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About the Composer
Joshua Shank
Lorelei Ensemble
Saro
Explores the text and melody through a range of musical textures: ranging from drone and melody to rich, contrapuntal fullness.
SSSAA (with soloists), violin or cello
The lovely folk song “Pretty Saro” is given a stunning arrangement by Joshua Shank for women’s voices with violin. The arrangement explores the text and melody through a range of musical textures: ranging from drone and melody to rich, contrapuntal fullness. The violin and cello parts are included in the score.
Composer’s Notes
“Pretty Saro” was first an English folk song which is thought to have originated in the 1700s. It disappeared from performance but was eventually “rediscovered” in the Appalachian Mountains where it had immigrated and been preserved through the oral traditions of the local singers. Its lyrics had been changed but the subject had stayed the same: a person who is mostly content with where they are, but would still rather be with the far, far away Saro.
What I always think of when I hear this tune is the experience of a person immigrating to the United States and what it must have been like for them to leave someone they loved behind potentially thousand of miles away. We all have a Saro somewhere in our lives and, from immigrants processing through Ellis Island in 1905 to a Hispanic boy in 2014 wearing a t-shirt that says “Don’t Deport My Mom,” it’s clear that sometimes things still don’t go the way we want them to. In this moment, our lives are defined by one heartbreaking event: saying goodbye.
– Joshua Shank
Text
I came to this country, eighteen and forty-nine
I thought myself lucky for to be alive.
I looked all around me, no one I could see
that could compare to my pretty Saree.
If I were a turtle dove, had wings and could fly
far away to my Saro’s lodging, I’d fly a straight line.
I’d lay in her arms for all of the night
And watch through the windows for the dawn’s first light.
But her parents they won’t have me, as I understand,
they want some freeholder, and I have no land.
O Saro, pretty Saro, am I on your mind?
Your parents they told me to leave you behind.
I wish I was a poet, could write in fine hand.
I’d write my love a letter, one she’d lone understand.
I’d send it by the water, where the islands overflow,
And dream of pretty Saro wherever I go.
’Tis not this long journey that grieves me for to go.
’Nor the country that I’m leavin’, nor the debts I owe.
There’s one thing that grieves me, and bears on my mind.
That’s leavin’ my darlin’ pretty Saro behind.
– English Folk Song
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