My Lord, What A Mournin
by Eli Villanueva
4-Part - Sheet Music

SATB choir, piano - Intermediate

SKU: MN.CH-1278

Composed by Eli Villanueva. Spirituals. 21st Century. Octavo. Laurendale Associates #CH-1278. Published by Laurendale Associates (MN.CH-1278).

African-American spirituals have been passed down orally from their inception. The earliest published collection of these spirituals is entitled Slave Songs of the United States. The editors of this 1867 compilation expressed the difficulty in compiling these songs because of different versions and text, largely due to the locality and region where these singers learned these songs. This arrangement finds the same situation. There are authorities who believe that the use of the word, mourning is an annotation by editors to emphasize the painful conditions reflected in many of the spirituals and is erroneous, while others, also respected in the field of African-American spirituals continue to use the annotation in their own publications. It is difficult to know the true intention behind the word morning, and it must be admitted that the annotated, mourning does offer a very different perspective in the intent of the text. It was decided to use the text as realized by the former Fisk University professor, John W. Work who has compiled numerous work songs and spirituals in his 1940 compilation, American Negro Songs. Traditional Spiritual.