The World is Old

Appalachian Carols
Appalachian Carols was written in celebration of the Capitol Hill Chorale’s 25th anniversary. The work is a tribute to the musical legacy of Jean Ritchie (1922-2015), perhaps the best known and most respected singer of traditional ballads in the United States. The youngest daughter of one of the most famous American ballad-singing families—the Ritchie family of Perry County, Kentucky—Jean Ritchie is often referred to as the “Mother of Folk.” Music had come to her by tradition, and she maintained an impeccable but down-to-earth authenticity throughout her storied career.

The five movements of Appalachian Carols are drawn from Ritchie’s repertoire for the Christmas season. I began by transcribing the melodies from Ritchie’s recordings to capture her unique interpretations as closely as possible. Adding choral harmonies to the original melodies, I tried to stay true to the essence of the tunes as she performed them. Throughout the five movements of Appalachian Carols, echoes and reverberations of the Appalachian folk style abound: unison singing, the use of drones, open sonorities evoking the mountain dulcimer, and allusions to the three-part vocal harmony of 19th-century American tunebooks. The resulting work is a meditation on the interweaving themes of winter, Christmas, family, music, and nature.

The World Is Old
The World Is Old is part of Jean Ritchie’s core repertoire for the Christmas season. She originally learned the song from her sister Pauline in the 1930s. After Pauline’s passing, Jean searched for over forty years for the song’s origins, eventually discovering that it was a composition by Laurence Housman and Joseph Moorat published in The English Carol Book (London: Mowbray). Jean’s version of the song, shaped by years of singing, transformed The World Is Old into an ancient-sounding folk song with, as she liked to say, “an almost unbearable feeling of ‘something about to happen.’”

The world is old tonight,
The world is old;
The stars around the fold
Do show their light.
And so they did, and so,
A thousand years ago,
And so will do, my love,
When we lie cold.

The world is still tonight,
The world is still;
The snow on vale and hill
Like wool like white.
And so it did, and so,
A thousand years ago,
And so will do, my love,
When we lie still.