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Re: Yellow Rose, etc.
McGoo wrote:
>Yes, they can, I can have several musicians confirm this if you
would
>like. They would definately sound very wierd, but so would a
Dickinson
>poem if you sung it to anything. While they were metered to fit
songs,
>the accents fall at some very awkward places (for a song).
I haven't attempted the experiment with many Dickinson poems yet, but
"I Never Saw a Moor", "My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close", and
"Because I Could Not Stop for Death" sound perfectly lovely when set
to "The Yellow Rose of Texas". What little weirdness I can detect
comes only when Dickinson's rhyme scheme differs from that of "Yellow
Rose". But I can sing all three easily, and greatly amused my
English teacher by doing so yesterday.
On the other hand, I tried singing all the Who songs Kyle suggested
to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", and while "Boris the
Spider" was easy, most of the others had me performing vocal
gymnastics! Not only were the stresses in the wrong places, but
there were usually the wrong number of syllables after the first two
lines. Try fitting "By tomorrow's Sunday worship we'll be gone" to
the bit that's supposed to go "Up above the world so high"! Perhaps
a more talented singer than I could pull it off, but it's nowhere
near as easy as substituting "Yet know I how the Heather looks" for
"With the Yellow Rose of Texas". But don't feel bad, "The Yellow
Rose of Texas" is a fine song. (I myself am especially fond of it,
as I am both Yellow and from Texas.)
-Yellow "I'm not a mulatto 'soiled dove', though!" Ledbetter