Amazing Grace

[caedmon]

My all-time favorite song is Amazing Grace. With any new instrument I have been learning to play, it is the first song I am learning. Tonight, I sat down with the Clarke Meg and after about 50 attempts, got my way through the first bar mostly mistake free.

yay.

No brave enough to record it for sharing, yet. I am getting some accidental ornamentation in there in some spots, even.

[peeplj]

I've a bit of a history with this tune.

I've a good friend who plays the Great Highland Bagpipes, Pat McReynolds. He played at our wedding, many moons ago:



When my father died, Pat played his pipes at the graveside service. He played Amazing Grace...this tune takes on an entirely different feel when played in formal style on the pipes, and to this day, I can't listen to GH pipes without getting tears in my eyes. That day, I was in control until Pat was done playing. He came to military attention and saluted my father's coffin. That was when I was able to weep for my father.

Several years later (and just a few years ago), when my mother died, Pat was to pipe at her graveside as well. As it turned out, his reed was messed up and his pipes wouldn't play. At my sister's request, I played Amazing Grace on an old borrowed fife at the graveside. I don't remember much about the actual deed, except that I got through it, and it was one of the single hardest things I've ever had to do.

I love the tune, but I hope I don't have to play it again for a long, long time.

--James

[Finikey O'Reeley]

Amazing Grace is a good tune to learn on. The melody is easy to keep in your head and it is fairly easy to learn. I spent many years as a Highland piper and was called upon to play it many times at funerals. While I still play it from time to time on my Uilleann pipes and tin whistles, I don't "enjoy" it as the association is with death. If you listen to the actual lyrics, though, you see that it wasn't intended to be a sad song, but one of hope.

[PeteyWhistle]

Take a listen to Micho Russel's version on the Whistling Ambassador (Sp?). Very familiar and unique.

[chinese_whistler]

I also started with a Clarke Meg...

[Belgian_Waffle]

Wow Peeplj !

That history of yours brings tears to my eyes.
I don't think I'll be able to play Amazing Grace without thinking of you (and your loved ones) from now on...

[pancelticpiper]

It's interesting, the path that Amazing Grace has taken.

It's an American hymn, and first appears in one of the early 19th century American hymnals (I can't remember which one at the moment).

I was surprised, when I collected a pile of hymnals from various US denominations, to find that it didn't appear in very many of them.

Then in 1969 American folksinger Judy Collins included it on an album. Her version was an odd one, rather different in melody from the version found in hymnals. I don't know where she got that melody from.

Somehow that Judy Collins album ended up in the UK, in the hands of the Bandmaster of the Scottish regiment The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.
Like all Scottish regiments at the time, the RSDG had both a "military band" (what we call a brass band in the US) and a "pipes & drums" band.

Liking the tune and realising that (unlike most hymns) the tune fit perfectly onto the scale of the Scottish pipes, the bandmaster wrote an arrangement for pipes & drums and military band. The album featuring this arrangement, called Farewell to the Greys, came out in 1971. The single sold over 30,000 copies and was No 1 on the British pop charts for six weeks. It was one of the biggest instrumental hits of all time, sales estimated to have topped 12 million worldwide.

So Amazing Grace, in the form of Judy Collin's unusual version, became powerfully associated with the Scottish pipes.

Pipers still run into trouble all the time when they're asked to play it in church and the organist and congregation are doing the traditional version as found in hymnals but the piper is playing the Judy Collins/RSDG version... they don't match up. Pipers are well advised to learn the standard/traditional/hymnal version and be prepared.

Now, due to the popularity of the Judy Collins/RSDG version, I've actually seen the Judy Collins melody appear in a few modern arrangements of Amazing Grace.

I used to be asked to play AG at weddings and church services as well as at funerals. But 9/11 changed that: the public heard the NY firefighters' pipe band play AG at 9/11 services and now the tune has taken on a funereal/memorial aspect in the public mind. Within churches it retains its original character as a joyous hymn.

A sidelight is that immediately after 9/11 a military men's choir (I can't remember if it was Army or Marines) sung AG at the White House but to an entirely different tune.

[caedmon]

In the immortal words of Johnny Carson, "I did not know that."

[riverman]

To go even further back, the tune to Amazing Grace was really African!
I read a biography of John Newton, who was the son of a British Navy commander. He was absolutely without any redeeming qualities, and after much trouble in the Navy he was transferred at his own request to serve on a slave ship. In time he was captain of his own slave ship. As he was crossing the ocean with a hold full of slaves, stored side by side on what amounted to shelves (the death rate was high) he heard, from his cabin, all the slaves humming this tune in unison. He recognized it as a tune of mourning or plea for help. It deeply affected him.
Later, Newton accepted Jesus Christ at his Lord, and soon abandoned slaving. He became a preacher, and wrote lyrics to the tune, calling it Amazing Grace in gratitude to God who had so changed his life.
I love to play this song.

[FJohnSharp]

I started learning whistle just before 9-11 and my little whistle tutorial book had Amazing Grace in it. I spent much of September playing that tune over and over, as a tribute, and I had no trouble getting motivated to put some feeling into it.

[MTGuru]

Quite a bit of info on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace

And a nice LOC page tracing the history of the hymn. No Judy Collins, but Elvis Presley and The Lemonheads!

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/ ... eline.html

The humming slaves story sounds completely apocryphal, but it's a nice story. In this case, it's pretty clear that the lyric (published sans music in 1779) was only later paired up with the familiar tune by others in an American context. This was common practice in hymnody, as in broadsides and other song-writing publication at the time.

[OBrien]

I saw the Blind Boys of Alabama in concert last night and they did it to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun". It worked well.

[peeplj]

I saw the Blind Boys of Alabama in concert last night and they did it to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun". It worked well.

You can also sing it rather nicely to the tune of the theme from Gilligan's Island.

--James

[walrii]

I saw the Blind Boys of Alabama in concert last night and they did it to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun". It worked well.

You can also sing it rather nicely to the tune of the theme from Gilligan's Island.

In the immortal words of Johnny Carson, "I did not know that."

For those of you who want the hymnal version, here is the abc. I did the transcription some years ago from an old tune book but it sounds like I remember the folks in my grandmother's church singing it.

X:1
T:Amazing Grace
S:Transcribed by Walrus
M:3/4
L:1/4
K:D
(F/2E/2) | D2 F | A2 (B/2A/2) | G2 F/2E/2 | D2
D |G2 B | B d B | (A3 | A2)
A | G2 B | (B d) B | A2 A/2G/2 | F2
D/2D/2 | B2 (B/2A/2) | G2 B/2G/2 | A2
F | D2 G/2G/2 | F2 (G/2F/2) | E2 F/2E/2 | (D3 | D)

Edited to add: OK, pancelticpiper is right. The above tune came from an old hymnal. I don't know the name of the tune but I recall singing the hymn, "Amazing Grace," to this tune.

[pancelticpiper]

the lyric (published sans music in 1779) was only later paired up with the familiar tune by others in an American context. This was common practice in hymnody...

Was, and still is.

People not familiar with hymnody may not realise that the hymn is a set of words, which can be sung to any tune with a matching meter.

So, there is no such thing as a tune called "Amazing Grace". AG is a hymn, a set of words. The tune usually used is NEW BRITAIN. But not always: immediately following 9/11 a military mens' chorus sung Amazing Grace to a different tune. (By the way the tune name is traditionally written in all caps.)

Look in the back of any traditional hymnal and you'll find a number of indices. One is called the Metrical Index. It lists the meter for each hymn (text) and for each tune. Choir directors can select a text which fits with that Sunday's message, and then select any tune which has a matching meter.

In this day, when pop music and modern Church music has the text and tune written together from the get-go, this notion seems odd. But we have to remember that in the Reformation the singing of hymns was begun by borrowing dozens of existing popular tunes which the various hymns were sung to. It would be like today a new church starting out and borrowing any familiar or currently popular tune (such as Let It Be by the Beatles, or Row Row Row Your Boat, or anything) and fitting church words to them, to create songs which are easy for the congregation to sing.

This still exists in hymnody. For example the tune HYFRYDOL is extremely widespread and I have, in the various hymnals I've collected, over twenty different hymns sung to it. You'll often find four or five different hymns sung to the same tune in a single hymnal.

Anyhow, as an instrumentalist, I cannot play Amazing Grace on the pipes, as Amazing Grace is a text. But I can and do play NEW BRITAIN and HYFRYDOL and MARTYRDOM and many other tunes on the pipes.
Just last Sunday I was asked to accompany a congregation on the uilleann pipes, and the choir director told me I was to play KREMSER in D. And I played KREMSER and the congregation sung We Gather Together and all was good.