All The Pretty Little Horses

Description

Violin 1, Violin 2, Violin 3, Viola, Cello, Contrabass, Piano — I - Some Thoughts about the SongOne of the chief differences between the "Art Song" and the "Folk Song" is that in the former the name of the music and text generally evolve over a period of time as a kind of cultural artifact of a people. In the folk song, new words are constantly being added to or subtracted from older ones as the times and locale require.The songxa0All the Pretty Little Horsesxa0is a fine example of the origin and development of a folk song, which appears to have begun its life as a lullaby sung by slaves from about the time of the Civil War. The first verse of the song was much the same as the one we sing today but the melody was completely different. As the song became more popular and people moved about the country, new verses were added or replaced older ones thereby occasionally adding an underlying emotional content, which may not have existed in the original text. Additional music was sometimes added to the new words (or even individual syllables), which probably developed spontaneously as the need arose.Enter the compiler and folk song collector. not infrequently it happened that they were faced with several different versions of the same song. In preparing their collections it was sometimes necessary to combine two or more different versions of a song into one, thereby creating a third version, which they hoped would give the essence of the regional differences and at the same time be a unified song in its own right. In making their compilations, the collectors may have facetiously had in mind the saying of the 18th century writer who said that "Poets and painters to which we would add "compilers," who derive their inspiration from "nature" "...should neighborly assist his brother, and steal with decency from one another."The present version is a composite, which has been modified and rearranged to suit present-day needs.II - Thoughts about the "Fantasy"While the Fantasy onxa0All the Pretty Little Horsesxa0is based on the well-known melody, there is also a secondary melody, which serves as a counterpoint to the folk tune (see for example mm.2-10 and mm.22-25). Melodic fragments of the folk tune are also developed and evolve into something new. The four sixteenth notes in mm.37 and 38 are derived from the third measure of the folk tune itself, and notice the melodic relationship to the first few notes of the original tune. Similarly, the sixteenth-note figures from mm. 48 to 57 are an inversion of the scale passage of the original melody at m.3No undue emphasis need be placed on these passages, or similar passages, although it was felt that some understanding of the relationship between melody and counter-melody and thematic development would be of some interest to the conductor and performers.The piano part is included primarily for rehearsal use in bringing out or reinforcing specific parts, and should be used in performance only if the third violin, viola or cello parts are weak or if a bass part needs to be strengthened. This piece can be performed by a solo string Quartet if desired by omitting the low part of thexa0divisi sections.- Douglas Townsend