Maiden's Prayer

"A Maiden's Prayer" (original Polish title: "Modlitwa dziewicy" Op. 4, French: "La prière d'une vierge") is a composition of Polish composer Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska (1834–1861). It was published in 1856 in Warsaw, and then as a supplement to the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris in 1859. It is a short piano piece of medium difficulty for intermediate pianists. Some have liked it for its charming and romantic melody; others have described it as "sentimental salon tosh." The pianist and academic Arthur Loesser described it as "this dowdy product of ineptitude."

For the cocktail sometimes known as the Maiden's Prayer, see Between the Sheets (cocktail).
Sheet music title page

In country music
"Maiden's Prayer"
Single by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
B-side"Takin' It Home"
ReleasedMay 1941
RecordedFebruary 24 1941[1]
StudioWBAP Studio, Blackstone Hotel, Fort Worth, Texas[2]
GenreWestern swing
LabelOkeh 06205
Songwriter(s)Bob Wills
Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys singles chronology
"Take Me Back To Tulsa"
(1941)		 "Maiden's Prayer"
(1941)		 "Twin Guitar Special"
(1941)

The American musician Bob Wills heard "Maiden's Prayer" played on a fiddle while he was a barber in Roy, New Mexico,[3] and arranged the piece in the Western swing style. Wills first recorded it as an instrumental in 1935 (Vocalion 03924, released in 1938),[4][5] and it quickly became one of his signature tunes. Later, it became a standard recorded by many country artists, including Buck Owens on his number-one 1965 album I've Got a Tiger By the Tail.[6] The tune is still a standard in the repertoire of Western swing bands.

Wills wrote lyrics for "Maiden's Prayer" and recorded it again in 1941 (Okeh 06205) with vocals by Tommy Duncan.[7] His lyrics reflect the title, and the song, as written by Wills, opens with:

Twilight falls, evening shadows find,
There 'neath the stars, a maiden so fair divine.
The moon on high seemed to see her there.
In her eyes is a light, shining ever so bright,
She whispered a silent prayer.

"Maiden's Prayer" was released in May 1941, and quickly hit number 1 on June 28, 1941, in The Billboard's "Hillbilly and Foreign Record Hits Of the Month".[8]

Relatively few country singers have covered "Maiden's Prayer" with vocals, but they include Ray Price on his tribute album San Antonio Rose (1962)[9] and Willie Nelson on his album Red Headed Stranger (on the 2000 CD reissue but not the 1975 LP).[10] Both singers used the lyrics written by Wills with minor variations, e.g. the maiden is an Indian in Price's version. Also the Everly Brothers recorded a rendition of the song in 1973.[11]

Wills recorded the song a third time on the 1963 album Bob Wills Sings and Plays.[4] When he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, "Maiden's Prayer" was one of the works cited.

The "Maiden's Prayer" is quoted in the 1930 opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. It appears midway through act 1, played on an out-of-tune piano at a honky-tonk frequented by prostitutes and their clients. Jakob Schmidt, one of the denizens of Mahagonny, refers to the song as "ewige Kunst" ("eternal art").

"Maiden's Prayer" is heard off-stage in act 4 of Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. "Maiden's Prayer" appears as an insert piano song in the anime series Strawberry Panic. "Maiden's Prayer" is played by garbage trucks in Taiwan. As residents have to take out their own trash, the garbage truck signals everyone to do so with the melody of this piece, along with Beethoven's Für Elise.[12][13][14][15]

The Rodgers and Hart standard "It Never Entered My Mind" refers to this song in the penultimate line.

In the 1955 Italian Scandal in Sorrento film, Antonio and Violante play the tune together on a piano at the very end of the movie

In Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1977 horror movie House, the character Melody plays the opening section of "A Maiden's Prayer" on the piano a few times.

In 1993, the North Korean Wangjaesan Dance Troupe's VHS tape featured this song in electronic arrangement.

In the 2013 television serial The Tunnel, Anglo-French actor and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg performs a voice-over to the tune of the Maiden's Prayer, singing a mixture of French and English:

Venez dans mes bras, closer to me, dear.
Donnez-vous à moi; set aside all fear.
Restons enlacés pour l'éternité,
Yes, you shall be mine till the end of time.

In literature

The Maiden's Prayer was used in a macabre context in Mary Wilkins Freeman's ghost story The Wind in the Rose-Bush (published 1903), where the main character, roused from sleep by the sound of the melody being played in a seemingly empty house, rushed downstairs to see who was at the piano, only to find that there was no one there.[16]

References
  1. 78 Record: Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys - Maiden's Prayer (1941), retrieved 2021-07-20
  2. Russell, Tony (2004). Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921-1942. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 965. ISBN 0195139895.
  3. McWhorter, Cowboy Fiddler, pp. 59–60: "Bob said, 'He played "The Spanish Two-Step" and I locked the door where he couldn't get out and nobody else could get in, and I made him stay there until he taught me that and "Maiden's Prayer." Finally he nodded. I didn't know whether he needed to go to the bathroom or if I was doing it right, but I let him out.' That Mexican taught him those two tunes."
  4. Praguefrank's Country Music Discographies: Bob Wills – part II Retrieved 2 January 2012
  5. "Maiden's Prayer", Bob Wills with music sample, AllMusic. Retrieved 1 January 2012
  6. "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail, Buck Owens review with chart and music sample, AllMusic. Retrieved 1 January 2012
  7. "A Maiden's Prayer", Bob Wills with music sample, Allmusic. Retrieved 1 January 2012
  8. "Hillbilly Recordings – Month Ending June 28, 1941" (PDF). The Billboard. Cincinnati, Ohio. 28 June 1941. p. 94. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  9. San Antonio Rose Ray Price review with music sample, Allmusic. Retrieved 1 January 2012
  10. Red Headed Stranger Willie Nelson review with chart and music sample, Allmusic. Retrieved 1 January 2012
  11. The Everly Brothers, The Masters, Eagle Records, 1997
  12. "'A Maiden's Prayer': A call to dump all our garbage" Archived 2011-08-11 at the Wayback Machine by Leo Maliksi (7 October 2008)
  13. "In Taiwan, trash disposal is a classical affair". MNN – Mother Nature Network. Archived from the original on 2018-10-03. Retrieved 2018-10-03.
  14. "Taiwan Enlists Garbage Trucks To Teach the English Language" by Jason Dean, The Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2002 (subscription required)
  15. "When You Hear Beethoven, It’s Time to Take Out the Trash (and Mingle)" by Amy Qin and Amy Chang Chien, The New York Times, February 8, 2022
  16. "The Wind in the Rose-Bush" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Bibliography
  • McWhorter, Frankie. Cowboy Fiddler in Bob Wills' Band. University of North Texas Press, 1997. ISBN 1-57441-025-3
  • Mishler, Craig. The Crooked Stovepipe: Athapaskan Fiddle Music and Square Dancing in Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada. University of Illinois Press, 1993. ISBN 0-252-01996-2
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