Songs You Learned at School

[MickyD]

I sang many old folk songs at my London primary school in the 60s and the astonishing thing was that most classrooms had a piano and most teachers could play them pretty well.

This is a very nice anthology of old British folk songs sung by the lovely Catherine Bott and the Parley of Instruments...it always cheers me up.

[french frank]

I sang many old folk songs at my London primary school in the 60s and the astonishing thing was that most classrooms had a piano and most teachers could play them pretty well.

Oh, indeed they did: both our primary school teachers played in a small village school (about 60 pupils). I've heard that there are teachers nowadays who are worried if they're expected to sing … No one can deny that it's excellent that children are given a chance to sing and that they enjoy it. But it would be sad if they lost all perspective on the past and were only familiar with their own, contemporary culture (something that seems to apply across the board in music). The songs we sang were 'traditional' and went back centuries before our time.

Another I remember was "Hope the Hermit" ('Once in a blithe greenwood, Lived a hermit wise and good'). I was looking on the internet to see how old it was (16th c.?) and found: "Some people even make fake seashells that they hope the hermit crabs will like."

[LeMartinPecheur]

Has anyone mentioned Handel's Silent Worship?

Before checking online I hadn't realised Somervell should get part of the blame

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I loathed "Singing Lessons" at Primary School "infants": every Friday morning from Nine o'clock until Wednesday (it seemed like) all the first three years were bundled together to practise the week ahead's hymns, and then "songs", whose words were incomprehensible to my five-seven-year-old self, with the three teachers shouting at us to "sing up" and "sound as if you're enjoying yourself" and the teacher bashing out the notes in octaves on the forte (it sure as hell wasn't a Piano). I developed a deep-ingrained hatred of "Folk Songs" (less so Hymns: when the teachers shut up and let us belt out "Hills of the North Rejoice", it probably saved my developing love of Music - but the saccherine inanities of "Little Jesus sweetly sleep" were probably my first steps towards Atheism) which hasn't really left me.

It was better in "Junior" years (aged 8-11), when we had BBC-based Music activities involving instruments as well as songs written by people who knew what they were doing (I'm with Tom Lehrer; "the trouble with Folk Songs is that they were written by 'the people'") - very fond memories of a version of Aladdin, even more so of an adaptation of the Ancient Marriner story called Lieutenant Cockatoo, with Music by Phyllis Tate. The opening D - A - D on chime bars: the first interval I learnt the name of and how to hear internally.

Even betterer, Secondary School - not so much the Music Lesson singing sessions (although they were much better than the Primary efforts) but the school choir ... and Handel, Purcell, Haydn (the Nelson Mass, the first Classical work I ever sang in - and my eleven-year-old self seeing the name "Haydn" on the cover of the sepia and burgandy vocal score cover, and wondering how that was pronounced. And the school orchestra ...

Years of therapy and medication have thankfully worked, and I can no longer remember the songs inflicted upon us as cruel and unnatural punishment - but I wish them all heartily to hell, and rejoice that kids today have better stuff to engage their minds and enthusiasms. For me, until aged 8, school singing was something to be dreaded (how we all longed for measles and an excuse to avoid the misery) and something completely different from the joy of singing at home, in the playground, or to ourselves.

[Padraig]

Alas poor ferney.

You should have come to our school.

I spent a long time polishing this one on my own in my effort to impress a certain Anna! We all had to have a party piece, and this was mine. I must have been 10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4bUKf1GVFc

[Keraulophone]

My love dwelt in a Northern Land - Elgar... particularly memorable.

Friday Afternoons - Britten
...though we sang them on Wednesday afternoons, with no ill effects.

[Mary Chambers]

I absolutely adored singing all the folk songs, hymns and carols I learnt at school from age four or five up. I went to a very small private infant school where the headmistress was an ex-professional singer. We learnt French and English folk songs, and often she would sing to us. I still remember with a shiver her singing of the sinister “Lord Randall”. I can’t have been more than six or seven, so that was over seventy years ago! I don’t think we children sang that one, but we did many others.

At her school and my later schools all the folk songs mentioned so far in this thread were standard fare. I wasn’t a bit worried by the fact that they were ‘old songs’. They were magical to me, pure pleasure. Schubert in English from junior school onwards - I certainly remember “To wander is the miller’s joy, to wander” and The Son of the Muses (though I can’t remember the words we sang for that one). I did know they were by Schubert, and that some of the songs we sang came from something called “The Fair Maid of the Mill”. There seems to be a fear now of giving children anything too unfamiliar, with difficult words, and of course many folk songs would now be considered sexist.

I think children are a bit short-changed these days with the Disney-esque stuff they usually seem to be taught, if they are lucky enough to be singing anything at all. I am pleased that my young grandchildren are at schools where singing is taken reasonably seriously. As far as I know they don’t sing old folk songs, though. Pity.

Edited to add how much I loved Strawberry Fair. “Singing, singing buttercups and daisies”.....essence of pure joy.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I was lucky not to have suffered Ferney’s fate at primary school. I loved all the folk songs we learnt. Hymns too, though in school assemblies I was surrounded by groaners. Sadly, I was kicked out of the choir because I was perceived to have caused a disturbance when we sang in a music festival, when it was really the girl behind me.

And one of our infant teachers had sung on the famous Manchester Children’s Choir recording of Nymphs & Shepherds/Brother Come and Dance with Me.

[cloughie]

I loved singing at school - in primary school there was always a piano and a teacher to play it - whether hymns or songs, and this was backed up by attendance at Sunday school (Methodist), not that I’m particularly religious now but you can’t beat a good sing! School was also where William Appleby was the roots of knowing what a good song was - the National Songbook with such as Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill, already mentioned on this thread, along with ‘The Mermaid’ which I have revisited in recent years sung in the Pub, but also as a joint piece sung by male voice choir and a junior school choir. Then there were gems such as Vicar of Bray, Darby Kelly and Twankydillo. It was also the introduction to a number of Scottish, Welsh and Irish songs. ...and of course Singing Together would not have been the same without Miss Avis.

[gurnemanz]

What amazes me somewhat is that I can still sing the words of lots of these songs from memory after about 60 years.

[teamsaint]

What amazes me somewhat is that I can still sing the words of lots of these songs from memory after about 60 years.

Yep, they really stick with you.

“Donkey Riding” being one of the ones we sang. Think we all loved that one. I certainly did.

[cloughie]

What amazes me somewhat is that I can still sing the words of lots of these songs from memory after about 60 years.

Yes but not the Choir songs I am singing now and need to remember for concerts - memory is almost full!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I loved singing at school - in primary school there was always a piano and a teacher to play it

And there's the rub. Now (and more so since the deskilling of primary school classroom teachers since the introduction of the disastrous "Wider Opportunities") you'll be lucky to find anyone who can play the piano (if the school even has one. So you get inflexible and unmusical backing tracks that even professional musicians often find difficult to keep in time with.

[MickyD]

It's sad to read about Ferney's unhappy experiences - I have only happy memories of singing at primary school.

The other thing we did was Country Dancing, which I loved! If I remember correctly, some tunes from Eastern European countries, played at full blast on an old portable record player. We girls and boys gave a demonstration - even with a maypole! - at about age seven or eight to our parents at the beginning of Sports Day. I have some old 8mm footage that my Dad shot of the event on an old clockwork camera. Managed to get this transferred to DVD and the old Kodak prints still hold up pretty well!

[LMcD]

Ah yes - country dancing - The Dashing White Sergeant!