The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #14451 Message #3185755
Posted By: Genie
11-Jul-11 - 08:02 PM
Thread Name: Tune Req: My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose (R Burns)
Subject: Tune Req: Red Red Rose (R Burns)
I'm trying to figure out which of the various tunes to which Burns's "Red, Red Rose" is sung is which.
Several websites, including the Burns Encyclopedia, say that Burns originally set the poem (which was a song he had heard a country girl sing) to the tune of Niel Gow's "Major Graham," but that when Burns gave the song to Pietro Urbani to publish in his "Scots Songs," Urbani wrote his own tune for it. In 1797, the year after Burns died, the song was published in Johnson's Museum to the "Major Graham" tune. Two years later it appeared in Thomson's Scottish Airs, to William Marshall's tune "Wishaw's Favourite." They also say that the song did not really become very popular until 1821, when Robert Archibald Smith set the lyrics to the tune of the traditional Scots song "Low Down in the Broom."
The thing is, I'm having trouble matching MIDIs and YouTube versions with the scores that I've found, and some versions seem to be using totally different tunes. When I find a MIDI with the accompanying lyrics, it usually doesn't specify which tune it is. YouTubes and mp3s I find online are generally even more unclear about that.
Can anyone direct me to clear MIDIs or YouTubes of Red, Red Rose being sung to the following tunes?
Major Graham Wishaw's Favorite Low Down In The Broom Urbani's original tune
(One reason the MIDIs don't always help is that they're sometimes overlaid with ornamentation making it hard to hear the basic tune, and sometimes they're played in a style that doesn't seem to fit this song -- e.g., the score says "very slow," but the MIDI is played quite fast.)