Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)

Subject: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: InOBU
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 04:38 PM

Hi Folks... The Popular Halfwit's CD has been recorded - looking for who wrote the music for the Yeats poem the Hazel Wood... for the album notes etc. Anyone know?
Cheers, Larry

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: InOBU
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 04:42 PM

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS - I should have said... whoops, I will check the forum again.... Larry

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Peg
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 10:32 PM

Hi Larry; congratulations to Ralph for finishing his CD!!!!!

I recorded a version of this song (original music, piano, composed by a friend) when I was in the group Urban Myth. If you and/or Ralph would like a copy let me know, I have some demos left...I like what she did with it, kind of a Tori Amos sound...

Lovely haunting poem...

I have a CD by Karan Casey where she sings this; probably the version you mean; I can go look for it but it might take me a while (the place is a wreck with the impending move)...

Peg

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Noreen
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 10:45 PM

It is done beautifully on a Judy Collins CD, which says music: Collins; but I have no way of knowing if it the same music that you mean. Good luck.

Noreen

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: InOBU
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 11:20 PM

Hi Noreen and Peg... I have also heard that Judy Collins wrote the music that is the standard which, for example Karin Casey uses, and I also have her CD, though God only knows where the cover is... I will see if I can find a Judy Collens web page or something to check. Thanks again, all, Larry

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Noreen
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 11:48 PM

Hmmm.... this page of the Digital Tradition Mirror, with the score of the music that I referred to, claims the tune as trad. But several other sites give it as being composed by Judy Collins. I would love to sing it sometime...

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Peg
Date: 01 May 01 - 12:16 AM

On Karan Casey's album "Songlines" the arrangement is credited to her band; so I guess that means the tune is "traditional."

However I recall a thread dedicated to this song...but the title of the thread was not the song title. The person who started it was, I think, complaining about the overly-sweet quality of the melody...

I will do a search...

Peg

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Peg
Date: 01 May 01 - 12:18 AM

here is the thread:

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=16581#155484

(help! need blue clicky thing! sorry I am illiterate at this)

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 01 May 01 - 01:13 AM

In the Judy Collins Songbook, the tune is listed as words Yeats, tune traditional. The song is titled there, "Golden Apples of the Sun."

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Noreen
Date: 01 May 01 - 01:25 AM

Thanks Becky, is that an official publication, i.e. sanctioned by Ms Collins and therefore to be taken as Gospel truth?

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: InOBU
Date: 01 May 01 - 09:36 AM

On behalf of the Popular Halfwit, (RS) who has just recorded this on our fledgling lable,(Hearthside Culture Cooperative) thanks... the CD Songs for my Downlands Rose, will soon be available, and has on it... The Way I feel (Gordon Lightfoot) - Lord Frankln, Young Waters, John Barelycorn, Dowey Dens of Yarrow, Matty Groves, and the Song of the Wandering Aengus. - Larry

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Peg
Date: 01 May 01 - 10:05 AM

congratulations! How can we get copies? What is your next project?

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: InOBU
Date: 01 May 01 - 04:40 PM

Hi Peg
Next project... Well, I am trying to get my bad little monkeys to record, but I am everyone's (explitive deleted) last priority. Also, I am recording a CD of Lacota storries, by Dan Charging Hawk, for example, "How the cayote found his asshole", and some west village women poets. Also I have been speaking to Matt Jones about an album... and how to get a copy? Drop me a note with your address and I will send you a copy of the pre-mixed CD, we are thinking of adding some oboe, fiddle and flute. The finished think should be available to buy in a little while, just have to get a Harry Fox licence for one of the songs, that was written by Gordon Lightfoot...
Cheers, Larry

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Peg
Date: 01 May 01 - 07:25 PM

thanks, Larry. Best of luck with finishing up the project. I will PM you my address as I would also love to have a pre-mix copy!

I want to do a recording at some point this year and am looking for musicians (I already have one guy who pays guitar, harp and whistles). Maybe we should talk about doing this thru your collective? I would love to support what you are doing.

Peg

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: InOBU
Date: 02 May 01 - 07:25 AM

Great... send informal tape! Larry

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 02 May 01 - 02:32 PM

Noreen,

(Back on topic...)

The Judy Collins Songbook was (first) published in 1969 (Grosset & Dunlap) and yes, it's certainly the real thing: songs interspersed with "comments, instructions and personal reminiscences by Judy Collins" and photos. I assume the attributions on the songs are correct from her perspective.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: InOBU
Date: 02 May 01 - 03:03 PM

Thanks Noreen! (Back off the topic...) The CD is in the mail, Peg, Thanks to all, Larry

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 May 01 - 03:31 PM

I think just about everybody has taken a shot at this, and I'll bet that there are several melodies extant. I learned one from a fellow named Dick Adams back in the late Fifties. Dick had written it himself, and of all the tunes I've heard, it's still my favorite. But it's amazing how similar they all are.

Don Firth

Subject: Wandering Aengus
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 02 May 01 - 07:22 PM

everybody seems to compose their own tune for this poem. Judy Collins has been mentioned and from what Peg writes, Karan Casey and her band have their own tune. And Dick Adams, who I am not familiar with. So did Serafin and Sean Tyrell. I don't know if The Popular Halfwit used one of the aove tunes or made up or borrowed yet another tune.

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Noreen
Date: 02 May 01 - 07:44 PM

Thanks Becky, glad that's sorted! :0)

Good luck with the CDs, PH and Larry.

Noreen

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Deckman
Date: 02 May 01 - 10:19 PM

... and Don, you have done the consummate arrangement. I've always tried to duplicate it, but I always end up short! CHEERS, Bob (deckman) Nelson

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Peg
Date: 03 May 01 - 12:14 AM

Then there is Barbara Blatner who made up yet another version! (I helped with the arrangement, too).

It is such a powerful poem, I am not surprised that so many feel inspired to write a song around it...

I was just given a CD by a band called Mandible Chatter that does yet ANOTHER version!

Peg

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: menzze
Date: 03 May 01 - 05:28 AM

I think Donavan did it mostly parallel to Judy Collins in the late 60s/early 7os, Angelo Branduardi did it as well in the 8os and I also recorded it with OAKTREE in...-puh- ... I can't recall exactly but it was 'round '86-'87 on our first recording "Come To The Land Of The Oaktree".
A great song I'm still singing today. At the moment we're(Celtic Harvest) working on a folk-rock-version of it.

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 04 May 01 - 02:25 AM

Welcome to Mudcat, Desert Dancer!

~S~

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Murrey
Date: 04 May 01 - 09:54 PM

If you mean same as Song for Wandering Angus-English singer/writer/hurdy-gurdy player Jake Walton does a version-I suspect the tune is his but not sure-big help huh

Subject: RE: Help: Who wrote music for The Hazel Wood?
From: Big Tim
Date: 05 May 01 - 03:57 AM

It's called "The Song of Wandering AENGUS", written by Yeats in 1897 and first published in his collection "The Wind Among the Reeds" (1899). The first line is actually "I went OUT to the hazel wood" not "DOWN". The collection also includes "The Host of the Air", first line, "O'Driscoll drove with a song, the wild duck and the drake" which was made famous by the Clancy Bros and Tommy Makem in the 60s. On the Grapevine label CD "Now and in Time to Be - a musical celebration of the works of W.B.Yeats" (1997), the music is credited as follows, "Music by Christy Moore (Bal Music)". I don't know if the album is available in "foreign parts". If anyone can't get the tracks let me know and I'll post them. All the best.

Subject: RE: Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 02:15 AM

I don't think Judy Collins composed the air. I heard her sing the song earlier this month and she said she couldn't remember who the composer was. She suggested maybe John Jacob Niles. I went up afterwards and mentioned Serafin, though I think he had a different tune from the one Collins uses, because as you see in my old message I mentioned that a few people had set the song to music.

Judy Collins didn't recognise the name Serafin, so I asked lots of people with knowledge, experience, interest in the folk music scene and couldn't find anyone who remembers him. I had an lp in mid or late 1960s, Serafin the self-styled wandering minstrel, pictured on the album cover with a flowing cape. Besides the Song of the Wandering Aengus, I remember he sang The Bonny Earl of Murray.

Subject: RE: Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 02:25 AM

haven't been able to track down the mysterious minstrel with the stage name (or perhaps it really was his name, but I think he was harking back to an earlier fictional character). It sounds like this blogger heard him live:
http://bish-randomthoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/cheers-bars-part-two.html

I believe I should have written "The Bonny Earl of Moray"

Subject: RE: Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 02:29 AM

On the liner notes to The Golden Apples Of The Sun, Judy Collins says she learned the tune from Will Holt, but says nothing about where Holt got it.

Caroline Herring joins the long list of people who have written melodies for it. A concert recording can be seen here.

Subject: RE: Seraffyn
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 02:31 AM

http://playitagainmax.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/seraffyn-of-love-of-war-of-many-things.html

Seraffyn

Found it!

Subject: RE: Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 03:09 AM

found a discussion by Seraffyn's nephew. It includes an mp3 of Seraffyn reciting the poem while his wife hums a tune in the background

http://www.brightcecilia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3244

Hello,
I'm hoping someone will know a tune that my aunt used to sing. I've attached an .mp3 of it.

It's a home recording made by my dad in the 1950s, of a recitation of Yeats' "Song of Wandering Aengus" by my uncle, Donald Mork. He plays accompaniment on a lute, and Ania his wife sings a wordless minor key melody that I've never been able to identify. The recording isn't the best but it should suffice to convey the mood - "plaintive" I believe would describe it.

I'm no expert on Renaissance music, but I'm posting here on a hunch, and if I'm off the mark please let me know.

Thank you in advance for sharing your expertise.

Peter Mork

[One respondent suggests that the tune is based on Schubert's 'Standchen' and Mork replies:]

"Thanks for replying. The Schubert melody isn't the same, but there are points of similarity. Possibly is was inspired by a hearing of Schubert, or could it have been the other way around?

After I posted my question yesterday, I did some more research - one of those nights where you keep jumping out of bed to Google something you just thought of. Here's what I found.

My uncle later made a recording (under his minstrel name, Seraffyn) of 'Wandering Aengus' - same arrangement but with a different singer backing him up. In the album notes he says 'The accompaniment is an old lute exercise, to which a friend of mine composed the little melody you hear'. That friend turns out to be Bayard Rustin, known more as a civil rights activist but also a tenor who performed in the 30s in New York with Paul Robeson and Josh White (according to Wikipedia). The 'Wandering Aengus' melody was the tune to a song he wrote called 'I Saw Her As She Came and Went'.

Looking up Bayard Rustin on a folk music forum (mudcat.org) turned up the fact that Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" had been set to the same Rustin melody, and that a recording of "I Saw Her As She Came and Went", with Rustin's original words, was made in the the 90s by the folksinging trio of Gordon Bok, Ann Mayo Muir and Ed Trickett. I wasn't able to buy the whole song online, but the snatch provided by Amazon certainly sounded like the 'Wandering Aengus' tune.

The question then is, did Bayard Rustin actually compose this melody or did it come from somewhere else? I'm willing to field any theory but like hard facts the best!"

Subject: RE: Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 03:39 AM

for more re the numerous recordings of Song of the Wandering Aengus, using a variety of melodies, see the discography at http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=46666#692961

and another one at http://www.emusic.com/search.html?QT=Song+of+Wandering+Aengus&mode=s&off=0&navs=

Subject: RE: Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 02:03 PM

BTW, I can add another version of the song to the discussion. It appears on my CD "The Wind, the Reeds, and the Seven Woods." Available widely and at cdbaby.com, keyword Saum or Yeats. I'm working now on my seventh CD collection of Yeats's lyric poems to original music. Doug

Subject: RE: Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
From: GUEST,C. Ham
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 02:07 PM

I have a live recording of Dave Van Ronk singing The Song of the Wandering Aengus. In the intro, he credits the musical setting to Judy Collins.

Subject: RE: Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
From: Amos
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 03:02 PM

Burl Ives recorded this poem to music long before Judy Collins went public, but I don't know if the tune is the same or not.

A

Subject: RE: Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
From: GUEST,Guest - Lin
Date: 30 Oct 12 - 02:46 AM

I absolutely love Donovan's version of this song, just beautiful beyond words! Have not really cared too much for other artists who I have heard sing it (either didn't care for their vocals or arrangement or both) - accept for Judy Collins. Love her version a lot too!

Subject: RE: Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
From: GUEST,Judy Collins
Date: 21 Apr 23 - 08:41 AM

I am now sure that Hamilton Camp DID not write Wandering Angus melody-The recording that Burl Ives made A decade before Hamilton Camp was working.-So it was either Burl Ives-
Who sings my version on his earlier recording at least 10 years before I did or someone anonymously wrote the melodies supposed to Angus and Innisfree somewhere in the dust of the preceding Century
‘Tis a mystery!
Judy Collins
oh PS I heard this song sung by Wilholt in 1960 at the gate of horn-He’s gone now, so I can’t ask him who he thinks wrote the melodies

Subject: RE: Origin: The Song of Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Apr 23 - 11:37 AM

❤ ️