| Misc. Notes
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Originally penned as The Roots Song, n°4, volume 1, a piano improvisation that was associated, as an afterthought, to the song poem by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835) which was mentioned to me by an old lady I was interviewing when researching my roots in South Petherwin, Cornwall, at the time my great uncle John Gunner, the village headmaster, played the organ at the local church. Back home, it incidentally occurred to me my improvisation was particularly well adapted to the late romantic and sentimental mood of the poetry in its reminiscence of Goethe's Mignon.The latter has been set to music many times, less so The Better Land, which is why, I spontaneously added the first stanza to the solo piano score. The text appears in a variety of hymnals between c.1840 -1900, with music by diverse authors, so I surmise it was sung in churches around Launceston and elsewhere in that period.
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