The Slave Scale – Amazing Grace

NottHeads

Wintley Phipps provides a history lesson to a song that inspires and provides courage. The black keys on the piano; 5 note scale (pentatonic scale ) is the basis for most of the Negro spirituals. “Every time I Feel The Spirit”, “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”, and “Amazing Grace” are but a few examples.
John Newton wrote this hymn after converting to Christianity. The hymn describes his feelings about having survived a dangerous storm while he sailed on his slave ship, the Greyhound, in 1748. Several years later he abandoned the slave trade. Milton maintained that his true conversion did not take place until several years after the storm incident. A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five pitches per octave. Pentatonic scales are very common and are found all over the world, including but not limited to the clarinet Music of Epirus in northwest Greece and Southern Albania[1], the tuning of the Ethiopian krar and the Indonesian gamelan, the melodies of Chinese folk music, African-American spirituals, Celtic folk music,

Hemitonic or anhemitonic

Ethnomusicology commonly classifies pentatonic scales as either hemitonic or anhemitonic. Hemitonic scales contain one or more semitones and anhemitonic scales do not contain semitones. For example, a hemitonic pentatonic scale common in some areas of North and West Africa contains flatted 2nd, 3rd, and 6th degrees (hence, if the scale begins in C, it will contain a D-flat, E-flat, and A-flat, plus a G-natural).

Amazing Grace is a well-known Christian hymn. The words were written c. 1772 by Englishman John Newton. They first appeared in print in Newton’s Olney Hymns, 1779 that he worked on with William Cowper.

Amazing Grace

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promis’d good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.
John Newton, Olney Hymns (London: W. Oliver, 1779)

~ by notthead on April 29, 2007.