By An’ By

One of eight harmonisations Moerane made of ‘Negro Spirituals’ (as he called them), By An’ By may date from the late 1930s, which is when Lovedale Press published his arrangement of Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen. This was a a time when there was a strong identification among Africans in southern Africa with African American music and several songbooks and recordings were available to support this. Moerane may have found his inspiration for By An’ By on a 1925 HMV Victor 78rpm recording by Paul Robeson and Lawrence Brown or his source was the songbook called Negro Spirituals ‘Arranged for Solo Voice by H.T. Burleigh’ (1917), which was also his source for Nobody Knows. Moerane’s arrangement of By An’ By begins in a straightforward way and then gradually plumbs greater emotional depths and becomes more chromatic as it proceeds. In order to help choirs learn this song, a free rehearsal mp3 at a slow tempo is downloadable when the song is purchased.

Duration: 1’33”

The audio sample below was generated from the Sibelius file of the score and the image on the right shows the first page of the score.