Posted on 09/21/2017 2:29:13 PM PDT by mairdie
"Yanky Doodle" as originally played, from Major Henry Livingston, Jr.'s music manuscript book. Major Livingston joined the 3rd New York in 1775 and was part of General Richard Montgomery's Revolutionary Army that went north to invade Canada. He was also the actual author of the Christmas poem, "The Night Before Christmas."
Henry's taste runs strongly toward hymns and comic operas, as well as the more traditional dance music of the period. I'm ruined when it comes to the hymns, but I was able to purchase an original score of one of his favorite light opera's, "The Duenna" by Richard Sheridan, and I've transcribed most of the opera.
Actual author of the Night Before Christmas??? Really??
Livingston and Clark Clement Moore were related by marriage, so it's possible that Livingston wrote the poem and it eventually got to Moore and was published.
A computer analysis said that Livingston was the more likely author.
MacDonald Jackson and I, my husband and a friend who was president of computational linguistics while I was chair of programming languages, spent two solid years and then some doing statistical analysis of unconscious patterns in poetry. One method we used was to transcribe the entire bodies of work of Livingston and Moore into phonemes, the sounds of words. Then we statistically compared the phoneme patterns of those bodies with the phonemes of the Christmas poem. Every test said Henry.
Mac is an emeritus professor in New Zealand, most known for his work on Shakespeare.
Henry’s next door neighbor and first cousin was married to a brother-in-law of Moore’s aunt. The story in the Livingston household was that a governess going to work for a family in the south, which could have been the children of his next door neighbor, stopped off at the Moore’s and dropped the poem then.
I have to say, that as a musical piece, the version we adopted was far superior. This original version is too simplistic.
The difference in the original “Star Spangled Banner” is quite interesting as well.
Thanks for posting this! :-)
Do you have any personal knowledge of how this analysis was done? I know of a piece of writing that I have long wished to see put through this same sort of process to determine authorship of it.
MASSIVE work over years! It’s preparing the data to go through programs and then putting the results through statistical programs. The programs that are out there have the worst human interfaces you can imagine. I was in the User Interface Institute at IBM Research, which is one of the reason we were able to provide Mac with the level of data that let him dig down to China.
Well, remember, these people are passing around hand-written copies. There’s only two or three pieces that are multiple lines. I think they must have expected people to embroider on their own. There’s a set of music manuscripts from that period and this is one of the larger ones. I’m planning to do Farewell to Lochabor next, which is more intricate. But almost all are simple melodies.
It was a retired professor in New Zealand, MacDonald P. Jackson, who did the computer study, and there's also a wikipedia page about him.
Most of that Wikipedia article comes from my website. I prepared the data that went into my husband’s computer programs. We laid out the data to make it easy for Mac to pull out information. Then either Mac or Paul, at Mac’s instruction, would run statistical tests. That sequence repeated for YEARS!
I have read about some University that already created the database that I think will be relevant to the work. I saw an article here on Free Republic that claimed they finally proved through computer analysis who wrote the various Federalist papers under the pseudonym "Publius."
I believe the answer was that James Madison wrote the ones which were in dispute.
Oddly enough, the piece of writing I wanted analyzed was also written under the name of "Publius" at a time when only Madison was still alive and active in national affairs.
I would think it would be a simple matter to run this text through that same database they used to determine that Madison had written the Federalist papers that were in dispute.
Now if I could only remember which University did it, and if someone could convince them to do the piece in which I am interested as well, that would be a fine piece of work. At least we would know.
If it turns out to be Madison, it might send a few shockwaves through several debates on matters of citizenship.
They did, and I think the evolved product turned out better than the root from which it began.
There’s a set of music manuscripts from that period and this is one of the larger ones. I’m planning to do Farewell to Lochabor next, which is more intricate. But almost all are simple melodies.
I don't know that one, but I am partial to "the girl I left behind me." :)
>>I don’t know that one, but I am partial to “the girl I left behind me.”
I should think you would be. She undoubtedly still misses you!
I suppose they expected people to do a lot of their own improvisation.
If I can get the special characters out of Mac’s first email, I’ll put it up. It’s sort of historical now. 2011, not 2007. One of the many problems we have with getting the attribution changed is that Mac writes peer-to-peer. I just received a book from someone wanting me to go over it and the chapter on Mac’s research was horribly light. He explained that his publisher wanted it to read like a magazine article. Mac does NOT read like a magazine article. Trying to explain how you decide which phoneme groups are valid for comparison twists your tongue in your mouth. I always thought the simplest way to prove the matter was to make people read Moore. He was the worst poet imaginable! Ghastly. Every time I had to go through data to analyze for yet another pass, I would absolutely SUFFER through Moore’s writing. Livingston’s floats like a dream.
Ah well, thanks for the info. I don't see how it can help in the particular task I had in mind, and one of which I think you too would be very interested in the outcome.
James McClure ring a bell? :)
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