Pretty Saro for solo soprano and piano
Pretty Saro is the first in a collection of American art songs that I'm arranging using traditional Appalachian ballads as source material. This ballad, like most from Appalachia, originated in England, and is sung from the perspective of a lower class man longing for the world beyond his social class of the time. The man comes to America from across the Atlantic and yearns for a woman and life better than what he was able to find in England. The text highlights the struggle of the Scotch-Irish immigrants who came to America in the 18th century, and was only rediscovered in Appalachia in the 19th century passed down via oral tradition over hundreds of years.
Text:
When I first come to this country in Eighteen and Forty-nine
I saw many fair lovers but I never saw mine
I viewed it all around me, saw I was quite alone
And me a poor stranger and a long way from home
Well, my true love she won't have me and it's this I understand
For she wants some free holder and I have no land
I couldn't maintain her on silver and gold
But all of the other fine things that my love's house could hold
Fair the well to ol' mother, fair the well to my father too
I'm going for to ramble this wide world all through
And when I get weary, I'll sit down and cry
And think of my Saro, pretty Saro, my bride
Well, I wished I was a turtle dove
Had wings and could fly
Far away to my lover's lodgings
Tonight I'd drawn the line
And there in her lilywhite arms I'd lay there all night
And watch through them little wind'ers
For the dawning of day
Instrumentation:
Soprano
Piano
Duration:
3'30"
What's included:
-pdf of the score
Details:
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