John Jacob Niles

Stunning in its simplicity this unaccompanied setting of the plaintive John Jacob Niles song is breathtaking!

John Jacob Niles well-known as a folklorist and traditional music performer composed this tender setting now arranged for mixed and treble choirs. Available for SATB SAB and SA. Performance Time: Approx. 4:30.

I Wonder As I Wander by John Jacob Niles arranged by Keith Christopher for SATB chorus with Piano accompaniment and optional Flute.This Christian folk hymn was inspired by a song heardby Niles at a fundraising meeting for evangelicals which he attended in Murphy North Carolina. Niles wrote of the moment he first heard the tune:'A girl had stepped out to the edge of the littleplatform attached to the automobile. She began to sing. Her clothes were unbelievable dirty and ragged and she too was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins.... But best of all she was beautiful and in heruntutored way she could sing. She smiled as she sang smiled rather sadly and sang only a single line of a song'.Niles requested that the girl repeat the fragment seven times paying her a quarter perperformance and left with 'three lines of verse a garbled fragment of melodic material—and a magnificent idea'. He completed his composition on October 4 1933 and I Wonder As I Wander was firstperformed on December 19 1933 at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown North Carolina.