Lovely Evening: A Song History
The 1962 songbook Songs for Primaries prints "Lovely Evening" and gives its source only as a German round.[1] Hymnary.org traces the same English words to two earlier books: a 1935 Christmas carol collection that calls the piece "Christmas Bells," and A World of Song (1958), which titles it "Oh, How Lovely Is the Evening."[2] The publisher Helbling issues "Oh, How Lovely Is the Evening" as a nineteenth-century evening canon in three parts with both English words and the German "O wie wohl ist mir am Abend."[3] The German song archive Volksliederarchiv likewise lists that title as a three-part canon of the nineteenth century, crediting the melody to a "Chr. Schulz" with the date 1820; the sources consulted here do not settle who that Schulz was.[4] The German round also circulated in the United States, where it appears as No. 81 of 349 Lieder für Schule und Haus, an 1876 German-language songbook for schools and homes in that country.[5]
Anton Mauve, Twilight, oil on canvas, 1800s. A shepherd bringing sheep home at dusk, shown for the round's evening; it has no connection to the round.
Shelley Stevens arranges it as one of the rounds in Baker's Dozen #8: Rounds And Duets, a Fingers Of Steel collection of 13 easy rounds and duets for two or more dulcimers, given in both standard notation and tablature.[6]
Sources
- Hymnary.org: "Lovely Evening" (Songs for Primaries, 1962, No. 168).
- Hymnary.org: "Christmas Bells".
- Helbling: "Oh, How Lovely is the Evening" (choral single edition, 3-part).
- Volksliederarchiv: "O wie wohl ist mir am Abend".
- Hymnary.org: "O wie wohl ist mir am Abend" (349 Lieder, 1876, No. 81).
- Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Baker's Dozen #8: Rounds And Duets".
- Image: Anton Mauve, Twilight, oil on canvas, 1800s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.