Arnold Zwicky's Blog

The trigger was singing the shapenote hymn Millbrook, 484t in the 2025 edition — yes, the latest revision, successor to the 1991 revision —  of the Sacred Harp yesterday; I was at home, following along via Zoom with the Palo Alto singers (who were at the UUC church in southern Palo Alto). Four connections here:

— 1, the song comes from the 2013 Shenandoah Harmony book (where it’s 264b), which I’d sung from on occasion (so it was in fact already a favorite); I don’t know why it’s named Millbrook (from Millbrook AL? Millbrook Village NJ? from some specific millbrook?)

— 2, the song has the same name as the much more widely known utterly secular composition “Millbrook” (1998), by singer / songwriter Rufus Wainwright, referring to the very tony New York village of Millbrook — so, two musical Millbrooks

— 3, the village of Millbrook is the home of the Millbrook School, a private boarding school that’s interesting in its own right; and there’s a connection to Rufus Wainwright, who’s a 1991 graduate of the school

— 4, Bill Richardson — a friend from a boys’ summer camp (ca. 1950) / Princeton (ca. 1960) / Wyomissing PA (vs. my West Lawn PA, a couple miles away), now Golden CO vs. Palo Alto CA — is a much earlier graduate of the school (in 1958)

Background. I had a long period with no singing voice and a hoarse speaking voice (it’s an autoimmune thing) — so no shapenote singing for a long time — and then, from about 9/29 through 10/9, a sinus infection that was painful enough to derange my sleep and make it hard to sleep lying down (lots of nights sleeping sitting up in a chair). But it was clearing up nicely (I have my sex drive as an indicator of general health, and it returned gratifyingly on 10/10), so yesterday morning I tried singing along with Sacred Harp videos, and it was fabulous (considerable joyous weeping), and I was ready for the Palo Alto singers at 2. And then we got to Millbrook

The Sacred Harp Millbrook. Text by Charles Wesley, 1745; tune by Neely Bruce, 1989. The background of the text is biblical: in John 5:2, Jesus heals a paralyzed man at Bethesda, a pool of water in Jerusalem; Wesley’s text tells the story from the paralyzed man’s point of view, begging Jesus to heal him; 484t in the Sacred Harp:

How long, thou faithful God, shall I
Here in thy ways forgotten lie?
When shall the means of healing be
The channels of thy grace to me?

Sinners on ev’ry side step in,
And wash away their pain and sin;
But I, a helpless sinsick soul
Still lie expiring at the pool.

Thou seest me lying at the pool,
I would, thou know’st, I would be whole;
O let the troubled waters move,
And minister thy healing love.

The Shenandoah Harmony Millbrook. The music from the book:

The compilers of the 2025 Sacred Harp chose (wisely, in my opinion) to drop the original third verse (shapenote refresher: SATB lines, with the melody in the tenor, third, line; the 4 different shapes of the notes (named FA, SO, LA — hence fasola music — and MI) convey their position in the scale for this tune)

From Wikipedia:

The Shenandoah Harmony is a 2013 publication including the works of Ananias Davisson (1780–1857) and other composers of his era, in the [4-shape] format used by modern shape note singing groups, in addition to contemporary compositions and tunes from other sources.

You can watch Millbrook from a 2013 singing from the Shenandoah Harmony at Cross Keys, Virginia, near the grave of Ananias Davisson, in this video. Notes: the singers first “sing the shapes” — they practice the tune by singing the names of the shapes — before going on to singing the words. You can hear not only the tenor melody but also a strong counter-melody in the treble line (I’m a male treble, doubling the women an octave down; this song has an especially fine treble line.)

Rufus Wainwright’s “Millbrook”. The lyrics:

The boys and girls of Millbrook are on a train from New York
Wearing new hats, shooting the shit
Deep in the heart of Dutchess County, bounty

And all the evening breakdowns will soon be washed from their hands
The next very day, as they make way
Eating the apple to the chapel, holy

Don’t even try, they’ll get away with murder
Sure as the rain washes away and brings thunder

Oh tell me can you see the gentle tower rising?
Over the pines, out of a book
Zion mistaken for the state of Millbrook

You can listen to the original recording here.

The village of Millbrook and the school. From Wikipedia about the place:

Millbrook is a village in Dutchess County, New York, United States. Millbrook is located in the Hudson Valley, on the east side of the Hudson River, 90 miles (140 km) north of New York City. Millbrook is near the center of the town of Washington, of which it is a part. In the 2020 census, Millbrook’s population was 1,455. It is often referred to as a low-key version of the Hamptons, and is one of the most affluent villages in New York.

… In 1869, the Dutchess and Columbia Railroad commenced operating with a stop called Millbrook, named after an adjacent farm. This new rail stop lay between Mechanic and Hart’s Village and the economic opportunities it afforded soon led to a developing village centered on the Millbrook stop. However, it was not until 1898 that that Millbrook was incorporated as a village.

It seems unlikely that the shapenote song Millbrook was named in 1989 after this tony village, but composers do have their whims in naming.

In any case, Millbrook the village gave its name to the nearby Millbrook School, which is no run-of-the-mill prep school. From Wikipedia:

Millbrook School is a private, coeducational preparatory boarding school located in Stanford, New York

Millbrook School was founded in 1931 by Edward Pulling. Pulling was a graduate of both Princeton University and Cambridge University, and he taught at Groton School and Avon Old Farms as well as private schools in the United Kingdom. While at Avon, Pulling began to think of creating his own school. His philosophy for a school was heavily influenced by the traditional setting he experienced at Groton and in the UK, as well as the progressive ideology that Avon possessed. After searching for suitable grounds to house the school — including an offer from then Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt to build in Hyde Park, New York — Pulling and his wife decided on the Stephenson farm five miles (8 km) outside Millbrook in nearby Stanford, New York

… Environmental Stewardship is one of the five core values of Millbrook School and the school has contributed in many ways with having Trevor Zoo [AZ: yes, a substantial zoo, specializing in endangered animals] on campus, building solar panels that will source and generate electricity for the entire campus, and building school’s architecture with LEED certification.

Bill Richardson. From my 8/17/25 posting “Socialist Park”:

When recent chat with my [old] friend Bill Richardson (William F. Richardson) turned to politics in Reading PA (county seat of Berks County, where we both grew up; and where WFR’s father William E. Richardson (1886-1948) was a progressive Democratic congressman from 1933 to 1937), I referred to the Socialist Park of my childhood (where we went for 4th of July fireworks):

— WFR: How do I not know there was a Socialist Park in Reading??

— AMZ: You don’t know about Socialist Park because it was in Sinking Spring, not Reading, and because Wyomissing had its own more elegant parks, while Socialist Park was more of a people’s park (with a dance hall and a roller rink)

WFR’s family had status and money, mine came out of the working class, but that was no bar to our friendship

Bill’s family had money, but they were also politically progressive and socially responsible, which is why he ended up going not to one of the standard all-male prep schools of the time (in New England, with British public schools as a model), but to the coed, socially conscious, and also arts-oriented Millbrook, halfway between NYC and Albany. And it’s why I came to know about Millbrook School.

So I was delighted, though puzzled, to come across the shapenote Millbrook.

 

This entry was posted on October 13, 2025 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Education, Friendship, Language and religion, Music, My life, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.