Mountains turn up all the time in the Bible. They can be places where God interacts with people, such as Mount Sinai where God gave the commandments to Moses to take back down to Israel, or where someone with “clean hands and a pure heart” can meet with Him, or where a chosen few disciples can see the transfiguration of Jesus. Or people can shout for joy from the mountaintops. And a mountain can also be simply a place from which to speak, with the most famous example being that of the Sermon on the Mount: “Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.” (Matthew 5:1-2 NIV) Here’s this big crowd, and here’s a high place to sit which happens to be on a mountainside, so Jesus uses it.
All very obvious, right? So in this carol the news of Jesus’ birth is supposed to be spread far and wide, from the mountaintops and the hills and “everywhere.” There’s an echo in this line of what is often called “The Great Commission” in Matthews 28:19, where Jesus says to the disciples: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.” (KJV)
Depending on what version of this song you consult, you’ll be told that it’s a “African-American Spiritual” or just “Traditional,” with no other attribution, or you might be told that the words or verses are by someone named “John W. Work, Jr.” or that he wrote the whole thing. Well, of course I wanted to know who this John Work was, and he’s indeed a fascinating character. He was born in 1872, so not that long after the end of the Civil War, and his father was a former slave who become a church choir director in Nashville, Tennessee. Work’s life was really fascinating: not only did he attend Fisk University in Nashville, the first liberal-arts college in America that welcomed black students, but he also studied the classics at Harvard. I wish, wish, wish I could eavesdrop on the conversations that went on in the Work household about this move to Harvard! Since Work ended up teaching Latin, Greek, and history at Fisk, I wonder if he was given a scholarship from the school to attend Harvard, with the understanding that he’d return to teach on their faculty? But Work’s heart was still in the choir, and however he spent his academic days he was all in on music, so much so that he is now known as the first African-American to write down texts of spirituals. This was a daunting task, as spirituals had been passed down orally. So I guess he did a Library of Congress kind of thing and went around to the homes of former slaves asking them to sing the songs they remembered.
(I’m going to have to stop here and go off on a little rabbit trail, because Work’s career reminds me in some ways of Charles Anthony Silvestri’s. Both men taught/teach history as their day job, but both were/are incredibly involved in the music world. Indeed, both are known primarily for lyrics—Work for those of spirituals and Silvestri for his own.)
But back to the subject at hand. We think that Work simply wrote down the words to “Go Tell It,” but he may have had a hand in writing them, or some of them. The tune is definitely traditional, so he didn’t write that. He took his books of spirituals and used them in leading the Fisk Jubilee Singers, taking them on tours to raise money for the school. (I don’t have to tell you that these talented performers had to put up with segregated restaurants and lodgings on these tours.) I was pleased to see that this group is still performing; you can visit their website here. But before I go on to the modern arranger of our fabulous version, I have to tell you that “because of negative feelings toward black folk music at Fisk, he was forced to resign his post there in 1923.” To which my reaction is, “Wh-a-a-a-a-a-t?” I’m just flummoxed. What on earth were they (whoever “they” were) thinking? Work didn’t stay home and pout, though–he went on to become the president of Roger Williams University, also in Nashville. Sadly, he lived only two more years.
There’s any number of arrangements out there for this spiritual/carol, so I’m confining myself to the two that my own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale in the Denver area, has programmed. (Link is to the ticketing page for the choir’s December 2024 concert. We’d love to have you attend if you live anywhere near us!) We previously performed an arrangement by a woman who’s well up in the competition for World’s Best First Name, Rosephanye Powell. She’s one of those people my husband and I call “a force of nature.” I mean to say, folks, just looking at her website about wore me out! (And to answer the question everyone has, her name is a combination of her mother’s name, “Rose,” and “Stephanie,” a popular name in 1962, the year of her birth. Her mother liked the look of the “y” instead of the “i,” and that was it.) She has earned multiple degrees and awards, and her work has been performed worldwide. But you know what? The arrangement that we’ve sung doesn’t even appear in the catalog of works on her website, and it’s listed as “permanently out of print” on sheet music sites. It’s still available as a digital download, though, so that’s how my choir got hold of it for a concert in 2019. There’s only one performance using this arrangement on YouTube, with very few views, but I have to say that this choir of only a dozen singers sure puts out a lot of sound!
Here’s the second version we’ve used, in a set of carol arrangements by the great Karl Jenkins. My preference is always for live performances, but I couldn’t find anything suitable. So this is the recording from the album. You’ll hear a much more magisterial version than the one above; both are great:
© Debi Simons
