Odd Sunday morning-went to church with my Dad years ago, and the Haydn hymn was sung. It was noodling around in my head that I’d heard that somewhere else, with different words but Dad couldn’t place it. I followed him back home on a hunch and rooted through his LP collection until finding a disc he’d bought during WWII-entitled Music of the Third Reich or something to that effect. It was a collection of stuff including the Horst Wessel song, a.k.a. Die Fahne Hoch which melody was known as a “Well-known soldiers song” but sounds extremely close to the melody of “How Great Thou Art”.
I never realized the Procol Harum/Bach connection-but thinking of the opening to AWSOP and contrasting that with a Bach/E. Power Biggs organ CD of mine, the styling is there, for sure.
A friend in Sydney has just informed me that Australia’s national anthem can also be sung to the Gilligan’s Island theme (indeed, since I don’t know the tune to Australia’s national anthem, I can only sing it that way):
Australians all let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil;
Our home is girt by sea
(Our home is girt by sea)
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts
Of beauty rich and rare;
In history’s page, let every stage
Advance Australia Fair.
(Advance Australia Fair)
Whoa, there was band here in the '80s that would do the Green Acres/Purple Haze song live - Dr somebody-or-other and the PhDs. This makes me think they either recorded it, or lied when they said they made it up.
And Fleming and John do “Winter Wonderland” to Zepp’s “Misty Mountain Hop” around Cristmas time. The last line is:
“I really want snow snow snow”
For those of you bored in church and with a poetic bent, you can put almost any set of lyrics to a hymn. Figure out the number of syllables in each line of a poem, concatenate them with periods, and then skim the hymnal. Most hymns have a notation at the bottom of the page which identifies their meter, and therefore their suitablity for adaptation. For example:
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
was blind but now I see.
The hymn would be annotated 8.6.8.6, and would fit with any number of poems or modern songs.
Guess it depends how you define “upper midwest pronunciation”. Myself, I woudn’t have called it “upper midwest” being as he’s from southern Ontario and all (originally from Orillia, an hour north of Toronto, and then Toronto itself), but then I suppose I’ve got the mid-western Canadian perspective on it.
Longfellow’s Excelsior works really well to the tune from Underdog:
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
