Wintergrace: A Song History

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"Wintergrace" is a modern song by Jean Ritchie rather than a traditional carol: Atwater-Donnelly's recording credits the words and music to her, under a 1984 copyright held by Geordie Music Publishing.[1] Ritchie recorded it herself on her album Kentucky Christmas Old and New, and Nigel Schofield's notes for the 2006 Free Reed anthology Midwinter say she wrote it because none of her family's seasonal songs reflected the season as a short release from the hardships of everyday mountain life.[2] The composer Kevin Siegfried, who points to Ritchie's fame as a dulcimer player, calls the song a reflective tribute to winter and says that in performance she would frequently accompany her singing with a different melodic line on the instrument.[3]

Ink painting of snow-covered mountains and trees with a small house among them

Yosa Buson, Snow Landscape, hanging scroll; ink and color on paper, mid-1770s. A snowbound mountain dwelling, shown for the song's winter setting; it has no connection to the song.

Siegfried himself set it for mixed (SATB) chorus as part of his five-movement Appalachian Carols, which the Capitol Hill Chorale commissioned and first sang in Washington, DC, on December 2 and 3, 2017.[3] Eliza Carthy and Jon Boden recorded it on Glad Christmas Comes (2023); Carthy recalls that her mother, who had met Ritchie in 1976, suggested it to them.[2]

Aubrey Atwater and Elwood Donnelly included it on When Winter Calls, a live concert of winter and holiday songs recorded in December 2004 at the Blackstone River Theatre in Cumberland, Rhode Island, and released in 2005.[4] On that track Atwater sings and plays mountain dulcimer while Donnelly sings and plays guitar.[1] Atwater includes it, in DAG tuning, in Song By Song, Vol. II, a book of dulcimer tablature that she publishes herself.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Wintergrace"

Sources

  1. Atwater-Donnelly (Bandcamp): "Wintergrace".
  2. Mainly Norfolk: "Wintergrace".
  3. Kevin Siegfried: "Wintergrace".
  4. Atwater-Donnelly (Bandcamp): "When Winter Calls (2005)".
  5. Aubrey Atwater: "Song By Song, Vol. II".
  6. Image: Yosa Buson, Snow Landscape, hanging scroll; ink and color on paper, mid-1770s. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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