Shop for Music
Voces Feminae
Star of Columbia
Matilda Durham, arr. Jennifer Lucy Cook
An exciting new arrangement of an American shape note hymn.
SATB a cappella
Matilda Durham (1815-1901) was an American composer and music teacher. She may be the first woman to publish music in the United States, with the hymn “Promised Land” (1835, Southern Harmony). Her second composition, “Star of Columbia,” was also published in a subsequent edition of “Southern Harmony.” Both hymns are included in the sixth edition of 1854.
Jennifer Lucy Cook has also edited the text and reframed the message to better reflect modern times. She’s undone the colonial values with a new focus on the beauty of nature of American national parks and the bounties we share as a people.
Composer’s Notes
Matilda Durham (1815-1901) was an American composer and music teacher. She may be the first woman to publish music in the United States, with the hymn “Promised Land” (1835, Southern Harmony). Her second composition, “Star of Columbia,” was also published in a subsequent edition of “Southern Harmony.” Both hymns are included in the sixth edition of 1854.
Durham’s musical style is characteristic of shape-note hymnody. There are abundant parallelisms, open fifths, and a rugged, determined rhythmic energy. The melodies are in the middle voice (tenor), which contributes to the idiomatic sound.
Performance suggestion: Similar to Dufay’s L’Homme Arme Mass, one effective way to perform these works is to sing through the tune once, then begin the arrangement.
– Jonathan Campbell
Text
Jen’s alterations from the original appear in italics
Columbia! Columbia! To glory arise
The queen of the world, and the child of the skies,
Thy genius commands thee, with rapture behold,
While ages on ages thy splendors unfold
With a welcome in the mountains and a bounty we all share
Most fruitful thy soil, most inviting the air
Let the debts of our fathers be repaid to clear thy name
Be freedom and science and virtue thy fame
Thus down a lone valley with cedars o’erspread,
From the noise of the town I pensively stray’d
The bloom* from the face of fair heaven retired
The wind ceased to murmur, the thunders expired.
Perfumes, as of Eden, flow’d sweetly along,
And a voice, as of angels, enchantingly sung,
Columbia! Columbia! To glory arise,
The queen of the world and the child of the skies
With a welcome in the mountains and a bounty we all share
Most fruitful thy soil, most inviting the air
Let the debts of our fathers be repaid to clear thy name
Be freedom and science and virtue thy fame
– Dr. Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), ed. Cook 2023
* Some early hymnals, perhaps mistakenly, reprinted the
word “gloom” as “bloom,” so Jen incorporated this change.
$2.50 per licensed PDF
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.