Simple Gifts - Tune

Tune

The tune was written by Joseph Brackett (1797–1882) who first joined the Shakers at Gorham, Maine, when his father's farm helped to form the nucleus of a new Shaker settlement.

A manuscript of Mary Hazzard of the New Lebanon, New York, Shaker community records this original version of the melody:

The song quite closely resembles several repetitions of the opening measures of William Byrd's renaissance composition, "The Barley Break', which Byrd intended to imitate country children playing a folk game. Similarly, Brackett is claimed to have come up with the song as an imitation of what folk music sounds like.

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