My niece in New York has just graduated from college. Congratulations!!
This led my brother to reflect on the very odd fact that Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance, that most English of pieces of music is always played at graduation ceremonies in the US. This is a tradition that dates back to the 1920s when many colleges were using it. It all began when it was played in 1905 when Elgar received a honorary doctorate from Yale. Its popularity grew and now it’s as American as Mom’s Apple PIe.
A Frenchman would be equally surprised if they attended a Swedish Midsummer. They would see lots of small blonde children dancing around the Maypole to the sound of an old French military march. And pretending to be frogs. The melody was stolen by the English who added a satirical text about the green amphibians and from there it somehow travelled to Sweden.
Anyone else got any examples of a familiar melody turning up in a very unfamiliar context?
Alan Price: Changes. To the tune of the hymn What a Friend We Have in Jesus. I’d post the clip but I’m on my way to see Madness at Hove. Toodle Pip.
Lucky you Dave! Enjoy!
Some tunes have been reworked many times.
Greensleeves- from profane to sacred
Colonel Bogie – from military to satirical
The tune of John Brown’s Body has been re-used many times. But here’s the original-
I was browsing around and discovered that there was a popular misconception that the Wesleys and Luther had used the tunes from drinking songs for their hymns. This has been vigorously denied, as you can see from this article. Spirits and the spiritual do not mix!
http://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/did-the-wesleys-really-use-drinking-song-tunes-for-their-hymns
The Others version of Bo Diddley’s Oh Yeah was re-worked by David Bowie for Jean Genie IMO.
Bloody hell! They were from my home county of Middlesex. And I see exactly what you mean.
When the congregation started to sing rather than just the choir, they needed some toons. Another article about where some of these may have come from,
http://www.tradsong.org/Secular%20Tunes%20II.pdf
100 years ago, hymns were probably the melodies that most people knew. Or…….?
@kaisfatdad (and everyone else) – Midsummer isn’t the only Swedish one day-holiday that has taken a song about something else and turned it into a holiday song.
Lucia – celebrated on the 13th of December – originally had nothing to do with the Catholic saint of that name, it was always a day – or rather night – of celebration said to be full of magic and evil that had to be kept at bay. But later, because Saint Lucia is celebrated on that very date, and perhaps also helped by the fact that one of the names for the original celebration was “Lussinatten” (referring to Lucifer in fact) which sounds close enough, she was incorporated into the celebrations.
The traditional intro song when the Lucia and her following walks in is “Luciasången” (“Natten går tunga fjät”…etc) and that song is originally a Neapolitan folk song called “Santa Lucia”, but the Neapolitan lyrics are not about the saint, but an area of Naples named after the saint.
It was translated and sung for many years prior to someone getting the idea to rewrite the lyrics completely and make it a Christmas song, and now that’s the only lyric we know and sing.
Well, the “only” probably is the wrong word to use, since it has been given three different lyrics over the years, but all of those specifically for the Lucia holiday. Which one you use is probably down to what generation you’re from.
Here’s the original, sung by Pavarotti:
And here’s a Swedish version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_8oI9HZtxA
(Yes folks; we do dress like that for Lucia…if we’re in a choir at least. The guys wearing what looks like dunce caps with stars on them and – not here but usually – a wizard like wand, also with a star attached, are “stjärngossar” – “star boys”…it’s cold and dark, we have to entertain ourselves somehow!)
Thanks a lot @locust. That was very interesting.
I bet you’re the only one on the AW who has dressed up in a white nightie with candles in your hair. Well, @moose-the-mooche perhaps? He’s a rather dark horse.
The wiki entry on Santa Lucia is excellent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Lucy's_Day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Lucia
And thanks to that I found this gem. Santa Lucia in Thai!
I can imagine a Swede hearing that would be seriously gob-smacked.
Here for you, Lo, is a wonderful poem about St Lucie’s Day by John Donne, set to music by Ketil Bjornstad.
Here’s the poem without music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAaQd-r-7sk
The white nightie, no.
I once had a conversation with Mike D’Abo about John Donne, if you’re interested.
Back in my school-going, choir-singing days I used to love Lucia day, even though you’d have to get up way too early for my liking, being a night-owl. But it had such a special atmosphere (and if you were in the choir you didn’t have any lessons that day – reason alone to love it!)
Especially one year, when we had a big and very good choir led by a very good music teacher, and we put on a concert in the assembly hall that was absolutely magical. When the parents heard about it from their kids in the audience, they demanded a repeat performance for them that same night. People talked about that concert for years, especially after we got a new music teacher the next year who ruined the choir and turned all of the big annual choir performances into absolute buffoonery.
I used my last Lucia nightie to make my fancy dress costume for the graduation celebrations. I cut it very short, cut it low in the neckline and short sleeved and put a pair of black wings on the back of it, with added accessories, because I was going as a fallen angel – quite an accurate metaphor for my rise and fall through the school system…! 🙂
The halo that I made from two connected circles of steel wire, the bottom one around my head and the top one slid down to the side above my right ear, had the left-over tinsel from Lucia celebrations past around the top one when I walked through the school halls in my fishnet stockings and high heels, a black lipsticked smile greeting the teachers I never had to see again…a very different styling of the white nightie compared to the Lucia festivities!
I agree. There is something very special about the atmosphere at Lucia.
Wow! That is one story and a half.
You are the AW’s very own fallen angel in fishnet stockings!
To use a Babben Larsson joke: today I’d look like “kassler” in fishnet stockings! 🙂