ROSS LEE FINNEY Pilgrim Psalms
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ROSS LEE FINNEY Pilgrim Psalms HARVARD CHORUSES | ANDREW CLARK , CONDUCTOR ROSS LEE FINNEY (1906-1997) Pilgrim Psalms HARVARD CHORUSES , Andrew Clark, Conductor 1 | Immortal Autumn Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum 9 | Psalm LI Harvard Glee Club; Radcliffe Choral Society 2:52 Charles Blandy, tenor; Christian Lane, organ 6:40 10 | Psalm LV Harvard Glee Club; Charles Blandy, tenor 3:35 2 | Psalm XXIV Harvard Glee Club; Radcliffe Choral Society Christian Lane, organ 3:08 11 | Psalm I Radcliffe Choral Society; Margot Rood, soprano 2:56 3 | Psalm LXIV Harvard Glee Club; Radcliffe Choral Society 2:48 12 | Psalm CXXXVIII Harvard Glee Club; Radcliffe Choral Society 3:39 4 | Psalm CXXXVII Charles Blandy, tenor; Christian Lane, organ 3:22 13 | Interlude on Psalm CVIII Christian Lane, organ 3:45 5 | Psalm V Harvard Glee Club 1:16 14 | Psalm C Harvard Glee Club; Radcliffe Choral Society Christian Lane, organ 3:01 6 | Prelude on Psalm I Christian Lane, organ 2:42 15 | Psalm CXXXIX Harvard Glee Club; Radcliffe Choral Society 7 | Psalm CL Harvard Glee Club; Radcliffe Choral Society Christian Lane, organ 1:54 Christian Lane, organ 1:10 16 | Words to be Spoken Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum 3:01 8 | Psalm XCV Harvard Glee Club; Radcliffe Choral Society Christian Lane, organ 1:29 Total: 47:19 2 solace of people resting from toil. Ed - “Pilgrim Psalms” grew slowly from ward Winslow describes in “Hypocrisie my deep love of this material. I would Unmasked” (1646) the singing of these make no pretense that they either songs as the congregation bid farewell improve upon these old tunes or make to those of their members who were music that can be labeled American. sailing for the new world: I only hope that my settings have notes from the composer not spoiled the spirit of the original “They that stayed at Leyden feasted songs. Great care has been taken to Notes from Ross Lee Finney’s Preface to Pilgrim Psalms us that were to go at our pastor’s evolve a style that springs both from house, (it) being large; where we the old melodies and from my own The Pilgrims brought with them to Plymouth in 1620 a psalm book which refreshed ourselves, after tears, emotional feelings. The quaint charm had been prepared for them in Holland by Henry Ainsworth and published in with singing of Psalms, making of the words which comes from the Amsterdam in 1612. The music in this little volume was sung in America for joyful melody in our old spelling and from a hundred years not only at religious meetings but privately for the “godly” hearts as well as with a certain awkwardness the voice, there being in matching poetic to many of our congre - musical accent, may at gation very expert in first be a problem for music; and indeed it the singer; but in time, was the sweetest as with all such primi - melody that ever tive qualities in folk mine ears heard. ” music, the singer will not wish them differ - These melodies are ent... among America’s great - I would not pretend est folk heritage. They that the Puritan would have influenced sacred approve of the treat - singing through each century. When ment that I have given his psalms. He one sings the First Psalm with lute or was too concerned with the literal guitar accompaniment, it seems no meaning of the Biblical text to permit great leap to such folk spirituals as such freedom as I have taken. But “Wayfaring Stranger” or “I Wonder as perhaps the modern audience, in re - I Wander.” Here, indeed, in these alizing the beauty of these melodies, psalm melodies, is a rich supply of will be less inclined to think of his spiritual song that may perhaps lead Puritan ancestors as unmusical and the Protestant composer of America uncontributive to the musical culture to religious music. of our country. Landing of the Pilgrims , Michele Felice Cornè, circa 1803-1807 3 the composer Ross Lee Finney was born in Wells, of the first academic courses dedicated Minnesota in 1906 into a family that to American music. Year laters, he cultivated a lifelong interest in Amer - wrote: ican history and music. By the age of “During the mid-thirties there was twelve, Finney had distinguished him - a growing feeling that the United self as a musician, barnstorming small States should isolate itself from the communities in the Midwest as a political tensions in Europe. One effort cellist in a string trio, playing alongside of this hysteria was an increased em - his two brothers. In 1924, he enrolled phasis on American history. A younger at the University of Minnesota, study - group of faculty wanted to organize ing composition with Donald Ferguson. an inter-departmental American studies Finney would transfer to Carleton degree program. I did the course in College where, after graduating, he music, as best I could…To teach a briefly taught cello and music history. course on “Music in America” was After a year in Europe performing in much harder in the 1930s. There were a jazz band to subsidize his study few recordings, few scores, and only with the master teacher Nadia a few studies…I had to get out my Boulanger in Paris, Finney returned guitar and remember the songs I had to the United States in 1928 to teach sung as a child and learn a few that I at the Tilton School for Boys in New had not known. Digging out Waldo Hampshire. Selden Pratt’s Music of the Pilgrims, During his short time at Tilton, I learned to sing several of the Psalms Finney regularly traveled some eighty with my guitar and I made the class miles south to study at Harvard with sing psalms and choral works by composers Edward Burlingame Hill Billings from scores projected onto (1872-1960) and Walter Spalding the blackboard… It was fun to teach, (1865-1962). The precocious composer but a little unorthodox. I suppose had mixed feelings about his time in now no good university would be Cambridge, writing to his brother that without a course on music in America.” he had “almost uncontrollable hatred Indeed, a revival of interest in early for the academic nonsense around American music swept the country here,” and that “Harvard ain’t all it’s beginning in the 1930s. Later, during cracked up to be.” the Second World War, schoolteachers At age 22, Finney was appointed taught democratic values and national to the faculty at Smith College where pride through song. Performing arts he met his wife Gretchen, herself a organizations, government funding distinguished scholar of 17 th -century agencies, broadcast radio and others English literature and music. In 1942, advanced American pride and princi - Ross Lee developed and taught one ples through a renewed appreciation, Ross Lee Finney 4 and appropriation, of early sources. published in British North “Simplicity is something nat - Among these included the hymnody America. ural to my background,” he re - of the 17 th -century, the composer Finney channeled his en - flected about his style at the William Billings (1746-1800), and the gagement with the Ainsworth time, “complexity has no music of the Revolutionary War. Psalter into a modernist musi - virtue to me.” As the scholar Annegret Fauser cal idiom, developing an elab - Pilgrim Psalms was pre - writes in her book Sounds of War: orate choral work that set in - miered on June 2, 1946 at the Music in the United States During dividual psalm tunes “planned Cornell University Festival of World War II , the “musical models so as to distribute the perform - Contemporary American Arts. from the Revolution served a dual ance between different school John Kuypers led the first per - function: they embodied a preclassical groups.” He ultimately created formance with Cornell’s Sage sound world because of their modal a suite of fifteen compositions, Chapel Choir and Festival Or - texture, and they grounded this idiom entitled Pilgrim Psalms, based chestra in a version of the in a foundational period of American on the Ainsworth melodies . work for strings and brass. history...the American Revolution Pilgrim Psalms consist of While at Smith, Finney de - gained considerable currency both as movements for a variety of veloped a close friendship with historical evidence of genuinely Amer - choral voicings, both a cap - the Modernist poet and writer ican creativity in art music and as pella and accompanied by or - Archibald MacLeish. Finney nativist inspiration for contemporary gan, as well as two organ in - composed numerous works on composition.” terludes, and a final number MacLeish texts, including a set While teaching his trailblazing enlisting the audience. In of eight songs entitled “Poems course in American music, Finney Finney’s settings, all the by Archibald MacLeish” had discovered the tunes of the Psalms retain the archaic (1935), “Bleheri”s (1937) for Ainsworth Psalter from Waldo Selden spelling of their original Eng - tenor solo and orchestra, and Pratt’s 1921 collection, The Music of lish texts. several choral works: “Words the Pilgrims: A Description of the Having nearly completed the to be Spoken” (1946) and “Im - Psalm-book brought to Plymouth in work, Finney was drafted into military I have never gotten a greater kick out mortal Autumn” (1952), among them. 1620. Henry Ainsworth (1571-1622) service in 1943, where he worked for of working. Time seems too short.” “Words to be Spoken” appears in was an English Nonconformist cler - the Office of Strategic Services in Eu - Pilgrim Psalms reveals Finney’s Modern Canons , a collection of thirty- gyman and scholar of Hebrew who rope. During one of his journeys, he mastery of compositional economy eight contemporary short composi - fled to Amsterdam from England in stepped on a land mine and was and craft.