Still, Still, Still: A Song History

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"Still, Still, Still" is a Christmas song known in the Austrian province of Salzburg, where the Salzburger Volksliedwerk has recorded several local variants of it.[1] The familiar version derives from the 1865 collection Salzburgische Volks-Lieder mit ihren Singweisen, in which Vinzenz Maria Süß printed it with a reference to its melody.[1][2] Süß (1802–1868), who gathered folk songs and rhymes across the Salzburg countryside, also founded the city's museum, later called the Carolino Augusteum, which he began building up in 1833.[3] In his printing the dialect verses picture Mary singing her child to sleep while angels make music around the cradle.[2] Other versions surfaced later, among them a variant in August Hartmann's collection of 1884 and another noted in the Lungau district in 1899.[1]

Etching of a gatehouse and stone buildings below the fortress walls of Salzburg, with mountains behind and two small figures on the path

Johann Christoph Erhard, On the High Fortress in Salzburg, etching, 1819. The fortress above Salzburg in 1819, shown for the region where the song was collected; the etching has no connection to it.

Hymnary.org lists the melody as a traditional Austrian tune, though a few hymnals there label it a German carol, and Voices Together names the 1865 Salzburg collection as its source.[4] George K. Evans's English translation is copyrighted 1963, and the earliest hymnal Hymnary.org lists for it dates from 1974.[5] Nine of the hymnals indexed there name Walter Ehret in the tune's music credits.[4] John Rutter later supplied a separate English text, copyrighted in 1994, which is found in Voices United and Voices Together.[6] For mountain dulcimer, Maureen Sellers sets it in DAD tuning in Simply Christmas, a 60-page book of unadorned melodies and harmonies in easy-to-read tablature, published by Fingers Of Steel.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Still, Still, Still"

Sources

  1. Salzburg24: "Wie sich Salzburgs Weihnachtslieder mit der Zeit veränderten".
  2. Internet Archive: "Salzburgische Volks-Lieder mit ihren Singweisen" (Maria Vinzenz Süß, 1865).
  3. Deutsche Biographie: "Süß, Vincenz Maria".
  4. Hymnary.org: "STILL, STILL, STILL" (tune).
  5. Hymnary.org: "Still, Still, Still" (George K. Evans text).
  6. Hymnary.org: "Still, Still, Still" (John Rutter text).
  7. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Simply Christmas".
  8. Image: Johann Christoph Erhard, On the High Fortress in Salzburg, etching, 1819. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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