AcaDeca 2022-2023 Songs

Sherburne, 1785, Daniel Read
A song using lyrics from a Christmas hymn written by Nahum Tate, inspired by the nativity story from the Gospel of Luke.
- in Common Meter
- tenor singers hold the melody
- fugues are fast paced and energetic
- key of D major
- form of the song is ABB (plain tune -> fugue -> fugue)

Die Sanfte Bewegung, Die Liebliche Krafft, 1746, Sister Foben (Christianna Lassle)
- no time signatures, only accents to indicate rhythm
- phrases separated by fermatas, indicating held notes
- melody sung by sopranos
- bassline is the foundation
- notes of the tonic chord were dubbed "Masters"
- other notes were dubbed "Servants"
- all parts were sung by women
- uses F major as its tonic chord
- plain tune hymn

Lady Hope's Reel, 1757, Anonymous
- a reel is a dance where two rows of dancers face each other and a couple dances through the gap
- as the couple goes through the gap, the rows of dancers form interlocking patterns
- popular in both military and dance events
- multiple variants of the song and title exist
- duple meter, major mode, binary form

Springfield Mountain, Anonymous
- describes the tragedy of Timothy Myrick, son of Thomas Myrick (spelling of last name varies)
- Timothy died to a rattlesnake bite on August 17 in 1761 in a meadow at Springfield Mountain in Massachusetts
- Timothy was 22 years, 2 months, and 3 days old
- his gravestone is at Deacons Adams Cemetry
- Timothy's fiance was identified as Sarah Lamb, who married another man a year and a half later
- many versions exist, some of them satirical parodies
- AcaDec's version is sung by John Galusha, mixing two different serious versions of the ballad
- in long meter

Woh Hoo, Anonymous
- Work call and response song
- Calls were common in African tradition
- Field calls were also called signs, field cries, or field hollers
- Very personal, intense, expressed things such as homesickness, loneliness, contentment, and exuberance
- usually short and free
- separated by Willis Laurence James into seven types; call, street cry, religious cry, field cry, night cry, dance cry, and water cry
- field cry was also known as a corn field whoop
- unmetered
- had early signs of blues notes

Ho Way Hey Yo, 1993, Betsy Buck
- Buck family is a notable Seneca family of musicians and composers
- recalls traditional features of Eastern Woodlands singing
- opens with water drum and cow-horn rattles
- uses full-throated, relaxed vocal technique
- singers respond with call and response vocables
- each phrase ends with "gai n wi ya he ya"
- ending contains six beats instead of the usual four
- uses A AB AB form

My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free, 1759, Francis Hopkinson
- earliest piece of secular music written in the colonies
- includes treble and bass clef
- vocalists follow top staff
- accompanist played lower staff
- the text came from Thomas Parnell's Poems on Severeal Occasions
- song details the speaker's happiness as he is about to marry his sweetheart
- binary form
- melisma sections use multiple notes per syllable to create a flowing graceful effect
- many ornamentations

Quintet No. 6 in E-flat Major, Movement 3 Pretissimo, 1789, Johann Friedrich Peter
- reflected his knowledge of European music
- Chamber music was traditionally published in sets of six
- reflected the stanards of the early Classical period
- five of his six quintents followed the early classical fast > slow > fast pattern
-Quintet 3 inserts a dance movement (minuet) before the last movement, which was fashionable in Europe
- in duple meter
- bouncy portion resembles an English "jig", called a "gigue" by French musicians
- motifs included jigs, arpeggios, conjunct rising notse, rising and falling seconds, call and response between violas and first violin, cascading downward scales, and hemiola motif changes
- in rounded binary form

The Anacreontic Song, 1771, John Stafford Smith
- eight line stanzas with nine rhymes
- triple rhyme (flute/mute/boot) in lines 5 and 6
- commissioned Thomas Carr to write sheet music for his song
- Thomas Carr was the younger brother of famous composter Benjamin Carr, who composed The Federal Overture
- Thomas Carr composed the Star Spangled Banner
- received criticism due to being used as a drinking song

Tammany; Or, the Indian Chief: Alknomook, or the Death Song of the Cherokee Indians, 1794, Anonymous
- drew from an earlier song, "The Death Song of the Cherokee Indians", originating from Britain
- Alknomook is the protagonist's father
- The poetry was written by the British poet Ann Home Hunter. It is speculated she wrote the melody too, but remained anonymous due to being a woman
- reflects a romanticized, stereotypical view of a Native American man; noble but savage
- very popular; even Washington subscribed to the publication of the script
- Hatton turned the song into a duet between two lovers; Tammany and Manana
- uses strophic form
- sometimes utilized in Anti-Federalist messaging

The Liberty Song (based on “Heart of Oak”), 1759/1768, William Boyce

• uses verse chorus form
• originally in Heart of Oak, the singers rally with "steady, boys, steady"; in the Liberty Song, it goes gender neutral with "steady, friends, steady"
• uses Scotch snaps on the word steady; scotch snaps are short long rhythms with the shorter note occurring on the beat, creating syncopation
• the oldest surviving printed music score in the colonies
• sheet music was published in the Boston Almanack
• Tories parodied the Liberty Song, using colonial slang words
• Patriots then parodied the Tory version

Chester, 1770, 1778, William Billings

• appears in the New England Psalm Singer and the Singing Master's Assistant
• Billing's most famous tune and one of the most recognizable patriotic tunes of the Revolutionary era
• underwent several changes between the two tunebooks
• the original only had one stanza, while the second version added four more stanzas
• uses long meter written in expanded strophic form
• the melody is sung by a tenor, which was unusual for the time; usually sopranos sung melodies
• the tenor melodies were called his "flight of fancy"
• easy to march too
• can be interpreted as a religious song

Lamentation Over Boston, 1778, William Billings

• dynamic and contrasting
• phrases are distinguished by the number of voices
• all voices are silent in measures 6, 8, 10, and 12, creating a gasping effect for the repetition of "we wept"
• uses word painting, where the singing changes to reflect the lyrics; for example, the voices overlap and fall on the word "weeping", similar to crying
• "then let my tongue forget to move and ever be confined"; move is sustained because the tongue forgets to move
• "let horrid jargon split the air and rive my nerves asunder"; syncopation on "sunder"
• "let hateful discord greet my ear as terrible as thunder"; syncopation on "thunder"
• "let harmony be banished hence and consonance apart"; no third on the hence chord
• "let dissonance erect her throne and reign within my heart" no third on the last chord

The Federal Overture (Keyboard Arrangement), 1794, Benjamin Carr

• first known American printing that sampled many melodies
• Anti-federalist melodies included the Marseilles March, Ca ira, and La Carmagnole
• the Marseilles March was originally a French marching song by Joseph Rouget de Lisle
• Ca ira was originally called Le Carillon and composed by Jeane-Antoine Becourt, it was regarded as an official song of the French Revolution
• La Carmagnole was a song used for French traditional dances; during the French Revolution it gained words; it is more relaxed than the other two songs, and may have been placed later in the song to calm down agitated listeners
• Federalist tunes included The President's March and Rose Tree
• The President's March was by German composer Philip Phile; it was played at Washington's inaguration; Gilbert Fox wanted to add lyrics to appeal to antagonistic audiences. He hated the first attempt and asked his friend Joseph Hopkinson to write lyrics and called them "Hail, Columbia", which became an unofficial anthem for the USA
• Rose Tree was a popular song from an English musical named "The Poor Soldier"; it was performed by the Old American Company and was Washington's favorite comic opera; The Poor Soldier follows an Irish soldier returning to his village after fighting in the Revolution. It made fun of French people, so it was popular with Federalists
• neutral songs included Yankee Doodle, O Dear What can the Matter Be, the Irish Washerwoman, and Viva tutti
• Yankee Doodle was well-known, and was originally a folk melody with no name. British troops used it to make fun of colonists, but the tune was reclaimed by colonists in the mid 1770s. Both Federalists and anti-federalists enjoyed it. Reportedly, captured British soliers were forced to dance to Yankee Doodle
  -O Dear, What can the Matter Be was an English nursery Rhyme
  -The Irish Washerwoman was an English and Irishjig
  -Viva Tutti ("long live everyone) was a neutralsong from Britain, originating from Pietro Guglielmi's opera Il carnovale de Venezia, which debuted in London. Michael Kelly, someone who later sang for for Mozart
• The President's March received many additions as it traveled; Boston added Knox's March (from a tunebook by fifer Thomas Nixon Jr) and Richmond Hill
• the keyboard arrangement is the only surviving copy, although attempts to create other arrangements exist, obviously; the 2009 version was professional recorded
  -The order of the tunes went: Yankee Doodle > Marseilles March > Ca ira > O Dear What Can the Matter Be > Irish Washer woman > Rose Tree > La Carmagnole > President's March > Yankee Doodle > Viva tutti > Yankee Doodle