Tune settings of folkies' poems/songs

Subject: Tune settings of folkies' poems/songs
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 May 10 - 04:48 AM

I was fascinated by the thread on poems being set to music by folkies - and wondered how much of the reverse might be true. In other words, how many of you/us have written a poem or song and then set it to an already composed tune? Or perhaps taken such a tune as the inspiration for a poetic composition?

Although a totally non-religious person, I have (for example) a huge musical affection for many of the tunes in "Hymns Ancient And Modern", and have used some of these, and others of their ilk not in that book, as melodies for my own words.

I'm not including parodies in this - there are plenty of threads on that aspect of the tune/song relationship already!

Subject: RE: Tune settings of folkies' poems/songs
From: theleveller
Date: 05 May 10 - 05:49 AM

Absolutely - why should god have all the best tunes!

Subject: RE: Tune settings of folkies' poems/songs
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 05 May 10 - 03:07 PM

I expect everyone already knows this, but Vaughan Williams occasionally applied folk tunes he'd collected to hymns as a way of putting them back into circulation. To be a Pilgrim (A Blacksmith Courted Me) Lord of All Hopefulness (Banks of the Bann) and - I think - Immortal, Invisible (Some Tyrant Has Stolen My True Love Away) spring to mind. The tune of O Little Town Of Bethlehem came from an alarming song about the consequences of using bad language called The Ploughboy's Dream, which Coope Boyes & Simpson have recorded.

Valmai (Lewes)