Amazing Grace
Play Bridget’s arrangement of a piece that’s the backdrop to many human rights events.
Amazing Grace is by all estimation the most famous hymn in the world; with over 3000 published recordings the largest number for any single work. This reflects its wide appeal, and importance to a range of cultures over the decades. In particular it might be said to be the soul of America, performed at key moments in its political and cultural history. From its first recording by the Sacred Harp Choir in 1922, Alan Lomax’s seminal 1939 ‘field’ recording in Alabama, the Decca 1951 gospel version by Sister Rosetta Tharpe (a seminal and woefully unknown figure of blues and gospel electric guitar), Sam Cooke’s 1963 (re) arrangement to its ultimate adoption by the likes of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, the hymn is omnipresent in Amercia’s turbulent history and the marriage of pain, redemption and hope in its simple melody and text therefore perfectly apt.
Its power is perhaps most keenly felt at moments of deep oppression, emotion or social change. Think of Mahalia Jackson’s 1960s performances at the American civil rights marches, Pete Seeger in the heart of the folk revival, Aretha Franklin’s staggering 1972 live performance marking her return to Gospel music, and again at the funerals of singers Clara Ward (1973) and Luther Vandross (2005). She performed it also for President Obama in the White House, who sang it himself at the eulogy of Senator Pinckney a victim of mass shooting. It was performed by Whitney Houston at the concert for a New South Africa in 1994, at the 9/11 memorial events and countless other seminal moments in US history.
The history of the hymn itself is appropriately also one of pain and redemption: Born in London in 1725, John Newton went to sea aged 11 and was pressed into the Royal Navy, flogged for desertion, abandoned to a slave owner in Sierra Leone where he himself was treated as one. Rescued in his early 20s, he survived a vicious storm, which ignited his evangelical Christianity, but not his morale centre, as he went on to captain slave ships for several years. On his return to Britain in his 60s he published a pamphlet of remorse condemning the slave trade, and supporting Wilberforce’s campaign for abolition. His atonement is also reflected in his 1779 poem Faith’s Review And Expectation which contained the immortal opening lines of “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me”. The famous melody itself was originally a (possibly Appalachian) American folk tune from an unknown composer entitled New Britain, first published (with a different text) in an 1829 hymnbook with shape notes (simplified notation system for choirs), and to Newton’s poem in 1835.
The melody uses just the five notes of the Major Pentatonic scale, so is playable on the piano’s black keys, is highly singable, ripe for blues inflection, and can even approximated by the overtones of the harmonic series.
It is structurally and rhythmically equally straightforward, containing a series of 16-bar stanzas in three-four time, each of which is made of two eight-bar phrases. This simplicity of structure and melody means that it is readily arranged in various levels of complexity from just the three major triads of the major scale (I-IV-V) to much richer harmonic options.
NEXT MONTH Bridget arranges and transcribes Schubert’s beautiful Trout Quintet
amazing gra ce might be said to be the soul of america, performed at key moments in the country ’s political and cult ural history