SING GOD A SIMPLE SONG

Jerry Harkins


People don’t sing as much as they used to. My mother was always singing. When she was a child—she was born in 1908—most middle class families had pianos. Friends and neighbors would frequently gather for “singings” in the evenings. That year, Victor Herbert was advising young swains to “Ask Her While the Band Is Playing” and the Ziegfeld Follies pleaded “Shine on Harvest Moon” so boys and girls could enjoy one more round of outdoor spooning before winter set in. (I suspect that that the meaning of spooning has changed since 1908.) In a similar vein, the swains of the day sang, "Cuddle Up A Little Closer" to the girls they fell in love with "Down By The Old Mill Stream." The older generation, tired of songs about "moon and spoon and June," urged the youngsters to "Stand Up And Sing For Your Father An Old Time Tune." Of course, the big song that year was Norworth and Tilzer’s “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” It was the beginning of the golden age of Tin Pan Alley during which sheet music became a billion dollar industry that eventually centered on West 28 Street in New York. That same year, 364,545 new pianos were sold in the United States, a record that has never been surpassed. Also that year the piano industry held a convention in Buffalo and agreed on an 11¼ inch, 88 note standard for the new player piano rolls which became the home entertainment centers before the advent of electric “Victrolas” in the mid-1920’s. But it was all downhill from there.

The end of home-made singing came swiftly with the Depression and the rise of radio and the phonograph which turned America into a nation of enthusiastic listeners. In succeeding generations, transistor radios, Walkman tape players, boom boxes and iPods of every description unleashed a global passion for songs of all kinds. But the actual singing is now left mostly to people who do it for a living. Every once in a while, there’s a do-it-yourself revival. A natural song leader like Pete Seeger comes along to remind people how much fun it is to sing together. But, by and large, the songwriters don’t bother trying to write for ordinary people anymore. There is still a fair amount of solo singing out there, or at least a fair number of young people who want to sing and think they can. Between 3 and 3.5 million guitars are sold in the U.S. each year which means about one in every hundred Americans buys one. For those with more modest goals, Guitar Hero is a best selling computer game. Karaoke is a popular entertainment. And there is an entire sub-genre of reality television devoted to singers and their bands. But the last redoubt of amateur choral singing is the Christian church and the state of that art is pretty pathetic. [1] Even as choirs have gotten better and better—which is to say more “professionalized”—congregational singing has become virtually extinct.

As an art form, song is a strange and not always comfortable hybrid of words and music. In non-classical categories alone, there are hundreds of genres and subcategories differentiated primarily by the styles in which they are meant to be sung. There are styles of musical architecture the most important of which in popular music is probably the 12-bar blues. But performance trumps everything else as a listener will sense from the different interpretations of a song as sung by different vocalists. It is hard to say exactly what makes a song a good song. The music, of course, must be “catchy” which basically means it must be easily memorable. There is also the broader quality of “singability.” Left to professionals, songs tend to become too complex for untrained singers. Even contemporary blockbuster Broadway musicals are hard for audiences to get their ears and their vocal cords around. Wicked, for example, is a wonderful show but its songs demand highly trained, almost operatic, voices. Whereas anyone can sing the songs of Oklahoma or My Fair Lady.

Lyrics are a different story. The truth is it has never been essential for songs, including hymns, to make sense. Even as important a hymn as “Tantum Ergo,” written by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, has a lyric like, “Praestet fides supplementum /
Sensuum defectui.” Let faith provide a supplement / For the failure of the senses. A supplement for a failure? Tom probably meant substitute (vicarious) or replacement (reponendus), both of which have four syllables like supplementum but neither of which rhymes with sacramentum or documentum. When you’re looking to complete a clever rhyme scheme, you take whatever the Muse lays on you.

He has trampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. When I was a kid, I wondered what that meant. I had an image of Jesus in a warehouse where “grapes of wrath” were kept, crushing them with his feet to make a bitter wine. Now I know better and the truth is even stranger. Julia Ward Howe [2] a Unitarian, had been raised in a strict Calvinist home so it is not surprising that she was familiar with and took inspiration from the fourteenth chapter of the Book of Revelation, the part that describes the Last Judgment. It begins by discussing the first 144,000 souls that are saved, implying that they are all celibate males. As Verse 4 tells us, “These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they kept themselves pure.” [3] Verses 14-16 describe the first harvesting of the earth, possibly but by no means certainly, the harvesting of the elect. There follows the harvesting of those presumed damned. One angel tells another: “Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth's vine, because its grapes are ripe.” Then,

"The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God's wrath. They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses' bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia." [4]

Apparently Mrs. Howe did not like the image of the winepress so she changed it to the almost comic one of Jesus crushing grapes with his bare feet. She also attributed the wrath to the grapes rather than to God, thereby turning it into an even more obscure metaphor than the Bible’s evil grapes formulation. Part of the problem is the rhyme scheme she chose: A A A B, (lord, stored, sword, on). This is at least twice as hard to create as a scheme requiring only two rhyming words. The same problem St. Thomas had. Part may also be the fact that the first five verses were written in a few hours while the author was in some sort of trance.

Mrs. Howe wrote her lyrics to a popular 1856 tune, “Canaan's Happy Shore” by William Steffe which had been borrowed in 1860 by Thomas Bishop for his even more popular marching song, “John Brown’s Body.” She heard that version at a military review on November 18, 1861 and wrote the first five verses the next morning before dawn. The dominant imagery is the horror of war: his terrible swift sword, his righteous sentence, his fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel, the trumpet that shall never call retreat and, finally, let us die to make men free. To one raised with the songs of World War II—songs like “Lily Marlene,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and the “The White Cliffs of Dover”—it is hard to imagine soldiers or civilians embracing this sort of imagery but “Battle Hymn” was the most popular song of its time. As we approach its 150th birthday, it is still hugely popular but today it is more often sung in sad, reflective arrangements. Artists as different as Marilyn Horne and Judy Garland have recorded such versions. Dionne Warwick though treats it as a gospel hymn with a touch of joy and an even more joyous vocal backing. Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic play it as though it were a rousing Sousa march while the magnificent Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings it as though it were a dirge. But it is first and always a hymn even if its lyrics are bloodthirsty to the modern ear. Is anyone paying attention?

Maybe it is best not to parse the logic of hymns. What, for instance, is a “round yon virgin mother?” [5] Or why is a “mighty fortress” a suitable metaphor for a loving God? “Change and decay in all around I see.” Why associate change with decay? Is the author referring to some sort of moral entropy law? But worse is the treacle that passes for petition. For example: “From war’s alarms, from deadly pestilence,/ Be Thy strong arm our ever sure defense;/ Thy true religion in our hearts increase, / Thy bounteous goodness nourish us in peace.” Daniel C. Roberts wrote those lyrics which were chosen by George W. Warren, the organist at St. Thomas Church in New York City, to be the new “National Hymn.” [6] The music Warren wrote for them is memorable and easy to sing but how would you like to sing those lyrics before every ball game? In fact, it is still sung often by congregations as “God of Our Fathers” although the third verse quoted above is omitted as often as not. Or how about the hymn called “O Sacred Head Now Wounded?” Most of it is a maudlin translation of a maudlin text used by Bach in the St. Matthew Passion. But modern translators have made it even more embarrassing by adding verses with lines like, “Can death thy bloom de-flower” and “Thy beauty long desired…thy power all expired.”

Worst of all is when the theology gets muddied. There is a beautiful Shaker hymn called “Simple Gifts.” In 1963, the great British hymnist Sydney Carter provided a new set of lyrics based on the insightful image of Jesus as the Lord of the Dance. This is actually a fairly common medieval image first put to music in 1833 in a hymn titled “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day.” All dance is metaphor and in this case it refers to religious ecstasy, the universal archetype also represented by Bacchus as the Liberator. The idea appears to disturb Pope Benedict XVI who commented on it at length in his first encyclical, Deus Est Caritas. Still, “Lord of the Dance” is one of the most frequently sung hymns in Christian, including Catholic, congregations in the English-speaking world.

Carter begins with a verse establishing the image. He follows with: "I danced for the scribe and the pharisee / But they would not dance and they wouldn't follow me / I danced for the fishermen, for James and John / They came with me and the Dance went on." This is unsettling because it is vaguely anti-Semitic. And wrong: James and John themselves were certainly Jewish and almost certainly Pharisees. But the third verse continues: I danced on the Sabbath and I cured the lame / The holy people said it was a shame. / They whipped and they stripped and they hung me high / And they left me there on a Cross to die. The implied “therefore” between the second and third lines is more than vaguely anti-Semitic. [7] The incident of the Sabbath curing is described at the beginning of Mark 3 and does indeed end with the Pharisees plotting how they might kill Jesus. But the plotting came to naught. As the gospels make perfectly clear, the high priests later accused Jesus of blasphemy in claiming to be the son of God and, for Pilate’s consumption, of rebellion against Caesar. [8]

Most hymns are, of course, unobjectionable and many are both musical and intellectually appealing. But times and sensibilities change. The muscular Christianity of the Nineteenth Century may strike modern listeners as bellicose blustering. “Christ, the royal Master, /
Leads against the foe; /
Forward into battle, /
See His banner go!” Indeed.

The title of this essay is taken from the first aria in Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. In performances, it follows a quadraphonic recording of a short, wild, cacophonous Kyrie for soprano and soloists. The score is marked “Tranquillo” and it is exactly that: a quiet, pensive, tonal solo for bass. The lyrics for the first section are:

Sing God a simple song: Lauda, Laude.
Make it up as you go along, Lauda, Laude
Sing like you like to sing.
God loves all simple things,
For God is the simplest of all.

In Judeo-Christian theology, God is said to be infinitely simple as opposed to composite. God does not have component attributes such as knowledge and goodness but rather is these attributes. As with every other part of Mass, there is a profound and quite orthodox point being made about the role of religion in disturbing times and the music perfectly complements this. The Times, though, was having none of it. On September 9, 1971, its senior critic Harold Schonberg called Mass pretentious and thin, cheap and vulgar. The following Sunday, he added superficial and said it was, “…the greatest mélange of styles since the ladies’ magazine recipe for steak fried in peanut butter and marshmallow sauce.” Ten years later, the paper’s dismay was unrelieved. On September 14, 1981, Donal Henahan wrote that the piece, “…finds no time to say anything worth hearing.” Moreover, “…much of the evening would sound [sic] as it were being improvised by the cast of ‘Saturday Night Live’ except that the humor is vapid and superficial.” Forty years later, it is finally being recognized as a masterpiece. “A Simple Song” has been frequently recorded and is even sung in worship services because congregations like it and because its message of simplicity provides a rich wellspring for homilies.

Hymns are important for many reasons not the least of which is the fact that these are the songs most sung and perhaps most enjoyed by ensembles of non-professional singers. They are by no means alone in being burdened with lyrics that are often bathetic or worse. Think of the mileage Paul McCartney and John Lennon got out of the line, “I wanna hold your hand.” Dumb, dumb, dumb, but, in fairness, it should be remembered that their manager, Brian Epstein, told them he wanted a song that would appeal to the American market. Did it ever! Elvis could make a line like “Y’ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog” immortal and a fellow named Oscar Rasbach could produce a lovely song out of Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” The first line of that poem is arguably the most memorable line of poetry ever written and is certainly an esthetic triumph compared to “I wanna hold your hand.” It exemplifies the virtue of simplicity. The problem arises in the eleven lines that follow. Most interesting is what appears to be an unintended subtext. Both tree and the earth are clearly identified as female and it is hard to avoid the metaphor of them as lovers. Kilmer almost surely meant to signify the love and nourishment of mother and child but he does not shy away from sexual imagery which suggests he is celebrating a lesbian love affair. Nonetheless, “Trees” was enormously popular as a poem and became even more so as a song set to music in 1922. Modern critics tend to despise the poem and the poet, seeing them both as simple and sentimental rubbish but, in the context of the times, “Trees” was a major accomplishment.

For really ghastly lyrics you need to turn to contemporary singer/songwriters, including Michael Jackson, the King of Pop who was widely regarded as the greatest entertainer in the world. Two of his many platinum songs are “Bad” and “Beat It.”

Because I'm Bad, I'm Bad-
Come On
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)
You Know I'm Bad, I'm Bad-
You Know It
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)
You Know I'm Bad, I'm Bad-
You Know It, You Know
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)

Just Beat It, Beat It, Beat It, Beat It
No One Wants To Be Defeated
Showin' How Funky Strong Is Your Fight
It Doesn't Matter Who's Wrong Or Right
Just Beat It, Beat It
Just Beat It, Beat It
Just Beat It, Beat It
Just Beat It, Beat It

No one ever questioned Jackson’s musicality. Both “Bad” and “Beat It” are important contributions and the choruses quoted above drive both songs forward. They fail not as lyrics so much as English rhetoric. They do not fail because they are repetitious. Mozart used the word Alleluja thirty-three times in a row in his motet Exsultate, jubilate and Handel used Hallelujah thirty-six times in the soprano line alone of his famous chorus. “Bad” and “Beat It” fail because they lack meaning. Many classical composers encountered similar problems, especially when they looked to the Bible for inspiration. Arguably, the soprano aria "I know that my Redeemer liveth" from Handel’s Messiah is one of the greatest hymns ever written. But its attempt to link Job’s act of faith (“Yet in my flesh shall I see God” (Job 19:25) with Paul’s assertion that the risen Christ is, “the first fruits of them that sleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20) is dubious at best. [9] In Samson, "Let the bright Seraphim" which is sung just before the final chorus is a showstopper which gained worldwide popularity when Kiri Te Kanawa sang it at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. The music is sublime, the lyrics less so:

Let the bright Seraphim in burning row,
Their loud uplifted Angel-trumpets blow:
Let the Cherubic host, in tuneful choirs,
Touch their immortal harps with golden wires.

These words are a slightly edited version of lines taken from John Milton’s "At a Solemn Music," published in 1645 but written much earlier. He is describing heaven:

Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud up-lifted Angel trumpets blow,

And the Cherubick host in thousand quires

Touch their immortal Harps of golden wires,

This is not a train wreck even if seraphim being immolated at a row of stakes while blowing angel trumpets is hardly an edifying image. In the context of the bizarre Samson story recorded in Judges 13-16, it is only a minor aggravation. What should bother people is that while this is being sung, the stage is littered with dead Philistines and, of course, Samson himself. Why such a song was thought suitable for a royal wedding—even in England—must remain one of life’s mysteries.

Handel had a habit of celebrating events that might appeal to eighteenth century British nationalism but which strike the modern progressive ear as horrific. Another of his great arias, Oh, had I Jubal's lyre, is from the final section of the oratorio Joshua. It is a song of thanksgiving sung by Achsah whose father Caleb has just given her to his nephew (her cousin) Othniel as a reward for driving the Canaanites out of Kiriath Sepher, a town near present day Hebron (Joshua 15:13-17). Achsah sings to Othniel:

Oh, had I Jubal’s lyre,
Or Miriam’s tuneful voice!
To sounds like his I would aspire,
In songs like hers rejoice.
My humble strains but faintly show,
How much to Heaven and thee I owe.

Now this is a well read young lady. True, Miriam is of her parent’s generation and, as Moses’ sister, she would be famous. But Jubal, seven generations removed from Adam in the line descended from Cain, is obscure, mentioned in only a single line (Genesis 4:21), identified as the son of Lamech and “…the father of all who play the harp and flute.” Achsah owes exactly nothing to Othniel whose achievement was conquering a small town in the Negev desert. She is a mere pawn in her father’s empire building strategy and you are being asked to believe she was utterly delighted by it. Perhaps. Maybe, were she a twenty-first century Middle Eastern princess, she would still be delighted to be thought of as a prize for an honored warrior. But why would Handel celebrate such views?

On the other hand are many hymns based on great poetry which are still less than satisfactory as liturgy. A prime example is the lovely but now infrequently sung Christmas carol “In The Bleak Midwinter” with a text by Christina Rossetti and a tune by Gustav Holtz. The poem addresses the question of why Jesus was born in a manger and proposes that it was “Enough for him,” the eternal God whose mother worshiped her beloved with a kiss. In the second verse, however, brilliant poetry is imposed on nightmarish theology: “Heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign.” Still, it is a wonderful hymn. If pastors and ministers of music are troubled by its theology, musicians of every description are attracted to it. The current catalog lists more than 50 covers including those of Julie Andrews, Allison Crowe, Cyndi Lauper, Annie Lomax, Sarah McLachlan, James Taylor, Jars of Clay and the Crash Test Dummies.

Both popular and sacred music are often denigrated because the lyrics are thought to be simple and simple is equated with simple-minded. Such high criticism misses the point of song which is to engage the imagination rather than the intellect. In his recent book of collected lyrics, the songwriter Stephen Sondheim compares two songs with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” from Oklahoma and “All the Things You Are” from Very Warm for May. The former is an eminently simple sentiment set to light, airy music by Richard Rodgers. The latter is sophisticated poetry set to the sophisticated music of Jerome Kern. [10]

You are the promised kiss of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long.
You are the breathless hush of evening
That trembles on the brink of a lovely song.
You are the angel glow that lights a star,
The dearest things I know are what you are.

But Mornin’ is the more successful song because, as Sondheim argues, poetry and lyrics are very different. “Poetry,” he writes, “is an art of concision, lyrics of expansion…Music straitjackets a poem and prevents it form breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric.”

The difference is often clearly evident in nineteenth century art songs. Take, for example, Schubert’s song cycle Die Winterreise based on poems by Wilhelm Müller. The third song is Gefrorene Tränen. The German poetry does not translate well but here is a more or less literal rendition:

Frozen tear drops
fall from my cheeks:
Can it be that, without knowing it,
I have been weeping?

O tears, my tears,
are you so lukewarm,
That you turn to ice
like cold morning dew?

Yet you spring from a source,
my breast, so burning hot,
As if you wanted to melt
all of the ice of winter! [11]

The lover is crying without realizing it. To make sense of this, the reader must ponder the metaphors carefully, leisurely. The forced tempo of even the most sublime music prevents this and leaves the listener with the image of tears coming from the poet’s burning breast which are nonetheless frozen because they are lukewarm. Contrast this with a popular song of the 1960’s, Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man?

Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail

Before she sleeps in the sand?

Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly

Before they’re forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind

The answer is blowin’ in the wind

This is not going to win the gold medal for rhetoric even if it makes a lot more sense than “Beat It.” The image of a white dove sailing is nonsensical. The notion that manliness is somehow related to walking down roads or that either is related to the central peace message of the song is far fetched. And what was Mr. Dylan thinking of when he wrote the answers are blowing in the wind? But this song was ranked Number 14 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. (Number One, the absolute greatest song of all time, bar none, was said to be Mr. Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” But that’s another story. [12])

As all right-thinking people know, the greatest song of all time is the hymn “Amazing Grace,” a poem by John Newton published in 1779 and set to various tunes until it was finally joined with the tune “New Britain” 56 years after he wrote it. [13] The tune is engaging and readily singable and the words are meaningful and accessible. The language, like that of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, is or sounds as though it should be biblical. The cadences are familiar and comfortable, the message is uplifting. The melody is a simple one based on the pentatonic scale common in folk, gospel and rock music. Hear it once and you can hum it on the way home.

Simplicity is often but not always the soul of a great song. Cole Porter and the Gershwin brothers, for example, often wrote songs with highly sophisticated words and music. Porter’s “So In Love” from Kiss Me Kate is a good example. It has been covered by virtually every major jazz singer and new recordings have been released every year since it was written in 1948. Millions of people recognize it instantly. Everyone likes it. But no one sings it in the shower even though they may occasionally hum the first three bars, “Strange, dear, but true, dear.”

Whenever someone notices anew that “The Star Spangled Banner” is not very singable or that its lyrics are a bit bellicose, there ensues a debate about possible replacements. No one understands “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and it would hardly appeal to southern ears. “America the Beautiful” sounds like a tourist guide. “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” uses the music of the British national anthem. “This Land Is Your Land” was written by Woody Guthrie and “God Bless America by Irving Berlin, one a Communist, the other a Jew. We must be sensitive to the delicate feelings of the right wing. In any event, “God Bless America” is, in its own words, “a solemn prayer” which might offend the left wing. Otherwise it has everything a great song needs. In fact, there was a strong movement in the 1930’s to use it in place of the Star-Spangled Banner and it is still widely used before sporting events because it is so easy to sing.

There is nothing wrong with listening to a song. When you hear Joan Sutherland sing about seraphim on fire or Kathleen Battle waxing humble about her vocal talent, you can give yourself over to euphoria without obsessing about the logic of the lyrics. But listen also to babies babbling and observe that they are (a) singing and (b) having fun. We are born to sing. You don’t have to be a medieval philosopher to know the world is made of music.

Notes

1. This is something of an exaggeration. Practically every high school and college has at least one glee club, the barbershop movement remains strong with more than 30,000 participants in the United States, and there are amateur choruses throughout the country. But these activities are highly structured and strive to sound as polished as possible. It’s like the difference between a suburban Little League and a pick-up game of stickball.

2. Mrs. Howe was one of the most accomplished Americans of her time, an abolitionist, feminist, essayist and poet of distinction who is less appreciated today than she should be. Her husband was an archetypical male chauvinist who opposed her every public action. With all she accomplished outside the home, she also raised four children who went on to distinguished careers of their own.

3. Unless otherwise noted, all biblical quotations are from the New International Version®. Copyright © 1984 by the International Bible Society.

4. One stadium equals 185 meters or about 607 feet. A typical horse would be about 5 feet (15 hands) at the withers, so the bible is talking about 1.8 million cubic feet of blood, about 11.5 million gallons. At 1.5 gallons per adult, that’s 7.6 million people.

5. There is nothing even close to a round yon virgin in the original German, the first verse of which is:
Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!
Alles schläft. Eynsam wacht
Nur das traute heilige Paar.

Holder Knab’ im lockigten Haar,

Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh!
Which translates:
Silent Night, Holy Night,
Everyone is sleeping. Only the faithful and holy couple keeps watch.
Lovely child with curly hair
Sleep in heavenly peace.

6. Modern hymnals include this under a title taken from its first line, “God of Our Fathers.” All the lyrics are undistinguished but only the third verse is truly bilious.

7. Sydney Carter (1915-2004) was many things—poet, scholar, pacifist and theologian, and he was certainly not an anti-Semite. The analysis presented here would never have occurred to him when he was in the process of exploring one of his favorite metaphors. In an early poem which many thought of as a fitting epitaph, he wrote, “The dance is all I am, the rest is dust. /
I will believe my bones and live by what /
Will go on dancing when my bones are not.” There is evidence in the form of a note from his friend Rabbi Lionel Blum that when he realized the problem, he set out to modify several lines in the poem. Sadly, the Rabbi writes, "...before this could happen, Alzheimer's took over." See Blum's Introduction to Lord of the Dance and Other Songs and Poems, Stainer and Bell, 2002.

8. In demanding the death penalty for blasphemy, they were only following the mandate of Leviticus 24:14 which says, “Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him. Whether an alien or native-born, when he blasphemes the Name, he must be put to death.” Obviously, Mr. Pilate would not have been impressed by Leviticus so they had to suggest a Roman crime and call for a Roman punishment.

9. Messiah and a great deal of Christian exegesis are full of such efforts to see the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in some New Testament event. “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son” (Isaiah 7:14) is seen as a prediction of Matthew 1:24 which quotes it. But the Hebrew of Isaiah actually is better translated as, “a young woman has conceived,” referring to a sign from God to King Ahaz.

10. The melody is said to be, “one of the loveliest in the American repertory by no less an authority than James R. Morris, former head of the Smithsonian Institutions Division of Performing Arts. See Six Decades of Songwriters and Singers, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984.

11. Trans. Arthur Rishi, www.recmusic.org/lieder/assemble_texts.html?SongCycleId=47

12. The lyrics are misogynist claptrap. Even the central metaphor is absurd: “How does it feel / To be on your own / With no direction home / Like a complete unknown / Like a rolling stone?” Such a stone surely has a direction—down—and is derived from the aphorism “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” It was coined by the Dutch theologian Desiderius Erasmus who clearly meant that we have to live active lives lest we get rusty.


13. The essence of both music and poetry is meter which is defined by stress patterns in both. Thus, it is not uncommon to find poems and tunes whose meters complement each other. Francis Scott Key wrote a poem which he entitled “Defense of Fort McHenry.” Several days later, his brother-in-law noticed that it “fit” the music of a popular ditty, “The Anacreontic Song” by John Stafford Smith. Eight days after the poem was written, the words and music were published together as “The Star Spangled Banner.” Similarly, there are many poems that “fit” the “New Britain” tune, among them Samuel Taylor Colderidge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Robert W. Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”