Commissioned in commemoration of Barren County, Kentucky’s 225th Anniversary.
When I was asked to arrange this, I immediately began to delve into the canon of Scottish folk music in search of appropriate choices for this piece. While I encountered a lot of different tunes, I kept returning to these two because of their unique juxtapositions between texts regarding an afterlife and rather joyous melodies. In Scottish folk music, there is an all-at-once mesmerizing yet heartbreaking nostalgic remembrance that mourns the dead while still embodying the warmth of the memories.
In addition to these two songs being stellar examples of that, they are both fairly well-known songs with many arrangements sung by choirs around the world. In fact, I sang arrangements of both of them while growing up in Kentucky public schools. Thus, in addition to the immense beauty, there was also a personal connection tying back to my choral upbringing in the Commonwealth that seemed all too fitting for current Kentucky high schoolers to premier.