At the River (‘Shall We Gather at the River’)

Program notes

About the Work

‘Shall We Gather at the River?’ is one of the best-known American hymns. Robert Lowry, a Baptist minister in Brooklyn, wrote words and tune in 1864, and it was published the following year. Its picture of the saints meeting beside the river of life comes from the last chapter of the Book of Revelation.

Charles Ives grew up with hymns like this one in the churches and outdoor revival meetings of Connecticut, and they run through his music from first to last. He used Lowry’s tune in the finale of his Fourth Violin Sonata, subtitled ‘Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting’, and around 1916 he reworked that movement as a short song for voice and piano called ‘At the River’. Aaron Copland made his own, plainer arrangement of the same hymn in 1952.

The LSO lists the piece under the hymn’s first line and does not say in what version it will be heard. Barbara Hannigan is billed as soprano as well as conductor, and the four minutes allowed are a good deal more than Ives’s song takes on its own.

What to Listen For

Ives leaves the tune almost intact and changes everything around it. The harmony leans away from the melody, as if the accompanist were half remembering a different key, and the phrases stretch and hesitate the way a congregation’s singing does. Listen above all to the ending. Lowry’s refrain answers its own question with a confident ‘Yes, we’ll gather at the river’. Ives lets the question come back once more and leaves it hanging.