You Are Alone To Sleep

Composer's Note:

Based on “Grandmother’s Lullaby,” this piece is a little fantasy on a tune that was passed from Frances Goose to her granddaughter Joan Swallow. Joan is a Southern Cheyenne woman from Geary, Oklahoma, and is known as a singer who performs at revivals, funerals, & church services. Her work has been transcribed and discussed by Virginia Giglio in Southern Cheyenne Women’s Songs (University of Oklahoma Press, 1994).

“Grandmother’s Lullaby” is borrowed, changed, and harmonized in this solo guitar lullaby, but the melody hopefully remains remarkable in its use of only four tones. An introduction and conclusion (borrowed from a manuscript of mine that Aaron Larget-Caplan saw framed and hanging above the photographer Susan Wilson’s sink) formalize the setting. The title, a free translation of part of the Cheyenne lullaby text, suggests the “isolation of the baby in a peaceful place of sleep within the surrounding, waking world.”  (Giglio, p.46).  The guitar chords I chose to decorate the tune perhaps reveal the discomforts and potential threats of the waking outside world, and should awaken (albeit gently) our own fears and feelings of isolation. 

I am honored to offer this lullaby to Aaron Larget-Caplan as part of his guitar lullaby project.