Winter’s Light: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"Winter’s Light" closes Ellen Pratt's Ensemble Arrangements For The Mountain Dulcimer, Volume 2, a volume the DulcimerDownloads listing says Pratt publishes, and it is the last of the twelve titles on the book's contents page.[1] Where most of the book is scored for three dulcimers, this one is a quartet: the listing offers four parts, Dulcimer 1 to Dulcimer 4, each tuned DAD, and the contents page reproduced among its images marks it as a 3/4 piece filling pages 49 to 56, with "Unresolved" the only other four-part entry.[1]

Woodblock print of a snowy hillside, an arched bridge over a stream and snow-laden trees under a dark sky

Utagawa Hiroshige, Meguro Drum Bridge and Sunset Hill, from One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo, color woodblock print, 1857. Shown for its winter scene; it has no connection to the piece.

Pratt's own store page says the volume mixes original and traditional material, but it gives no contents, and neither it nor the DulcimerDownloads listing names a composer for "Winter’s Light," so the sources consulted here do not settle whether the tune is hers.[1][2] Her DulcimerDownloads profile dates her dulcimer writing to about 2004 and says she turned to ensemble writing and arranging once she joined a dulcimer orchestra in northeastern Connecticut.[3] Nothing in the sources consulted here accounts for the title or points to a recording of the piece.[1][2][3]

Our book that contains the song "Winter’s Light"

Sources

  1. Ellen Pratt: "Ensemble Arrangements For The Mountain Dulcimer, Volume 2".
  2. Ellen S. Pratt: "Ensemble Arrangements for Mountain Dulcimer Volume 2".
  3. DulcimerDownloads: "Ellen Pratt".
  4. Image: Utagawa Hiroshige, Meguro Drum Bridge and Sunset Hill, from One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo, color woodblock print, 1857. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song