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About the Composer
Linda Tutas Haugen
Performed on four continents, Linda Tutas Haugen’s music has been critically acclaimed as “music of character and genuine beauty.” [Minneapolis StarTribune.] Opera Today praised her opera, Pocahontas, as “superbly crafted,” “engaging,” and “beautiful and powerful.” She has written for instrumental and vocal chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, wind ensemble, solo voice, chorus and opera. Linda has...
Linda Tutas Haugen (Ephraim Bay Publishing)
Black is the Color
An excellent piece sung surrounding an audience!
SSA a cappella
The first movement from Appalachian Love Songs – Women’s Reflections on Love, Loss and Strength, by Linda Tutas Haugen, this haunting arranged “round” is based on the traditional Appalachian folk song. It can be performed a cappella or with an instrumental accompaniment such as a dulcimer, guitar or piano. It also would be lovely with three flutes or clarinets each accompanying a vocal part or any combination of instruments listed. An excellent piece sung surrounding an audience!
Composer’s Notes
This folk song is the lament of a young woman over the death of her true love. Scholars believe the song originated in Scotland, based upon its reference to the river Clyde, where the young man drowned in a logging accident (the word “river” is substituted in this setting). Black Is the Color later became well known in the Appalachian Mountains. Alan Lomax calls this song an American “re-make of British material where the mountain people have woven a new song…touching it with passionate lyricism.”
This tune variant was first collected by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles in Appalachia in 1916, sung by Mrs. Lizzie Roberts in Hot Springs, NC. Later, Kentucky folk singer and collector John Jacob Niles wrote a different tune between 1916-21 because his father liked the lyrics, but thought the original tune was “terrible.” The Niles tune became very popular and the gender also shifted to a male lamenting the death of a woman.
However, this setting is a variant of the lovely, original tune.
– Linda Tutas Haugen
Text
But black is the color of my true love’s hair,
His face is something wondrous fair,
The prettiest eyes and the gentlest hands,
I love the ground on which he stands.
The winter is passed and the leaves are green,
The time is gone that we have seen,
If you no more on this earth I see,
I still hope one day to be with thee.
I go to the river for to mourn and weep,
But satisfied I never could sleep,
I’ll write you a letter in a few short lines,
I’ll suffer death ten thousand times.
– Traditional Folk Song
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