Sowash: "The Country Fair”, a capella  for SATB chorus.

August being a month of rural fairs, consider this anecdote about the grumpy ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, as told by Izaak Walton in The Compleat Angler:

        “Let me tell you, Scholar, that Diogenes walked on a day, with his friend, to see a country fair; where he saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nutcrackers, and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other gimcracks; and, having observed them, and all the other finimburns that make a complete country-fair, he said to his friend, “Lord, how many things are there in this world of which Diogenes hath no need!”

Isn’t “finimbrun” a wonderful word?  Walton seems to have invented it.  I like to think of him, quill pen in hand, script paper on the writing desk before him, running his fingers through his hair, rummaging through the fusty corners of his mind, seeking a generic word to summarize the plenitude of sundries, trifles, trinkets, gewgaws and knick-knacks he had envisioned.  Finding no suitable word, he wastes no more time; he makes up a great one on the spot.  "Finimbrun!"  Writers could get away with such things in 1653.  For my money, it's a mighty fine word, even if it has never achieved widespread usage.

Walton’s telling has a charm all its own; his word-strings have a rickety, mock-stately, skimble-shanked, hobbledehoy rhythm.  You’d think it was a parody of 17th-century prose if you didn’t know that 17th-century prose is precisely what it is.  Delightful to the eye when read, it's not entirely felicitous for singing.  When I set the anecdote to music I made apologies to Walton’s shade and trimmed the text, thus:

        “One day Diogenes walked with a friend to a country fair.  And there he saw ribbons and snuff boxes and looking glasses and bird cages and all the other finimbruns which go to make up a country fair.  And he said, “Lord, how many things there are in this world of which Diogenes hath no need.”

Having surgically reduced the paragraph to its bones, I fleshed it out again by having the choristers repeat words and phrases.  “Diogenes!” they sing, eight times over, right off the bat, a fanfare to introduce the main character and capture your attention before the anecdote begins.  The repetitions continue throughout, with humorous effect, developing at length into the little fugue that starts on the bottom of page nine.

A fugue, mind you!  Music doesn't get more 17th-century than that!  The ultimate flowering of canonic repetition.

When the last line is reached and we are waiting to hear what the philosopher, afloat in flood of finimbruns, will have to say, the music — appropriately, on the word “Lord,” — suddenly turns solemn, even hymn-like.  We’re expecting an expression of gratitude.  Maybe Diogenes will say something like, “What a piece of work is man, who can devise so fantastic a farrago of, of, of … well, finimbruns!”

But no.  We’re talking about Diogenes after all, the Groucho of his time and place.

“How many things there are in this world,” he says, "of which Diogenes … hath … no … need!"

Ha, ha!

May our lives be free of — or, if we prefer, favored by — finimbruns!

To hear the celebrated choral conductor Gregg Smith leading his Gregg Smith Singers in an exuberant rendition of "The Country Fair,” click here:
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/country_fair.mp3

To see a PDF of the score, click here:
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/country_fair.pdf