The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #32196   Message #3928799
Posted By: GUEST
02-Jun-18 - 05:39 PM
Thread Name: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
No - I've just started having a look, and the hymn tune is cited continuously through the period, although it's possible we have (Wesley's?) Dots A inspiring Poem A (the unattributed base text) which is then set to someone else's Dots B, as I suggest above, by someone in the boonies who doesn't know the tune and adapts a better one

The American Hymns and Tune Book of 1862 refers to it, as does Hymns for the Methodist Episcopal Church (1849) but without the dots, and the general practice of the time was to assume the singers knew that tune by heart.

Over to you, my learned colleagues: find the dots.