Composer - Lyricist: Sydney Bertram Carter
From HymnsWithoutWords
Biography
Sydney Bertram Carter (1915 – 2004) was an English poet, songwriter, folk musician and Quaker, born in Camden Town, London. He is best known for the song Lord of the Dance (1963), set to the tune of the American Shaker song Simple Gifts. Other notable songs include Julian of Norwich, One More Step along the road I go... and When I needed a neighbour
He studied at Christ's Hospital school in Horsham, West Sussex and Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in history in 1936. A committed pacifist, Carter joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit on the outbreak of World War II and served in Egypt, Palestine and Greece.
He worked as a lyricist for Donald Swann's reviews and musicals in the 1950s and in 1962, produced an album Putting Out The Dustbin with Sheila Hancock, with the song Last Cigarette on failing to give up smoking that became a minor hit.
Partly inspired by Jesus, and partly by a statue of Shiva as Nataraja, Sydney wrote the lyrics "Lord Of The Dance" in 1963, as an adaptation of Joseph Brackett's "Simple Gifts", and a tribute to Shaker music. He later stated, "I did not think the churches would like it at all. I thought many people would find it pretty far flown, probably heretical and anyway dubiously Christian. But in fact people did sing it and, unknown to me, it touched a chord… Anyway, it's the sort of Christianity I believe in."
"I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality. By Christ I mean not only Jesus; in other times and places, other planets, there may be other Lords of the Dance. But Jesus is the one I know of first and best. I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus.
Whether Jesus ever leaped in Galilee to the rhythm of a pipe or drum I do not know. We are told that David danced (and as an act of worship too), so it is not impossible. The fact that many Christians have regarded dancing as a bit ungodly (in a church, at any rate) does not mean that Jesus did. The Shakers didn't...
Green Print for Song (1974)
