The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #42804   Message #622033
Posted By: Haruo
06-Jan-02 - 02:20 AM
Thread Name: Tune Add: Cookham (and Q re fasola repeats)
Subject: Cookham (and Q re fasola repeats)
I want to post the Sacred Harp tune "Cookham" (used for "Hark! the herald angels sing" before Mendelssohn's tune got decocted into a carol. However, like any good fasola piece, it's three-part music that is degraded by being turned into a "melody line". So I am posting (again; I already did it in an earlier thread on "earlier tunes of hymns etc.") a GIF of the Sacred Harp page in question: p. 81. If you click on the image it will enlarge to where you can see what my question about repeats is about.

Those unfamiliar with fasola tradition please note that the primary melody line is in the tenor, i.e. the middle of the three staves.

I have made a MIDI file of this tune, but am unsure whether the two dots at the beginning of the fifth measure of each staff mean that the tune from that point on to the end is to be repeated. The text does not require this (though the tune is less than half the length of the one we are now used to, so each of our verses of "Hark! the", after the refrain is dropped, becomes two verses when set to Cookham), but the example of Beach Spring (upper song on the page) where there are similar dots at the first measure, and where there is indeed a repetition of the first portion (where the text is doubled), makes me suspect Cookham is supposed to be 7.7.7.7.7.7 rather than merely 7.7.7.7 .

In any event, you can listen to the MIDI I created (with or without repeats) by scrolling down below the lyrics at Aŭdu! kantas anĝel-ĥor'; the first MIDI link under COOKHAM is without the repeat, the second one is with.

Liland
Getting all geared up for Christmas now that it's Epiphany