Author: Hilton Kean Jones

During the pandemic, almost all of us have experienced the midnight cry. Awake in the middle of the night worrying, reliving all of our misdeeds, slights, inventing fear after fear, suffering…

This article — https://health.ucdavis.edu/health-news/newsroom/covid-19-is-wrecking-our-sleep-with-coronasomnia–tips-to-fight-back-/2020/09 — talks about it and has some helpful suggestions.

I’ve suffered from it, too. That’s why almost all of the music videos I’ve recorded during the pandemic were done around 4 am, sometimes even 2 or 3 am. I can really related to the sentiment of the title of this hymn tune from Southern Music, and Musical Companion. Nothing human is really that new is it.

Another new setting of a tune from Southern Harmony. Several of the Southern Harmony hymn tune names have their source in the Hebrew Bible. Every lazy person’s (like me) guide to the universe (Wikipedia) says “ancient Idumea or Edom, [was] a historical region south of Judea and the Dead Sea. This Wikipedia article on Edom has considerable information, including a map. A detail about the sources of Idumea (or Edom) is this: “The Hebrew word Edom means “red”, and the Hebrew Bible relates it to the name of its founder, Esau, the elder son of the Hebrew patriarch Isaac, because he was born “red all over”. As a young adult Jacob, Esau’s brother, stole Esau’s birthright by deceiving their aging father into thinking Jacob was Esau. Jacob for ‘red pottage’. The Tanakh [Hebrew Bible] describes the Edomites as descendants of Esau.

“This hymn tune is another that’s new to me. I think it captures the longing for a home and the feeling of isolation in a remote desert.

A new one in my current project of setting some tunes from the “Southern Harmony, and Musical Companion.” I love writing countermelodies and this arrangement was no exception. I’m grateful to the teacher of my freshman theory course, Dr. Walter Teutsch, for beginning our first two years of theory with a year of counterpoint, FIRST, before “Harmony.” Usually, it’s reversed. He began with a solid semester of 16th Century (sacred, Italian) counterpoint, and then a semester of tonal counterpoint (J.S. Bach style). I specify the sacred and country because by the time I’d finished grad school I’d had courses in Italian secular counterpoint, English secular counterpoint, etc. Anyway, thank you Dr. Teutsch (now long deceased) who escaped from Nazi Germany before the US entered the war.

Another repost of a favorite from the past, this one from my current project of arranging and recording tunes from the 19th Century collection of hymns, Southern Harmony and Musical Companion.

Another “May Memories.” This tune from the Southern Harmony, and Musical Companion compiled by William Walker in 1835 is so romantic it’s hard to imagine it’s actually a hymn tune…but it is.