Dorian Recordings

DOR-90299

MARK TWAIN'S AMERICA
A Portrait in Music

JACQUELINE SCHWAB - PIANO
DOR-90299 Cover

This recording contains some of my personal favorite "remembrancers" composed or popular in America during Twain's life (1835-1910). The far-ranging world of nineteenth-century American music included imported and domestic operas, symphonies, hymns, minstrel songs, ballroom dances, fiddle tunes, "Scotch" and Irish airs, parlor songs, spirituals; and later, ragtime and Tin Pan Alley songs. Some of the tunes I've recorded here were well known and perhaps among Twain's favorites, others were at least "in the air." Some may not have been played on piano until now. Some genres have not been represented, others perhaps misrepresented. My own arrangements draw on period styles but also on my modern sensibilities. I picture a mythical Twain reminiscing over old times (as in his autobiography) and playing tunes as they tumble out, willy-nilly. . . .
- Jacqueline Schwab

1. Medley: Love's Old Sweet Song (Just a Song at Twilight), C. Clifton Bingham & J. L. Molloy, 1884; Sweet Genevieve, George Cooper & Henry Tucker, 1869
2. Medley of traditional hornpipes: Fisher's Hornpipe, Saratoga Hornpipe, Good for the Tongue, Cincinnati Hornpipe
3. 'Tis the Last Rose of Summer, Thomas Moore, 1813, traditional air
4. The Good Old Way (As I Went Down to the Valley to Pray), traditional spiritual
5. Beautiful Dreamer, Stephen Foster, 1864
6. Tenting on the Old Camp Ground, Walter Kittredge, 1864
7. Little Carrie's Favorite Gallop, from Howe, 1859
8. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, traditional spiritual
9. Gentle Annie, Stephen Foster, 1856
10. La Gitana, Ernest Bucalossi, ca.1886
11. John Anderson, My Jo, Robert Burns, 1790, Scottish air
12. The Schottische from the Ameer, Victor Herbert, 1899
13. Medley: Oft in the Stilly Night, Thomas Moore, ca.1818, traditional air; Flow Gently, Sweet Afton, Robert Burns, 1792, & Jonathan Edwards Spilman, 1838
14. The Fascinator, James Scott, 1903
15. A Psalm of Life, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1839, from Lotus Dickey
16. Our Meeting is Over, traditional camp meeting revival song
17. Medley: Beautiful River, Robert Lowry, 1866; Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe, 1862 18 Waltz Medley: The Flying Trapeze, George Leybourne, ca.1867; A Bicycle Built for Two (Daisy Bell), Harry Dacre, 1892; After the Ball, Charles K. Harris, 1892

Total Program Length: 61:38

Dorian Recordings & Dorian Discovery
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