James McCullough

O Tell Me Where the Dove Has Flown

This haunting folk tune is classified as Type I, which are hymns sung to settings of traditional ballad tunes. This classification was devised by Phillips Barry (1880-1937), who was a pioneering Early American folk hymn specialist and folk tune collector.

The tune has many variants. However, chief among them are the traditional Scottish ballads called Lizie Wan, the (Frances James) Child ballad No. 51 and the Child ballad No. 112, The Baffled Knight.

Brewer, Maine, was the first New England town where this particular variant was first notated by Phillips Barry. Nevertheless, similar variants were also collected in Vermont and Massachusetts much later by otherfolk tune collectors.

The intoxicating full melody of O Tell Me Where the Dove Has Flown is in the Dorian mode. It is repeated five times in this edition, making the design of the entire work strophic in structure. The verse melody in five phrases was first harmonized in 1937 by Annabelle Morris Buchanan (1889-1983). She was another pioneering shape-note specialist who wrote the trailblazing book titled Folk Hymns Of America (J. Fisher & Bro. , 1938).

Specialists in the art of folk tune arrangements will herein notice that I have been greatly influenced by the classic folk song settings of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

The text authorship of the verses is unknown, rendering them as a traditional text. In this setting I have used five of the surviving six ABAB rhymed verses.

The complete (slightly altered) text with a different tune is also found in William Walker's The Southern Harmony & Musical Companion (1854 edition), under the title Dove of Peace.

This work was first performed in 1965 by the Boston University Marsh Chapel Choir conducted by Dr. Max Miller in a worship service.

I hope you enjoy this pensive, yet invigorating secular tune used in a sacred form.
-James McCullough (2014)