English tunes & poems by John Clare

Subject: BS: Lament of Swordy Well John Clare BBC Rad
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Apr 24 - 03:18 AM

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000gnd5

Subject: English tunes JohnClare
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Apr 24 - 03:53 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMZXUp2thOQ

Subject: RE: English tunes JohnClare
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Apr 24 - 04:09 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2E6OZE3PNY

Subject: RE: English tunes JohnClare
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Apr 24 - 01:33 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9N_zcxtk_g

Subject: john clare poems set to music
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Apr 24 - 04:36 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_JMae81jYU
John Clare: The Meeting. Poetry and Song.This is a panel discussion about musical settings of John Clare's poetry - covering historic settings from around 1820, along with contemporary composition. The panel features discussion, performances of song and readings of poems. Kate Romano chairs the panel of Simon Kövesi, Julian Philips and Toby Jones, while Julian on piano performs songs with tenor William Searle, and Toby reads Clare's verse. This is part of a project celebrating 200 years since the publication of Clare's first book Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, in January 1820.

alright joe offer

Subject: English tunes JohnClare
From: The Sandman
Date: 23 Apr 24 - 02:25 AM

Helpston hornpipe played on guitar
Helpstone Hornpipe” (John Clare) -Fiddle Tune - Pandemic ...
YouTube · AtlantaJazzGuitar
120+ views · 2 years ago
1:15
John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet of the Romantic Period. He was a contemporary of John Keats and Lord Byron,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2E6OZE3PNY

Subject: RE: BS: Lament of Swordy Well John Clare BBC Rad
From: The Sandman
Date: 23 Apr 24 - 04:26 AM

Released On: 22 Mar 2020
Available for 28 days

Daljit Nagra selects the very best programmes from the BBC's poetry archive
the above link is safe it takes you to bbc rADIO

Subject: RE: English tunes JohnClare
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Apr 24 - 05:45 AM

John Clare is a very worthwhile subject for a Mudcat thread. He was a "peasant poet" who collected many folk songs and who published books containing hundreds of English folk tunes, as well as being a decent fiddle player himself. He was also an early environmental activist who catalogued the beginning of the destruction of his rural environment as the Industrial Revolution and injurious farming practices took hold. It could be that the ravages he saw going on around him contributed to his long-time mental ill-health.

A good read from 11 years ago in the Guardian about him: John Clare, the poet of the environmental crisis – 200 years ago by George Monbiot.

At least you can do links, Dick! ;-)

As a postscript, I noted that one of his incarcerations was at High Beach in Epping Forest, just a couple of miles from where I lived for a few years. There's a great pub there!

Subject: RE: English tunes JohnClare
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 23 Apr 24 - 06:13 AM

ABC and pdf transcriptions of Clare's tune books are on the Village Music Project website (along with many other resources)

VMP - mss list

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Apr 24 - 02:15 AM

John Clares collection of English tunes and the settings of music to his poems are two completely different subjects.,
Whoever comnbined the two appears not to understand the two very different topics

Subject: John Clare – Traditional Musician
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Apr 24 - 08:12 AM

John Clare – Traditional Musician

Katie Howson has been reading about the poet John Clare’s musical life and delving into his store of songs and tunes.
By Katie Howson
this link is safe and takes you to EAST ANGLIAN TRADITIONAL MUSIC TRUST
https://www.eatmt.org.uk/john-clare-traditional-musician/

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Apr 24 - 03:39 PM

They are different subjects, his poetry set to music is one subject,
his collection of tradtional folk songs and tradtional tunes are another, they have nothing in common musically.
one. his poems are his own creative work
the tunes he collcted are not his composed work, they are tradtional but were collected by him.
no one , with any knowledge of their subject, would try and say that Ewan MacColl compositions were the same subject matter, as the tradtional songs he collected with peggy seeger, they are two different subjects, to lump them together demeans both subjects, there is nothing idiotic about keeping them seperate

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Apr 24 - 03:43 PM

John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet. The son of a farm labourer, he became known for his celebrations of the English countryside and sorrows at its disruption. His work underwent major re-evaluation in the late 20th century; he is now often seen as a major 19th-century poet.

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Apr 24 - 03:44 PM

John Clare and the folk tradition

by George Deacon

Francis Boutle Publishers - paperback, pp.400, £15, ISBN 1- 903427-11-9

I knew George Deacon slightly back in the late-sixties, and was very surprised when this book first appeared in 1983 since it didn't sound at all like the sort of thing that he would have become interested in. Then I remembered that seven years makes an alteration, and realised that I, too, was into all kinds of stuff which might have surprised people who knew me then.

I was equally surprised when this new Francis Boutle edition landed on my doormat last week, as I'd neither asked for a review copy, nor even realised that it had been published ... Things are quiet down here in the Five Valleys!

I couldn't immediately think of anyone to send it to for review, and so began reading the odd page here and there when I had a spare half hour - and soon became fascinated. John Clare was an immensely interesting character, and this is a very interesting book. But first I should tell you what it's not. It's not a book about Clare's life - although you do get a pretty good idea of it, but incidentally to the central theme. Nor is it a book about Clare's poetry - although his poetry is discussed fairly frequently. No, it 'does what it says on the tin' - it describes the sort of rural community in which he grew up, and makes it quite clear that he was an active part of that community. It describes his collecting methods and shows who and what his sources were. It suggests that this connection with the folk traditions of Helpston, Northamptonshire, effected all his writings, and quotes from his poetry, prose and a great many letters in illustration of this thesis.

The book gives the texts and tunes (where given) of all the songs in John Clare's manuscripts, plus many other songs which he has stated that he knew, but did not 'collect', together with his descriptions of customs and village games. It also includes his famous collection of 263 tunes and the not so well-known dance manuscripts. All - and most particularly the songs - are very well annotated, if in a somewhat academic fashion by today's standards ... no Roud numbers are given, for example, and the citations are of publications in standard reference works, rather than of other instances within the oral tradition.

But the most important thing about this book is that George Deacon presents a pretty clear and detailed picture of the traditional culture within which Clare grew up, and one which is probably unique for three very important reasons: that the period was the 1820s (far earlier than any other such collecting enterprise); that it was entirely local; and that the observer was a member of the community concerned. This is why it is so important to the likes of us. The poet Tom Paulin is also impressed; he says in his Preface that it is: 'a classic work, which brings us so close to Clare that we can almost hear his living voice. We can also hear his father's and mother's voices, so that a vanished world and a neglected culture comes back with an eager and vital freshness.'

An important aspect of Clare's tune collection, which I've not seen mentioned elsewhere, is that much of it came to him from Gypsy musicians. In his own words:

    I used to spend my sundays & summer evenings among them learning to play the fiddle in their manner by the ear & joining in their pastimes ... got the tune of Highland Mary from Wisdom Smith a gipsey & pricked another sweet tune without a name as he fiddled it ... At these feasts and merry makings I got acquainted with the gipseys & often assosated with them at their camps to learn the fiddle of which I was very fond the first acquaintance I made was with the Boswells crew as they were calld a popular tribe well known about here & famous for fidders & fortune tellers ... the Smiths gang of gipseys came & encamed near the town & as I began to be a desent scraper we had a desent round of merriment for a fortnight sometimes going to dance or drink at the camp & at other times at the publick house.'

    Spelling and punctuation is Clare's own.

The whole book is well presented and the staff notation of the tunes is very clear. Being musically illiterate, I can't vouch for the accuracy of the transcriptions, but the text is fairly clear of typos - just the usual things you find with scanned and OCRed texts; missing full stops and words like 'apart' and 'abetter' instead of 'a part' and 'a better', which a spell check won't pick up. For a 21st century edition, I was surprised to find the word 'Scotch' used several times in Deacon's text, where I would have thought that Scots or Scottish might have been considered more appropriate. I was even more surprised to find no mention of the fact that the complete John Clare tune collection has for some time been available on the Internet, via the excellent Village Music Project, in ABC format, courtesy of a lot of work by Flos Headford. Go to www.performance.salford.ac.uk/research/vmp/msroom/Jclare.abc if you want editable files and midi playback.

Enough of small quibbles - this is a very worthwhile purchase, and £15 seems a fair price. I would recommend it to anyone interested in getting a better picture of where our traditions come from - not to mention 263 dance tunes, 208 pages of songs and their annotations, 13 pages of customs, and 17 sets of dance instructions.

I'd like to end with a couple of short quotes from John Clare's poetry which seem to me to clearly indicate the value he placed on the tradition and the songs:

    ... as Wantley Dragon or The Magic Rose;
    The whole of music which his village knows,
    Which wild remembrance in each little town
    From mouth to mouth thro ages handles down.

    and ...

    The ballad in the ploughman's pocket wears
    A greater fame than poets ever knew.

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Apr 24 - 02:53 AM

An important aspect of Clare's tune collection, which I've not seen mentioned elsewhere, is that much of it came to him from Gypsy musicians.

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 25 Apr 24 - 02:57 AM

'Scotch songs' are not necessarily songs from Scotland!

‘Scotch Songs’ and English Perceptions of Scotland in the Restoration 14 Sep, 2020 By Allan Kennedy; Dr Allan Kennedy looks at the vogue for Scotland-based popular songs in Restoration England, asking what their subject-matter was, and what they can tell us about English attitudes towards Scotland in the later 17th century.

From Wikipedia; Barbara Allen. A diary entry by Samuel Pepys on 2 January 1666 contains the earliest extant reference to the song. In it, he recalls the fun and games at a New Years party:

...but above all, my dear Mrs Knipp, with whom I sang; and in perfect pleasure I was to hear her sing, and especially her little Scotch song of Barbary Allen.

From this, Steve Roud and Julia Bishop have inferred the song was popular at that time, suggesting that it may have been written for stage performance, as Elizabeth Knepp was a professional actress, singer, and dancer.

However, the folklorists Phillips Barry and Fannie Hardy Eckstorm were of the opinion that the song "was not a stage song at all but a libel on Barbara Villiers and her relations with Charles II". Charles Seeger points out that Pepys' delight at hearing a libelous song about the King's mistress was perfectly in character.

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Apr 24 - 03:52 AM

One reason to combine threads about Clare's own tune collection and the modern settings of his poems: it shows how much better Clare's own taste was. A modern folkie put together a show of his own settings of Clare and presented it at Whitby a few years ago - cringe-inducing mediocrity. For a lot of them he could have used one of Clare's own tunes with stunning effect - instead we got something as bad as Kate Rusby's rewrites.

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Apr 24 - 08:12 AM

1.mediocrity like beauty is in the eye of the beholder
2 Generalsing from one particular musical setting is a mistake, and in my opinion is not a reason for combining two different subject matters, his poetry and his collection of tunes, however I accept that we are dealing with an illogical musical editor, Who has the power to demean, two different topics, its his forum, c est la vie

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Apr 24 - 05:38 PM

Well, there'll be a next time. At least you've got a thread (begod we tried...). We can discuss John Clare for now in a broad sense, and he's a bloke who is well worth discussing and well worthy of his place on this website. Roll with it.

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Apr 24 - 01:50 AM

and many thanks to joe offer for one thread on John Clare

Subject: ADD: To the Nightingale (John Clare)
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Apr 24 - 03:27 AM

To the Nightingale
by John Clare

I love to hear the Nightingale—
She comes where Summer dwells—
Among the brakes and orchis flowers,
And foxglove's freckled bells.

Where mugwort grows like mignonette,
And molehills swarm with ling;
She hides among the greener May,
And sings her love to Spring.

I hear her in the Forest Beach,
When beautiful and new;
Where cow-boys hunt the glossy leaf,
Where falls the honey-dew.

Where brambles keep the waters cool
For half the Summer long;
The maiden sets her pitcher down,
And stops to hear the song.

The redcap is a painted bird,
And sings about the town;
The Nightingale sings all the eve,
In sober suit of brown.

I knew the sparrow could not sing;
And heard the stranger long:
I could not think so plain a bird
Could sing so fine a song.

I found her nest of oaken leaves,
And eggs of paler brown,
Where none would ever look for nests,
Or pull the sedges down.

I found them on a whitethorn root,
And in the woodland hedge,
All in a low and stumpy bush,
Half hid among the sedge.

I love the Poet of the Woods,
And love to hear her sing,—
That, with the cuckoo, brings the love
And music of the Spring.

Man goes by art to foreign lands,
With shipwreck and decay;
Birds go with Nature for their guide,
And GOD directs their way—

GOD of a thousand worlds on high!—
Proud men may lord and dare;
POWER tells them that the meaner things
Are worthy of HIS care.

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Apr 24 - 08:08 AM

That poem is lovely in its simplicity, lightness of tread and lyricism (though I disagree with its ending!). With poems like that I might have come to embrace poetry in my misspent youth far more than I did, what with having been burdened by having to study the lugubrious and near-impenetrable longer works of Wordsworth at school. Clare and Wordsworth were near- contemporaries.

I think "Forest Beach" is a reference to High Beach in Epping Forest, where he lived for a few years in a private asylum (he eventually escaped from it and walked for four days to get back to his village). The forest is in the range of nightingales and "redcaps" (likely the birds we call redpolls). Lime trees (lindens of old) grow in the area. They are notorious for dropping honeydew, and you learn not to park your car under one in summer.

Subject: ADD: The Mores (John Clare)
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Apr 24 - 04:51 AM

John Clare Poem against enclosure
(1793-1864)

The Mores
(John Clare)

Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed spring’s blossoms on its brow
Still meeting plains that stretched them far away
In uncheckt shadows of green brown, and grey
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following eye
Its only bondage was the circling sky
One mighty flat undwarfed by bush and tree
Spread its faint shadow of immensity
And lost itself, which seemed to eke its bounds
In the blue mist the horizon’s edge surrounds
Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours
Free as spring clouds and wild as summer flowers
Is faded all - a hope that blossomed free,
And hath been once, no more shall ever be
Inclosure came and trampled on the grave
Of labour’s rights and left the poor a slave
And memory’s pride ere want to wealth did bow
Is both the shadow and the substance now
The sheep and cows were free to range as then
Where change might prompt nor felt the bonds of men
Cows went and came, with evening morn and night,
To the wild pasture as their common right
And sheep, unfolded with the rising sun
Heard the swains shout and felt their freedom won
Tracked the red fallow field and heath and plain
Then met the brook and drank and roamed again
The brook that dribbled on as clear as glass
Beneath the roots they hid among the grass
While the glad shepherd traced their tracks along
Free as the lark and happy as her song
But now all’s fled and flats of many a dye
That seemed to lengthen with the following eye
Moors, loosing from the sight, far, smooth, and blea
Where swopt the plover in its pleasure free
Are vanished now with commons wild and gay
As poet’s visions of life’s early day
Mulberry-bushes where the boy would run
To fill his hands with fruit are grubbed and done
And hedgrow-briars - flower-lovers overjoyed
Came and got flower-pots - these are all destroyed
And sky-bound mores in mangled garbs are left
Like mighty giants of their limbs bereft

Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Apr 24 - 03:57 PM

That's a truly heartfelt lament, though looking back at golden ages is a risk. I wonder what he'd have thought of the depredations committed in the name of "progress" in the century and a half since his passing...