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

Good enough for Toscanini, Ormandy and Stokowski

Image
Edmund Rubbra's Brahms Variations And Fugue On A Theme By Handel Op. 24 was performed in the 1940s and 50s by Arturo Toscanini and Eugene Ormandy, and his Rubbra's Fifth Symphony was recorded by Sir John Barbirolli and programmed by Leopold Stokowski. Yet today Rubbra's music is rarely if ever heard in the concert hall. So we are fortunate that it has been better served in the recording studio. Notable recordings include Richard Hickox's indispensable survey of all the symphonies for Chandos , supplemented by compelling interpretations by Norman del Mar, Tod Handley, Sir Adrian Boult, and the composer. (But strangely, Rubbra's Brahms Variations is missing from the current CD catalogue.) But why has Rubbra failed to gain traction in the concert hall? Why, for example, in an age when accessible trumps challenging , is Rubbra's Fourth Symphony virtually unknown? Why is his music so neglected when the Lark Ascending consistently tops popularity polls, and Robert L...
Read more

Early musician who could have become a great conductor

Image
Hopefully at least a little of the content from eleven years of On An Overgrown Path transcends the virtual noise that is the staple fare of online music journalism today . For me the most rewarding projects have been the Philippa Schuyler and Master Musician of Jajouka doubleheaders, the profile of Guyanese conductor Rudolph Dunbar , the exploration of contemporary modal music , and interviews with Jonathan Harvey , Jordi Savall , Ali Keeler , and with David Munrow's recording producer Christopher Bishop. Although the latter interview has been available as a sound file it has not to date been transcribed as text. So while tidying up loose ends I have transcribed the interview below. (The photo at the foot of the article was taken during the radio interview and shows me with Christopher Bishop). Although David Munrow is best known as an early music authority the interview ranges widely. Christopher Bishop mentored both Riccardo Muti and Andre Previn early in their careers...
Read more

Musician's dissent dismissed as "sanctimonious shit"

Image
Violinist, conductor, composer, and improviser Pekka Kuusisto recently announced he would pausing his professional engagements in the United States in the following message: I’ve decided to stop working in the United States for the time being.  I want no pressure placed on any of my colleagues to come to the same conclusion.  Love and solidarity Predictability his decision was greeted by an outpouring of bile on the classical music industry's online resource of choice Slipped Disc . Just as the decision of respected American composer John Luther Adams to relocate to Australia  was greeted with similar bile . Here is just one comment posted in response to Pekka Kuusisto's decision: Sanctimonious piece of shit. Never going to another one of his concerts. The US didn’t kill Iranian school girls for performative violence. This false accusation is disrespectful to the US military which gives Pekka his freedoms. Online forums always attract nutjobs. But this thread is a conti...
Read more

How classical music became a pseudo-event

Image
A recent thread On An Overgrown Path that culminated in a reader's assertion that it's OK to program something that isn't perfect , received widespread support. This strand was an extension of my argument that audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music . In turn this reflected the response of "I've always felt that it is and will be strong enthusiasm that will change the world" by the much-missed Jonathan Harvey to my early advocacy of his music. But despite this, I am proposing today rather contrarily that excessive enthusiasm as well as excessive neglect can harm a composer's music. In his 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America the historian Daniel J. Boorstin coined the term 'pseudo-event' for events that are staged specifically to attract media coverage. He asserted that pseudo-events are in reality 'synthetic news', and that manipulation to maximise media exposure reduces the spontaneity and intrinsi...
Read more

Classical musician's brave journey from Mozart to Morisco

Image
In the 1950s a number of prominent jazz musicians converted to Islam, including - to use their adopted names - Ahmad Jamal , and Sahib Shihab , Yusef Lateef . One of the most notable converts was the drummer Art Blakey , while the very personal heterodox cosmology of the most celebrated jazz musician of that period John Coltrane was influenced by the beliefs of his first wife Naima, who was a Muslim convert . Many of the musicians who converted were African Americans endeavouring to escape from the shadow of Western colonialism ; they saw Islam as an attractive alternative to Christianity within the Abrahamic tradition, and jazz at that time was heavily influenced by music from cultures beyond the Judeo-Christian world. These circumstances were unique to the 1950s, and fewer jazz musicians have taken the path to Islam since. But those who have include the bass player Danny Thompson who converted in 1990; he has played with many great musicians, including Nick Drake on the legendary...
Read more

Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

Image
On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of the harpsichordist's great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the Château d'Assas, Scott Ross gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos b...
Read more

All aboard the Martinu bandwagon

Image
Depressing, but predictable, to see the mainstream media scrambling aboard the Bohuslav Martinů bandwagon as soon as BBC Radio 3 announces a cycle of his superb symphonies . Equally depressing, but a sign of the times, to see the Independent publishing an appreciation of the composer's symphonies by a writer who confesses elsewhere to never having heard a single note of them. As Norman Lebrecht famously wrote in the Evening Standard back in 2006: ‘... until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’. Sadly the hard facts now show that Norman is no longer at the Evening Standard , and, as from next Monday, the Evening Standard will no longer be a paid for newspaper . But you can find pre-bandwagon appreciations of Martinů here and 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 ...
Read more

Pure Gould

Image
"I suppose it can be said that I'm an absent-minded driver," Glenn Gould [seen above] once said. "It's true that I've driven through a number of red lights on occasion, but on the other hand, I've stopped at a lot of green ones but never gotten credit for it". We seem to have a Glenn Gould riff going right now and I am not complaining. A regular reader has written asking - Having recently bought the Arabian Passion on your "recommendation", I now find myself awaiting delivery of Glenn Gould's Byrd, Gibbons and Sweelinck disc, having followed an Overgrown Path last night . What other Gould recordings do you think I should not be living without? I currently only have the Bach recordings? Glenn Gould's 'contrapuntal radio' documentaries made for CBC are really a special case, and I will return to them in another post. But it is worth pointing out that the CBC Records CD release Glenn Gould the Radio Artist includes his Sto...
Read more

Soundtrack for a porn movie

Image
"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro...
Read more

The purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness

Image
Two contrasting responses from America to my post Third rate music on Naxos' American classics? Flinging merde - ' Granted some of the stuff that Naxos has packaged in that series has been less than distinguished but operating in a cultural establishment where critics treat every cow patty ever dropped by the likes of Alwyn (above) and Bax and Finzi and Michael Tippitt (sic) as if it were fois gras, Clements is hardly in a position to fling merde' - from Sequenza21 , and I'm sure Norman Lebrecht would approve of that misspelling of Tippett. The true beauty of the effort - ' Personally speaking I expect listener reaction to concert music is heavily dependent on emotional mood and cultural/historical context . The concept of "ratings" and "tiers" for composers is pretty much an over-rated specialization of critics, which serves the purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness. My father is the American composer George Frederick McKay (photo be...
Read more