Ten Thousand Miles
SSA - Sheet Music

SSA choir, Piano and Violin (SSA choir)

SKU: AN.AMP-0722

Edited by Susan McMane. Arranged by Tom Porter. Octavo. Alliance Music Publications #AMP 0722. Published by Alliance Music Publications (AN.AMP-0722).

Porter.

Ten Thousand Miles (program and performance notes)

Ten Thousand Miles is a hauntingly beautiful English folk song that was adopted by the Appalachian folk tradition. The text and tune appear in many versions, including early 18th-Century English publications and the Sharp English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, a collection from 1916. The folk text may have influenced the poet Robert Burns, as several verses are close to those in My Love is Like a Red, Red, Rose. Recently recorded versions include Nic Jones, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Eliza Carthy, and Altan.

The Harvard Dictionary of Music defines folk music as, Music in oral tradition, often in relatively simple style, primarily of rural provenance, normally performed by nonprofessionals, used and understood by broad segments of a population and especially by the lower socioeconomic classes, characteristic of a nation, society or ethnic group, and claimed by one of these as its own. (p. 315)

Folksongs are communal creations. They belong to a culture rather than a composer. As a result, we lack source materials. In the realm of folk-music this results in variation, creating versions of a given song. The term version is revered in folk circles, because it is the opportunity to do it 'my way' that makes each new presentation of a folk song a vibrant, unique expression...The folk singer is not only encouraged to personalize the music, but expected to do so. Variants would include melodic embellishment, textual adaptation, expansion or contraction of form, and harmonic or rhythmic variation. Since folk music exists between the notes, spontaneity and improvisation are crucial to each performance.