song history - How Can I Keep From Singing

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 12:50 AM

Played it at a re-enactment today (burning of the Wrightsville Bridge), and none of the authenticity police bitched. Sounds like we are in the clear on this one.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Burke
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 07:44 PM

1) The clip of Cordelia's Dad that I was able to hear is Tim Erikson. More info here
Cordelia's Dad has come & gone as members have gone off to further education, careers, etc. They get back together every so often.

2)The tyrant is Doris Plenn's addition. Any tyrant will do.

I was the one who suggested a Civil War connection. It was pure speculation. To me the light after any disaster, war, etc. fits. The timing suggested Civil War to me.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Burke
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 06:21 PM

Thanks to Google Books, the first publication of Lowry's hymn is now online. Bright Jewels for the Sunday School

I also found an earlier printing of the poem, from England!
The Christian pioneer, v.20, 1866. p. 39.

It is also in the New York Observer, Aug. 27, 1868. Title is "Always Rejoicing" Above the title it says "For the New York Observer" at the end it says "Pauline T."

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Burke
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 08:01 PM

Google Books has 3 or 4 volumes of The Christian Pioneer in one big file. In taking a closer look at it, the poem actually was published in the 1869 volume, not 1866.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,Noreen
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 08:20 AM

Interesting to hear this song (the first two verses) being used for a Waitrose (supermarket) TV advert at the moment!

Lovely song.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Carol
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 09:40 AM

It's one of my favourite songs that I love to sing but I haven't noticed the advert. - will have to stop falling asleep through the adverts!!

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 03:21 PM

Waitrose Christmas ad

Ross

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Carol
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 12:26 PM

Thanks Ross - interesting!

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 12:32 PM

A fuller version of the Waitrose ad here . The "Angel Voices" choir was renamed "Libera" at some point.

Ross

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 02:58 PM

Simply not true.

I'll raise you John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), Quaker and author of one of the most popular hymns of all tinme: "Dear Lord and Father of mankind".

Mac

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Burke
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 01:59 PM

What's not true? What does Whittier have to do with this Sunday School hymn?

Subject: To Katie White: Please update Wikipedia!
From: GUEST,Melyssa Rice
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 10:45 AM

To Katie White:
Your book below contains information that should be included in the Wikipedia entry about "How Can I Keep from Singing," as it calls into question whether Lowry wrote or simply published this famous hymn. You are the best person to update Wikipedia with this information, since you own the book. Would you please update Wikipedia so that it's correct?
- Melyssa

Quoting from Katie White:
"I have an original edition of a book written in 1888, Baptist Hymn Writters and Their Hymns by Henry S. Burrage, D. D. written while Lowry was still alive. I am not going to type out its 7 pages which focus on the many hymn books that he edited and the hymns that he wrote. The most famous one is "Shall We Gather at the River" and much of the biography is about the story behind this hymn. But the following quote from the book is of interest to this discussion.

"Besides his own hymns Dr. Lowry has given vitality and popularity to many productions of other writers by the music with which they are sung, such as . . . 'How Can I Keep From Singing,' . . . and a host of others."
From this, it appears that in the 1880s Lowry was known to not be the original source of the words to this hymn, but was being credited for making it known and available. This doesn't solve the debate, but I don't doubt the information for these reasons: 1) the early date of this book, written by a Baptist and about Baptists, while Lowry was serving a Baptist Church and having been a professor at a Baptist School. 2) If the Baptists wanted to lay claim to what it lists as a popular hymn, they would have done so in this 682 page book.

Conclusion: Lowry was the first to publish it but did not write the lyrics."

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,Jeremy Main
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 04:13 PM

Given it's under a different name Always Rejoicing, and there's also a suggestion (link below) that the tune is derivative from a known shapenote melody, Sing,"Holy!" to the Lord of All, then we start to see folk tradition at its best at work.
Has anyone thought of looking in the Library of Congress?

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=L_liCUHqZboC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 04:57 PM

Well the critical bits are not shown in the preview, but that all long post-dates Lowry, surely.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 05:39 PM

No - I've just started having a look, and the hymn tune is cited continuously through the period, although it's possible we have (Wesley's?) Dots A inspiring Poem A (the unattributed base text) which is then set to someone else's Dots B, as I suggest above, by someone in the boonies who doesn't know the tune and adapts a better one

The American Hymns and Tune Book of 1862 refers to it, as does Hymns for the Methodist Episcopal Church (1849) but without the dots, and the general practice of the time was to assume the singers knew that tune by heart.

Over to you, my learned colleagues: find the dots.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 04:02 AM

Ok, I am a bit confused, and the reason for this probably is that the preview in your link omits many pages.

The link seems to give a hymn written in 2000 to the same tune as Robert Lowry used for How shall I keep from Singing, although it doesn't explicitly attribute the tune to Lowry. The text says that the tune is "loosely based" on a "shape note song called We'll soon be there", though no date is given for that. Loosely based doesn't suggest that Lowry copied it, even if that is earlier, and we don't have that so its difficult to know how similar it actually sounds.

Shape Note seems from my reading to be just a notation, not a musical form.

By dots do you mean the shape note notation?

And which Wesley? S.S. Wesley wrote music, as far as I am aware neither Charles nor John ever did.

Lowry's contemporaries asserted that he wrote the tune to How do I keep from Singing, although not the words as we know. If later people hearing it think it was based on something earlier, well that may be coincidence, or it may have been something he had heard and had slipped his memory. Or it may be people ascribing similarities which are just not there. I have lost count of the number of modern tunes for which people have said that they are based upon Pachelbel's canon.

I guess that people would not care so much about this if it hadn't appeared on a multi-platinum album.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 10:18 AM

Probably safest to tread thou in my footssteps, good David Carter - just search for the two possible source tunes, and and look at the dates. Ignore all the recent noise, that's not what I'm looking at at all, we have that tied down to a T, with the exception of the odd slur.
Funnily enough, I tipped my cap to the Wesleys' bones as recently as Thursday, on the way to the dentists. I now have some very odd slurs all of me very own. My interest is because I'm on a Choir Director's course (get him!) and I want to have an argued case for taking the arrangement Bob Chilcott and his mate Peter Hunt did for beginner choirs back to Roots.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 11:42 AM

It seems as if you have a theory, and you are looking for evidence to support it, rather than examining the evidence as it stands. Why don't you write all this up as a paper, or an article, presenting your arguments, with references to source material (though it helps if that source material is available and I have no idea of where I could get copies of old American hymn books). Rather than asking me to search for material that you havn't presented yourself.

Do I take it that your dentist is in Islington? You have an unusual vocabulary for a Londoner.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 18 Jan 21 - 03:51 AM

The Clarion Choir in Burnley has requested a new verse for the hymn. I've offered them this;

And now we face the darkest hour – the night is cold and lonely
The road is rough, we've come so far – we long for comfort only
But very soon we'll see the rays that a new dawn is bringing
And we'll enjoy happier days. How can I keep from singing?

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Nov 23 - 07:12 PM

Here are the Digital Tradition lyrics for this song, and I think this version has serious flaws.

---

        HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING

(G) C F / C G / C F C / C G C /
     C - / C - / C F C / C G C

  
  HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING
  
  My life flows on in endless song
  Above earth's lamentation.
  I hear the real, thought far off hymn
  That hails the new creation
       Above the tumult and the strife,
       I hear the music ringing;
       It sounds an echo in my soul
       How can I keep from singing?
  
  What through the tempest loudly roars,
  I hear the truth, it liveth.
  What through the darkness round me close,
  Songs in the night it giveth.
       No storm can shake my inmost calm
       While to that rock I'm clinging.
       Since love is lord of Heaven and earth
       How can I keep from singing?
  
  When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
  And hear their death-knell ringing,
  When friends rejoice both far and near,
  How can I keep from singing?
       In prison cell and dungeon vile
       Our thoughts to them are winging.
       When friends by shame are undefiled,
       How can I keep from singing?
  
-----------------------------------------------------------------
  
  Pete Seeger helped to make this song fairly well-known in the
  folk-revival.  He learned it from Doris Plenn, who had it from
  her North Carolina family.  It can be found in SING OUT, Vol 7,
  No 1, 1957.
  
  Recorded by Ed Trickett on Turning Toward the Morning, FSI-56
  @religion  @music
  filename[ KEEPSING
  TUNE FILE: HOWCANI
CLICK TO PLAY 
  DC           

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 05:14 AM

Gosh, what a confusing thread!

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 05:18 AM

By the way, here's a currently working link to that Waitrose ad.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Nov 23 - 07:12 PM

Here are the Digital Tradition lyrics for this song, and I think this version has serious flaws.

---

        HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING

(G) C F / C G / C F C / C G C /
     C - / C - / C F C / C G C

  
  HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING
  
  My life flows on in endless song
  Above earth's lamentation.
  I hear the real, thought far off hymn
  That hails the new creation
       Above the tumult and the strife,
       I hear the music ringing;
       It sounds an echo in my soul
       How can I keep from singing?
  
  What through the tempest loudly roars,
  I hear the truth, it liveth.
  What through the darkness round me close,
  Songs in the night it giveth.
       No storm can shake my inmost calm
       While to that rock I'm clinging.
       Since love is lord of Heaven and earth
       How can I keep from singing?
  
  When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
  And hear their death-knell ringing,
  When friends rejoice both far and near,
  How can I keep from singing?
       In prison cell and dungeon vile
       Our thoughts to them are winging.
       When friends by shame are undefiled,
       How can I keep from singing?
  
-----------------------------------------------------------------
  
  Pete Seeger helped to make this song fairly well-known in the
  folk-revival.  He learned it from Doris Plenn, who had it from
  her North Carolina family.  It can be found in SING OUT, Vol 7,
  No 1, 1957.
  
  Recorded by Ed Trickett on Turning Toward the Morning, FSI-56
  @religion  @music
  filename[ KEEPSING
  TUNE FILE: HOWCANI
CLICK TO PLAY 
  DC           

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 05:14 AM

Gosh, what a confusing thread!

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 05:18 AM

By the way, here's a currently working link to that Waitrose ad.