Juanita (Caroline Norton song)

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"Juanita"
JuanitaSheetMusicCover1855.png
Sheet music cover (1855)
Song
Published1855
Composer(s) Caroline Norton
Lyricist(s) Caroline Norton

"Juanita" ("Nita Juanita") is a love song variously subtitled "A Spanish Ballad", "A Song of Spain", and others. "Juanita" was number two of a six song collection entitled Songs of Affection published December 1853 by Chappell & Co. and composed by noted Victorian society figure and social reformer Caroline Norton. [1] Juanita was the first ballad by a woman composer to achieve massive sales, [2] and its original setting (for a soprano) has been seen to be subtly subversive of gender roles (as the woman singing the song is taking the part of the wooing lover), [3] a topic of some significance to Mrs. Norton.

As composing was seen as a masculine occupation, it was typical to borrow or adapt the melodies. [3] The opening four-bar phrase of the song is taken from Handel's aria Lascia ch'io pianga from the opera Rinaldo , although the subsequent melody differs from that of the aria. The name of the song is derived from the refrains:

Nita! Juanita! Ask thy soul if we should part!
Nita! Juanita! Lean thou on my heart. [4]

Nita! Juanita! Let me linger by thy side!
Nita! Juanita! Be my own fair bride! [4]

"Juanita" appears in numerous songbooks and has been recorded many times. Early successes were by Frank C. Stanley (1905) and by Emilio de Gogorza in 1919. [5] The song was included in the Jo Stafford and Gordon MacRae album Memory Songs (1955). A crowd of picnickers sings the song, near the 41-minute mark, in the 1955 film Picnic. Jim Reeves included the song (as 'My Juanita') in his album Girls I Have Known (1958) [6] and Bing Crosby featured the song in a medley on his album 101 Gang Songs (1961).

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References

  1. Fuld, James (2000). The Book of World-famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk. Courier Corporation. p. 325. ISBN   978-0486414751.
  2. Scott, Derek (2001). "3". The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlor (2nd ed.). Ashgate. ISBN   978-0754602590.
  3. 1 2 Swafford, Joanna. "Subversive Singing: Role Reversals in Caroline Norton's 'Juanita'". Songs of the Victorians. Retrieved July 16, 2017.
  4. 1 2 Norton, "Juanita"
  5. Whitburn, Joel (1986). Joel Whitburn's Pop Memories 1890-1954 . Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research Inc. p.  534. ISBN   0-89820-083-0.
  6. "allmusic.com". allmusic.com. Retrieved January 1, 2019.

Bibliography