Simple gifts?



Light at the end of the tunnel? Or a train coming the other way?

Something rather more chewy here.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Unknown said…
The middle section sounded like a rather curious mixture of "All Creatures of Our God and King" and "Lord of the Dance". Do either of these tunes have any particular siginificance for Barack H. Obama? Or maybe they weren't in fact the tunes they sounded like?
1:07 pm
Kyle L said…
Pliable, I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Very cryptic though. As for the John Williams piece, I rather liked it. I was fearing the worst, but I thought it was quite good.

And Andrew, it sounds like you're not familiar with "Simple Gifts" or Copland. It has the same melody as "Lord of the Dance." It's a nice tune and ever since Copland used it in Appalachian Spring it has always had a special place in Americana.
4:59 pm
La Cowntessa said…
Urg urg urg, Simple Gifts was a SHAKER HYMN written by Joseph Brackett. All the other versions are arrangements or appropriations.

It's possibly one of the most American pieces of music there is -- something written by an American, for Americans.

It was a perfect and appropriate tune to arrange for the occasion. The text is as follows:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight

'Till by turning, turning we come round right.
6:10 pm
La Cowntessa said…
Aaaaaaaaaaand because I can't shut up on this topic, and missed my calling as a musicologist -- Simple Gifts is also, in a way, a distillation of American music and American music history.

Our musical tradition was built and developed around religious music -- Puritan hymns, Shaker hymns, shaped Note hymn singing, spirituals, etc. There is a certain American "sound" or style that is embodied in Copland, and it is the direct influence of the music on which the US was built.

While there are many Big Names in the classical music tradition from the US, the true representatives of our musical culture are composers like Alice Parker, Moses Hogan, H.T. Burleigh, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and yes, Copland.
6:22 pm
Pliable said…
Email received:

Hello,

Am I alone in being disturbed by how similar Williams's treatment of Simple Gifts to that of Copland? The first appearance of the tune in the clarinet in the same register; the lightly bustling accompaniment...

--
James Primosch
10:12 pm
Unknown said…
Thank you Kyle, Pliable, and others, for the enlightenment here and in the post above. I'm not familiar enough with Copland, and my familiarity with Shaker musical tradition is limited to the adaptation of "Simple Gifts" by Sydney Carter in his hymn "Lord of the Dance". It is interesting that the opening of "Simple Gifts" is almost identical to the opening of the hymn tune "Lasst uns erfreuen" to which the hymn "All creatures of our God and King" is usually sung. A shared musical path in the distant past, perhaps?
11:14 pm
saintrussell said…
And now we learn the musicians were miming to a recording. I would not have planned to feature instruments that can't be played effectively in cold weather as part of an outdoor event in January.
5:23 pm
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

I have seen the future and it is cardboard

Image
This striking structure is the work of the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. It houses one of the electric powered tugs that worked on the Burgundy Canal until the 1930s, and is part of the Cap Canal museum at Pouilly-en-Auxois in France which we visited recently. By any criteria this is a remarkable work of art, but it becomes quite exceptional when it is explained that this is one of Shigeru Ban's famous paper tube structures. Shigeru Ban is famous for his innovative work using paper and cardboard tubing as a material for building construction, and he is particularly known for using recycled cardboard paper tubes to quickly and efficiently house disaster victims . His designs are influenced by the pioneering geodesic domes created by Buckminster Fuller, who made a guest appearance in Karlheinz Stockhausen - part of a dream . Free thinking chamber music ensemble Domus used a geodesic dome when they performed outside the comfort zone , while maverick architect Louis Kahn's
Read more

Four great albums that are victims of clickbait correctness

Image
Clickbait correctness - if ain't clickable, don't hype it on social media - means some great albums are not receiving the attention they deserve. My recent rewarding listening has included the new Alice Coltrane release Kirtan: Turiya Sings . Kirtans are sacred Vedic chants, and  Turiya Sings  was originally released exclusively on cassette in 1982 for the students of Alice Coltrane's ashram at the The Vedantic Center, northwest of Los Angeles. For this cassette release synthesizers, strings, and sound effects were added to Alice Coltrane’s voice and organ. Although this mix was never commercially released, it achieved cult status as a bootleg recording. The reason for the absence of a commercial release remains unclear, but the most plausible explanation is that the complete master tapes were not retained, making quality remastering impossible. But in 2004 Ravi Coltrane , who is Alice’s son by John Coltrane and producer of this new release, discovered tapes of just Ali
Read more

Towards infinite potential

Image
The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics postulates that "atoms form a world of potentials and possibilities, rather than of things and facts". Following a parallel path Ajahn Sumedho , a teacher from the Thai Forest Buddhist tradition , has proposed that: We do not know the future. But we do not need to know. We can let the future be the mysterious unknown, the infinite potential - the possibility for pleasure, the possibility for pain, the possibility for peace. As we let go of the fear of the unknown, we find peace. My photo of a stormy sky over Colombo in Sri Lanka hints at that infinite potential. There are many ways to experience it, and music is one of them. For me two examples particularly relevant to this post are Claude Vivier's Siddhartha and Jonathan Harvey's Body Mandala . It is now time for me to defy my advancing years and travel into the mysterious unknown of the future. Which means On An Overgrown Path  will fall silent, When, or indeed i
Read more

Banging the drum for new music

Image
Turning up the bass from left to right are Christopher Austin, Gabriel Prokofiev, Tansy Davies and yours truly. The photo was taken after Saturday's (Oct 9) Snape concert at which Christopher Austin conducted the Azalea Ensemble in Tansy Davies' music . The Azalea Ensemble is a newly formed group of outstanding young musicians mainly from the Royal Academy of Music who specialise in new music. Their principal conductor Christopher Austin , who conducts Boulez-style without a baton, is building an impressive reputation for championing contemporary music including that of Elisabeth Lutyens . Both Azalea and Christopher Austin are names to watch. Azalea's Snape concert was part of an Aldeburgh residency during which they are recording a CD of Tansy Davies' music for Gabriel Prokofiev's Nonclassical label . Judging by the non-classical microphone positions at last night's gig and the tight sound that Azalea were making, the upcoming release should satisfy even
Read more

New classical audiences need new music

Image
A reader's  perceptive comment  explained that to reach a new audience classical music must help listeners across the classical/non-classical divide.  Electronic Dance Music  (EDM) is the immensely popular staple fare of classical's elusive new young audience, and EDM lacks any narrative progression. Classical music can also be non-linear: one example is John Luther Adams' Become Desert , a seamless 40 minute sonic mirage which   abandons the horizontal narrative structures of works such as Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony  with its 'Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside'.  Become Desert sits comfortably in the concert hall, yet it would not be out of place in a sunset session at Ibiza's Café Del Mar or a full moon trance party on Koh Pha Ngan . As John Luther Adams described in a New York Times essay ,  Become Desert  literally entrances its audience - "You find yourself listening in ways you never have before. The scale of yo
Read more

Have all the really great musicians come and gone?

Image
Bernard Haitink's 2016 recording of Mahler's Third Symphony is arguably the greatest interpretation of that towering work committed to record. It is also one of the last testaments from a conductor who together with Georg Solti, Herbert von Karajan, Sir Adrian Boult, Colin Davis and others defined a golden age of classical music. In response to my post ' Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares ' reader David has posted a comment that starts by asking "...have all the really great performances, recordings indeed all the greatest musicians come and gone?" He then goes on to observe that  "I haven't heard anything in the last twenty or more years that compares with previous generations". The classical industry has spent much time agonising over its failed attempts to reach a new audience. But an even bigger problem has received little attention. Not only is the new young audience remaining elusive, but the older lon
Read more

Scott Ross and the paradox of popularity

Image
After seven years my post ' Scott Ross and the paradox of genius ' is still one of the most widely read Overgrown Path articles. This popularity at first sight seems pardoxical, as Scott Ross lacks any click bait or celebrity appeal. But his flame is kept alive by thoughtful articles such as the one in today's FranceSoir by Moufid Azmaïesh which links to my 2004 post.  What is remarkable and heartening is that Moufid Azmaïesh's article  is given prominence in a respected international publication without the clickable hook of virtue signalling , an anniversary or a scandal to hang the story on. In his thoughtful appraisal Moufid Azmaïesh avoids the sensationalism that blights so much of today's classical music writing . Instead he ponders on how art, and Scott Ross' art in particular, takes us to a better place beyond today's ailing materialistic culture. Moufid Azmaïesh goes on to explain how at this time of global crisis art exposes us to "the s
Read more

Virtue signalling does not sell concert tickets

Image
This article is unique among the 4554 posts uploaded to On An Overgrown Path since August 2004. Because it agrees with a Slipped Disc post. Last week Norman uploaded a Slipped Disc reader's contribution headlined ' Why I won't be going back to concerts '. The thrust of the contribution was not the reader's fear of COVID, but how for him concerts had become "just a bit too often ordinary... a bit of a ritual". Which resonates with my recent post 'Where has all the musical adventurousness gone?'  lamenting the demise of musicians who is transcend conventions and pursue their own unique musical visions. David Munrow is talking to Peter Maxwell Davies in that photo. In the early 1970s David Munrow’s Pied Piper radio programme was broadcast four times a week for five years and introduced a new audience to early music. He presented a successful TV series, and wrote scores for the BBC TV series The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elisabeth R , and
Read more

When classical musicians fought against tuxedo fascism

Image
In the late 1960s artist Tom Philips was also known for his music activities. These included compositions performed by pianist John Tilbury , and he also played in the Portsmouth Sinfonia and Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra . The Portsmouth Sinfonia was inspired by Cardew's Scratch Orchestra. It was formed in 1970 by a mischievous  Gavin Bryars  from staff and students at Portsmouth College of Art as a one-off ensemble to participate in a talent competition. But the Sinfonia took on a life of its own as a reaction against what its members termed 'tuxedo fascism'.  Ability and experience were not a criteria for playing in the Portsmouth Sinfonia, however attendance at rehearsals was mandatory and intentionally bad playing was not allowed. Early repertoire comprised classical warhorses such as The Blue Danube and Also Sprach Zarathustra . The Sinfonia went on to play at the Purcell Room, Festival Hall, and Albert Hall, and was rewarded with a recording contract; y
Read more

John Cage's Snape Song Books

Image
Song Books (Solos for Voice 3–92) is a collection of short works by John Cage , written and compiled by the composer in 1970. It contains pieces of four kinds : songs, songs with electronics, directions for a theatrical performance, and directions for a theatrical performance with electronics. Any may be performed by one or more singers . Song Books was published by Cage in 1970 as three volumes : volume one contained Solos for Voice 3–58, volume two contained Solos for Voice 59–92, and the third volume, titled "Instructions", contains various tables and other materials necessary for performance of some of the pieces. The work explores a very wide variety of notation systems. Some Solos are given in standard notation, others employ a special brand of notation with circles of different sizes and lines instead of notes , still others are systems of dots and lines, etc. Some are not notated at all: the text is given using different fonts and font sizes for different
Read more