Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.

Subject: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: GUEST,Terry Wilkinson
Date: 15 Feb 24 - 10:27 AM

Does anyone out there have any background to this song? It crops up on a number of Youtube videos where it is usually described as an 'English folk song'. Some go further and describe it as a '16th century English folk song'. A general on line search brings up the same information, some music scores (again with the '16th century English folk song' tag) but nothing more. But it would seem that it is popular in Germany. The Roud Folk Song Index provides no clues and neither does a specific online search for 16th century English folk songs. Now a song written in the 1500's and still being sung today would surely have more historical information about it than the above which leads me to thinking this is a fairly modern creation. These are the lyrics (which to my ears don't have a 1500's ring to them - a bit too William McGonagall):

Autumn comes, the summer is past, winter will come too soon, Star will shine clearer, skies seem nearer Under the Harvest Moon

Autumn comes, so let us be glad, singing an autumn tune Hearts will be lighter, skies seem brighter Under a Harvest Moon

Any thoughts?

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 15 Feb 24 - 11:02 AM

An obvious point is that there are no "sixteenth century English folk songs" -- the term hadn't been invented yet. There are, of course, songs which were in oral tradition in the sixteenth century, a (tiny) handful of which were still around in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for collectors to find them. Although it is very rare for them to use the same words.

There might, to be sure, be a sixteenth century song of unknown origin which is the ancestor of this thing. But, if so, it has clearly been modified.

And I certainly have no record of anything like this in any recent anthology. My strong suspicion is that someone found a sixteenth century poem, modernized the bleep out of it, and called it a "folk song." And then, as too often happens, others copied the attribution.

I can't prove it, of course. It's just the old rule that "it is much more likely that a modern composer was lying than that a song survived unmodified, yet somehow in twentieth century English, in the sixteenth century." :-)

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 15 Feb 24 - 11:23 AM

There is a beautiful version of the song here, first with German lyrics and then with English lyrics:

Herbst ist da / Autumn Comes - mit Text

I don't recognise the lyrics or the melody.

I noticed that one of the comments under the video states in German, "Wir haben das damals im Kinderchor gesungen" which according to an internet translation is "we used to sing this in children's choir".

To me the melody does not sound English or from the UK or Ireland but it does remind me of Jewish melodies.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: GUEST,maeve
Date: 15 Feb 24 - 11:32 AM

Nothing about this sounds like an English traditional song or melody. Have a look here for another possibility:
https://musescore.com/static/musescore/scoredata/gen/6/4/8/5293846/80d446a1f82fcc297a6064b29fbab54a73d84f56/score_0.png@850x1100

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 15 Feb 24 - 12:19 PM

Helen wrote: To me the melody does not sound English or from the UK or Ireland but it does remind me of Jewish melodies.

A German text and a Jewish melody might suggest Yiddish origin. But I looked at the staff notation, and I don't think the tune is Jewish. Certainly not characteristically Jewish. You're just hearing the minor mode, I think. (Strict Aeolian minor, not Dorian or natural minor.) I suspect it's German.

I'm not good enough at German to date it, but even the German sounds fairly modern to me.

The description as an English folk song is clearly not true.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 15 Feb 24 - 02:40 PM

Thanks Robert B. Waltz, you're probably correct. I did only say it reminds me of Jewish melodies, not that I think it is one of them.

Ok, sorry in advance because this won't really help the quest for answers but the video is funny:

Mendelssohn Herbstlied performed by Björn Linnman

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 15 Feb 24 - 05:41 PM

Helen wrote: Thanks Robert B. Waltz, you're probably correct. I did only say it reminds me of Jewish melodies, not that I think it is one of them.

Agreed, you did. But the point was worth a comment: It seems to me that Yiddish music is more likely to be in minor than are most other national musics. I don't have statistics, because I don't have a valid sample :-), but it is the impression I get from Ruth Rubin's books, e.g.

So a melody in minor is more characteristic of Yiddish music than of most other types.

I wonder if the "English folk song" bit arises from the fact that the tune was arranged by Mendelssohn, with someone assuming he picked up the tune in England. Wild speculation, that.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 15 Feb 24 - 06:27 PM

Thanks Robert. (BTW, I'm not disagreeing with you.) I think it is the rhythm combined with the melody which brings Jewish songs to my mind.

There are a number of Celtic tunes which are in minor too.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Feb 24 - 07:48 AM

Some really interesting points made here - much appreciated.
The Jewish/Yiddish melody similarities is interesting - the German version in the video link sounds a bit like it could be from the soundtrack of Fiddler on the Roof. Certainly any thoughts of it being a traditional English tune are immediately dispelled.
But it is still puzzling as to how it ever became a '16th century English folk song'.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 16 Feb 24 - 02:45 PM

Frankly, I think that describing a tune or song as a '16th century English folk song' is the easy answer to every mystery, accompanied by the unspoken thought, 'nobody will ever know any different so it won't matter much'. (This tactic would have worked especially well in pre communications technology days. LOL)

I bought this book about 40 years ago - which is one of my favouite music books - and none of the tunes in it are similar to the Autumn tune you are researching:

An Elizabethan song book : lute songs, madrigals and rounds / music edited by Noah Greenberg ; text edited by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman.

I think that the sentiment of the Autumn song would fit with the sentiments in that book, however. Having said that, the style of lute songs, madrigals and rounds could be a specific style, separate to the folk songs being sung by the less affluent members of society so I might be looking down the wrong path.

This probably won't help much either but the song lyrics which came into my head as soon as I read the first post is the Irish song with a completely different melody The Curragh of Kildare, with the opening verse:

The winter it has passed
And the summer's come at last
And the birds, they are singing in the trees
Their little hearts are glad
Ah, but mine is very sad
For my true love is far away from me

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 16 Feb 24 - 04:46 PM

Because it is a song about one of the seasons, I've been thinking about the very unusual and very old English song Sumer is Icumen in

The information on the video page is:

"'Sumer Is Icumen In' is a traditional English medieval round, and possibly the oldest such example of counterpoint in existence. The title might be translated as 'Summer has come in' or 'Summer has arrived'.

"The round is sometimes known as the Reading rota because the manuscript comes from Reading Abbey though it may not have been written there. It is the oldest piece of six-part polyphonic music (Albright, 1994). Its composer is anonymous, possibly W. de Wycombe, and it is estimated to date from around 1260. The manuscript is now at the British Library. The language is Middle English, more exactly Wessex dialect."

It has an unusual melody and rhythm and for me there is a similarity in the melody with the Autumn song, but maybe it's possible that the Summer song inspired the Autumn song.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 16 Feb 24 - 06:55 PM

Helen wrote: It has an unusual melody and rhythm and for me there is a similarity in the melody with the Autumn song, but maybe it's possible that the Summer song inspired the Autumn song.

I would consider this pretty unlikely. "Sumer Is Icumen In" is from MS. Harley 978, which is usually dated 1225-1250 though a few scholars date it 1300-1325. (Looking at the photos of that page kinda makes me think the people argue for the later date are right -- it looks more fourteenth than thirteenth century. No way that that hand comes from the sixteenth century, though.)

People call "Sumer" a "pop song," but there is no reason to think so; there is no record of it other than the Harley MS. Moreoever, it is the only poem in English in Harley 978. I think it's a one-off that was not widely known. The only real reason to think that it's non-classical is the rather earthy words.

Additional background can be found in its Ballad Index entry, http://balladindex.org/Ballads/FSWB260B.html.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 16 Feb 24 - 10:26 PM

Robert, you said that you "think it's a one-off that was not widely known" but I think it could have been widely known, or at least known in some communities e.g. religious communities known for music and song, even though the lyrics are not religious. The Wiki article gives the Latin version with Christian lyrics, so the tune was also used in a religious song to refer to the sacrifice of the Crucifixion of Jesus.

When I was at school in the 1960's I first saw the song in a book published around the 1950's Sing Care Away Book 1 with the title Summer is a-coming in, and noted as English traditional. If you look at the song list on that page the other songs in the book were well known so I would be surprised if the Sumer/Summer song was a completely unknown song. More research needed perhaps?

I'm more interested in whether the melody of the Sumer song has any similarity to the melody of the Autumn song to other people - or is it just me?

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 17 Feb 24 - 03:39 AM

Helen wrote: The Wiki article gives the Latin version with Christian lyrics, so the tune was also used in a religious song to refer to the sacrifice of the Crucifixion of Jesus.

Yes, but don't confuse a Latin text with a Latin translation. The English and Latin are different texts. And there is speculation that (a) the book was a commonplace book (so Dickens and Wilson, Early Middle English Texts, p. 118), and (b) that the English text was composed on the page to match the melody (so J. A. W. Bennett, Middle English Literature, edited and completed by Douglas Gray, p. 395). The Latin could be a church piece without it being a folk song, and the English may never even have been known outside the book.

As for similarities in the melody, I didn't notice any (I know "Sumer" well enough that I would probably have noticed it when I listened to the "Autumn" song, though that's not a guarantee). "Sumer" is in major; the "Autumn" song in minor. Of course, it's possible to move a major song to minor. But it usually requires a deliberate rework.

And, again, you have three hundred years of non-attestation to account for.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 17 Feb 24 - 05:26 AM

I didn't say it was a Latin translation of the English lyrics. They are completely different lyrics, so a version of the song specifically rewritten for a Christian purpose.

In the Wikipedia article the image of the manuscript shows the English lyrics written in black ink and then Latin lyrics written in red ink. I know they are not the same song. I studied Latin, and Middle English and Anglo-Saxon/Old English at university.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 17 Feb 24 - 05:31 AM

On the Traditional Tune Archive a note on the song Sumer is icumen in states that the melody was originally an Irish tune, collected by Bunting. I've found it in my copy of the book, but I'll have a closer look at the tune tomorrow.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 17 Feb 24 - 10:31 AM

Helen wrote: On the Traditional Tune Archive a note on the song Sumer is icumen in states that the melody was originally an Irish tune, collected by Bunting.

In other words, Edward Bunting, The Ancient Music of Ireland, 1840.

I don't find "Sumer" in its contents list by that title, but that's not surprising, because Bunting pretends everything is Irish and names it accordingly. However, the attributions are revealing. The large majority of the airs are described as "Very ancient, author and date unknown" -- but were collected in 1792 or later. Bunting has no proof of anything; his phrase "very ancient..." merely means "source not known to the harper who played it." The next-most-significant source is O'Carolan. A few other sources are listed, but the overwhelming majority are one of those two.

Very few have words -- not even things that everyone knows are songs, e.g. "Banks of Claudy." Given that they have been rearranged for piano, it will be hard to identify any tune with the manuscript melody, which has a different number of parts. I'm still looking. But I don't believe in the strength of five hundred years of conjectures.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 17 Feb 24 - 01:26 PM

Seventh tune in the third section of my Bunting book but the title page of that section states Vol 1.

First tune on this page:

The Summer is coming

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 17 Feb 24 - 05:34 PM

GUEST,Terry Wilkinson, I'm interested to know when the song began to be known in Germany. A lot of the sites I looked at had comments from people saying they used to sing it at school, but there is little indication of how long ago that was or when the song became popular in Germany.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: GUEST,Terry Wilkinson
Date: 18 Feb 24 - 04:54 AM

And from at least one comment also sung in school assembly in Austria (and in English - the poster doesn't remember why).
From the comments they recall singing the song in infant and primary school so they were fairly young at the time. My guess is that we are talking about the 1980's and 1990's here. From an English perspective I was at infants and junior school in the late 1950's / early 1960's at a time when British folk songs were still sung in schools - 'Dashing Away With The Smoothing Iron', 'Soldier,Soldier', 'The Mermaid' etc - but definitely not 'Under the Harvest Moon'. My wife concurs.
The obvious way forward is to ask some of those posters when it was they sang this at school. Watch this space.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 18 Feb 24 - 01:41 PM

Thanks Terry. The reason I am asking is to try to narrow down when the song may have been heard or "discovered" in England or the UK and taken over to Germany. My guess is mid 20th Century, perhaps.

Knowing when and how the Autumn song appeared in Germany might give clues to how it transformed from a '16th century English folk song' into a song sung in German schools in German and English.

There may even be clues to who brought the song to Germany as well.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 18 Feb 24 - 02:20 PM

My last post on this topic, since my comments so far obviously aren't doing much good.

This "Autumn" song has no Roud number. It has no Ballad Index entry. That's because it has never been field collected.

The text as quoted is not sixteenth century English.

Just because some un-authoritative source calls something a "sixteenth century English folk song" does not make it so. People can be deceived; people can lie.

Fakery is well-attested in the history of folk song, since the days of Thomas Percy.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 18 Feb 24 - 04:09 PM

Robert, as an amateur Celtic harp player of 30 years I am aware of the issues you raise about Turlough O'Carolan's collected works which were transcribed from performances heard at harp events, and also Bunting's collections of tunes rearranged for piano.

Given the lack of technology back in those centuries, and the traditional method of hearing a tune, learning to play it and possibly making changes to it, then playing it to others who repeat the process it is very difficult to identify the original version of the tune and how it has changed in time. It is even difficult to identify who composed the tune. As an example there are possible mistaken attributions to O'Carolan of works by Connellan or Rory Dhall O'Cahan.

By trying to find information on how and when the Autumn song arrived in Germany I am hoping to narrow down the information on where it came from originally.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: GUEST,Fred
Date: 19 Feb 24 - 07:55 AM

Helen - in case you were still wondering: the earliest appearance of this song in Germany that anyone seems to be able to find is in Gottfried Wolters' 1968 volume of his Ars Musica songbooks, published between '62 and '71, where it's just credited as being a 16th century English folk song along with a contemporary German translation by Hannes Kraft.
Sadly not much hope of tracking down its actual origins there.

Something that might not apply to this song at all but just feels worth mentioning is that growing up, a lot of songs originating in the third reich were rebranded and sold to us as folk songs from other countries... For example, "Über der weißen Nacht", a "Swedish folk song" we learnt in primary school, was never Swedish at all but written by (the horrid) Erich Scholz. Given both Wolters' and Kraft's history with the Nazi regime, it doesn't seem completely impossible that it became an "English folk song" because its original composer (/importer) had become unpublishable in the 60s?

That doesn't explain it being in English of course, or the number of people in YouTube comment sections that sang it at schools outside Germany.

Subject: RE: Under the Harvest Moon AKA Autumn Comes.
From: Helen
Date: 19 Feb 24 - 12:50 PM

Thank you for that information, Fred. It is interesting that the earliest appearance of the song seems to be a book published in 1968.

I looked at the sample page of music on the link you provided to Ars Musica and it appears to be in a very similar format to the book I mentioned earlier, Sing Care Away, which contains songs often with harmony lines, or songs to be sung as a round. In fact if I had seen that page of music my first thought would be that it came from the same book, except that the lyrics are in German.

It is especially interesting to read that you said, "..a lot of songs originating in the third reich were rebranded and sold to us as folk songs from other countries". I suspect that could explain this song's origins.

I have never heard the Autumn song until I read about it here in this thread. I definitely don't recognise the lyrics.

I have listened again to the melody of the first verse of the early English song Sumer is icumen in and the I still think that the chord progression seems very similar to the Autumn song. The two songs are stuck in my head. I hear first one and then the other.