Spring Peepers Waltz: A Song History
"Spring Peepers Waltz" is one of the twelve titles in Ellen Pratt's Ensemble Arrangements For The Mountain Dulcimer, Volume 3, a book Pratt publishes herself and that DulcimerDownloads offers as an authorized, licensed download in a 58-page PDF.[1] The listing gives the waltz in DGD tuning with three dulcimer parts, and the book's contents page, pictured on the same listing, puts it in 3/4 time on pages 36 to 38.[1] Pratt's own store calls the volume "original and traditional multi-part arrangements," but neither that page nor the DulcimerDownloads listing names a composer for this tune.[1][2] According to her DulcimerDownloads artist page, Pratt started writing music for the dulcimer around 2004 and turned to ensemble writing and arranging once she had joined a dulcimer orchestra in northeastern Connecticut.[3] The sources consulted here give no date for the waltz.[1][2][3]
Totoya Hokkei, Ono no Tofu Standing on the Bank of a Stream and Watching a Frog Leap to Catch a Willow Branch, woodblock print (surimono); ink and color on paper, ca. 1825. A frog, though not a spring peeper, shown for the title; it has no connection to the tune.
The spring peeper of the title (Pseudacris crucifer) is a very small frog whose range takes in much of eastern North America, reaching north to Quebec and the Maritime Provinces, south to north-central Florida, and west to eastern Manitoba and Texas.[4] A dark X-shaped mark on its back gives the species its name, crucifer, and its best-known call is a high, rising peep, normally given about once a second.[4] North Carolina's wildlife agency observes that across most of that state the frog usually breeds in winter, so that "winter peeper" might fit it better.[4] Nothing in the sources consulted here links the waltz to the frog beyond its name.[1][2]
Sources
- Ellen Pratt: "Ensemble Arrangements For The Mountain Dulcimer, Volume 3".
- Ellen S. Pratt: "Ensemble Arrangements for Mountain Dulcimer Volume 3".
- DulcimerDownloads: "Ellen Pratt".
- North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission: "Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer), North Carolina Wildlife Profiles".
- Image: Totoya Hokkei, Ono no Tofu Standing on the Bank of a Stream and Watching a Frog Leap to Catch a Willow Branch, woodblock print (surimono); ink and color on paper, ca. 1825. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.