Samanthra: A Song History

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Hymnary.org and the Choral Public Domain Library both trace "Samanthra," a tune in a minor or modal key, to the second edition of Ananias Davisson's Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony (Harrisonburg, Virginia, 1822).[1][2] Sources differ on who wrote it: the Choral Public Domain Library credits R. D. Humphreys and places the tune, in three parts, on page 16 of that 1822 edition.[2] By contrast, Hymnary.org's tune page names no composer, and Glory to God (2013) labels it an anonymous American folk melody.[1][3] Davisson ran a printing shop in Harrisonburg from 1816, and the Library of Virginia counts his Kentucky Harmony of that year as the South's earliest known shape-note tunebook.[4] According to Hymnary.org, the words printed with the tune in the Supplement are the fourth stanza of a hymn by Joseph Swain (1761-1796), a Baptist minister, with the text dated 1791.[1][2][5]

Black-and-white photograph of a hammered dulcimer, a flat trapezoidal box strung with many wires

Hammered Dulcimer, wood and metal, American, mid-19th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

William Walker reprinted the tune in his Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist and later in The Southern Harmony, where it is number 322 in the revised edition of 1854.[2][6] There its words open by likening a voice to the sound of a dulcimer, which Hymnary.org describes as "apparently an adaptation" of Swain's hymn.[5][6] In The Christian Harmony (1867), Walker added an alto line to the three parts.[1][2] The title index of the 1991 edition of The Sacred Harp does not list it.[7]

In 1961 Alice Parker and Robert Shaw arranged "Samanthra," and in 1982 Joy F. Patterson wrote the hymn "Isaiah the Prophet Has Written of Old" for it.[3] Hymnary.org lists the tune in many recent hymnals, including The Presbyterian Hymnal (1990), Voices United (1996), and Glory to God (2013).[1] Some hymnals call it "Zion's Pilgrim."[1]

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Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "SAMANTHRA".
  2. Choral Public Domain Library: "Samanthra (R. D. Humphreys)".
  3. Hymnary.org: "Isaiah the Prophet Has Written of Old" (Glory to God, 2013, #77).
  4. Library of Virginia, Dictionary of Virginia Biography: "Ananias Davisson".
  5. Hymnary.org: "His voice as the sound of the dulcimer sweet".
  6. Hymnary.org: "His voice as the sound of th dulcimer sweet" (The Southern Harmony, #322).
  7. Fasola.org: "The Sacred Harp, 1991 Edition: Index by Title".