There are some songs that are so hauntingly beautiful, they come near to bringing tears — and if they are hymns, too, the tears will gleam with longing and even a kind of solemn joy. Our Hymn of the Week is like that. There are only a few words to it, and it’s all the better for that, because the words say everything they can, and much that they cannot, and the music goes far beyond where words can go. Here they are:
Deep river, my home is over Jordan,
Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.
O don’t you want to go to that gospel feast,
That promised land where all is peace?
Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.
My copy of Deep River comes from a small paperback book called Sociability Songs — for Camps, Homes, Communities, and Schools (1945). Half the songs are hymns, with a strong emphasis on the spirituals and camp meeting songs. Others are love songs, patriotic anthems, folk songs, and silly little ditties, such as this one, sung to the music of the French “Alouette” — I give it here because it’s fit for Thanksgiving!
All you et-a, think of all you et-a,
All you et-a, think of all you et.
Think of all the soup you et, think of all the soup you et,
Soup you et, soup you et, soup you et, soup you et, OH —
All you et-a, think of all you et-a,
All you et-a, think of all you et!
And you can go through the whole Thankgiving dinner, from meat to potatoes to salad to pie!
The company that produced the book I’m holding was called Rodeheaver Hall-Mack, after Homer “Rody” Rodeheaver, who was the great popularizer of cheerful upbeat revival songs, and who, at age 60, in 1940, led 250,000 people in song to welcome home the presidential candidate Wendell Willkie. My copy is stamped “Property of Fiskeville Choir,” that is, the choir of a neighborhood in western Cranston, Rhode Island, called Fiskeville; someone has written in pencil on the cover, “Organ Copy,” so it must have belonged to the church nearby.
But what really wrings my heart is to read about the man who first transcribed and arranged the song, and made it known to the world. He was Harry Burleigh, the man who introduced Antonin Dvorak to Negro spirituals. In 1892, Burleigh was in New York, enrolled as a student in the Conservatory of Music, and to help pay for his expenses, he worked there also as a handyman and janitor. While he was working, he’d sing the old spirituals, and that is when Dvorak heard them for the first time. So he asked Burleigh to sing them for him, and thus began a wonderful and mutually enriching musical relationship. Dvorak instructed Burleigh in classical music, and Burleigh opened to Dvorak all those spirituals, and plantation songs, and American folk songs generally. If there’s one person to whom Dvorak was most indebted for his magnificent New World Symphony, it was Harry Burleigh. Dvorak said that in those spirituals, America had all she needed for the foundation of her own classical music. George Gershwin — who knew Burleigh and learned from him — was born six years later. Think of that sultry lullaby, “Summertime.”
We are talking about truly great human beings here, about whom I could write a great deal — and bring into view the singers Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson, whom Burleigh taught, or America’s most important music critic in the early 1900’s, Henry Krehbiel, who also worked with Burleigh and who, as much as anyone, brought the spirituals to a wide and most eager audience of Americans. But I’d like to end with a meditation on the effect of “Deep River.” The river is the “Jordan,” not the one in the Middle East, but the Jordan that flows between this life and the life to come, between time and eternity. It is a river none can cross without dying. So to long for that river is to long for what nothing on earth can provide. The song calls it “campground,” a homely and familiar word for the peace and ease and friendship of a world whereof we have sometimes a sweet and quiet intimation. The melody is both deep and soaring, perfect for that movement of the heart, that longing, that love.
Today’s recording features the master, Leopold Stokowski, conducting the New Symphony Orchestra of London, and the Norman Luboff Choir. The arrangement is by Luboff and Walter Stott.
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The more artificial intelligence encroaches, the more real wisdom is to be treasured. A raise of the morning mug of coffee to you, Tony!
Sister Wilhelmina, of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles in Gower, Missouri, loved this song. It is recorded in her tribute album. Asked why the song meant so much to her, she said “Campground is the place you go where you’re going to stay,” in a tone both wistful and assured.’ That Sister Wilhelmina tribute album also features an amazing piece of music called ‘’Song of the Tilma,’ with a melody derived from the placement of the stars on the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe, ‘following the “boustrophedonic” style of medievalists…..’ No, I don’t understand that either, but it’s beautiful. Also beautiful is your meditation on this song, and the men who made it. Thank you! We are blessed with your lives of courageous loving service. And, now that I have listened to your included version of Deep River, I am trying to find a way to say how my socks are blown off, without ending the sentence in a preposition. Glory to God! That’s the way to sing a song, which the ears adore and the heart understands. ❤️ I am forwarding this one to everyone I know.