lo dello: the dance

Hannah Cohoon (1788-1864) is one of the earliest known female composers in the United States, and when I discovered this tune, it was unnamed and without any text. Early Shaker tunes were often sung as a vocalise to substitute for the lack of musical instruments. So, when setting the tune for voices, rather than adding a lyric, I decided instead to honor the tune by imagining a cinematic scene in which a romantic couple in Hannah Cohoon’s day hear the tune while meeting for the first time at a dance. I researched Shaker-era nonsense syllables and discovered “lo del lo,” which is satisfying to sing and felt to me like shifting weight from one foot to another, as one would do while dancing.

The rhythmic treatment of the old tune is brought into the modern musical vernacular with the use of repeated tied rhythms over the barline, anticipating the downbeat like popular music often does. This nod to pop should be wholeheartedly embraced, in order to connect this centuries-old romance to our contemporary parallel meet-cutes: locking eyes with a mysterious stranger across a roomful of dancing bodies was as relevant for Hannah Cohoon in the 18th century as it was for Tony and Maria in West Side Story, as it was in Netflix’s Bridgerton, as it was for Cinderella, and as it is for us now in modern clubs.

lo dello: the dance is constructed like a film soundtrack to this imagined scene. The descriptive boxed text throughout the score is provided to help the performers imagine the dramatic narrative, so that even though the audience won’t know the exact specifics of the scene, they will still be taken on a highly emotional journey through extremes of dynamic, tempo, and intention.
– Jennifer Lucy Cook

Hannah Cohoon is best known as a painter in the 19th century American Shaker community. Professor Daniel W. Patterson discovered Hannah Cohoon’s name in a Shaker hymnal, ascribing four separate tunes to her. The tune reproduced in “American Folk Painters of Three Centuries” (Hudson Hills Press, 1980) is the source for this arrangement.
– Jonathan Campbell