Kingdom Songs

[Melinda Mills]

24 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

I have tried to include EVERY current song that goes back at least to the 1966 songbook, and a few of these also go back to the green 1950 and some to the grey 1928 songbook.

Double check - I think the colour of the 1950 song book was red.

[JW Insider]

15 minutes ago, Melinda Mills said:

Double check - I think the colour of the 1950 song book was red.

My 1944 is red. My 1950 is green. 1966 is pink/magenta. (Not shown with correct proportional sizes)

[Melinda Mills]

"Ave Maria!, (Latin: “Hail Mary”), original German title Ellens Gesang (“Ellen’s Song”) III, song setting, the third of three songs whose text is derived of a section of Sir Walter Scott’s poem The Lady of the Lake(1810) by Austrian composer Franz Schubert. It was written in 1825. Probably because of the song’s opening words, Schubert’s melody has since been adopted for use with the traditional Roman Catholic prayer (in Latin) of the same name.

Although the song is a prayer, Schubert’s “Ave Maria!” was not written with religious practices or the Catholic church in mind. "   Taken from Internet.

Yes, quite a few of these compositions were taken over by the church but were not written for religious purposes as can be seen in the quote above.  However, I won't sing this attractive song because "Ave Maria" means Hail Mary and one could think we are worshipping her like the Catholics.   There is also a pop song with those words in the chorus which I don't sing either.

On Handel's Messiah,  I can play a small part of the Hallelujah chorus which is in one of the piano tutor books, but I have not had time to listen to it although I have a CD with it, which was given to me. Handel, like Schubert, developed it without the church, but it later came to be required agenda in Christmas services, although it is not really about Christmas.  They say Handel wrote the music but one of his friends (Jennings) wrote the words, part of which were taken from a church prayer book but the majority were from the Bible books prophesying about the Messiah.

[Melinda Mills]

About the colour of the song books, I saw my parents with the red and green one, but I was not aware of these things at that age. Only knew that I used to sing from the green one, but the red one was  hanging around as well.  Thanks for clearing that up.  Will save those pictures.

[Melinda Mills]

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

Some have similar music, and the melody is different, but it's close enough so that the previous version could still harmonize with it, or even match it in several places, and if enough similarities are there, they will be included.

Agree.

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

40. To Whom Do We Belong? (First half harmonizes, second part matches.)

However, with this one, I was taught the alto for the branch dedication in 1967. However, now the first part has been changed I can no longer sing it.  It was a beautiful alto.  Sometimes I am still tempted to sing the alto for the second portion.

[JW Insider]

35 minutes ago, Melinda Mills said:

However, with this one, I was taught the alto for the branch dedication in 1967

That must have sounded nice, with the parts in a real choir. True that the old harmony doesn't work so well with the new melody on parts of the first portion.

The easiest song to learn harmony on (for me) was the old song 5 (pink) now 93 "Bless Our Meeting Together." Most of words have remained intact, too. The tenor and the alto could easily be memorized by others in our service car group. And now the new version is even easier because it's in C with no "accidentals" in the melody.

[Anna]

When singing with her sister, my mum would always sing second voice, and she still does that at the KH with some of the songs. I can't do it....

[Melinda Mills]

32 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

The easiest song to learn harmony on (for me) was the old song 5 (pink) now 93 "Bless Our Meeting Together." Most of words have remained intact, too. The tenor and the alto could easily be memorized by others in our service car group. And now the new version is even easier because it's in C with no "accidentals" in the melody.

I was going to mention this song, and you got to mention it first. This is one of the songs for which the little choir was taught altos.  I can still remember that alto after all these years but I think this song was missing from the book in recent years, if I am not mistaken. I am glad it is back in the book.  I just looked it up. The old one was in the key of D, but this one is in C and just  about three accidentals in the bass. I will add this song to the ones I want to practise on the piano as well as the two you mentioned above. 

 "We thank You Jehovah" is another. The bass is even more beautiful than the alto. I sung the alto the other day and a sister looked back and said, "that was beautiful, Melinda". I think there is one or two more songs for which the alto was taught for that occasion but can't recall them now.   (That brother is deceased now and I am glad that I can still remember these altos - that his work lives on.)  

It is so  good when we have the same appreciation for these things.

 

[JW Insider]

A quick review of the songs in the 2017 songbook reminded me of a few things.

• First of all, it was discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls that the book of Psalms they used had 151 Psalms, not 150. Our new songbook has 151 now too. Although we will still have some extras from the monthly broadcasts.
• I was also reminded that in the same way that two Psalms in the Bible are essentially identical (Psalm 14 and Psalm 53), we have also ended up with several songs that are nearly identical.
  • I think this could have happened with the update assignments given to brothers (and probably sisters, too) to recommend and present new and better versions of some of the older songs. In some cases the new one was used, but the old one is still there, too. This would explain why there are some cases of current songs that are only variations of each other with similar lyrics in a similar order. Or why some musical refrains echo in more than one song. In fact, there are also several points of musical similarity between three consecutive songs, 68, 69 and 70, in addition to topical similarity.
  • The explanation of Psalm 14 and 53 could have been that these were two different musical versions of the same lyrics, just like the updates to some older songs with new music that kept the lyrics almost identical. (There are about 20 examples of this.)

[Melinda Mills]

Someone once said that the reason why songs sound similar is that there are only eight notes on the stave.  So most songs have the same notes. Simple but true.

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, Melinda Mills said:

"We thank You Jehovah" is another.

That's amazing. As soon as you said you were already thinking of "Bless Our Meeting Together" I also wanted to mention "We Thank You Jehovah" because it has exactly the same features. It has no accidentals in the melody, and almost none in the bass or tenor either, but the alto is where a lot of the best harmonic action is found, although the bass bounces nicely through a greater range than usual (full octave intervals). Of course, they put it in a slightly harder key to play in.

1 hour ago, Melinda Mills said:

the reason why songs sound similar is that there are only eight notes on the stave

That's part of it, but doesn't explain why 140 of them don't sound alike at all. Nor why "Beethoven's 5th" sounds nothing like "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

[Melinda Mills]

Only found out last week that Mozart is the author of  the melody for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  It's a bit more sophisticated than the tune we now know, though.