Are You Sleeping, Brother John? A Song History

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English speakers know it as "Are You Sleeping, Brother John?", but the round is French, and the Traditional Ballad Index lists its author as unknown. Drawing on James Fuld's research, the Index notes a manuscript copy of the tune under another title from around 1780. It also gives 1811 as the year the melody was first printed and 1860 as the first time words and music were printed together.[1] The 1811 printing was in La Clé du Caveau.[2]

Grandville wood engraving of an old bell ringer hauling on a bell rope while onlookers watch

J. J. Grandville, The Bell Ringer, from The Complete Works of Béranger, wood engraving, 1836. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its bell ringer; it has no connection to the round.

In 2014 the Rameau specialist Sylvie Bouissou argued that Jean-Philippe Rameau wrote the tune.[2][3] As reported at the time, her case rests on manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France that credit Rameau.[3] IMSLP lists one of these, a copy appended to Louis-Joseph Francoeur's treatise on wind instruments, Diapason général, as the earliest known appearance of the round. It dates this copy to about 1772 and notes its attribution to Rameau.[2] Bouissou has called the discovery "un choc incroyable" (an incredible shock).[4] Rameau died in 1764,[5] almost fifty years before the first printing. The sources consulted here also give different dates for early manuscript copies (about 1772 and about 1780), and do not say whether these are the same document. The Rameau credit is therefore best read as one specialist's case, not settled fact.

Gustav Mahler used the round, which he called "Bruder Martin," in the third movement of his First Symphony. He set it in a minor key and recast it as a funeral march, beginning with a solo double bass before the canon spreads through the orchestra.[6] In America the English round became a schoolroom and campfire standard. The Ballad Index finds it in Boy Scout, 4-H and camp songbooks, along with a crop of new words set to the tune.[1] A track titled "Frère Jacques" is on the 1965 Silver Burdett record set Making Music Your Own Grade Three.[7]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Frere Jacques (Are You Sleeping; Brother John)".
  2. IMSLP Petrucci Music Library: "Frère Jacques (Rameau, Jean-Philippe)".
  3. Slippedisc (Norman Lebrecht): "Named: The great composer who wrote Frère Jacques".
  4. ClassiqueNews: "Le Rameau nouveau de Sylvie Bouissou. Entretien".
  5. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Jean-Philippe Rameau".
  6. Mahler Foundation: "Movement 3: Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen".
  7. Internet Archive: "Making Music Your Own Grade Three" (Silver Burdett Records, 1965).