A spiritual song I've loved through the years since my youthful years. Through this hymn of faith and hope, I face the the new year... "looking to my God's right hand, when the stars begin to fall".
My Lord, What a Morning!
THE 1790 CENSUS of the United States reported more than 750,000 blacks. The musical expressions of the majority of these blacks—those enslaved in the South—greatly influenced American religious and secular musical forms. Although some Christians attempted to use the Bible to justify the institution of slavery, the majority of African-Americans embraced Christianity. As a result, they created and performed songs, particularly the spiritual, that had a lasting influence on Christian worship.
Slaves held informal, possibly secret, prayer meetings. Sometimes they sang and prayed all night. The spirituals sung in these meetings drew from hymns, the Bible, and African styles of singing. Most slaves could not read, so the spirituals helped to teach them the Bible.
The religious counterpart to the work song was the spiritual. The first reference to spirituals as a distinctive genre appeared early in the nineteenth century. Many scholars believe, however, that the spiritual originated in the late eighteenth century. It is not known precisely when the term spiritual began to be applied to black religious folksongs. Since the editors of Slave Songs of the United States (1867) did not define the term in their compilation, it must have been in common use by 1860.
Improvisation was crucial in the creation of a spiritual. The spiritual was most likely fashioned by combining verses from the Bible and hymns with portions of sermons and prayers given during the worship of the enslaved. Such religious expressions were embellished, and repetitive refrains were added.
The spiritual “My Lord, What a Morning!” for example, was essentially (re)created from the hymn “Behold the Awful Trumpet Sounds.” Here is the spiritual:
My Lord, what a morning,
My Lord, what a morning,
My Lord, what a morning
When the stars begin to fall.
You’ll hear the trumpet sound,
To wake the nations underground,
Looking to my God’s right hand,
When the stars begin to fall.Two stanzas from the original hymn, first published in Richard Allen’s 1801 hymnal, show where the slave composer received his inspiration:
Behold the awful trumpet sounds,
The sleeping dead to raise,
And calls the nations underground:
O how the saints will praise! . . .
The falling stars their orbits leave,
The sun in darkness hide:
The elements asunder cleave,
The moon turn’d into blood! . . .
Video Credit:
My Lord, What a Morning, sung by Le Choeur d'Adultes de la Maîtrise Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris (Choir of Notre Dame Cathedral): "My Lord, what a morning!" (traditional, arr. H.T. Burleigh), sous la direction de Lionel Sow. Hommage musical pour les victimes des attentats du 11 septembre 2001 (Musical homage for the victims of September 11, 2001 victims.)
Resource:
The Spiritual. Written by Angela M.S. Nelson. ChristianHistoryInstitute.org. Accessed January 3, 2020.
(c) January 2020. Tel. Wayfarer Psalms. All rights reserved.
