| Heleluyan | arr. Ulrich |
| Presentation by Ron Brave | Native Flute and Drum |
| Red Cloud’s Prayer | de Pue |
| Yankee Doodle | arr. Runswick |
| Buttermilk Hill | arr. Olson |
| Tenting Tonight | arr. Berkey |
| In Flanders Fields | Andrews |
| For What It’s Worth | arr. A. Winters |
| Gift to be Simple | arr. Chilcott |
| Down to the River to Pray | arr. Lawson |
| Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal | arr. Parker/Shaw |
| We Shall Overcome | arr. Crenshaw |
| MLK | arr. Chilcott |
| My Old Kentucky Home | arr. Moore |
| Shenandoah | arr. Erb |
| Home on the Range | arr. Hayes |
| America the Beautiful | arr. Helvering |
| Star Spangled Banner | arr. Meader |
| Eternal Father Strong to Save | arr. A. Winters/B. Winters |
| Concord | Britten |
Program Notes
I am fond of puns and double meanings.
Last season, I gave a talk entitled “The State of Choral Music in an American Idol Age.” I was typing up a promo for the talk and managed to type “idyll” instead of “idol.”
Then I started thinking; always a dangerous prospect.
Idyll (pronounced just like “idol” or “idle”) can be best defined as “a poem or prose composition, usually describing pastoral scenes or events or any charmingly simple episode, appealing incident, or the like.”
Charmingly simple. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could boil down our differences to a charmingly simple common ground? Better yet, a musical charmingly simple common ground? Or even better, a choral charmingly simple common ground?
The FOX show American Idol has become an iconic democratic equalizer of sorts. Viewers come together (in the privacy of their own homes), listen to people sing, decide who they like best, vote, and then the results are made public. America has spoken. Contestant X will not return next week. Viewers who disagree with the decision lambast the choice of the judges and the viewing American public. Viewers who agree find validation in knowing that they are in a majority; the right. Much like politics, yes? But (usually) without the bile, the anger and the reactionary attitudes, because, hey, it’s all in good fun. Viewers might disagree with who was eliminated the week before, but they usually don’t quit the show because of it. They keep tuning in to see what happens next. And sometimes, sometimes, they hear a performance that changes their mind; that allows them to see and hear in ways they’ve not seen and heard before. Sometimes the contestant who lost is the one who ends up with the more meaningful career; the one who sings the music that strikes a chord with more Americans.
Yes, politics is much more serious than American Idol. But can we not take a page from the American Idol playbook in our political maneuverings? Keep tuning in? Keep voting? Keep trying to make our voices heard? Keep singing, though our song has been voted off? And sometimes, sometimes, find value in a contestant we had previously written off as useless?
Pair this sentiment with my frustration at the myopic tendencies of many Americans to think that their American experience is the only one; that my America is not correct because it contains parts that are not in your America. That people on one side of the political spectrum are somehow less American than people on the other. And vice-versa. But all citizens of the United States are American. Whether you voted for McCain or Obama, you voted. You are an American. We all have unique experiences of being American and none of them are invalid.
So American Idyll was born, a concert designed to reflect some commonalities of the American Experience. A concert conceptualized as a way for listeners to find common ground as Americans the weekend prior to the election. Though we all might disagree on politics, we must always search for a foundation for mutual understanding about what it means to be American.
***
The first section of unifying music might, at first, seem divisive. After all, Native American history is a history that makes Americans uncomfortable, or angry, or defensive, or indifferent. Or perhaps all four. Even the term “Native American” is divisive. Some prefer “American Indian.” Others do not want to be known by a geographic misnomer and prefer “Native American.” Some are offended by pan-Indian naming and identify with their particular nation, tribe or band. It’s a messy controversy without a clear answer. And that’s just the name. Dig deeper into the state and affairs of the Indigenous Peoples and the controversy gets as messy as a controversy can possibly get.
Regardless of what name we use or what our politics and ideals are, we can all certainly agree that the Indigenous Peoples were here first. The Native Americans created a culture, religion, history and forms of government on this land long before the Europeans arrived. Not much of their civilization remains. In Mexico, the grandeur of pre-Columbian Indian culture was incorporated into the national imagery of what it means to be “Mexican,” and indígenas make up about fifteen percent of the population. In the United States, most of the Native American culture remains with the Native American populations. And one wonders whether we as Americans have incorporated more Aztec and Mayan traditions into our culture than those of the native peoples who made their homes in what would eventually become the United States.
But that’s a pretty divisive idea. And it would be an understatement to say that this is a prickly issue, as the recent yearly Columbus Day fracas demonstrates.
So why am I opening our concert about common ground with the music of American Indians? Because their music and stories describe the land we all now call home. And some of their prayers, particularly the one attributed to Red Cloud, are beautiful in their ecumenical inclusiveness; before there was a need for the word “ecumenical” even.
Heleluyan is a Muscogee song of praise. The Muscogee villages were permanent sites along four rivers in Alabama and Georgia, which is why they were called “Creek” Indians. In the eighteenth century, they allied with Britain and Spain, becoming one of the more formidable tribes on the continent. Some versions of Heleluyan boast verses that refer to the tragedy of the Trail of Tears, but this arrangement chooses to focus on the praise, not the tragedy. It is considered a Muscogee national hymn, a sacred song of praise and has been said to be the most popular Muscogee hymn sung in churches in Oklahoma.
Ron Brave, a Lakota from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, was born on the south side of the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota. He is a Native drum and flute performer and has been active in the powwow community for over 30 years, singing and drumming across the U.S. and Canada. He is recently inspired by and is integrating instruments from around the world in his flute music. Mr. Brave attended Haskell Indian Junior College where he received an associates degree in American Indian Studies. He also attended the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare. Ron now resides with his family in Lawrence, Kansas, where he is on the board of directors for the Four Winds Indian Center and Haskell Cultural Center.
“Red Cloud’s Prayer” uses a text that is as often attributed to Yellow Lark as it is to Red Cloud. The poetry of the prayer is astonishing in its simultaneous simplicity and depth. It calls to mind a simpler time, when inner wisdom was hidden in every leaf and rock, and strength was sought not for competition but for battle with the greatest enemy, the one who lives inside each of us.
O Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind
Whose breath gives life to all the world
O hear me.
I am small and weak, I need your strength and wisdom.
Let me walk in beauty.
Let my eyes behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made.
Make my ears sharp, to hear your voice.
Make me wise so that I can understand the lessons you have taught my people.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock.
I need strength not to be greater than my brother but to fight my greatest enemy, myself.
Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes.
So when life fades as the fading sunset
My spirit will come to you without shame.
***
How could a program about commonality as Americans be complete without Yankee Doodle?
The tune we now know as Yankee Doodle was used by the British, with varying texts, as propaganda to bait their enemies. The melody was so culturally universal that it appeared in the 1767 American comic opera, The Disappointment, as a nonpolitical ditty. But at some point, the Americans embraced the song, along with the term “Yankee Doodle,” and made it their own, turning it back on those who had used it to mock them.
The text is rather befuddling to modern ears, and there are, of course, many theories drafted as explanation. The theory that seems most likely to me is as follows: the term “Jahnke” was used by early Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam as a derogatory term for English-speaking colonists. “Doodle” is how the British referred to uneducated farmers and backwoodsmen. The Macaroni Club was made up of British gentlemen who adopted the ostentatious and flamboyant fashions popular in Europe during the eighteenth century. Ergo, the original insult was that a backwoods colonial would stick a feather in his tricorne cap and consider himself fashionable.
But what does that have to do with war? Part of propaganda is turning insults into praise. British troops taunted the colonists with this tune and insult for years, sometimes by singing it loudly outside church services. Eventually the Americans appropriated the tune and embraced it, turning the insult into a celebration of their defiance. With a variety of texts, it became the principal American battle theme of the Revolution and eventually a greater symbol of humiliation to the British than it had been to the Americans.
Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony,
Stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni.
Chorus:
Yankee Doodle keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy,
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy.
Fath’r and I went down to camp,
Along with Captain Gooding,
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty pudding.
Chorus
There was Captain Washington
Upon a slapping stallion,
Agiving order to his men,
I guess it was a million.
Chorus
Then the feathers on his hat
They looked so very fine-ah!
I wanted peskily to get
To give to my Jemima.
Chorus
The troopers they would gallop up
And fire right in our faces;
It scare me almost half to death
To see them run such races.
Chorus
Well, I can’t tell you half I see,
They kept up such a smother;
So I took my hat off, made a bow,
And scampered home to mother.
Chorus
Music of our wars.
This section should have been the easiest to program, as there is an abundance of repertoire from which to choose. But that wide selection also made it the hardest section to program. How does one effectively program a musical overview of our wars? How does one compartmentalize without glossing over and trivializing?
I still don’t know. What I chose to do, however, is focus on the one thing that is irrefutable: when there is war, people die. We may agree or disagree with the reasons we fight, but we can all agree that war, in the end, leaves only an army of mourners behind. As Bertrand Russell is quoted as saying, “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.”
With this thought in mind, I went directly to Tenting Tonight, a song of the Civil War. Soon after, I added Buttermilk Hill. I found the poem In Flanders Fields soon after that and was lucky enough to find a beautiful setting.
All three of these songs are not about the wars themselves, the political fights and situations that caused them. They are about those who fought. Those who died.
Buttermilk Hill is an old Irish lullaby tune. During the American Revolution many of the common soldiers were Irish immigrants, and the tune, with updated lyrics, became one of the Revolution’s most popular and famous airs. Arranger Phil Olson has taken the powerful lament one step further; he adds a drone, a note or chord that sounds continuously through the piece. The text for this drone, which starts with the bass opening then moves from part to part, are names; names found on the casualty lists from the Battle of Bunker Hill. Private John Simpson. Jonathan Bate. Colonel Jonathan Brewer. Jonathan Lovejoy. Colonel Jon Glover. Jonathan Jenkins. Major John McClary. Jonathan Hadley. John Lord. Colonel John Stark. Jonathan Gray. John Cole. Captain John Brooks. John Barret. Colonel Jonathan Ward. Captain John Manuel. John Gordon.
Just names. But each name represents a human life snuffed out by war. A human life connected to other human lives that remained behind to mourn.
Here I sit on Buttermilk Hill
Who can blame me, cryin’ my fill
And ev’ry tear could turn a mill,
Johnny has gone for a soldier.
Me, oh my, I loved him so,
Broke my heart to see him go,
And only time will heal my woe,
Johnny has gone for a soldier.
Price and honor one and all
Rise up to a nation’s call,
All ‘round me men will fall.
Johnny has gone for a soldier.
I’ll sell my flax, I’ll sell my wheel,
Buy my love a sword of steel,
So it in battle he may wield.
Johnny has gone for a soldier.
Tenting Tonight is a song of grief, frustration and exhaustion. As the nation tired of the war between brothers, the music representing the Civil War changed. Patriotic songs gave way to haunting music conceived in sorrow. One of the best known is Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground by Walter Kittredge. The story behind the song’s composition is told this way on the 77th New York Regimental Balladeers website: “The Civil War was in full development by 1863 when he [Kittredge] received notice that he had been drafted to serve in the army and must report at once to Concord, New Hampshire. The night before he left, he sat beside the window looking out across the twilit New Hampshire fields. He reached for his violin. Inspired by sadness, regret and thoughts of soldier life that were all too familiar, with mingled glory and pathos, a song began to take form. His thoughts continued to wander away into the South and to the camps where soldiers were gathered. “Many are the hearts,” he thought, “many are the hearts that are weary tonight, wishing for the war to cease.”
We’re tenting tonight on the old camp ground,
Give us a song to cheer
Our weary hearts, a song of home,
And friends we love so dear.
Many are the hearts that are weary tonight,
Wishing for the war to cease;
Many are the hearts that are looking for the right
To see the dawn of peace.
Tenting tonight, tenting tonight, tenting on the old camp ground.
We are tired of war on the old camp ground,
Many are dead and gone,
Of the brave and true who’ve left their homes,
Others been wounded long.
We’ve been fighting today on the old camp ground,
Many are lying near;
Some are dead and some are dying,
Many are in tears.
Many are the hearts that are weary tonight,
Wishing for the war to cease;
Many are the hearts that are looking for the right
To see the dawn of peace.
“In Flanders Fields” is the poetic legacy of the Second Battle of Ypres during the First World War. Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD, was a surgeon who had spent seventeen days treating injured men in the Ypres salient (a battlefield feature that projects into enemy territory making troops vulnerable because they are surrounded by the enemy on three sides). One death was particularly difficult for McCrae. A former student, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, had been killed by a shell burst and was buried later that same day in the little cemetery outside McCrae’s dressing station. McCrae performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.The next day McCrae sat in the back of an ambulance parked near the little cemetery. He gazed at the wild poppies and scribbled in a notebook. Cyril Allinson was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. McCrae looked up as Allinson approached. McCrae went on writing while the sergeant-major waited. When McCrae finished he handed his pad to Allinson. “The poem was an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind,” Allinson remembered later. McCrae died of pneumonia while on active duty in 1918.
Outside this auditorium are nine thousand poppies, each one representing a thousand combatant deaths during World War One, a total of nine million.
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
“For What It’s Worth” is a song written by Stephen Stills, performed by Buffalo Springfield and released as a single in January 1967. While the song has come to symbolize worldwide turbulence and confrontational feelings arising from events during the 1960s, Stills reportedly wrote the song in reaction to escalating unrest between law enforcement and young club-goers related to the closing of a club on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. The song warns of increasing polarization and violence in American society without taking any stand other than that of acceptance of diversity and free speech. It comments on politics without itself being political. The song becomes a warning: strident and violent attacks against opponents might threaten the very freedoms, attitudes and lifestyles you seek to protect. “Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong.”
Stop. Find common ground. And go from there.
There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down
There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Gettin’ so much resistance from behind
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the Man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down
Intermission
In his book, The American Soul, Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders, Jacob Needleman writes, “we need to appreciate the important role that innovative religious communities played in the formation of our country–remembering that, for many of the Founding Fathers, America itself was envisioned as a new land, a new community defined not only politically but also spiritually.” The idea of a free America became a beacon for leaders of would-be utopian communities, one of which was the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, commonly known as the Shakers. The Shakers began in England in 1747, arising from a group of dissenting Quakers. Only a handful of Shakers came to North America in 1774, but once here, they won many converts, and their faith spread to include roughly 6,000 members just before the Civil War. They were known for their emphasis on social equality between genders and races, as well as for their ban on procreation (hence the need for so many converts). “Simple Gifts” was written by Elder Joseph while he was at the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine in 1848. Several Shaker manuscripts indicate that this is a “Dancing Song” or a “Quick Dance.” The references to “turning” in the last two lines have been identified as dance instructions. The Shakers composed thousands of songs and also created many dances; both were an important part of the Shaker worship services.
‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where you oughta be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
“Down To The River To Pray” is a traditional American folk song that falls into the vast category of Appalachian Gospel Music. The style of music known as “Appalachian” music probably grew out of Scottish, English and Irish music brought to the United States by immigrants but was adopted by many other groups, including slaves. “Down To the River to Pray” may have been written by 19th century slaves, or it may have been a derivation of a Native American tribal song, adapted with Christian lyrics. The tune was reportedly published in Southern Harmony, a 19th Century Shape Note hymnal, which gives “Down to the River to Pray” its association with the Shape Note notation and singing schools. Founded in Colonial times to improve the quality of congregational singing, the singing school soon outgrew its church-centered focus and became an integral part of the social life of the community. Held for a week or month at a time, itinerant singing school masters would teach both secular and sacred three- and four-part music to a room filled with energetic colonial young adults of both sexes. Part of this democratization of music was a new musical notation, Shape Notes, which were designed to take the mystery out of notation and allow more people to learn to read music. Shape notes and the democratic participatory music they served flourished, but critics from the urban-based “better music” movement, spearheaded by Lowell Mason, advocated a style of sacred music more closely based on the harmonic styles of European music. The critics prevailed, and Shape Notes and singing schools faded into relative oblivion. “Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal,” a rousing anthem, is one of the best examples of a traditional musical notation approximating the style and spirit of the democratic, and sometimes raucous, Shape Note singing tradition.
As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the starry crown?
Good Lord show me the way!
O sisters let’s go down
Let’s go down, Come on down
O sisters let’s go down
Down in the river to pray
As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the robe and crown?
Good Lord show me the way!
O brothers let’s go down
Let’s go down, Come on down
Come on brothers let’s go down
Down in the river to pray
As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the starry crown?
Good Lord show me the way!
O fathers let’s go down
Let’s go down, Come on down
O fathers let’s go down
Down in the river to pray
As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the robe and crown?
Good Lord show me the way!
O Mothers let’s go down
Come on down, don’t you wanna go down?
O Mothers let’s go down
Down in the river to pray
As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the starry crown?
Good Lord show me the way!
O sinners let’s go down
Let’s go down, come on down
O sinners let’s go down
Down in the river to pray
As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the robe and crown?
Good Lord show me the way!
Hark I hear the Harps eternal ringing on the farther shore
As I near those swollen waters with their deep and solemn roar.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, praise the Lamb!
Hallelujah, hallelujah, Glory to the great I AM!
And my soul, tho’ stain’d with sorrow fading as the light of day,
Passes swiftly o’er those waters, to the city far away
Hallelujah.
Souls have cross’d before me, saintly, to that land of perfect rest;
And I hear them singing faintly, in the mansions of the blest.
Hallelujah!
***
The Highlander Research and Education Center, formerly known as the Highlander Folk School, provided training and education for the labor movement in Appalachia and throughout the Southern United States. During the 1950s, it played a critical role in the American Civil Rights Movement. It trained civil rights leader Rosa Parks prior to her historic role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Highlander Folk School also provided training for other movement activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr. The school’s intimate connection to the Civil Rights Movement gained it negative attention, and the school was closed by the state of Tennessee in 1961. It reorganized and moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where it reopened, later becoming the Highlander Research and Education Center. “We Shall Overcome” was Zilphia Horton’s favorite song, which wouldn’t mean much except she worked at Highlander AND she taught the song to Pete Seeger, who expanded the text and added it to his repertoire. Frank Hamilton, a folk singer from California, picked up Seeger’s version and taught it to Guy Carawan. In the early fifties, Carawan visited Highlander, where he probably also heard Zilphia Horton sing the song. When Carawan succeeded Horton as music director at Highlander in 1959, he reintroduced the song to the young student-activists. Those students gave the song the words and rhythms we know today, as they sang to keep their spirits up during the frightening police raids on Highlander and their subsequent stays in jail in 1959-60. In the decades since, the song has circled the globe and has been embraced by civil rights and pro-democracy movements in dozens of nations worldwide. From Northern Ireland to Eastern Europe, from Berlin to Beijing, and from South Africa to South America, its message of solidarity and hope has been sung in dozens of languages, in presidential palaces and in dark prisons. “We Shall Overcome” continues to lend its strength to all people struggling to be free.
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day
We’ll walk hand in hand
We’ll walk hand in hand
We’ll walk hand in hand some day
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day
We shall all be free
We shall all be free
We shall all be free some day
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day
“MLK” was written by Bono, of the band U2, to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. It captures the larger essence of what Dr. King has come to mean without mentioning him by name. “Sleep, sleep tonight. And may your dreams be realized. If the thundercloud passes rain. So let it rain. Let it rain — rain on him.”
***
While it is claimed that Stephen Foster wrote “My Old Kentucky Home” after a stay at Federal Hill, the home of his cousins, the Rowans, in Bardstown, Kentucky, there is no clear evidence that this is true. However, Foster’s sister, Charlotte, was a frequent visitor to the estate, and a case can be made that part of Foster’s inspiration for the song came from the letters Charlotte sent home to Pennsylvania while staying in Kentucky. The Fosters were descendents of the heroes of the American Revolution, but shortly after Stephen was born, the family lost its home and money due to bad investments. Charlotte, not wishing to be a burden, began to visit her rich relatives in Kentucky for extended periods of time. Charlotte was fascinated with the sprawling plantations and often wrote home of the “the most hospitable and friendly people you could wish to see. Indeed, it appears to be the Kentucky character.” As the song made its way into our modern times, the lyrics have changed drastically. All reference to “darkies” are gone, and the arrangement we sing has even removed the word “gay,” meaning “happy,” which still appears in the version that is the official state song of Kentucky. Some view the song as a racist view of an idyllic time of slavery, while others, including abolitionist Frederick Douglass, saw the song as sympathetic to slaves. Regardless, the melody and text was extremely popular during the Civil War, sung not only in the parlors of the ladies left behind but also beside army campfires of both Union and Confederate soldiers; a small beacon of common ground in the midst of a divisive war.
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,
‘Tis summer, the fields are array
The corn tops ripe and the meadows in the bloom,
While the birds make music all the day.
Weep no more, my lady,
Oh! weep no more to-day!
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky Home,
For the old Kentucky Home far away.
The day goes by like a shadow o’re the heart,
With sorrow where all was delight:
They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,
Oh my old Kentucky Home, good-night!
The unclear provenance of the songs in this section could be held up as another piece of evidence of our common ground as Americans. “Shenandoah” is a fine example of this. The lyrics may tell the story of a roving trader in love with the daughter of an Indian chief. Or they may tell of a pioneer’s nostalgia for the Shenandoah River Valley in Virginia. Or they may tell of a Union soldier in the American Civil War, dreaming of his country home to the west of the Missouri river, in Shenandoah, Iowa. Or they may tell of slaves escaping bondage, grateful that the river allowed their scent to be lost. The Shenandoah area was an important stopping point for pioneers, and lyrics were undoubtedly added by rivermen and settlers heading west. It’s a tune whose lyrics are easily manipulated. I once made a joke that my singers loved this arrangement so much that they insisted on singing it as an encore to our Holiday concert (“Oh Christmas tree, you are so pretty, with your lights and hanging tchotchke.”) or as an encore to our Saints and Angels concert (“Oh saints and angels are so lovely, and we just sang some songs about them.”) or even at weddings (“Oh these two folk are getting married, and we like to sing at weddings.”) It seems it is a song that can mean almost anything. The version we sing boasts simplified lyrics; ones that concentrate on the river and its valley. Certainly, for those of us who live along the wide Missouri, the images are powerful.
O Shenandoah, I long to see you
And hear your rolling river
O Shenandoah, I long to see you
‘Way, we’re bound away
Across the wide Missouri
I long to see your smiling valley
And hear your rolling river
I long to see your smiling valley
‘Way, we’re bound away
Across the wide Missouri
‘Tis seven long years since last I see thee
And hear your rolling river
‘Tis seven long years since last I see thee
‘Way, we’re bound away
Across the wide Missouri
In the early 1870s in Kansas, Brewster M. Higley originally wrote the words in a poem called “My Western Home.” The poem was first published in a December 1873 issue of the Smith County Pioneer under the title “Oh, Give Me a Home Where the Buffalo Roam.” Higley’s friend Daniel E. Kelley set the poem to music. And the song took off like wildfire over a prairie. Settlers passing through the territory and cowboys constantly on the move created a conduit for spreading the song throughout the United States. The universality of its lyrics made it easily adaptable to each new locale. “Everybody changed the words to suit the place they were from. So it became ‘My Colorado Home’ and ‘My Arizona Home,’” says Tom Averill, a Kansas scholar and writer. “The fact that Dr. Brewster Higley wrote it and the fact that Dan Kelley set it to music was completely lost probably within four, five or six years.” When Texas singer Vernon Dalhardt made the first commercial recording of the song, it was a huge hit. Franklin Roosevelt even declared it his favorite song in 1932. By 1935, “Home on the Range” was everywhere and universally loved. It is so familiar, in fact, that the arrangement Octarium performs uses no text for the first four pages; yet everyone still knows the words.
O give me a home where the buffalo roam
And the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
Home, home on the range.
***
The next set of pieces was designed to become American common ground. America the Beautiful was written by Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College. In 1893, Bates took the train to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach summer school at Colorado College. Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, including the alabaster buildings of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the wheat fields of America’s heartland Kansas and the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Zebulon’s Pikes Peak. The music was composed by church organist Samuel Ward in 1882. The tune came to him while he was on a ferryboat trip from Coney Island back to his home in New York City, and he was so anxious to write it down that he asked a friend to lend his shirt cuff to write on. Ward’s music combined with Bates’ poem were first published together in 1910 and titled, America the Beautiful. As an interesting side note, the words of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution can be sung as verses of “America the Beautiful,” an inspired mnemonic for the amendment that in 1868 declared African Americans to be full citizens of the United States.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for heroes prov’d
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev’ry gain divine.
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
The lyrics of The Star Spangled Banner were originally a poem entitled “Defence of Fort McHenry,” written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key after he witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812. Key’s poem was set to the tune of a popular British drinking song, written by John Stafford Smith, and a popular patriotic song was born. There are four verses, but only the first verse is well-known. In 1931, The Star Spangled Banner was declared our national anthem by a Congressional resolution.
O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
“Eternal Father Strong to Save” is known to United States Navy men and women as the “Navy Hymn.” With poetry by Whiting and music by Dykes, the Navy Hymn, with various texts, can be found in most Protestant hymnals and currently concludes each Sunday’s Divine Services at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. This hymn was among those sung at a religious service aboard HMS Prince of Wales attended by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt at the conference creating the Atlantic Charter. It was also the last song sung during the Sunday Church Service aboard the RMS Titanic just hours before it sank. It was sung at the funeral of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, played by the Navy Band at the funeral of John F. Kennedy, sung at the funeral of Richard Nixon, played by the Navy Band and the Coast Guard Band during the funeral of Ronald Reagan and sung by U.S. Navy Sea Chanters at the State Funeral of President Gerald R. Ford.
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
O Christ! Whose voice the waters heard
And hushed their raging at Thy word,
Who walkedst on the foaming deep,
And calm amidst its rage didst sleep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
And bid its angry tumult cease,
And give, for wild confusion, peace;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
O Trinity of love and power!
Our brethren shield in danger’s hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoe’er they go;
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.
Ending a concert of American music with a song by a Brit with lyrics by a South African from an opera that depicts the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex that was composed for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II may seem a tad incongruous. But you should be able to figure out why I did it.
Concord is here, our days to bless
And this our land to endue with plenty, peace and happiness.
Concord and time, each needeth each
The ripest fruit hangs where not one but only two can reach.
Krista Lang Blackwood, artistic director