where Elder Joseph Brackett composed "Simple Gifts." She wrote the first article which identified him as the composer of this Shaker song. --Aaron Copland (1900-1990), the composer who first arranged the "Simple Gifts" tune in his award-winning ballet score, Appalachian Spring (1944), and ...
Until 1944, “Simple Gifts” was known mostly inside Shaker communities. But in 1944, American composer Aaron Copland used Brackett’s melody in his compositionAppalachian Spring,which served as the score to a ballet choreographed by Martha Graham. ...
Simple Gifts, a new live recording from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS), is filled with eminently accessible, decidedly optimistic American music written between 1854 and 1993. Its frequently dance-worthy melodic beauty makes for a most lovely 77 minutes of pure pleasure, and i...
the Shakers (and American composerAaron Copeland) used “Simple Gifts” about the gift to be simple. In the 1970s, Dion beautifully sang about finding a “Sanctuary” in difficult times. More recently, Passenger warned us we needed to get away from our computers to “Scare Away the Dark.”...