Songs from Old Plum Grove
by David Ashley White
4-Part - Sheet Music

SATB choir, piano (SATB choir)

SKU: AN.AMP-0630

Composed by David Ashley White. Octavo. Alliance Music Publications #AMP 0630. Published by Alliance Music Publications (AN.AMP-0630).

White.

SONGS FROM OLD PLUM GROVE

Over the centuries, composers have used folk songs or hymn tunes as part of their output, a practice that has certainly become a part of my compositional style over the past 20 years. I have treated this kind of music as either a part of larger pieces or in a self-contained manner, as is the case in the two folk song settings presented here.

Songs from Old Plum Grove takes its name from a settlement that once existed west of LaGrange, Texas -- all that remains now is a cemetery. It was here that some of my maternal ancestors -- the Scallorns, McClures and Youngs, all of Scottish heritage -- settled in the early 19th century. Allowing some poetic license, I have imagined that the two songs that form this set, Ye banks and braes and Skip to my Lou, were sung in that community.

Actually, these songs do have a real Texas connection: I found Ye banks and braes in a book of Scottish songs that was purchased in Salado, Texas, where a large meeting of the Scottish clans takes place each fall. This melody is very familiar to many of us in its secular form, and in 1935 it first appeared in the Methodist Hymnal, paired with the famous Charles Wesley text, Come, O thou traveler unknown. I found Skip to my Lou, an American folk song widely sung in Texas, in Texas Folk Songs, collected by William Owens; it is considered a play-party song that was typically sung as an accompaniment to folk dancing.