President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Message to Congress,
January 6, 1941
FOUR FREEDOMS
The fourth is:
In this speech Roosevelt explained his vision
of our American ideals of individual liberties.
These are freedoms we should celebrate
and honor at Thanksgiving each year.
Norman Rockwell
is the artist of
Norman Rockwell created this series of paintings
based on the "Four Freedoms" theme after being
inspired by Franklin Roosevelt's speech. His art
displayed these freedoms in four scenes of American
life current for the time period and place where
Rockwell lived in New England during the 1940's.
Images of these paintings were first publicly
circulated by a famous popular magazine of the
day called "The Saturday Evening Post" for
which Rockwell worked as an illustrator. The
paintings won public approval and were then
used by our government during WWII to help
in the war bond drive.
SIMPLE GIFTS
Sung by MARILYN HORNE
Arranged by AARON COPLAND
'Tis the gift to be simple,
'Tis the gift to be simple,
'Tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves
in the place just right
'Twill be in the valley of
love and delight.
SIMPLE GIFTS
from "APPALACHIAN SPRING"
By AARON COPLAND
"Simple Gifts" is an American religious song written
by the Shaker Joseph Bracken Jr.(1797-1882) in the year
1848. This song was named as one of the forty-two songs
that every American should know by the Music Educators
National Conference in 1966. Until Aaron Copland used it
in his 1944 composition Appalachian Spring, the melody was
largely unknown outside of Shaker communities. The song
celebrates a core principle in the Shaker belief system:
the idea of simplicity.
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| Norman Rockwell |