John Barleycorn Must Die

Instrumentation: 2(II=picc).2.2(II=bscl).2(II=cbsn.).-4.3.3.1.-tmp.-3 prc.-hp.-strings

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PROGRAMME NOTE

John Barleycorn is an an ancient English folksong that describes the various stages of barley culGvaGon – harvesGng, reaping andmalGng – for the preparaGon of beer and whiskey, with John Barleycorn being the anthropomorphised personificaGon of barley. Thesong tells how ‘three men from the west’ decide to murder John Barleycorn. He is ‘ploughed and sowed and harrowed’ into theearth with ‘clats’ of mud thrown upon his head before making a miraculous return from the dead. He is then cut down once morewith ‘scythes so sharp’, dragged around a field and then has the skin cut skin from bone before finally being turned into beer. Insome versions of the song John takes his revenge on the intoxicated in the form of hangovers. In John Barleycorn Must Die I havenot aeempted to follow the songs narraGve, but instead have taken two of the collected melodies and woven them into a concertoverture, with fragments of each heard throughout the work.

There are many different versions of this song throughout England, but for this piece I have focussed on just two. The first is foundin the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, collected by James Madison Carpenter (sung by Harry Wiltshire c.1930). The second iscollected by Cecil J. Sharp and found in One Hundred English Folk Songs.

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