Lyr Req: Flee as a Bird (Mary S. B. Dana)

Subject: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From: greg stephens
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 12:32 PM

Have at a couple of cracks at finding the words to this, but have only managed to find some sheet music with illegible words(on my TV screen, anyway).Can anyone help? I have many recordings of the tune, but no vocal versions. Author Mary Dana, incidentally.
    Anyone know them?
cheers
greg

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From:
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 01:29 PM

Where's this sheet music? Do you have a partial on the lyrics?

Subject: Lyr Add: FLEE AS A BIRD (Mary S. B. Dana)
From: Sorcha
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 01:32 PM

Right one?

Flee as a bird to your mountain, thou who art weary of sin;
Go to the clear flowing fountain where you may wash and be clean.
Haste, then, th'avenger is near thee; call, and the Savior will hear thee;
He on His bosom will bear thee; O thou who art weary of sin,
O thou who art weary of sin.

He will protect thee forever, wipe every falling tear;
He will forsake thee, O never, sheltered so tenderly there.
Haste, then, the hours are flying, spend not the moments in sighing,
Cease from your sorrow and crying: The Savior will wipe every tear,
The Savior will wipe every tear.

From:Cyber Hymnal
MIDI and score there too.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From: greg stephens
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 02:13 PM

Thanks a lot, Sorcha, that's the one. Funny, I searched using that first line, and didnt find that site. Maybe I had a word wrong.
    The tune's better than the words. Explains why I've got so many instrumental recordings!

Subject: Lyr Add: Flee as a Bird
From: Sorcha
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 03:58 PM

For my post of 07 Aug 03 - 01:32 PM this thread.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From: greg stephens
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 05:58 PM

Try as I might, Sorcha, I can find no meaning to your previous post. Do explain. Maybe it's because I've just been up the Greyhound for an Old hooky or two,

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From: Sorcha
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 06:51 PM

It's for the Add in the Subject box, sorry.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From: masato sakurai
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 07:59 PM

Three editions of sheet music are at the Levy collection:

The Bromo-Seltzer Collection of 54 Popular Songs. Complete and Unabridged. Full Music Size With Piano & Organ Accompaniment. Flee as a Bird.
Composer, Lyricist, Arranger: Mrs. M.S.B. Dana.
Publication: Baltimore: Emerson Drug Co., n.d..

Title: Flee as a Bird. Song.
Composer, Lyricist, Arranger: Words Written and Adapted to a Spanish Melody by Mrs. Mary S.B. Dana.
Publication: Boston: O. Ditson & Co., 277 Washington St., 1857.

Title: Flee as a Bird.
Composer, Lyricist, Arranger: By Mrs. M. S. Dana.
Publication: n.p., n.d.: , .

Five at American Memory:

Flee as a bird / by ...
CREATED/PUBLISHED
Cincinnati: Church & Co., John, 1882.

Flee as a bird / by Ms. Mary S. B. Dana.
CREATED/PUBLISHED
Boston: Ditson, Oliver, 1885.

Flee as a bird; Spanish melody / by Antonio Lopes.
CREATED/PUBLISHED
Brooklyn: Slade, A. G., 1884.

Flee as a bird; Fantasia de concert / by James J. Freeman. [piano composition]
CREATED/PUBLISHED
New York: Woodward & Co., Willis, 1882.

Flee as a bird (to your mountain).
CREATED/PUBLISHED
Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1857.
NOTES
Sacred Song, from the "Northern Harp"

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From: masato sakurai
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 08:22 PM

From HERE:

Flee As a Bird (1842?)

Mary Stanley Bruce Dana

This lovely song was apparently popular for at least two decades and perhaps much longer. Its first appearance was in the songbook The Northern Harp in 1842, and there were sheet-music editions in 1857 and later. The only name associated with the piece is that of Mrs. Dana, who was born in South Carolina in 1810 and died in Texas in 1883. (Her first husband died and she subsequently became Mrs. Schindler, but she seems always to have retained the name Dana in her professional work.) Mrs. Dana wrote poems and hymn texts (though no music) that were published during her lifetime but are largely unknown in the twentieth century.

For The Northern Harp and its companion The Southern Harp (1841), Mrs. Dana provided a large number of original secular and religious texts that were set to extracts from European operas and other classical works. She used material from masters such as Mozart and Rossini and from several now obscure English and Italian composers. This was becoming a standard practice of the day and was especially associated with Lowell Mason and followers such as I. B. Woodbury. It was seen as a legitimate method of introducing classical music to the culturally deprived American middle class. An ordinary church or school tunebook could be a rather classy item when sprinkled with Haydn, Beethoven, and Cherubini.

Mrs. Dana identified some of her musical sources but left others anonymous, including "Flee as a Bird." All editions of the song identify the music simply as a "Spanish Melody." The tune is suave, professional, effectively melodramaticnot typical characteristics of a folk melody. It smacks of an early nineteenth- century opera influenced by the Italian style. Mrs. Dana's verse was clearly inspired by Psalm 11, especially the central image of the fleeing bird.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From: masato sakurai
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 08:35 PM

I have a CD featuring a vocal version. Note quoted above is from it.

Angels Visits & Other Vocal Gems Angels Visits & Other Vocal Gems (New World)

Click on the 4th red notes below. Performers are Larry Skrobacs (Piano), & Rose Taylor (Mezzo Soprano)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From: masato sakurai
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 10:09 PM

At Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads:

So Long ("O! ye despised and forsaken ...")
To the tune of: Flee as a bird.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From: greg stephens
Date: 08 Aug 03 - 09:24 AM

Someone should mention a reason why this tune is so widely known and loved now. It became a standard funeral dirge for the New Orleans marching bands. All the trad bands in england used to play a 4 or 8 bar snatch as their intro to "Didn't he ramble". A play yesterday on BBC Radio 4 called "Flee as a bird to the mountain" prompted me to ask for the lyrics. The play concerned a group of 50-something jazzers getting together to rlive their youth, anbd then to bury one of their number.
    I think I must have half a dozen recordings in the house, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Chris Barber, Kid Ory, plus a couple of Classic NO brass band recordings of the whole piece(Olympia and New Tuxedo if I remember correctly).
    I've only ever heard it sung once in my life, must be more than forty years ago, on a TV play..."The corn is green" by Emlyn Williams. Can't remember much of the story or anything, but at one point the Welsh family(farmers, sons warring with father sort of stuff I think, full of cliches): anyway they all sat round the kitchen table and sang "Flee as a bird", throbbing with Welsh emotion. And I thought, as a teenage jazz fan "Hey! I recognise this". The tune got around. New Orleans emotion, Welsh emotion, you name it. And as has just been pointed out, a Spanish tune originally, though nobody seems to know its origin.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From: masato sakurai
Date: 08 Aug 03 - 09:57 AM

The tune has been familar in Japan since 1919, when it appeared as "Koshoomai" (Memories of the Late Little Sister) with a different set of Japanese lyrics. It became later (1950s?) "Tsuioku" (Memories of Those Happy Days), and has been included in lots of songbooks. As we were told that it is a "Spanish folk song," I was surprised when I first heard a New Orleans brass band version.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a bird
From: greg stephens
Date: 08 Aug 03 - 10:08 AM

New Orleans was such a great exporter of music, it's very interesting to see what tunes it imported, before radical recycling and sending on. "Didnt he ramble", the classsic post burial funeral march, came from "The Derby Ram", an English song,perhaps coincidentally for a death-and-resurrection mumming play. The old King's Polka(Brit/Iriah fiddle tune, but I would guess European as well) ended up as one of the themes of Les Ognons(Bechet). St James Infirmary's origins(tunes and words from separate British/Irish songs) are well discussed elsewhere.
   
   Doubtless there are many many more. And tune origins are notiously difficult things to pin down. The last word has doubtless not been said on any of these.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Flee as a Bird (Mary S. B. Dana)
From: GUEST,kb
Date: 05 Feb 24 - 11:47 AM

you can find the music on archive.org