Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne

Subject: Tune Req: Notated Music ID request
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Mar 14 - 02:31 PM

I have a piano with this painted on the top, and I am trying to find out what the tunes represented are. I tried using noteflight for the "Auld Lang Syne" page (here is the result), but I do not recognize the melody it plays back and might have gotten the notation wrong. I have not attempted the "Edinburgh Forever" page.
Apparently Robert Burns' poem "Auld Lang Syne" was not originally set to the music we associate it with it today (by George Thompson as I understand), and I wonder if anyone knows if the music depicted in the painting is the original Burns music ("For old long Sine my jo") or some other tune. (Fyi I could not load the plugin on this page to hear "For old long Sine my jo.")
I have not found any record of the Edinburgh song anywhere online so far.

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Mar 14 - 03:48 PM

Hi - take a look through the various versions of the song linked to at the top.

Click here for notation for the version that is heard more commonly these days - this is NOT the melody Robert Burns used. [also here (click)]

This page has a transcription of the original Burns notation. [also here (click)]

Does that help?

-Joe Offer, Mudcat Music Editor-

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 Mar 14 - 06:10 PM

The "Auld Lang Syne" tune is recognizably part of the usual tune for the song (i.e. the one Thomson suggested, and which Burns seems to have gone along with because the old one was crap), but it's a bit distorted, probably because whoever painted the lid didn't read music. Nothing on the painting suggests the old "Auld lang syne" tune.

I've never heard of a song called "Edinburgh Forever" and that page doesn't make any sense to me.

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: GUEST,Auldtimer
Date: 07 Mar 14 - 06:56 PM

"The old one" is not too bad and far from "crap", indeed it is now well known and used and well favoured. As I allways understood it Auld Lang Syne was set to the commonly known air by Thompson after Burns had died. I also beleve the painted instrument to be a Spinett, not a piano.

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 07 Mar 14 - 08:06 PM

I agree with Auldtimer regarding the original tune, this is what I sing, with all the verses (not just two). In fact I rate it as being much better than not too bad.
I got this tune from the research of Serge Hovey and the singing of Jean Redpath.

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 Mar 14 - 08:53 PM

It's a Broadwood square piano from about 1815.

I think the attraction of the older tune to modern singers is pure showing off. It's very hard to hit the high notes without wandering into an uncontrolled warble, and most people can't do it. A singer leading off with that one is wearing both their historical knowledge and their vocal training on their sleeve.

The whole point of Auld Lang Syne, worldwide, is that it's something everybody can sing, not a pretext for displays of musical superiority.

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Jim McLean
Date: 08 Mar 14 - 07:00 AM

As Jack says, it's a Broadwood square piano. I have one dated 1803 and in the picture you can pick out bits of the Auld lang Syne air set to Burns' lyrics by Thompson. The tune can be found in Vol 4, number 394 of Johnson's Scots Musical Museum under the title of O Can ye Labour lea, Young Man. Burns obviously knew this air but his Auld Lang Syne was a reworking of an older song, also in JSMM with the older tune contributed by Ramsay, Vol l number 25.

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 08 Mar 14 - 10:01 AM

Hi, Guest. Congratulations on your cool piano. Is it playable? I have an LP of Schubert's dance music played on a similar piano.

I have a MIDI keyboard right on my computer desk, and I tried playing the music on your Flickr page. The first one is the well-known, present-day tune for Auld Lang Syne, although it doesn't seem to be perfect. As someone said here, the artist probably couldn't read music.

I couldn't read the second one well enough to play it.

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Joe_F
Date: 08 Mar 14 - 08:20 PM

Jack Campin: Distinguo. At a Burns supper, I do not scruple to sing it to the tune Burns knew. Its range is only an octave & a third; my country's national anthem, which does take a little warbling at my age, demands an octave & a fifth. However, on New Year's Eve, in America, of course I follow Guy Lombardo like everybody else. (That tune, also, spans an octave & a third.)

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 04:22 AM

Jim Malcolm uses a modernized version of the Burns melody for "Auld Lang Syne," but then, I like Jim.

This page (click) has notation and various recordings.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Jim McLean
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 06:08 AM

Joe, Jim Malcolm doesn't use a modernized version of the Burn' melody. His version is exactly the same as printed in Vol 5, #413 of Johnson's Scots Musical Museum as submitted by Burns. The only difference is the key. In the book it is D major but Malcolm sings in A. And as previously posted, Burns knew BOTH airs, he just chose the first part of the traditional one supplied by Ramsay and 'tweaked' it slightly.

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 12:20 PM

I think the attraction of the old tune for Auld Lang Syne is that it is lovely melody and it has, as Joe F has pointed out, a fairly modest range.   It appears to be increasingly popular with both singers and the public at large in Scotland. Concert audiences are joining in with it these days in a way they didn't ten or even five years ago.

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Weasel
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 05:25 PM

I arranged the old tune for full orchestra - it went down well. I prefer it to the more familiar tune (but that may be simply because it is less familiar).

Weasel

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 09:39 PM

I hope each of you reads this: THANK YOU for your replies. I am blown away. What a great resource this site is. Exactly the info I was looking for.

Separate question, and I know this is not an art ID forum, but because it is related to the sheet music painting-- I spotted what looks like a name signed on the score (the last pic is a close-up), and to my eye it looks like Henderson. Any other guesses on the signature?

Btw this set shows more pics of the piano.

Many thanks to you all again for the ID on Auld Lang Syne. It has been a great help to me.

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 10 Mar 14 - 06:16 AM

Obviously Henderson was the composer of a march titled "Edinburgh Forever", both rightly fallen into oblivion. (S/He may even be identical to the person who commissioned the painting, vainly hoping for the tune to be discussed at Mudcat a century later.)

Not to be confused with Connery's "Scotland Forever" - his right arm, wasn't it?

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Mar 14 - 09:34 AM

Looks like Henderson to me too.

Did Broadwood do the case painting in-house or were the instruments finished by a dealer? Henderson is mentioned here as a piano supplier or maker from before 1830:

http://pianogen.org/names.html

and there was a much later piano firm called Henderson, probably unrelated.

Re the Auld Lang Syne tunes: it's interesting that both of them owe their popularity to manufactured culture rather than the autonomous processes of oral tradition. Thomson picked "The Miller's Wedding" tune because it had been made an enormous hit by Shield in his opera Rosina, and the main reason anybody now sings the old tune is that it was used in Sex and the City - which dates from 2008, hence GUEST's estimate of its popularity going back five years.

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Marje
Date: 10 Mar 14 - 12:37 PM

I don't know why Jack thinks the older tune of ALS is difficult to sing, or only for show-offs. As it starts near the highest part of its range, most people can pitch it very comfortably without any need to "warble", and the range (octave +3) is only one note more than the Thomson version. To me, the original tune has a somewhat more wistful quality about it that is more fitting to the words.

Marje

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 10 Mar 14 - 01:53 PM

Jack Campin

The majority of your contributions this and other forums (fora if you wish to be pedantic) appear to be your 'pretext for displaying musical superiority' - in other words( or in your own words) 'showing off'!

Other posters manage to offer alternative views and points for discussion without being condescending or sarcastic.

You don't know me from Adam, have never heard me sing, yet you choose to put me down by insinuating that I might 'wander off into an uncontrolled warble' that I might 'lead off with that one' and that I would be 'wearing my historical knowledge and vocal training on my sleeve' (Actually I have no idea what you mean by that last part?)

In an earlier post you state that 'the old tune was crap' and in a more recent one you state that the tune 'has only become popular in the last five years since being used on Sex in the City' (I believe that that Mairi Campbell and David Francis were also invited to sing it in The White House?)
Your taste obviously differs from mine, I much prefer singing the full song to the older tune - and I learned it about 34 years ago from the singing of Jean Redpath at the Heritage of Scotland Summer Schools at Stirling - along with many other people who have an affinity with Robert Burns and the songs and tunes he collected as well as the words he wrote.

The next time you want to express an opinion, please refrain from nastiness - and remember not to state something as a fact when it is just - your opinion!

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 10 Mar 14 - 05:47 PM

Here is my brave attempt at "Edinburgh Forever". I had to add the last note, where the painter ran out of space. Note the becoming irregularity, worthy of, say, Haydn ;-)

X:1
T:Edinburgh Forever
C:Grishka Henderson
M:2/4
L:1/8
K:F
Q:1/4=80
F|"F" c >A f A |"Gm" B <d G A/B/ |"C" C c e d |"F" d Ac F|"D" A3 G/ A/|\
"Gm" B d "C"G c/ B/ |"F" A c "Dm"F2 |"Gm" G < B "C"E G |"F" F3 |]

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Sheena Wellington
Date: 10 Mar 14 - 06:31 PM

Gallus Moll and I obviously picked up the old tune from the same source and round about the same time. I and many other folk singers have been singing it for the last thirty odd years but obviously the Cast version being used in 'Sex in the City' has made it familiar to a wider audience.   Not quite sure why this seems to have offended Jack Campin but then his considerable historical knowledge, which he rarely seeks to conceal, does rather lead him to be a bit disparaging about anything that becomes popular!

The old tune is not that difficult to sing nor does it require a large degree of vocal training. I have taught it to infant classes and to senior citizens and they have managed it very well.

But what do I know?

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Mar 14 - 06:41 PM

you choose to put me down by insinuating that I might 'wander off into an uncontrolled warble'

I didn't say you did. I don't know who you are but it's clear from what you write that you're a very experienced singer. I'm reporting what I've heard happen at every single public gathering of non-expert singers where someone taking on a leadership role decides to impose their preference for the older tune. Most people can't follow it and just go silent, and a large proportion of those who do try will get the two tunes mixed up or otherwise get in a fankle.

If you want to show off soloistically, there are plenty of other songs to use. You don't have to sabotage something which has remained a musical focus of community over 200 years, more widely known than any other song ever.

Eddi Reader's version is even worse and the hand signals don't help one bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhhxOI3gfp8

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Marje
Date: 11 Mar 14 - 07:38 AM

I really don't see what the big deal is. Here (in SW England) I sing that older tune, often along with a Scottish friend, around Xmas and New Year - sometimes we get asked to sing it to round off the evening. We sing the verses, everyone joins in the chorus. No one gets it mixed up with the other tune, or stands up with their arms crossed - it's just a simple song, and enjoyed in much the same way as many other traditional songs.The only time I'd avoid that tune is midnight on 31 December, when people expect and enjoy the better known tune.

If I wanted to show off my vocal technique, there are far more demanding songs I could choose, and I wouldn't pick one with a chorus - choruses are great levellers.

Marje

Subject: RE: Notated Music ID request - Auld Lang Syne
From: Jim McLean
Date: 11 Mar 14 - 09:40 AM

I have been trying, unsuccessfully, for some time now to get educationscotland.gov.uk to either remove or rewrite their page on Auld Lang Syne as it is misleading and confusing for the children at which it is aimed. I won't quote the whole article but it says that Burns, because he had already used the air for O Can Ye Labour Lea, Young Man, he used another tune ".... he called The Miller's Wedding and that is the tune we use today".
The "tune we use today" or the one known throughout the world, is note for note O Can Ye Labour Lea, Young Man. The Miller's Wedding/Daughter is more like Coming Through The Rye but has echoes of O CYLL,YM but the well known melody, it is not.
Modern academics may have just taken Francis Collinson, page 6, Traditional and national Music Defined, as gospel when he printed an air called The Miller's Wedding, which was actually OCYLL,YM and subtitled it Auld lang Syne.

I agree with Jack that Eddie Reader's version is dreadful. I don't think she understands some of the words and sings "freer" for "fiere".