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:
“Refuse them!
If we too miss out, don’t create our lives,
invent or deeds, do them, dance
a tune with our own feet,
we shall thirst in Hades,
in the blood of our children.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“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)
“If we should swap a good library for a second-rate stump speech and not ask for boot, it would be thoroughly in tune with our hearts. For deep within each of us lies politics. It is our football, baseball, and tennis rolled into one. We enjoy it; we will hitch up and drive for miles in order to hear and applaud the vitriolic phrases of a candidate we have already reckoned we’ll vote against.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)