Simple Gifts

Most of America's best-known historical songs tend to be patriotic (like "America The Beautiful" and "Battle Hymn Of The Republic") or holiday (like "We Three Kings" and "Up On The House Top"). But one of the most famous – and the recorder feature for this issue – started life as a dance song. A Shaker dance song.

"Simple Gifts" was composed by elder Joseph Brackett for the Shaker settlement formed near Gorham, Maine. On several Shaker manuscripts of the day the song was labeled "Dancing Song" or "Quick Dance" and some lyrics of the original were dancing instructions, much as square dance music includes movements in the song lyrics.

Actually, this tune wasn't that well-known outside the Shaker world until the great American composer Aaron Copland used it as a part of the famous Appalachian Spring ballet written for Martha Graham's dance troupe in 1944. Indeed, he would use it again in his first set of Old American Songs in 1950. Originally for just piano and voice, this work was eventually set for full orchestra.

Full of contrasts, our arrangement features soprano recorder 1 (DF#GABCD'), an optional easier soprano 2 (DGAB), and an alto recorder part suitable for a young player (GACDEG'). During the first section and a later interlude, you may want to add live players of your own, with perhaps a small triangle playing beats 1 and 3. If you are daring, maybe they could play beats 2 and 4 or a more complicated rhythm. At the same time, a bell pitched D could play a part against it, so if x = triangle, you could use this quarter note pattern:
x rest x D | x D x D |
Or something similar to it.

As is the case with many of our recorder features, this arrangement is created so that you can use all or any combination of recorder parts and still sound great with our well-designed recording. True, if you just use the alto recorder part, it may not sound its best, but our accompaniment is very good, so your performance will sound good, too.

Note that you can find the condensed piano/recorder score online at MusicK8.com where it is available for download, free for subscribers.