Piano Arrangements Of Famous Spirituals - Don Shirley

 

Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child

Piano Arrangements Of Famous Spirituals

Don Shirley

Designer/Photographer: Frank Gaunt

Recorded July 18 and August 19, 1960 at Fine Recording Studios in New York City

Cadence Records CLP STEREO 25049

1962

From the back cover: I was asked after making this album why I wanted to record spirituals on the piano, a musical form that is usually sung, and also why I "dressed them up" in a formal way.

First, although it is true that the spiritual is essentially a vocal form, I don't think the wealth of beauty of this music should be limited to vocal expression. All music can be enriched by what is best about the particular medium in which it is being performed (for example, the Maurice Ravel orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition, Leopold Stokowski's orchestral transcriptions of Bach's organ works). Therefore, I tried to interpret these Negro spirituals on the piano in a way that would enable the instrument to bring additional beauty out of them, rather than by merely substituting a keyboard for the human voice and imitating it.

Secondly, I hope I haven't "dressed them up" too much. I feel it is certainly in keeping with the importance of the spiritual in American culture to expand the form that exists as a seed in the Negro spiritual. Musicologists all over the world recognize that the Negro spiritual is by far the greatest art form to come out of this country. (By the way, I am not saying anything against what we call "jazz"; I am only thinking in terms of a counterpart to the European-Asian culture of longer and larger forms, in which case the seed of American culture will have to be found in that kind of music which most adequately expresses the fervor of the land and the people indigenous to the land. This can be found only in the Negro spiritual.

I found that these spirituals had a great impact on me, particularly in the light of current events, and I began to realize that generally not too much is understood about the Negro spiritual. Many people, for instance, will hear the word "heaven" used in the spiritual and associate it with the Christian concept of Heaven. But I have see sources where religion had nothing to do with the word–heaven sometimes refers to Africa (though there are definite places in spiritual lyrics where they are speaking of Heaven and God and Jesus.

The basic fact about the Negro spiritual is that it is a medium of expression that transcends all the horrors on earth, all the pain the Negro suffered in this country. And the beauty of it was, this could never be taken away from him; the spiritual was an area of privacy that could never be invaded.

Spirituals are not sung at religious meetings. That is a misnomer. People confuse the gospel song with the spiritual. Religion in one thing and the spiritual is something else; the gospel song also attempts to transcend earthly torment, but through the medium of religion.

For example, the opening band, Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child, is one of the most melancholy and beautiful expressions of loneliness and the sense of being "lost" that I know, whereas the fourth band, Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord), though it expresses the same depth of misery, does so in a religious context, almost by identification with the suffering of Jesus on the cross.

Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen is a classic spiritual. In it we find the heart of all the spirituals; expressed to the simplest and most direct way.

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is one of the best-known Negro spirituals. The word "home" in the line "comin' for to carry me home" might well refer to Africa in the same way that "heaven" sometimes represents the homeland to an uprooted people.

The philosophy behind My Lord, It's So Much is rather interesting. I don't think Confucius or Socrates ever put forth a more solid idea for men to follow in understanding truth or the idea of doing honestly what must be done (since we deem these two of the greater virtues in our society). And these ideas are not, of course, limited to any particular ethnic group – this is one of those universal things that is best expressed, perhaps, in a religious song. The lyrics say "My Lord, it's so high  you can't get over it, so low you can't get under it, so wide you can't get around it, you must come in at the door." Now, this suggests moral truth, keeping the individual straight about what he thinks he wants to do. We have a tendency to try to outdo ourselves but moral law always catches up with us in the end.

Take My Hand, Precious Lord is not a spiritual because it has a composer, but it is known by every Negro in this country and belongs in this album. It is almost a religious hymn and a very beautiful one.

Go Down, Moses certainly is an expression of hope the Negro has felt for centuries and is applicable in our own time: "let my people go." The Biblical references in this spiritual and in Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jerico point up the close kinship that exists between oppressed peoples of all backgrounds, in this case Negro and Jew.

One of my particular favorites among all the spirituals is When The Saints Go Marching In, which I played on a series of concerts in 1961 and 1961. I tried to point up the original meaning of the song by playing it in this style. Not that I want to criticize the treatment usually given to it by Dixieland groups and the Swing bands in earlier eras. But examine the lyrics: "Oh Lord I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in." This is a fairly direct expression of the desire for "oneness," of the need to "belong."

God Be With You and It's Me Standing In The Need Of Prayer are both religiously oriented, the one used at the close of religious services and the other an expression of humility, an admission of human guilt and unworthiness.

Let Us Break Bread Together is a prayer that is not necessarily limited to an ethnic or national group. This is an expression of the democratic concept of living, of people doing things together. It is universal and dramatic because it came out of a people who had no purpose other than that of expressing truth and beauty born of suffering and oppression. The artistic impact that has kept it alive is its truthfulness and simplicity.

I don't know who composed the music and lyrics to these beautiful spirituals – nobody does. These are traditional things that have been handed down from one group to another, just a matter of people getting together and singing of the private things that are not talked about – the pain of oppression, the longing for freedom, the dependance on God. I have tried here to present them in a different and interesting way without changing their basic and universal meaning. – Donald Shirley

Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child

Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen

Heaven

Were You There

Swing Low Sweet Chariot 

My Lord It's So High

Take My Hand Precious Lord

In-A My Soul

Go Down Moses

Even Me

Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jericho 

When The Saints Go Marching In

God Be With You

It's Me Standing In The Need of Prayer

Let Us Break Bread Together

Every Time I Feel The Spirit