TOTW: Murillo’s Lesson (G)
Source: Fife tune and shape note melody
Modern fiddle and guitar setting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbPDRsajhxE
Solo banjo recording from the Alan Lomax archive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nEbq5k7j2k
Fife and Drum recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wWksSG2nbw
Shape note singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaUCMWtbPAU
Timothy Dwight’s “Columbia”: https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/columbia
In honor of America’s Independence Day, this week’s TOTW is the “Murillo’s Lesson,” which comes from a march tune for fife that was published in several instrumental collections as “Morelli’s Lesson” or “Lesson by Morelli”. Benjamin Franklin White (1800-1879), the compiler of the shape note tune book, The Sacred Harp, was a military fifer and probably knew the tune at an early age. In his 1850 appendix to The Sacred Harp he arranged the tune with words from the poem “Columbia,” by Timothy Dwight. Columbia was published in 1798 but is said to date from 1777 or 78 when Dwight served as a chaplain in the American Continental army. The last stanza of the poem became the first verse of the shape note hymn:
Thus as down a lone valley, with cedars o'er-spread,
From war's dread confusion, I pensively stray'd,
The gloom from the face of fair heav'n retir'd;
The winds ceas'd to murmur, the thunders expir'd.
Perfumes, as of Eden, flow'd sweetly along,
And a voice, as of angels, enchantingly sung—
COLUMBIA! COLUMBIA! to glory arise,
The queen of the world, and the child of the skies.
My version is in standard G tuning, and uses many open strings. The most difficult section is the reach to the F# on the fourth string during the B part.
Edited by - Jim_VA on 07/05/2024 11:33:08
Thank you kindly Sir! Great tune, well played! I enjoyed the history too.
It is clearly related to the popular old time fiddle tune "Queen of the Earth, Child of the Skies" from the Hammons Family. I don't know why any has not taken the words of Murillo's Lesson and sang it against the fiddle tune version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baYoQMkXXRY
Edited by - ndlxs on 07/06/2024 11:08:05
It appears in either this one or the volume 2 of the same series:
https://www.amazon.com/Fiddlers-Tune-Traditional-Hornpipes-Reels/dp/B001MSMP98
Nice little tune, Jim, and one of our oldest on TOTW. Your arrangement shows originality in its nice embellishments, not seen in the Martha Woodard banjo video.
I used the annotation from the Traditional Tune Archive to arrange a clawhammer version. It's almost all eighth notes and it moves quickly. You get a real march feeling in the fife and drum video, which gave me the rhythmic feel of the version below, called by an older title, Morelli's Lesson. That F# sequence in the B part was tricky, yes. I end up playing a partial D7 chord and use pull-offs and hammer-ons to get the notes in. It also used a low E note, which I don't hear elsewhere. It gives that part a different feel, as if the accompanying chord would be an Em.
Really nice Jim and Janet!
I am a real sucker for fife tunes. Over a decade ago I picked a fife tune, Oyster River Hornpipe, as the TOTW. In addition to Oyster River Hornpipe, three of my tabs (Albany Beef, Cincinnati Quick March, and Kenderbeck's Quickstep) are from fife manuals.
Now on to the matter at hand. A brief biography of John Nixon, Jr. is at https://biographies.framinghamhistory.org/thomas-nixon-jr/. I got the original notation for Morelli's Lesson (that is how it is listed in the tunebook) from Nixon's tunebook.
Now for two problems, the first of which is how to get aound those annoying F-sharps on the fourth string. I got around this by not using the standard G tuning, but instead using gEADE. This is my go-to G tuning. The second problem is tempo. Though not marked as a march, I am assuming this is a march. That means it has to be pretty "peppy" (around 120 BPM). I tried to get there, but I still think my playing is on the slow side. The tab is available as *.tef and *.pdf from the hangout and the *.mp3 is at the bottom of this post.
Regarding the *.mp3, the banjo has a pretty lousy sound (right, blame the carpenter for his tools). The reason for the poor sound quality is I am using a (cruddy) vintage Sears and Roebuck banjo which is, in fact, the exact same model as Martha Woodard used in her Alan Lomax video that Jim included in his original post. This was my very first banjo (purchased in 1972), and in fact the only one I had until 2001 when I bought a Reiter tubaphone banjo. My point here is that it is possible to learn to play, and make something resembling music, using a cheap cruddy banjo. Here are some photos of the Sears & Roebuck banjo for comparison to Woodard's.
Oops, that should have been Thomas Nixon, Jr., not John Nixon, Jr.
Thanks, Lyle! That TOTW, Oyster River Hornpipe, was a lovely tune and your presentation very interesting with its various tune discussions. I recommend readers go to its link above. I'll try your alternate tuning gEADE for ease of fingering the F# in Murillo's Lesson.
Thanks Lyle! I'm thinking I may need to buy a fife now!
Since no one has posted it, here it is from the Sacred Harp tradition. This is from Germany; the Sacred Harp is of course an American Tradition, but it has been lovingly adopted in Europe.
Edited by - ndlxs on 07/09/2024 07:58:11
quote:
Originally posted by ndlxsSince no one has posted it, here it is from the Sacred Harp tradition. This is from Germany; the Sacred Harp is of course an American Tradition, but it has been lovingly adopted in Europe.
Sacred Harp #358 was in the original post. See fourth link: "Shape note singing."
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