The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #113596   Message #3903739
Posted By: GUEST,Mick Pearce (MCP)
04-Feb-18 - 06:30 AM
Thread Name: Origin: Singer's Request / Minstrel's Request
Subject: RE: Origin: Singer's Request / Minstrel's Request
Not the only setting of it apparently:

From The Life Of Sir Walter Scott by Charles Duke Yonge:

'Summer eve is gone and past" ? The Harper's Song (from Rokeby).

By T. Attwood, 1815 ;
J. F. Barnett, 1876 ;
J. Clarke, 1814 ;
W. Gresham, 1815 ;
R. Hoar, 1876 ;
T. R. Hobbes, 1814;
W. Russell, 1812;
Spiker, 1815;
J. Whitaker, 1815.


The Gresham version didn't get a good revue:

"The Harper's Cong" from "Rokeby;" wrotten by W.Scott esq. Composed and inscribed to Miss Mead of Box-Moor House; by William Gresham. 2s
The "Harper" must excuse us, if we do not laud his strain. His melody is meagre and uncharacteristic, destitute of feature and devoid of beauty. Mr Gresham, we presume, is a very young man; very young, as a musician, he certainly is. If his treble is without air, his bass rejects all science; and yet, to say this his composition os both insipid and anomalous, is not to express all the sentiment it inspires.

The Monthly Magazine, Volume 43, 1817

(It got a slughtly better review in The Gentleman's Magazine "These are pretty good songs, as songs go; but they have no very striking excellencies. In the first [Harper's - MCP], which is in B glat, we notice some well-imagined alterations of the musick to suit the words of the different verses". Not exactly glowing!)


Another setting by Wiesenthal, T. V. (Thomas Van Dyke) -- 1790-1833 from 1821 can be seen at LOC: The Harper's Song


Mick