Oh! What A Beautiful City: A Song History

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"Oh! What a Beautiful City" is a spiritual of unknown authorship, also sung as "Twelve Gates to the City."[1] The Traditional Ballad Index suggests that its heavenly city may be drawn from Revelation 21, while its twelve gates, three on each side, ultimately come from Ezekiel 48.[1] The earliest date the Index gives is a 1929 recording by the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet, issued on Paramount in 1930, though one of its editors suspects that earlier printed versions exist.[1]

Engraving of an angel showing Saint John a walled heavenly city of towers and domes above the clouds

Jean Duvet, The Apocalypse: The Angel Shows Saint John the New Jerusalem, engraving, 1546–56. The heavenly city of Revelation, which the Ballad Index suggests lies behind the song's twelve gates; the engraving has no connection to the spiritual.

The song became a showpiece for the Rev. Gary Davis, who recorded it as "Twelve Gates to the City" in 1935.[1] Thirty years later, in 1965, Alan Lomax recorded Davis singing it and talking about the song.[2] A Blind Boy Fuller record with Sonny Terry appeared on Vocalion in 1940, and Marian Anderson's "Oh! What a Beautiful City" came out on Victor in 1943.[1] In the folk revival, Pete Seeger put it into the medley that opens his 1958 Folkways album with Sonny Terry.[3]

Church hymnals carry it as well: Songs of Zion printed it in 1981, and Lift Every Voice and Sing II, an African American hymnal from 1993, uses an arrangement by Irma Tillery.[4][5] On the dulcimer, Carol Crocker includes it in Songs Of The Spirit, her collection of sixteen African American spirituals arranged for mountain dulcimer solo in DAD tuning, with lyrics included.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Oh! What A Beautiful City"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Twelve Gates to the City".
  2. Association for Cultural Equity, Lomax Digital Archive: "Reverend Gary Davis".
  3. Smithsonian Folkways: "Goofin' Off Theme / Kum Ba Ya / Twelve Gates to the City (O What a Beautiful City)".
  4. Hymnary.org: "Oh! What a Beautiful City" (Songs of Zion, 1981).
  5. Hymnary.org: "Oh! What a Beautiful City" (Lift Every Voice and Sing II, 1993).
  6. Carol Crocker: "Songs Of The Spirit".
  7. Image: Jean Duvet, The Apocalypse: The Angel Shows Saint John the New Jerusalem, engraving, 1546–56. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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