Quote Originally Posted by OC Richard View Post
Beautifully sung, and I do like that the pipers took it at a more stately tempo than is usually heard.

The standard Hymnal version is generally taken at around 100 beats per minute, which is pretty much the default tempo for Hymns in general (except the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, who do everything slow).

Right on that the tune we now use for the set of words Amazing Grace is, as far as we know, purely American. It first appears in The Virginia Harmony, 1831, where it's used for a different Hymn.

In The Southern Harmony, 1847, the tune is for the first time associated with the set of words Amazing Grace.

The standard Hymnal version of the tune is somewhat different than the way it was arranged for the bagpipe in its bagpipe debut on the 1972 album Farewell to the Greys which is still my favourite bagpipe version.

The brass chords are understated and perfect, and there's a lovely French Horn descant (which starts at 1:38)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Drti...&start_radio=1

Now there is no tune "Amazing Grace", which is an utterly tuneless set of words.

The tune heard above is called NEW BRITAIN in The Southern Harmony.
Thanks for the history lesson. Unfortunately, at 78, I'll probably forget it quickly. However, with BOTH of my parents' funeral Requiems punctuated by Amazing Grace on the pipes, the bluegrass and banjo setting just doesn't do it for me. The Berlin Tattoo YouTube version is everywhere, of course, and it brings me to tears even 2 and 3 decades after my dad's AND my mom's deaths. The tune matches the text like almost nothing else (the other summits being soprano solos in the final movement of Mahler's gigantic 2nd and 8th symphonies). AND, for lovers of the pipes, there's NO better demonstration of how a brass band can add simply unsurpassable harmony to tune AND text, with a lone or gigantic assembly of pipers carrying the melody.

And, as for the "kilt on backwards" faux pas, my mom went to her grave with her kilt EXACTLY mis aligned like that, and I suspect NO ONE who attended her wake other than my sister recognized the sartorial sin.