Nearer My God to Thee

We have 2 Works called "Nearer My God to Thee"...

1) says from 1847 by Eliza Flower & Sarah Adams. We don't have any lyrics or anything as attachments for the song. We have no originals (which I understand), and first performance is 110 years later in 1957 which makes no sense to me.

Nearer, My God, to Thee

2) then we have a 1902 adaptation of #1 by Lowell Mason (again, seems odd we needed an adaptation since first performance in #1 bucket is 1957). We don't have lyrics on this Work adaptation so does that mean the lyrics are identical and it's just the music that's different? In the notes to the adaptation it says it's the most popular choice outside of UK and I'm sure almost every performance we have is US but yet most of them are parked in #1 bucket right now.

I'm thoroughly confused by this one. I have no clue which Work I should put performances of "Nearer My God to Thee" into and I bet I'm not alone.

I just think it's not a good idea to set up adaptations and not make it clear to people what the differences are. We think we are getting all precise and all we are accomplishing is a bunch of performances assigned to the wrong Work. We should make it easy on people.

This one is very simple to improve so I'd appreciate our actually correcting something here (which didn't happen when I pointed out the same exact problem with Away in a Manger [Mueller]) Someone that knows the differences between the two should take the time to figure out which ones should be moved. We have all the bluegrass ones in bucket #1 it seems so they should all be there or all be moved. Pretty easy. If the #1 1847 Work didn't have a performance until 1957 then clearly something isn't right or we just don't need choice #1. Someone probably put one there and it was a country one so bam next one and next one....I know I've put all the country one's in #1 because of that. I just think we might be fine with 1 choice.

Looks like Frokor set up the Work and Joanne set up the adaptation. I've seen Walt and Sebastian's names on the pages too so I'm just copying you four on this and I'm copying Thom as he is a good arbiter.

But let's please actually address this one. I don't care what the choice is, it will be better than what we have now.

The difference is the music. The lyrics are the same as Sarah Flower Adams' original lyrics. I actually think the adaptation page as set up does a nice job of clarifying that. But if it's confusing to people, we could revisit how the adaptations are presented. I could also revise the comment, but I'm not sure that's what's needed or wanted either. I get the sense you're more asking which melody goes with which version? In that case I could share a link to this [[|YouTube]] video with music and sheet music visuals in the editor notes as a reference.

I'm not that technical...This is too much. Can you please just listen to one of the bluegrass versions and tell me if it should be where it is or in #2 bucket. They will all be in one or the other. I just want to clean up the page. My guess is over half of the performances are in the wrong categories.

Thx.

To complicate things even more, the lyrics were set to various tunes in the course of time.

Qouting WIKI:

The verse was written by the English poet and Unitarian hymn writer Sarah Flower Adams at her home in Sunnybank, Loughton, Essex, England, in 1841. It was first set to music by Adams's sister, the composer Eliza Flower, for William Johnson Fox's collection Hymns and Anthems.

In the United Kingdom, the hymn is usually associated with the 1861 hymn tune "Horbury" by John Bacchus Dykes, named for a village near Wakefield, England, where Dykes had found "peace and comfort". In the rest of the world, the hymn is usually sung to the 1856 tune "Bethany" by Lowell Mason. British Methodists prefer the tune "Propior Deo" (Nearer to God), written by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan) in 1872. Sullivan wrote a second setting of the hymn to a tune referred to as "St. Edmund". Mason's tune has also penetrated the British repertoire.

But when I listen to the versions in bucket #1 (with the Eliza Flower tune) it's pretty clear to me these need to be transported to bucket #2 (with the Lowell Mason tune)

Jojo greets

Quote from jojo

In the United Kingdom, the hymn is usually associated with the 1861 hymn tune "Horbury" by John Bacchus Dykes, named for a village near Wakefield, England, where Dykes had found "peace and comfort". In the rest of the world, the hymn is usually sung to the 1856 tune "Bethany" by Lowell Mason. British Methodists prefer the tune "Propior Deo" (Nearer to God), written by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan) in 1872. Sullivan wrote a second setting of the hymn to a tune referred to as "St. Edmund". Mason's tune has also penetrated the British repertoire.

But when I listen to the versions in bucket #1 (with the Eliza Flower tune) it's pretty clear to me these need to be transported to bucket #2 (with the Lowell Mason tune)

Jojo greets

Without even listening, they probably all fall under Mason. I see no British versions at first glance.

Thx for all your investigation. So what I believe I’m hearing you say is all the versions should be in #2 which is what I suspected. So do we need #1? Couldn’t we just explain the adaptation in the Comments to #2? Then we won’t have to worry about people adding them to the wrong Work.

I guess if we just move all the ones now in #1 then people will realize not to add them to #1 by default.

I will move the ones I am able to move shortly but since I am not an Editor I can’t move most of them.

I could only move a couple of them. I filed some error reports.

It would help me greatly if we could have an example of one that should be in #1 bucket and refer to it...so people had something they really could compare to if really these ones in #1 now are in the wrong category.

Sorry I can't help with this one, Mark. But looks like you've got a few folk who know what's what.

We are working on it...........