Go Down Moses: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

The spiritual reached print as sheet music titled The Song of the Contrabands, subtitled O Let My People Go, issued in New York by Horace Waters in 1861 with a piano arrangement by Thomas Baker and with words and music credited as obtained through the Rev. L. C. Lockwood, chaplain to the contrabands at Fortress Monroe, Virginia.[1] "Contrabands" was the wartime term for people who escaped slavery by reaching Union lines, and Lockwood, an agent of the American Missionary Association, ministered to the refugees gathered at Fort Monroe in Hampton.[2] Hymnologist C. Michael Hawn dates the first sheet-music publication to December 1861 and notes that it carried a remark that Virginia's enslaved people had been singing the song for about nine years.[3] A Johns Hopkins exhibit suggests that Baker, an English musician, was transcribing a song that probably circulated orally, supplying the piano part and regularizing the tune's rhythm.[4]

Painted landscape with tall trees, a lake and a distant tower; in the foreground a man in a red cloak shields his face beside a burning bush

Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), Landscape with Moses and the Burning Bush, oil on copper, 1610–16. Shown for its subject, Moses at the burning bush; it has no connection to the spiritual.

After the war the Fisk Jubilee Singers carried "Go Down, Moses" into the concert hall, singing it at Steinway Hall in New York in February 1872 and again in January 1873.[5] Hawn reports, citing hymnologists J. Richard Watson and Carlton R. Young, that the Fisk singers' version ran to at least 25 stanzas in the 1870s.[3] The Johns Hopkins exhibit observes that the Fisk tune differs from the printed one and takes this as evidence of a widely varied tradition.[4] Harriet Tubman, often called "Moses," is linked to the song by Sarah Bradford's 1869 biography, which claims Tubman used it as a code song for people escaping Maryland, but the Johns Hopkins exhibit says the claim remains unproven.[3][4] Early recordings include a 1914 Victor disc by the Tuskegee Institute Singers and a 1939 Victor recording by the Hall Johnson Choir under the title "Go Down Moses (Let My People Go)."[6][7] An undated recording by Paul Robeson uses Harry T. Burleigh's arrangement, published in 1917, and Hawn credits performances by Robeson, Marian Anderson and Louis Armstrong with carrying the spiritual to twentieth-century listeners.[3]

The spiritual has since entered denominational hymnals, appearing for example as number 448 in The United Methodist Hymnal.[3] Maureen Sellers includes it in Simply Gospel, Book One, a 56-page collection of easy arrangements of spirituals, hymns and gospel songs for mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[8]

Our books that contain the song "Go Down Moses"

Sources

  1. Johns Hopkins University, Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection: "The Song of the Contrabands. 'O Let My People Go'".
  2. The Morgan Library & Museum: "The song of the 'contrabands'".
  3. Discipleship Ministries: "History of Hymns: 'Go Down, Moses'".
  4. Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries: "Emancipation & Abolition".
  5. Music in Gotham: "Go down, Moses".
  6. Library of Congress, National Jukebox: "Go down Moses" (Tuskegee Institute Singers).
  7. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix PBS-042216. Go down Moses (Let my people go) / Hall Johnson Choir".
  8. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Simply Gospel, Book One".
  9. Image: Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), Landscape with Moses and the Burning Bush, oil on copper, 1610–16. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song