The 5 Browns Simple Gifts/Going Home

Описание: The 5 Browns couldn't decide which melody they adored more, Copland's Simple Gifts, or Dvorak's Going Home theme from the New World Symphony. With the mastery of Jeffrey Shumway's writing for multiple pianos, they were able to combine both. A bit about the words "Going Home" by William Arms Fisher, a pupil of Dvorak...

"Goin' home, goin' home, I'm a goin' home;
Quiet-like, some still day, I'm jes' goin' home.

It's not far, jes' close by,
Through an open door;
Work all done, care laid by,
Goin' to fear no more.

Mother's there 'spectin' me,
Father's waitin' too;
Lots o' folks gather'd there,
All the friends I knew,
All the friends I knew.
Home, I'm goin' home!"


The Largo, with its haunting melody, is the outpouring of Dvorak's own home-longing, with something of the loneliness of far-off prairie horizons, the faint memory of the native's bygone days, and a sense of the tragedy of the black-man as it sings in his "spirituals." Deeper still it is a moving expression of that nostalgia of the soul all human beings feel. That the lyric opening theme of the Largo should spontaneously suggest the words 'Goin' home, goin' home' is natural enough, and that the lines that follow the melody should take the form of a negro spiritual accords with the genesis of the symphony.


-- William Arms Fisher, Boston, July 21, 1922.