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.
Read more about this topic: Simple Gifts
Famous quotes containing the word tune:
“But O, sick children of the world,
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“My Poynz, I cannot frame me tune to fayne,
To cloke the trothe for praisse withowt desart,
Of them that lyst all vice for to retayne.
I cannot honour them that settes their part
With Venus and Baccus all theire lyf long;
Nor holld my pece of them allthoo I smart.”
—Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)
“But since Thy loud-tongu’d Blood demands Supplies,
More from BriareusHands, than Argus Eyes,
I’ll tune Thy Elegies to Trumpet-sounds,
And write Thy Epitaph in Blood and Wounds!”
—James Graham Marquess of Montrose (1612–1650)