance tunes:

1.Petronella 2.Lamplighter's Hornpipe/Suffer the Child 3.Jefferson and Liberty/Bert Ferguson 4.Lady Walpole's Reel/The Mountain Ranger/Nancy King 5.Eugenia's Waltz 6.Moneymusk 7. Huntsman's Chorus 8.Rory O'More 9.Fisher's Hornpipe 10.Jamie Allen FEATURING: Lissa Schneckenburger (fiddle), Bethany Waickman (guitar, pump organ), Corey DiMario (double bass), Dave Cory (tenor banjo), David Harris (euphonium, trombone), David Kaynor (fiddle), Eric Merrill (viola), Jeremiah McLane (piano, accordion), Keith Murphy (guitar, piano), Stefan Amidon (percussion)

Miscellaneous notes: Historically informed performance practice

composer and record producer Michael Sartorius


-
http://www.baroquemusic.org/barperf.html BAROQUE MUSIC PERFORMANCE: "Authentic" or "Traditional"



There is a spirit to every age, every composer, and every piece of music. In baroque times secular and sacred life were very much inter-related, and music was to be enjoyed, but also respected as a spiritual gift. Bach spoke often of a piece, its performance, and the instrumentation or style with which it was performed as requiring gravitas. More importantly, the spirit of the baroque is characterized above all by clarity, for the music is very contrapuntal (fugal/canonic) and every note, every line has its place. Love and respect for the music, enjoyment in performance, and above all, clarity in the articulation, ensemble and recording balance. These are the true essentials of baroque music. If performance practices billed as “authentic” on "period" instruments can reveal these qualities and this spirit then that is true authenticity. If modern instruments can do the same, then that too is authenticity. It’s the spirit that counts.


story in Slate.com web magazine by composer and biographer (Brahms and Charles Ives) Jan Stafford

In Search of Lost Sounds
Why you've never really heard the "Moonlight" Sonata.
By Jan Swafford|Posted Tuesday, March 2, 2010, at 7:06 AM ET




The Wolf at Our Heels
The centuries-old struggle to play in tune.
By Jan Swafford|Posted Tuesday, April 20, 2010, at 10:08 AM ET

“‘Abe ... Never Could Sing Much’: Camp Meeting Songs and Fiddle Tunes in New Salem.”

“‘Abe ... Never Could Sing Much’: Camp Meeting Songs and Fiddle Tunes in New Salem.”

Pete Ellertsen, volunteer editor in the oral history program at Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, will give a talk entirled “‘Abe … Never Could Sing Much’: Camp Meeting Songs and Fiddle Tunes in New Salem” from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, April 28, in the conference room at the Visitor Center, Lincoln’s New Salem State Historic Site, off Ill. 97 at Petersburg.

Pete will present a program based on his research into the music of New Salem, where he uses the Appalachian dulcimer to interpret the Southern upland culture of the period. During the 1830s, popular sheet music for piano and guitar was beginning to compete with the Anglo-Celtic ballads, fiddle tunes and folk hymns handed down by oral tradition. So we can document both kinds of music on the Illinois frontier.

Pete will emphasize music attested at New Salem and the nearby Rock Creek Cumberland Presbyterian Church, as well as songs that William Herndon was told were sung by Abraham Lincoln's family and fiddle tunes that John Armstrong, the son of old settlers, played for Edgar Lee Masters in 1914, a session of which Masters said "I felt that somehow I was in the
Rutledge Tavern at New Salem" and "I felt that he was re-creating the past of the deserted village for me."

Carl Michael Bellman - "Opp Amaryllis" [Up Amaryllis] - Fredmans Sång N:o 31

Text, in Swedish, and music (in D) on Bellman website at http://www.bellman.net/texter/sang.php?nr=31&ord=Amaryllis. Commentary:

Daterad till 1773.
Sången hörde troligen till Bellmans opera Fiskarena. Förebilden till kvinnan i båten kan ha varit Wilhelmina Norman, som Bellman uppvaktade sommaren 1773.
Någon förlaga till melodin har inte hittats. Somliga har därför hävdat att denna melodi måste vara komponerad av Bellman själv. Det är naturligtvis mycket möjligt, men några bevis för att så skulle vara fallet finns det inte.

Singable English translation in PoemHunter.com.

YouTube has two good clips:

Carl Michael Bellman - Up Amaryllis (in English). Songs of Fredman (No. 31). Opp Amaryllis. Performer: Martin Best.



In Swedish by singer-songwriter Elina Järventaus Johansson.

"I Been a Swede from North Dakota" / Slim Jim and the Vagabond Kid Song Collection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_and_Clarence_Iverson Ernest and Clarence Iverson aka Slim Jim and the Vagabond Kid

Song Collection (1939) available as a PDF file

Å Kjøre Vatn http://youtu.be/wphGqM7eyLk Svein Haagensen - Å Kjøre Vatten / Husmannspolka

Nicolina http://youtu.be/Qo4C_tdHpn8 YouTube

Ernest Iverson, "Slim Jim", was the most popular local country/cowboy singer in Minnesota during the 1930s, '40's and '50's. He was a regular on KEYD, WDGY and KSTP radio stations, and a member of the KSTP Sunset Valley Barn Dance. His signature song was "Nikolina".

Flickan vid Bellmansro http://www.stockholmskallan.se/Soksida/Post/?nid=24157 Humoristen Kalle Nämndeman sjunger "Flickan vid Bellmansro" i en inspelning från maj 1923.



http://www.mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?songid=8380 Mudcat Cafe has this:

I go down to Seven Corners,
Where Salvation Army play,
One dem vomans come to me
This is what dat voman say:

She say, "Will you work for Yesus?"
I say, "How much Yesus pay?"
She say, "Yesus don't pay nothing"
I say, "I won't work today."

"Shepherd's Hey" -

Very informative thread with lead sheet (in G) on the Session website ... cites lyrics:

"One can whistle, two can play, three can dance the Shepherd's Hey"

* * *

"Oh dear mother, what a fool I be;
Here are six young fellows come a-courting me.
Three are blind and the others can't see;
Oh dear mother, what a fool I be!"

Not a good fit on the second one, as the discussion suggests, but close enough.



Kintbury villagers join in to celebrate May Day! Kintbury Morris and the Garston Gallopers lead the way with Derek Shaw on melodeon. Kintbury is a village in the southwest of England. Uploaded by juliacrobinson on May 3, 2010.



BBC PROMS 2011 from the Royal Albert Hall, London. A Late Night Prom celebrating anniversary composer Percy Grainger. Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell leads the way into the musical world of a composer she finds 'quirky and outrageous and very unconventional', concentrating on Grainger's fascinating and varied responses to folk music. Amy Thatcher clog dances to the music of the Kathryn Tickell Band.



Live at the Royal Albert Hall. Kathryn Tickell and Friends - Shepherd's Hey - Percy Grainger !



E2 'Shepherd's Hey' Big Session 20 06 09.. English folk/reggae roots band Edward II aka E2 - at the Big Session Festival in Leicester, June 2009. Their music is what they say it is - a blend of English folk and roots reggae. Website at http://www.edwardii.co.uk/.

Piano sheet music available online for Percy Granger, British Folk-Music Settings Nr. 4, "Shepherd's Hey" (Lovingly and reverenetly dedicated to the memory of Edvard Grieg) [the typo appears to be Granger's in the original].

More on Hogfiddle, including Percy Granger's orchestral version and an old 78rpm of Granger playing his piano arrangement,

New Salem: "Song catching," finding songs and transposing them for the dulcimer in open modal tunings ** UPDATED 04-05 **

"Songcatcher" is a catch phrase for someone who goes out in the field, not the studio, and records music wherever he or she finds it. It all started with Edison, of course, and his invention of the phonograph. ... Since then there have been many, many songcatchers working at the far corners of the Earth.
-- Mickey Hart, author and percussionist, Grateful Dead. Qtd. National Geographic News.

For our last off-season workshop on period music in open, modal lap dulcimer tunings, we'll look at a couple of songs that were sung at camp meetings near New Salem - at Rock Creek - and a Robert Burns song that raised eyebrows when a church musician sneaked it into a worship service down in Springfield. Since they're available on line in Appalachian dulcimer tab for DAA and DAD tunings, as well as their original keys of G and B-flat, they give us a good opportunity to learn how to transpose a song from the original to "D for dulcimer." Don't worry: It's easier to do than it is to talk about it!

And once we can do that, we can be our own song-catchers. We may be finding our songs in books like John Lair's "Songs Lincoln Loved" or David McIntosh's "Folk Songs and Singing Games of the Illinois Ozarks", but as far as I'm concerned we're still catching songs. I think we almost have to do that, since the ones that have the strongest connection to New Salem aren't always tabbed out for the dulcimer.

In my research for my paper on folk hymns, articles in The Picayune and dulcimer workshops at New Salem, I have identified a half dozen songs that are attested in New Salem and the surrounding rural communities during frontier days and perhaps another dozen that are attested in Springfield and elsewhere in what we now consider downstate Illinois.

On Saturday, April 7, we'll learn three of these songs we can share with visitors:

• "How Firm a Foundation." Sung in camp meetings at Rock Creek Cumberland Presbyterian Church (see below). Text by "K---," in John Rippon's Selection of Hymns (London, 1787). American folk melody collected by Joseph Funk (1832) and William Walker (1835). This hymn was said to be Andrew Jackson's favorite and still appears in denominational hymnals.
  
• "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood." Text by English poet William Cowper (1779), American folk melody arranged by Lowell Mason (18--). Although it has fallen out of favor, this was also one of the most popular hymns of the 19th century.
  
• "The Banks of Doon" (Ye Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon"). Text and melody by Robert Burns (1783). According to the thread on the Mudcat Cafe online discussion group, the published melody had widespread Scots and Irish antecedents. Very popular, and attested in Springfield (see below) in the 1830s or 1840s.

And I will hand out copies of North Carolina traditional dulcimer player Don Pedi's tuning chart of different keys at http://www.donpedi.com/Tab.htm (to make your own copy, scroll down to it -- it's the first item on the page -- and right-click on it, click on "Save picture as ..." to save the JPEG file to your hard drive. You can print it out from there. Check out Don's tab, too. He has some wonderful fiddle tunes.

The three hymns were popular camp meeting spirituals. In a 1922 history of Rock Creek Presbyterian Church Alice Keach Bone, the daughter of old settlers in Menard County, described the singing when she was a girl:

Prominent among the preachers on the platform [set up outside the church building at camp meetings] was Rev. John M. Berry. He would give out the hymn, read it, line it, and, in a strong voice, lead the singing himself, the people joining in one after another.

'On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,' and 'How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent word' were favorites. These were frequently followed by

'There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.'

Then came an earnest, heartfelt prayer and, sometimes, another song. After this he announced the text and began to preach. He did not time his sermons, neither did the people turn uneasy glances toward their camps. (*Bone, Rock Creek Church: A Retrospect of One Hundred Years.)

Last month we learned "On Jordan's stormy banks ..." (also known as "The Promised Land"), and in April we'll learn the other two that Alice Keach Bone remembered. When I sang with the New Salem Shape Note Singers, we could see the vistors perk up and listen when we told them we were singing a hymn from the early days at Rock Creek just a few miles down the road.

Another song we'll take up April 7 is secular, "The Bonny Doon" by Robert Burns. but its melody was played in church. Springfield's First Presbyterian Church, in fact, in the 1830s or 40s before it had an organ. According to a story that was told years later, an accompanist started playing the popular Robert Burns melody instead of another tune in the same hymnal:

Mr. Rague was ... leader of the choir. The tune book was Mason's Missouri Harmony with patent notes [shape notes]. Edward Jones was the accompanist on the flute, and Henry E. Dummer on the violin. It is said that one night when the hymn 'Sweet Is Thy Works, My God, My King, To Praise Thy Name, Give Thanks and Sing,' was announced, before Rague could pitch his pipe of 'Kingsbury' [the tune] to which it was set, Dummer started it to 'Ye Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon.' (*Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Organization of First Presbyterian Church, Springfield, Illinois, January 29-February 1, 1903.).

Was this an accident, or a little tomfoolery in the choir loft? We don't know. But we do know the story was still being told 70 years later (even if some of the details got confused in the retelling). At any rate, Robert Burns was popular in Illinois.

When William Herndon was collecting material for his life of Abraham Lincoln, he interviewed his mother, Rebecca Herndon. She recalled "my sisters & myself learned Burns by heart 0 Sang his Songs - Such as 'Bonny Doon-' 'Highland Mary ' Soldiers return." (That third song is obscure. Douglas Wilson and Rodney Davis, who edited Herndon's letters and interviews, guess it might be "When the Wild War's Deadly Blast Was Blawn." The other two were well known.) And Lincoln's fondness for Burns' poetry is well attested.

Some YouTube clips of the songs follow, along with a citation to the paper where I discuss the folk hymns that were sung on the Illinois frontier:

"How Firm A Foundation" played by David Summerford on mountain dulcimer



"There Is a Fountain Filled With Blood" by Grace Chu



-- Southern gospel singer David Phelps



-- UAB Gospel Choir , Univ of Alabama at Birminghan



"Ye Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon" - Singer-songwriter Holly Tomas of Edinburgh



Tony McManus teaches "Ye Banks and Braes." McManus plays Celtic fingerstyle in dropped D tuning, talks about arranging the song, ornamentation, etc. (10:32)



Digital Tradition (in G) http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiBNKSBRAE;ttBNKSBRAE.html

__________

* Detailed citations in my paper "American Folk Hymnody in Illinois, 1800-1850" (Conference on Illinois History, Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, Springfield, Oct. 14, 2000) http://www1.ben.edu/springfield/faculty/ellertsen/hymn102400.html

Thomas Moore, "Let Erin Remember ..."

Melody on whistle (?) uploaded by VanOrchClubYuki [of Hong Kong] Aug 15, 2010:



As a rousing pub song by Tanaman Dùl at Mittelalter Taberna in Brasília, Feb. 18, 2011



And as a very nice, contemplative piano solo by YouTube user machinehay



Sheet music (3 pages) from The Irish Melodies by Thomas Moore, arranged by Charles Villiers Stanford:

Let Erin remember the days of old.
Ere her faithless sons betrayed her;
When Malachi wore the collar of gold,[1]
Which he won from her proud invader.
When her kings, with standard of green unfurled,
Led the Red-Branch Knights to danger;[2]
Ere the emerald gem of the western world
Was set in the crown of a stranger.

On Lough Neagh's bank as the fisherman strays,
When the clear cold eve's declining,
He sees the round towers of other days
In the wave beneath him shining:
Thus shall memory often, in dreams sublime,
Catch a glimpse of the days that are over;
Thus, sighing, look thro' the waves of time
For the long-faded glories they cover.[3]

Moore's Footnotes quaoted in "Sing, Sweet Harp of Erin: Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies (1808)." Folkworld http://www.folkworld.de/37/e/moore.html:

[1] "This brought on an encounter between Malachi (the Monarch of Ireland in the tenth century) and the Danes, in which Malachi defeated two of their champions, whom he encountered successively, hand to hand, taking a collar of gold from the neck of one, and carrying off the sword of the other, as trophies of his victory." -- Warner's "History of Ireland," vol. i. book ix.

[2] "Military orders of knights were very early established in Ireland; long before the birth of Christ we find an hereditary order of Chivalry in Ulster, called Curaidhe na Craiobhe ruadh, or the Knights of the Red Branch, from their chief seat in Emania, adjoining to the palace of the Ulster kings, called Teagh na Craiobhe ruadh, or the Academy of the Red Branch; and contiguous to which was a large hospital, founded for the sick knights and soldiers, called Bronbhearg, or the House of the Sorrowful Soldier." -- O'Halloran's Introduction, etc., part 1, chap. 5.

[3] It was an old tradition, in the time of Giraldus, that Lough Neagh had been originally a fountain, by whose sudden overflowing the country was inundated, and a whole region, like the Atlantis of Plato, overwhelmed. He says that the fishermen, in clear weather, used to point out to strangers the tall ecclesiastical towers under the water.

Andrew Kuntz Fiddlers Companion http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/REA_RED.htm#RED_FOX_[3]:

RED FOX [3], THE (An Sionnac Ruad). AKA and see "Let Erin Remember the Days of Old." Irish, Air (4/4 time, "with spirit"). G Major. Standard tuning. AB. O'Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903/1979; No. 390, pg. 68.

X:1

T:Red Fox, The [3]

M:C

L:1/8

R:Air
N:”With spirit”
S:O’Neill – Music of Ireland (1903), No. 390

Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion

K:G

D2|G2 G>A B2 B>c|d2d2 c2 B>c|d3 e B2G2|A3F GFED|G2 G>A B2 Bc|d
d2 de B2G2|A4 G2||Bd|g2g2 f2 ed|e2 dB d2 BA|G2 G>A BAGB|A4 G2 Bd|g2g2 f2 ed|

More at "Let Erin Remember the Days of Old" w/ notation in D! (but for bagpipe) posted to Hogfiddle on March 17 (!), 2010.

Thomas Moore, "The Meeting of the Waters"

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

A couple of the good ones:

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



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



Lyrics and notes from "Sing, Sweet Harp of Erin: Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies (1808)." Folkworld http://www.folkworld.de/37/e/moore.html

Moore's notes:

[1] "The Meeting of the Waters" forms a part of that beautiful scenery which lies between Rathdrum and Arklow, in the county of Wicklow, and these lines were suggested by a visit to this romantic spot, in the summer of the year 1807.
[2] The rivers Avon and Avoca.

A bronze bust of Moore marks the spot, and a plague records the tribute offered by Eamon de Valera: "During the dark and all but despairing days of the nineteenth century, Thomas Moore's songs kept the love of country and the lamp of hope burning in millions of Irish hearts here in Ireland and in many lands beyond the seas. His songs and his poems and his prose works, translated into many foreign tongues, made Ireland's cause known throughout the civilized world and won support for that cause from all who loved liberty and hated oppression."

In James Joyce's "Ulysses," Leopold Bloom remarks about the Moore statue in College Green Dublin: "They did right to put him up over a urinal: meeting of the waters."

"Meeting of the Waters" is usually scored in A, but Digital Tradition has a lead sheet with lyrics transposed to D. The thread "Tune Req: Meeting of the Waters" at Mudcat Cafe has dates of Thomas Moore's "Irish Melodies," also relationship (or lack thereof) of his air -- "The Old Head of Denis" -- and a Scottish pipe also titled "The Meeting of the Waters" but with a different melody. links to an early version of Andrew Kuntz' "Fiddlers Companion" w/ tune families, etc. AS ALWAYS, THE MUDCAT THREAD IS A VERY GOOD SOURCE AND HAS MORE INFORMATION THAN WHAT I'VE SUMMARIZED HERE.

From Fiddlers Companion (via keyword search on old Ceolas version linked to Mudcat Cafe):

MEETING OF THE WATERS, THE [1] (Ceann Deiginse). AKA and see "Todlin Hame," "Gage Fane", "Na Geadna Fiadaine," "The Wild Geese," "Armstrong's Farewell," "The Old Head of Denis," "My Name is Dick Kelly," "An Bacac Buide," "The Origin of the Harp," "Old Ireland Rejoice." Irish, Air (6/8 time). A Major. Standard. AB. The title appears in a list of tunes in his repertoire brought by Philip Goodman, the last professional and traditional piper in Farney, Louth, to the Feis Ceoil in Belfast in 1898 (Breathnach, 1997). Roche Collection, 1982, Vol. 3; No. 31, pg. 9.

And this, the tune that Moore cites as the air in Irish Melodies:

OLD HEAD OF DENIS, THE (Sean Ceann Doncad). AKA and see "Meeting of the Waters," "Helen," "The Wild Geese." Irish, Air (6/8 time, "with feeling"). G Major. Standard. One part. The melody was used by Thomas Moore for his text "The Meeting of the Waters," but was the vehicle for a number of hymns and ballads, including many cowboy songs such as "The Dreary Black Hills" and the Catskill Mountain (New York) collected "Rock Island Line" (Cazden, et al, 1982). O'Neill (1850), 1903/1979; No. 526, pg. 92.

The tune is related to the Irish lament for the Wild Geese who fled Ireland after the wars of Cromwell and William III:

WILD GEESE, THE [1] (Na Geadna Fiadaine). AKA and see "Gage Fane," "The Origin of the Harp," "Old Ireland Rejoice," "Armstrong's Farewell," "The Old Head of Denis," "The Meeting of the Waters," "Todlin Hame," "My Name is Dick Kelly," "An bacac buide," "An Cana Draigeann Eille," "Tis believed that this harp." Irish, Slow Air (3/4 time). A Major (O'Neill, O'Sullivan/Bunting): G Major (O Canainn). Standard. One part. This Irish air dates back to the mid-17th century and has often been used as a song tune. Perhaps the first lyrics were written in 1670 by John Fitzgerald, son of the Knight of Glin. In the next century a version called in Irish "Na Geandna Fiadaine" had its title mangled into English as "Gage Fane" and appeared in several collections. The given title commemorates the thousands of Irish soldiers who fled to France and Spain after the Treaty of Limerick in 1691, preferring an honorable exile to remaining in their country when their cause was lost. These exiles sustained the national reputation afterwards under the name of the Irish Brigade in the wars on the Continent.
***
A legend has it that the air was sung by the women assembled on the shore at the time the troops embarked after the defeat of the Gaelic chiefs. O'Sullivan (1983) points out this is poetic license for the exodus was gradual, and not an embarkation along the lines of Dunkirk in this century, but (quoting MacGeoghan, who states in his History of Ireland {pg. 599}) "within the 50 years which followed the Treaty of Limerick 450,000 Irish soldiers died in the service of France." O'Sullivan also adds the title "Na Geadna Fiadhaine" is a translation of the English "The Wild Geese," and not vice versa, but that even the Gaelic-speaking majority at the time referred to these men as "Wild Geese," for they flocked before taking flight.
***
Source for notated version: Bunting noted the tune from Patrick Quin, the harper, in 1803. Holden (Collection), volume II, 1806 (appears as "Gage Fane"). Mulholland (Collection), 1810 (appears under the erroneous title "The Wild Swan"). Neale (Celebrated Irish Tunes), pg. 25. Ó Canainn (Traditional Slow Airs of Ireland), 1995; No. 51, pgs. 46-47. O'Neill (1850), 1979; No. 170, pg. 30. O'Sullivan/Bunting, 1983; No. 113, pgs. 162-164. Thompson (Hibernian Muse), c. 1789 (appears as "Irish Air"). Island ILPS9432, The Chieftains - "Bonaparte's Retreat" (1976). RCA 09026-61490-2, The Chieftains - "The Celtic Harp" (1993).

And to quite a few other tunes as well, on both sides of the Atlantic, including the "Rye Whiskey" family and tunes heard at the Belfast harp festival in 1798:

BACA(C)H BUIDHE, AN (Lame Yellow Beggar). AKA and see "Bacach Buidhe Na Leige" (The Yellow Beggar of the League), "The Lame Yellow Beggar," "The Wild Geese," "Johnnie Armstrong," "Todlin Hame," "The Meeting of the Waters." Irish, Air (4/4 time). B Flat Major (O'Sullivan/Bunting): G Major (Flood). Standard. AAB (Flood): ABB (O'Sullivan/Bunting). The great Irish collector Edward Bunting's 1840 publication attributes composition of this melody to the famous Ulster harper Rory Dall O'Cahan in the year 1650. Though born in Ulster, O'Cahan performed primarily in Scotland, and this tune is "said to have been composed by him in reference to his own fallen fortunes, towards the end of his career." {See note for "Give Me Your Hand" for more information on O'Cahan). Audiences heard the air in "The Beggar's Wedding" (1728), an opera by Charles Coffey of Dublin, and it was printed in the score in 1729. The title was reported by the Belfast Northern Star of July 15th, 1792, as having been a tune played by one of ten Irish harp masters at the last great convocation of ancient Irish harpers, the Belfast Harp Festival, held that week. Bunting, who was in attendance at the festival, claimed to have noted it from harper Charles Byrne in his manuscript, though he attributes harper Daniel Black in 1792 as the source in his 1840 published work. The melody may also be found in Neales' Celebrated Irish Tunes, pg. 26 and Holden's Old Established Tunes, pg. 36, reports O'Sullivan (1983), and is a variant of the melody known variously as "Johnnie Armstrong," "Todlen Hame," "Rye Whisky," "Jack of Diamonds," "Drunken Hiccups," etc. Flood, 1905; pg. 80. Murphy (A Collection of Irish Airs and Jiggs, 1809 or 1820; pg. 22. O'Sullivan/Bunting, 1983; No. 20, pgs. 34-35.

There's an American parody "The Meeting of the Waters of Hudson & Erie" by Samuel Woodworth. It begins like Moore's, "There is not in the wild world a Valley so sweet ..." but gets off into the brave new America vs. tired old Europe meme pretty quickly:

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

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

And so on.

"Shenandoah Falls"

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



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



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

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

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

X:1

T:Shenandoah Falls

M:C|

L:1/8

R:Reel

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

Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion

K:A

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liz Green "Sisters of Mercy"

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

Audio here: Sisters Of Mercy (Liz Green)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If so, think again.

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



Do these people sound sad?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D Aeolian (tune DAC)

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

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

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

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



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



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

D Mixolydian (tune DAD)

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

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

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

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

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

Video from Munnharpe and Langeleik Festival in Fagernes, 2012

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



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


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



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

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


Performance at Munnharpe and langeleik festival, Fagernes, 2010



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

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

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

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

Rick Santorum, mainline Protestants, politics and spiritual warfare: An Ash Wednesday meditation

While this year's Republican presidential primary candidates were debating tonight in Mesa, Arizona, I was singing in an Ash Wednesday service.

Out in Arizona the candidates treated each other, and CNN's audience of GOP party faithful, to a night of "brittle, passive-aggressive and macho blustering," as a live-blogger for The Guardian put it. Politics as usual, in other words. While they were politicking, I took part in my congregation's first Lenten soup supper, followed by a quick choir rehearsal; an Ash Wednesday communion service; and our regular Wednesday night choir practice after the service.

From the first bowl of soup to the last choir anthem, we spent three hours at church.

Soup suppers during Lent are a Lutheran tradition, one that's shared with Roman Catholics, the Episcopalians, the Methodists and other denominations who follow the seasons of the liturgical year. I don't know how old the tradition is. Early 20th century? But among Lutherans it's as time-honored as hot dish casseroles, Jell-O salad and lutefisk dinners in the church basement.

Ash Wednesday services are even older. The ritual is thought to date back to the 700s, and not too many years later the English homilist Aelfric of Eynsham recorded, "we strew ashes on our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast."

Holy Communion, of course, goes back to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the first Easter. Bby the time a manual known as the Didache or The Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles by the Twelve Apostles was written at some point between 50 and 120 A.D., it was recognized as the most important part of the early Christian liturgy, in a form still recognizable to us today.

Psalm 51 is a traditional part of Ash Wednesday services. It's the penitential psalm that begins, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness; / in your great compassion blot out my offenses." In our service, it was followed by a general confession, which our pastor introduced by saying:

As disciples of the Lord Jesus we are called to struggle against everything that leads us away from love of God and neighbor. Repentance, fasting, prayer, and works of love -- the discipline of lent -- help us to wage our spiritual warfare.

The confession itself followed the language of an ancient prayer called the Confiteor. First recorded in the eighth century, its language is familiar throughout western Christendom:

Most holy and merciful Father, we confess to you and to one another, and to the whole communion of saints in heaven and on earth, that we have sinned by our own fault in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done and what we have left undone.

After the confession, we sang Christian contemporary settings of "Create in Me a Clean Heart" by Mary Rice Hopkins and "Change My Heart, O God" by songwriter Eddie Espinosa that pick up the familiar language of the Confietor. (That's what our on-the-fly choir rehearsal was for -- to brush up on the service music.) We also sang hymns by John Wesley, 17th-century German chorale writer Paul Gerhardt and 19th-century Welsh composer Joseph Parry.

After the service was over, we had our regular Wednesday night choir practice. It made for a long evening, but you can't sound like much of anything on Sunday if you don't practice on Wednesday.

So for Sunday we worked up a contemporary, very syncopated arrangement of "O God Our Help in Ages Past" by Isaac Watts. And we ran through the 19th-century hymn "Jesus Paid It All," set to a new tune by contemporary pop musician David Clydesdale, and the American folk hymn "Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy" by Marty Parks, a longtime United Methodist choir director who has put together a collection of anthems for small parishes titled O For a Dozen Tongues to Sing. I think that's one of the best titles in the whole world of choral literature.

In the meantime, out in Arizona the Republican presidential candidates were engaged in their own form of spiritual warfare. Well, the effect wasn't exactly spiritual, but they were certainly demonizing President Obama for an alleged "secular agenda" and "phony theology" ... and trash-talking each other while they were at it.

Wednesday's debate capped off a week when somebody -- it's not clear who but speculation points to Mitt Romney's campaign, made sure the media got ahold of a speech that former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum gave in 2008 at Ave Maria University, a very conservative Catholic school in Florida. In it, Santorum suggested that Satan has subverted the mainline Protestant churches, along with academia and popular culture.

Most of the media comment was, predictably enough, breath-takingly superficial. So I went looking for a transcript

In the true spirit of "horse race" coverage, the coverage centered on whether the four-year-old speech will hurt Santorum, or help him, in the presidential preference polls, and his efforts to put the issue behind him. A more nuanced assessment came from freelance writer Michael J. O’Loughlin in the Jesuit magazine America. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, O'Loughlin was troubled by Santorum's "particular understanding of the world and his unique interpretation of Catholicism." He suggested:

Utilizing one’s faith to inform one’s politics is healthy and encouraging, especially when the resulting policies answer the biblical exhortation to protect the poor and marginalized. But claiming that those who differ from you in the values they hold or the worldviews they profess have been influenced by the Devil himself is truly bizarre and perhaps abhorrent.

Most of the news media accounts just quoted little snippets -- sound bites -- from Santorum's speech, and there wasn't enough context to evaluate it. So I tracked down a transcript posted by People for the American Way on its Right Wing Watch website. Santorum's context indeed was what he described as a "spiritual war" in which Satan is successfully "attack[ing] all of our institutions" in America, starting with academic life and moving on to the church and popular culture, He said:

And so what we saw this domino effect, once the colleges fell and those who were being education in our institutions, the next was the church. Now you’d say, ‘wait, the Catholic Church’? No. We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. So they attacked mainline Protestantism, they attacked the Church, and what better way to go after smart people who also believe they’re pious, to use both vanity and pride to also go after the Church.

Imagine my surprise. While I was singing in the choir and taking part in liturgical traditions that go back to the Apostolic church, I thought I was part of the "world of Christianity," too.

Der König in Thule - text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - melody by Carl Friedrich Zelter

According to the Wikipedia article, Zelter was a friend of Goethe's. Composed 200 lieder, including settings of Goethe's poetry. Taught both Felix and Fanny Mendelsohn, communicated his love of Bach to Mendelsoh.

Ulricus + Friesische Hummel



Ulrich writes: "König von Thule" ist eine alte Balade von J.W.v Goethe.
Die "Friesische Hummel" ist ein altes Instrument entlang der Nordseeküste von Dänemark bis Westfriesland (NL). Replies to question: "This Hummel has a string length of 70 cm. The normal tuning is: c´c´ c´c´ f cc F . For this ballade I have the aeolian mode: b b c´c´ g cc C. In english term you woud write bb bb c´etc."

Der König in Thule (voice & harp)



sandman21283 on YouTube: vocals and harp by myself (Nighttime Bird): "Der König in Thule" is a poem written by famous German author J.W. von Goethe in 1774. It is recited by Gretchen in Goethe's Faust and has also been set to music by various composers. Here you find a version done by C.F. Zelter. You'll find this song in many traditional songbooks today as it is quite famous. It was one of the first songs I sang within my classical voice training and I love it. To break the song's content down to a few sentences: It is about a king in Thule who receives a golden cup (or goblet) from his dying lover. He keeps this cup as a keepsake from his beloved one until he tosses it into the sea a short time before he dies himself- so not necessarily a happy song. ;)

Es war ein König in Thule (Goethe/Zelter), instrumental on mandolin and tenor guitar



mj10008 on YouTube: Having already recorded this piece on solo tenor guitar, I have now made a somewhat fuller arrangement, played as a duet of mandolin (melody) and tenor guitar (harmony). The instruments used are my 1921 Gibson Ajr mandolin and my Ozark tenor guitar, tuned GDAE.

This is one of several musical settings of a poem written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1774. This particular tune was written in 1814 by Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832). The poem attracted high caliber composers: there are other musical settings for the same words by Schubert, Berlioz, Liszt and Schumann, among others. Nevertheless, Zelter's tune is the best-known one and is still widely sung as a folk song in Germany.

Herre Gud, ditt dyre navn og ære - 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica's bio of Petter Dass

A catechism song by Petter Dass, according to Wikipedia, now sung to a folk melody from Romsdal that may be Dass'. (Google, by the way, translates the title as ""Lord God of your pet's name and honor" - because dyre means animal?) Text, in Norwegian, and MIDI file from NoS 268 are put on line in Orkdalsmenighetene by Orkdal church. Orkdal is a municipality in Sør-Trøndelag.

An old traditional Norwegian psalm tone. Two clips on YouTube, one very traditional and one by Norwegian pop and Christian contemporary artist Sissel ...

In Vang church --



Video of Musikklinja på Stange VGS - Spring 2010
Folketone fra Romedal, tekst: Petter Dass arr: Roger Andreassen

Magne Otervik og Tom Erik Antonsen, trompet
Anne Gunn Grimerud, horn
Erlend Østbø Juberg, trombone
Roger Andreassen, orgel
Musikklinjekoret og Ringsaker kantori
Torgeir Ziener, dirigent

Sissel in concert --



Sissel gives it the full treatment in what looks like a televised concert. Apparently in Sweden.
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dass, Petter has this:

DASS, PETTER (1647-1708), the “father” of modern Norwegian poetry, was the son of Peter Dundas, a Scottish merchant of Dundee, who, leaving his country about 1630 to escape the troubles of the Presbyterian chursh, settled in Bergen, and in 1646 married a Norse girl of good family. Petter Dass was born in 1647 on the island of Nord Herö, on the north coast of Norway. Seven years later his father died, and his mother placed him with his aunt, the wife of the priest of another little island-parish. In 1660 he was sent to school at Bergen, in 1665 to the university of Copenhagen, and in 1667 he began to earn his daily bread as a private tutor. In 1672 he was ordained priest, and remained till 1681 as under-chaplain at Nesne, a little parish near his birthplace; for eight years more he was resident chaplain at Nesne; and at last in 1689 he received the living of Alstahoug, the most important in the north of Norway. The rule of Alstahoug extended over all the neighbouring districts, including Dass's native island of Herö, and its privileges were accompanied by great perils, for it was necessary to be constantly crossing stormy firths of sea. Dass lived here in quietude, with something of the honours and responsibilities of a bishop, brought up his family in a God-fearing way, and wrote endless reams of verses. In 1700 he asked leave to resign his living in favour of his son Anders Dass, but this was not permitted; in 1704, however, Anders became his father's chaplain. About this time Petter went to Bergen, where he visited Dorothea Engelbrechtsdatter, with whom he had been for many years in correspondence. He continued to write till 1707, and died in August 1708. The materials for his biography are very numerous; he was regarded with universal curiosity and admiration in his lifetime; and, besides, he left a garrulous autobiography in verse. A portrait, painted in middle age, now in the church of Melhus, near Trondhjem, represents him in canonicals, with deep red beard and hair, the latter waved and silky, and a head of massive proportions. The face is full of fire and vigour. His writings passed in MS. from hand to hand, and few of them were printed in his lifetime. Nordlands Trompet (The Trumpet of Nordland), his greatest and most famous poem, was not published till 1739; Den norska Dale-Visc (The Norwegian Song of the Valley) appeared in 1696; the Aandelig Tidsfordriv (Spiritual Pastime), a volume of sacred poetry, was published in 1711. The Trumpet of Nordland remains as fresh as ever in the memories of the inhabitants of the north of Norway; boatmen, peasants, priests will alike repeat long extracts from it at the slightest notice, and its popularity is unbounded. It is a rhyming description of the province of Nordland, its natural features, its trades, its advantages and its drawbacks, given in dancing verse of the most breathless kind, and full of humour, fancy, wit and quaint learning. The other poems of Petter Dass are less universally read; they abound, however, in queer turns of thought, and fine homely fancies.