Friday, March 6, 2009

Tomorrow, Maggi and I are giving a workshop on folk hymns to the Merrimack Valley Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. We'll be presenting hymns from the shape note, Shaker, and Celtic traditions and talking about issues of style and performance practice.

I always feel compelled to try to combine my various disparate projects together in some way.

So....

Here's a canon on a old Shaker hymn that we will be doing in tomorrow's workshop.. In the spirit of the title (and first line), I've kept it simple.

It's a canon at the unison -- the pentatonic nature of the tune (and the general strength of the melody) makes even the mild dissonance of A against G sound good and traditional.

(click on image to enlarge)