Grand Rondo  on
Simple Gifts  and  Bourbon
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Setting for Organ

Two familiar hymn tunes combined into an A-B-A' rounded binary format

Notes

Grand Rondo on Simple Gifts and Bourbon is an extended setting of two contrasting hymn tunes, both with roots in American folk music. Simple Gifts traces its folk origins to 18th-century Shaker culture, while Bourbon’s pentatonic melody was first published in William Moore’s Columbian Harmony (1825), attributed to Freeman Lewis. It is worth noting that descendants of the French royal Bourbon family migrated to Kentucky, where there is a city bearing that name.

In this setting, Simple Gifts appears in a multi-sectional rondo; its second statement offers a richly harmonized version of the melody in a new tonality. In contrast with the apparent simplicity of the opening sections, the  intervening five variations on Bourbon pose a marked contrast with their chromatic and modulating passacaglia-like structure; the hymn melody migrates between voices, sounding out strongly in the bass registers for the last two variations. After a brief pause, Simple Gifts returns in abbreviated form  to bring Grand Rondo to a gentle conclusion. 

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