After lurking for almost 30 years, I have a question. Way back I don’t know when, I remember reading a list of Blackmore’s Night’s traditional / classical melodies with each song carefully annotated. Now since it was forever ago, I cannot find that list anywhere anymore. Is my recollection a fake memory, or does this list exist and if, can anyone point me towards the right direction? Thanks in advance!
I remember there was a list of Jon Lord’s classical quotations, but never heard of this. I’d be interested myself, particularly in the light of my recent discovery:
Familiar melody, eh? It is from a 1976 recording of Ahmad Jamal. I wonder if it’s his original, or quoting something else.
I seem to have a vivid visual memory of how the list looked like on screen, but I could also be dreaming and/or conflating it with something else, as this was more than a decade ago…
That piece of music sounds awful lot like God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen? Lest I’m entirely tone deaf.
Indeed, it is, thank you! After proper blackmorization it became, of course, the Village in the Sand
1 Like
This is an old page on this site:
I remember it as only having Deep Purple songs on it but I can see now that there is a BN section at the bottom of the page.
2 Likes
Thank you! I am pretty sure this is not the list I was thinking of, but it is the first to fit the description to a level.
Maybe it would be worth the while to try and come up with a list like that; many of the sources are documented and/or can easily be picked by ear, after all.
I absolutely agree that it is a valuable and interesting resource that deserves attention. I’ll put that on the to-do list!
1 Like
Great! I’ll take the time in the coming days to compile what I have, and post it below.
2 Likes
I started work on an Excel sheet and put this together from Wikipedia, the list linked above + nick’s input and album booklets (for the ones I have as physical copies). There is plenty more, of course, and even many of these are still kind of vague. But it’s a start!
| Name | Credits | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The Clock Ticks On | trad. by Tielman Susato, Blackmore, Night | Tielman Susato |
| Play Minstrel Play | trad. by Pierre Attaingnant, Blackmore, Night | Pierre Attaingnant |
| Ocean Gypsy | Michael Dunford, Betty Thatcher | Renaissance cover |
| Writing on the Wall | trad. by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Blackmore, Night | Swan Lake |
| Renaissance Faire | trad. by Tielman Susato, Blackmore, Night | Tielman Susato |
| Greensleeves | trad. | Anonymous |
| Wish You Were Here | Teijo Agélii-Leskelä | Rednex cover |
| Past Time with Good Company | trad. by King Henry VIII | King Henry VIII |
| Gone with the Wind | Blackmore, Knipper, Night | Includes “Polyushko-polye” by Lev Knipper, a popular Russian song of mid-1930s. |
| March the Heroes Home | trad. by Michael Praetorius, Blackmore, Night | Michael Praetorius |
| Spanish Nights (I Remember It Well) | trad. | Albeniz/Malaguena |
| Now and Then | Night | J. S. Bach/Well-tempered clavier, Prelude in C |
| Self Portrait | Blackmore, Ronnie James Dio | Rainbow cover |
| I Still Remember | trad. by Tielman Susato, Blackmore, Night | Tielman Susato: Mon Ami |
| Crowning of the King | trad. by Tielman Susato, Blackmore, Night | Mainly a Tielman Susato song |
| Mid Winter’s Night | trad., Blackmore, Night | Borrowed from a Provenceal French carol from the sixteenhundreds |
| Waiting Just for You | trad. by Jeremiah Clarke, Blackmore, Night | Main theme is taken from an 18th century melody by Clarke |
| Village on the Sand | Blackmore, Night | God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen(?) |
| Diamonds and Rust | Baez | Joan Baez |
| Ghost of a Rose | Blackmore, Night, Edward Elgar | Inspired by Jacqueline Dupre and Elgar |
| Rainbow Blues | Ian Anderson | Jethro Tull |
| All for One | trad. | based on Breton drinking song ‘Son Ar Chistr’ |
| 25 Years | Ritchie Blackmore, Candice Night | Ukrainian/Bulgarian traditional melody |
| World of Stone | trad., Blackmore, Night | German traditional song All Voll |
| St. Teresa | Eric Bazilian, Rick Chertoff, Rob Hyman, Joan Osborne | Joan Osborne cover |
| Mond Tanz / Child in Time | Blackmore / Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, Ian Paice | Deep Purple cover |
| Winter (Basse Dance) | Ritchie Blackmore | the first phrase comes from Gaspar Sanz’s “Espanoleta” written in 1674, this piece is familiar today from its adaptation by Joaquin Rodrigo for the second movement of his “Fantasía para un gentilhombre”, which he composed for classical guitar virtuoso Andres Segovia in 1954 though Blackmore quickly goes off on his own from there. |
| Lord of the Dance / Simple Gifts | Sydney Carter / Joseph Brackett | Shaker song |
| Locked Within the Crystal Ball | trad., Blackmore, Candice Night | Theme from “Stella Splendens” from “Llibre Vermell de Montserrat”, 14th century |
| Gilded Cage | trad., Blackmore, Night | inspired by Thomas Roth and Albert Danneman of Des Geyers |
| Rainbow Eyes | Blackmore, Ronnie James Dio | Rainbow cover |
| Can’t Help Falling in Love | Luigi Creatore, Hugo Peretti, George David Weiss | Elvis Presley cover |
| Highland | Peter Grönvall, Nanne Nordqvist | One More Time cover |
| Journeyman (Vandraren) | Helena Bäckman, Py Bäckman, Håkan Hemlin, Mats Wester | Nordman cover; English lyrics: Night |
| Celluloid Heroes | Ray Davies | The Kinks cover |
| I Think It’s Going to Rain Today | Newman | Randy Newman cover |
| Troika | Ritchie Blackmore, Candice Night | We heard a song on a Ukrainian soap opera that inspired this song |
| Lady in Black | Ken Hensley | Uriah Heep cover |
| Minstrels in the Hall (Instrumental) | Blackmore | First few notes are very similar to a song called Minstrel Hall |
| The Temple of the King | Blackmore, Ronnie James Dio | Rainbow cover |
| The Ashgrove | Traditional | Welsh song |
| Somewhere over the Sea (The Moon Is Shining) | Blackmore, Night | Based on an old Czech folk melody, we asked Czech friends but they couldn’t name it |
| The Moon Is Shining (Somewhere over the Sea) | Blackmore, Night | Based on an old Czech folk melody, we asked Czech friends but they couldn’t name it |
| The Spinner’s Tale | Traditional; by Richard Lionheart, Blackmore, Night | Richard Lionheart |
| Allan Yn N Fan (Instrumental) | Georg Hesse | Geyers cover |
| Darker Shade of Black (Instrumental) | Blackmore | Plaisir D’Amour |
| Long Long Time | Gary White | Linda Ronstadt cover |
| Moonlight Shadow | Oldfield | Mike Oldfield cover |
| I Got You Babe | Sonny Bono | Sonny & Cher cover |
| Once Upon December | trad. | Italian traditional |
| Darker Shade of Black (Instrumental) | Blackmore | Plaisir D’Amour |
| Wish You Were Here (2021) | Teijo Agélii-Leskelä | Rednex cover |
| Second Element | Thomas Schwarz, Frank Peterson, Mathias Meissner, Andrea Weiss | Sarah Brightman cover |
3 Likes
To be clear: I’ve converted the post above into a wiki article. This means that people who have been on the forum for long enough and earned certain trust level, can edit it like a wikipedia article.
3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Music discovered recently