Natkirken reaches out to unchurched 'seekers' in Copenhagen: 'We shall be shepherds to cats'

Lask week when Debi and I were in Copenhagen, we were able to attend Natkirken (Night Church) services at Helligaandskirken (Church of the Holy Spirit) on the Strøget and briefly look in on the service briefly at Vor Frue (Our Lady) cathedral in the old university quarter downtown.

The Friday night services we saw were simple, refreshing and sometimes moving, even though we didn't know the language. They have has spread from Denmark, where they originated, to Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh, and they could be a useful model for mainline churches in North America that want to do something about declining membership.

Natkirken is a "liturgical laboratory" of the Diocese of Copenhagen. It was initiated by the estabished Church of Denmark in 1999 at Vor Frue and other city parishes in order to reach non-churchgoers in one of Europe's most secular societies. Night church services in the 12 parishes vary from one to the other, but typically they are loosely structured, combining music, prayer and silent meditation. "Many of our visitors can be characterized as 'seekers' ... we must meet them on their own terms," concluded an initial diocesean program evaluation. Judging by what I saw, they do.

In all, it's a significant outreach in a nation where 80 percent of the population claims membership in the Lutheran church but only 2 to 3 percent attend Sunday services. On Friday nights, Night Church proclaims a very old Christian message in the heart of one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan, secular cities. And Helligaandskirken amplifies that message with CDs and social media like Facebook and YouTube.

"While the Sunday service puts the emphasis on the forgiveness of sins, we try at Night Church to preach God’s presence at the center of each human life," night church pastor Mikkel Vale told the diocesan magazine Kirken i København (the church in Copenhagen). "This is partly done by an emphasis on personal prayer in worship. It is important for us Christians to learn that God is alive and present. … God goes with us. Always. I hope we can help to convey that to people, so they too can feel it when they leave the church again."

In another Kirken i København article, Vale uses a striking metaphor. He says, "we postmodern people are both misguided sheep and independent cats" and suggests a new role for the church: "We shall be shepherds to cats."

What we experienced last Friday night in Copenhagen left this cat purring. Why wasn't anybody doing services like this when I was in my 20s and 30s?

Natkirken at Helligaandskirken begins at 7 p.m. with international evensong conducted in English and lasts till midnight, blending musical traditions ranging from Gregorian chant and the Lutheran chorale to the prayerful but very singable meditations of the contemporary Taizé and Iona communities. Last week's evensong was followed by congregational singing of familiar Danish hymns; a recital of medieval chant by Hildegard von Bingen, sung by mezzosoprano Elisabeth Ørsnes; and a lysandagt, or candlelight communion, followed by singing and prayer in the style of the Taizé community in France and a midnight service.

Part of the appeal of Night Church is that worshippers can come and go freely, and at least for us, that was part of the evenin's charm. Outside on the Strøget, a group of busking street musicians played Strauss waltzes and other light classics in the lengthening summer twilight (see picture at left). At times it almost seemed like the scene outside was playing in a kind of counterpoint with the sacred music within the church.

And I thought the contrast, the interplay between what was going on in the church and outside in the city, was utterly charming. The Scandinavians have a word for it -- hyggelig. It's pronounced sort of like "HOOG-ley," and it's usually translated as "cozy" or "comfortable" or "nice," but that doesn't begin to cover all of its meanings. Anyway, it was all hyggelig and I could have stayed there forever.

Inside the church, it seemed like there was a little something for everybody. The congregational singing was attended by 15 or 20 people, mostly middle-aged or older, while the candlelight service attracted a younger crowd. With faint echoes of the street band playing waltzes outside in the background, the celebrants and half the congregation walked down the nave of the church, holding candles and singing a processional hymn in Danish to the Irish tune we recognize in America as "Be Thou My Vision." The Danish words, I found out later, are by Pastor Vale.

The communion service followed, and the ebb, flow and cadence of the liturgy was wholly familiar even though we didn't speak the language.

(We had a service booklet, too, so we were able to follow along in Danish. We noticed parishoners were asked to hold their candles over the service booklet so they wouldn't drip on the floor. Another good idea to take back to North America!)

In all, it was moving and the familiar liturgy felt inclusive. There's something about candlelight, too, that transcends time, place and language. I wasn't about to pop a flash during the service, but the screen shot at right from Helligaandskirken's YouTube channel shows the same service and conveys some of the atmosphere.

(For another impression, link here to read San Francisco blogger "Mystic Seeker's" account in the early spring of 2007 ... and the comment below it by a hiker who was invited to take part in a communion service in Iceland without knowing the Islandic language.)

"God is a DJ" at Vor Frue. After the light service at Helligaandskirken, we headed back to our hotel on Vesterbrogade by way of Vor Frue. It's in the old university district, just a few blocks from the Strøget, and it has a different approach to Night Church. Vor Frue goes more into poetry, jazz, electronica and other contemporary forms. Taizé meditaion, for example, must take on an added dimension in what a cathedral bulletin describes as "Taizéimprovisationer." I wish I could have heard it. Jazz improv seems a perfect match for Taizé.

According to the bulletin we picked up at the door, Friday night's meditation at Vor Frue was a standing feature called "God is a DJ." It relies on recorded music, and according to the Copenhagen newspaper Politiken, the Friday-night DJ sessions appeal to an inner-city cross-section "from 20-something hipsters to lonely bag ladies."

We weren't there long enough to form a coherent impression, but the part we saw featured a light show to the soundtrack of what we gradually realized was a new age-y cover of "I Wanna Be Sedated" by punk rock icons the Ramones -- the selection wasn't announced, but it was sung in English, and it was probably by the Los Angeles electronica/trance band Superhumanoids. The interplay of lights, music and lyrics was mesmerizing.

Some Danish hymns on the Strøget. During the singing at Helligeaandskirken, which reminded me of the old-fashioned "hymn sings" in small-town American churches when I was growing up, a gentleman in the congregation realized the Americans in the third pew weren't following the numbers as they were called out in Den Danske Salmebog, the words-only hymnal they were using. So as each selection was called out, he came back and whispered the number to us in English.

With his help, I was able to follow the hymn singing fairly well even though most of the hymns -- salmer in Danish -- were new to me. They were Danish, mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries, although a couple of them were recognizable as variants of the old Lutheran chorales. A list follows:

• DDS 441. Alle mine kilder skal være hos dig. Text: N.F.S. Grundtvig 1856-60. Mel. Thomas Laub 1922. Click here for a pop version by Danish artist Peter Belli.
• 292. Kærligheds og sandheds Ånd. Text: Adam af St. Victor 12th c., N.F.S. Grundtvig 1837. Mel.: Christian Barnekow 1868 [same melody as Kom, Gud Helligånd, kom brat].
• 330. Du, som ud af intet skabte. Text: Jens Rosendal 1973. Mel.: Peter Møller 1974
• 11. Nu takker alle Gud. Text: Martin Rinckart [in German] ca. 1630. Danish 1740. 1885. 1889. 1890. Mel.: Johann Crüger 1647 [this is the Reformation chorale Now Thank We All Our God]
• 582, At tro er at komme. Text not available on line. Mel.: Bendt Astrup 1993 [Same as Dig rummer ej himle]
• 785. Tunge, mørke natteskyer. Text: Jakob Knudsen 1890. Mel.: Carl Nielsen 1917
• 612. Den store mester kommer. Mel.: J.P.E. Hartmann 1873, Caspar Chr. Hoffman 1878 and Rued Langgaard 1924.
• 787. Du, som har tændt millioner af stjerner. Text not available on line. Mel.: Erik Sommer 1981
• 217. Min Jesus, lad mit hjerte få. Text: Biørn Christian Lund 1764, Bearbejdet 1778, N.F.S. Grundtvig 1846. Mel.: Carl Nielsen 1914 [Same as Dybt hælder året i sin gang]

Nikolaj Grundtvig, a prolific writer and educator some of whose work appears in American hymnals (and whose theories are behind the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina), was well represented. As was early 20th-century Danish composer Carl Nielsen. I'm familiar with Nielsen's symphonies, but if I knew before that he wrote hymns, it slipped my mind. But write hymns, he did. I was told by people at Helligaandskirken that his contributions to Danish hymnody are especially beloved, and judging by the two I heard I can understand why.

Here are YouTube video clips of Neilsen's "Tunge, mørke natteskyer" (heavy, dark night clouds) as sung by the Danish Girls Choir of Copenhagen and (embedded below), by Den Danske Salmeduo in concert in 2011:

And an audio clip of the former pop/Christian contemporary band STOEW and a video (embedded below) of the Cantica Ungdomskor (Youth Choir) from Vor Frelsers (Our Savior's) Kirke, in Horsens, Jutland, singing "Min Jesus lad mit hjerte få" (my Jesus, let my heart receive), directed by Kevin Laplante

Finally, here's the official video of the Ramones' original of "I Wanna Be Sedated." I know it's heresy to say this, but I like the cover I heard at Vor Frue's "God is a DJ" meditation better!

Springsteen, in Oslo for 'Wrecking Ball' tour, joins memorial to Norway's terror victims

OSLO -- Our trip to Norway at the end of July coincided with Bruce Springsteen's "Wrecking Ball" tour of Europe and the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attack in Norway on July 22, 2011. It was the occasion, I think, for one of Springsteen's best moments.

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Imprompteau memorial, at right, in grounds of Oslo's Domkirke [cathedral] to victims of terrorist attack July 22, 2011.

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We had our downtown hotel room windows open for ventilation, and Saturday night we heard Springsteen's concert at Valle Hovin stadium in the outskirts of Oslo. The concert was halfway across town, and the sound was indistinct but loud and energetic -- and all of it pure Springsteen. If nothing else, it made me want to buy the CD.

What I'll remember most of Springsteen's weekend in Oslo, however, is his appearance the following night at a national memorial concert in front of Oslo's iconic city hall, or Rådhus, for the 77 people who were murdered in the terrorist attack. He simply sang and played "We Shall Overcome" on acoustic guitar backed by Steven Van Zandt. It was understated, passionate and wrenching, as the whole weekend of memorials was understated -- this was Norway, after all -- but passionate and wrenching.

And I thought it was one of Springsteen's finest moments in a stage career that spans 40 years.

Oslo was full of memorials to the terror victims. that Sunday's began at 9:30 a.m. with a wreath-laying ceremony at the downtown government buildings, where the July 22 atrocity had begun with a bomb blast, and continued with a religious service at Oslo's Domkirke. It was attended by the king and queen of Norway, the prime minister and enough ordinary Norwegians to fill the 1,500-seat cathedral with dozens more standing along the walls. And throughout the weekend one of those imprompteau memorials grew on the cathedral grounds, as people left roses and little Norwegian flags beneath a red balloon inscribed with the verse from 1st Corinthians "...og storst av alt er kjærligheten / ... and the greatest of all is love."

Springsteen's appearance at the memorial concert that night wasn't announced till the last minute. Reportedly, it was feared an international celebrity artist would overshadow the Norwegians.

But in the event, that wasn't a problem.

Nobody was upstaged, and Springsteen's delivery of "We Shall Overcome" was as intense as anything I've heard him sing, emotional but understated, and the mostly acoustic guitar supporting his voice was bright and intricate -- but understated, too, and perfectly suited to the song and the occasion.

Springsteen and the E Street Band were already scheduled to be in Oslo over the weekend, as part of their world tour to promote the "Wrecking Ball" album. The CD, which came out in February, got good reviews. David Fricke of Rolling Stone called it "the most despairing, confrontational and musically turbulent album Bruce Springsteen has ever made." Sales have been respectable, but it hasn't been a blockbuster, especially in America. Fricke says Springsteen is "angry and accusing in these songs, to the point of exhaustion, with grave reason. The America here is a scorched earth: razed by profiteers, and suffering a shameful erosion in truly democratic values and national charity."

Is it too angry and accusing? Do we really want to hear this? Especially in a edgy, polarizing, acrimonious political season?

Maybe, maybe not.

Whatever.

I'll leave that to the critics to sort that one out.

But the "Wrecking Ball" tour has been a blowout in Europe.

Certainly Springsteen's July 21 concert at the stadium in Oslo was a blowout. All day Saturday fans were pouring into Oslo. The crowds along Karl Johann Street, the city's downtown pedestrian mall, were liberally sprinkled with people wearing "Wrecking Ball" T-shirts, and throngs of mostly young people were already hoofing it out to the stadium by mid-afternoon.

Springsteen has his fans in Norway, and so does Van Zandt. He's starring in a Norwegian TV series called "Lillyhammer," in which he plays a New Jersey mobster in a witness protection program in the rather bucolic Norwegian town of Lillehammer.

In any event, speculation began early that Springsteen might appear at Sunday's memorial concert in the Rådhusplassen, or city hall plaza, on Oslo's waterfront. Not only does he have the fan base in Scandinavia, but the working-class values of his songs align closely with those of Norway's governing Arbeiterparti (labor party), so many of whose youthful members were murdered in last year's atrocity.

Previously scheduled by Norway's state broadcasting service NRK (the acronym for Norsk rikskringkasting) for the anniversary date, the national memorial concert [nasjonal minnekonsert] featured the Norwegian Radio Orchestra (universally known as KORK, for Kringkastingsorkestret) and a lineup of Norwegian artists, as well as an arrangement in which KORK and a carillon in the City Hall towers played a call-and-response arrangement of the Norwegian anthem "Til Ungdommen" (to youth), the bells echoing the orchestra. It was raining, and we watched the concert on TV in our hotel room, and it was stunning TV (especially with the bells also echoing outside our window, again open for ventilation).

Background on the song and the production --

Music by the Danish composer and conductor Otto Mortensen (1907-1986) to a poem by the Norwegian author, playwright, poet and journalist Nordahl Grieg (1902-1943). The song became a kind of anthem for several international peace marches in Europe in 1981-82 and later. After the terror attack on 22.7.11, it has become one of the most used songs in memorial ceremonies. The title means "To the youth" or "To the young ones". Here played on the carillon in Oslo City Hall by Vegar Sandholt, with Kringkastingsorkestret (the Norwegian Radio Orchestra) conducted by Christian Eggen, arranged by Håkon Berge. From the National Memorial Concert 22.7.12 in the City Hall Square of Oslo, July 22nd, 2012, one year after the terror attack. 50-60.000 people were there.

A version of "Til ungdommen" with song [performed by Norwegian pop and crossover artist Sissel Kyrkjebø at 2011 memorial] can be heard here: http://youtu.be/gKZa6hNFouw

A footnote. It all suggested to me that Americans who think the Scandinavian folk churches are dying because attendance at Sunday services is lower than in the U.S., might want to find a metric better suited to the facts of the case. Whatever else may be going on, the churches aren't dying.

In more ways than I could count, the Church of Norway was one of the key focal points of the weekend's observances, and -- I believe -- its teachings helped set the tone, for instance when Bishop Helga Haugland Byfuglien said at the Domkirke, "The light shines in the darkness; darkness hasn't been able to overcome it." Presiding bishop of the Norwegian church, she has sounded the same note on other occasions.

For his part, Prime Minister Jens Stollenberg sounded more like a pastor than a politician as he told survivors at the wreath-laying, "We will not forget you when the long days of summer give way to autumn darkness. Reach out. Show that you care. A chat about everyday things could help someone regain their will to live." It all had the sound, entirely appropriate under the circumstances, of pastoral grief counseling for a nation of 5 million.

How much of Norway's extraordinary response to terrorism is due to its Lutheran heritage and culture? I'll leave the theories and the pronouncements to others, but I had a sense that it's embedded deeply, even in one of Europe's most secular societies.

Another footnote. The July 30 issue of the New Yorker has a very thoughtful and well-researched profile of Springsteen by editor David Remnick. In the article, Remnick quotes Springsteen on how his parents' working-class struggles influenced his music:

... "Those wounds stay with you [he told Remnick in an interview during a rehearsal in New Jersey], and you turn them into a language and a purpose." Gesturing toward the band onstage, he said, "We're repairmen -- repairmen with a toolbox. If I repair a little of myself, I'll repair a little of you. That's the job."

The context was different, of course, but I couldn't help feeling Springsteen was doing something like that when he and Van Zandt performed "We Shall Overcome" in Oslo.

Planxty Madam Maxwell - Turloch O'Carolan

Heard on a CD in the car while Debi and I were running errands and posted here so I don't forget it while we're on vaction in Europe next week ...

A lively tune that sounds playable on the hammered dulcimer ... maybe even on Appalachian dulcimer. O'Neill's (Chicago: Lyon & Healy, 1903) has it in D, per the Frayed Knot Arts transcription at http://www.oldmusicproject.com/OneilsOcarolans.html. Says Grainne Yeats in the liner notes:

Madam Maxwell was probably Judith Barry of Newtown Barry, County Wexford, who married John Maxwell of County Cavan. Bunting collected the tune several times, and the version played here is based on that gien him by Huagh Higgens. Higgins was a "gentleman harper" who played for pleasure, and who gave many tunes to Bunting.

Here it is on YouTube user Vivian Jacobs' Celtic Harp channel:

And here with John Wynne and John Mc Evoy on fiddle and flute. Full set consists of: Madame Maxwell / The Whinny Hills of Leitrim/ The Leitrim Bucks

'Til Ungdommen' [To Youth], a song by Norwegian poet Nordahl Grieg that became an unofficial anthem in the aftermath of Utøya

Also known by the words of the first line "Kringsatt av fiender" (Surrounded by enemies), by Norwegian poet Nordahl Grieg. Written in 1936 during the runup to World War II and set to music in 1952 by the Danish composer Otto Mortensen. (Wikipedia) adds, "After the terror attacks of 22 July 2011, it was used in many memorial gatherings and services." The first verse makes clear why so many people found it appropriate in the aftermath of Utøya:

Kringsatt av fiender, gå
inn i din tid!
Under en blodig storm –
vi deg til strid!

In English translation, by Rod Sinclair:

Faced by your enemies
On every hand
Battle is menacing,
Now make your stand

During memorial service __ July 2011 in Oslo Cathedral. Clip from Norwegian National Broadcasting (NRK) of the service in the capital city's cathedral (Domkirken) the Sunday after the terrorist attack. Title says, "King and queen cry during song in cathedral" Original on nrk.no website.

Herborg Kråkevik in concert on Rådhusplassen in Oslo. Clip from NRK coverage 25 July 2011. Kråkevik is a crossover folk/pop singer who recorded the song in 2000, which was rereleased and topped the charts again last year after Utøya. An estimated 200,000 attended the concert in the square in front of Oslo's city hall (Rådhus).

Chords, in Norwegian, at http://nortabs.net/tab/3029/ and on English-language website tabs.ultimate-guitar.com. Song is in A minor (although the copy of the Dansk Skolesangbog I got last year in Copenhagen has it with chords and standard notation in E minor). Below is a very nice finger-style guitar arrangement by YouTube user loooovelyy, 20, of Norway, who says she "looked at the chords on ultimate-guitar and figured out the rest by ear."

Also in Denmark. Expressions of solidarity from across Europe, ranging from a moment of silence at football matches to religious services attended by heads of church and state, were posted to YouTube. Here a segment of TV news coverage of Danish Queen Margrethe, Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary as they participate in a memorial service at Denmark's Vor Frue (Our Lady) cathedral in Copenhagen. Video clip of choir singing "Til Ungdommen" begins at 8:34 and lasts 10 or 15 seconds.

'Singing and Praying Bands' bring African American tradition to Common Ground on the Hill

Some of the deepest roots of American music came alive at McDaniel College last week as "Singing and Praying Bands" from Maryland's Eastern Shore brought a time-honored African American style of worship to the Common Ground on the Hill summer music camp. Their art, a regional form descended from the "ring shout" of 19th-century black hymnody, was a reminder of the deep African influence on all of our music, from Leonard Bernstein and Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" to jazz, blues, hip hop and almost all of our popular music.

Their appearance also affirmed a long-standing relationship with McDaniel (formerly Western Maryland College). Walt Michael, executive director of Common Ground, said it was in McDaniel's Alumni Hall, where the concert was held, that local Methodist and AME conferences voted to merge in the 1960s.

"Consider this is your church here," he said. "We invite you back any time you want to come."

The Singing and Praying Bands grew out of Methodist camp meetings of the 19th and 20th centuries, according to the Rev. Jerry Colbert of John Wesley United Methodist Church of Annapolis. Like so many traditions, they are losing ground with the younger generation, and members of several churches in tidewater Eastern Maryland and Delaware decided to demonstrate it to wider audiences in the hope that it won't die out altogether.

So about 35 or 40 older black men and women, dressed in white, filed onto the stage in McDaniel's Alumni Hall singing "Am I a Soldier of the Cross" in call-and-response style. They circled around a mourner's bench - a row of chairs set up in the middle of the stage - praying and singing over the people seated there. The singing was repetitive, and it was mesmerizing in much the same way as a Taize meditation, but it also sounded like the Sea Island spirituals collected during the 1960s in South Carolina, and it carried you away as it got more insistent.

In all, it was a privilege to be able to hear it.

In a very fine, nuanced story that ran June 14 in The Washington Post, reporter Chris Richards gives a lot of background. Richards said the decision to take its art to a wider audience wasn't easy: "This isn’t just music. It’s their ministry. This isn’t entertainment. It’s their faith."

(There's an audio clip and slideshow with Richards' story. Definitely worth a listen.)

There's more background on the Maryland Traditions 2012 website of the Maryland Arts Council. Citing folklorist Jonathan David, independent scholar of Philadelphia and author of "Together Let us Sweetly Live, it explains:

... these groups are a regional variation of the larger ring shout tradition. Many scholars consider this to have been the most important religious service of enslaved Africans and their African-American descendants in North America in the 19th century.

The bands of Maryland grew out of Methodist prayer meetings. In some areas, these groups had their start in antebellum times in brush arbors where the enslaved held secret religious services. At camp meetings, prayer groups from many neighboring churches--referring to themselves as "Singing and Praying Bands"-- met and sang and prayed.

Ina the Washington Post story, Chris Richards said taking a religious tradition to secular venues can be "an ethical tightrope" because the tradition changes:

It’s delicate business. Intervention efforts in the 1960s helped rescue Louisiana Cajun music from extinction. But some say that intervention can change the actual nature of music, pointing to strands of gospel, bluegrass, the blues and other genres that have been professionalized, commercialized and taken far from their roots.

The ethical dilemma is real. Something like it has happened with the Sacred Harp, but somehow the shape note singers have managed to hold onto their spiritual core of their art. For what it's worth, after seeing them at Common Ground, I'm not too worried about the Singing and Praying Bands of eastern Maryland. I think they'll do the same.

Helligaandskirken's new CD and songbook w/ songs from Night Church - "Pilgrim: Songs for Prayer and Travel"

Published in April: "Pilgrim - sange til andagt og vandring" by Mikkel Vale, Night Church pastor at Helligaandskirken on the Strøget inCopenhagen

Promotional video on YouTube with excerpts, footage from rehearsals

Review article by Rasmus Koppelhus, organist in Simeon's Church in Nørrebro, in Kirken i København (link here for the original Danish article and here for an English translation by Google. Says Koppelhus:

Think of a church that Helligaandskirken manages, within its own ranks, to embrace as wide as last year's releases from the church testifies. In the autumn of 2011 appeared "Psalm Tax," which was the result of Carina Wøhlk vicar and organist Hans Ole Thers' cooperation on the 30 new hymns. And now this pilgrim songbook made in cooperation with Church Foundation. Helligaandskirken are not just a parish church for them within the ramparts, but manages through fine publications that parts of creativity works out to all of us outside the ramparts. Thank you.

Koppelhus has this to say about the music:

The composer Mikkel Vale have even tried their hand at Taize genre, and the result may in particular be tested in the song "God is everywhere." The song shows in the finest manner Mikkel Vales understanding of Baroque affective learning (that is, how specific intervals or a melodic progression of thought that could express the exact feelings and moods). Thus, there is almost an octave difference between the words "heaven" (light-register) and "earth" (dark register). The text on top of that is written by an anonymous karmelitternonne, helps give the song a spiritual credibility.

Same formula, but without karmelitternonnen, apply by Mikkel Vales music to the Lord's Prayer. However, it all becomes a bit far-fetched, because the only dissonance that occurs, is present on the first syllable of the word "temptation". The idea is of course good, but perhaps a more economical use of affect doctrine would do well.

That word Google didn't have in its memory bank, karmelitternonnen, is probably the Danish word for a Carmelite nun.

"Pilgrim - sange til andagt og vandring" is a joint publication of Helligaandskirken and Kirkefondet (the Church Foundation) of Copenhagen. Details at www.kirkefondet.dk. The songbook costs DKR 200 and the CD costs DKR 150.

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)