Connecticut

In 2011, a bill was introduced to the Connecticut General Assembly to make Joseph Leggo's Beautiful Connecticut Waltz the official state waltz.  That bill did not proceed.  Then in 2013, it was proposed that the Beautiful Connecticut Waltz be named as the states second official song (the first is Yankee Doodle) and that proposal was passed in April of that year.  There appears to be only one recorded version of the song which you can hear below. Lyrics and a simplified score may be found at the end of this blog.

You will find an excellent biography of Joe Leggo, the composer of Beautiful Connecticut Waltz, and the story behind the song in this official Connecticut Legislature webpage. Leggo wrote the piece for his wife in 1949, just two years after moving to Connecticut.  Interestingly, the same bill that made Leggo's tune the second official state song also declared that Gustave Whitehead, not the Wright brothers made the first powered airplane flight - in Connecticut, of course.

There are two other Connecticut waltzes of note.  In 2001, the group ShoreGrass recorded their own, original Connecticut Waltz in their very first album, In Connecticut.  It is purely instrumental and bluegrass in style. Here it is:

The third Connecticut waltz of note is by the American composer Virgil Thomson.  Thomson is known for his musical portraits of his friends.  He would sit the friend across from the piano, just as an artist might sit a subject if front of an easel, and compose a spontaneous and intuitive musical portrait of the friend. He composed 140 such portraits including, in 1935, a portrait of Harold Lewis Cook, an American poet, who at the time of the sitting was head of the English Department at Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut.  He titled the work Connecticut Waltz: Harold Lewis Cook.  You can hear it hear below in a performance by Logan Skelton (from an album titled Virgil Thomson).

What was left out?  Evidence of three additional tunes titled Connecticut Waltz were found but no hints as to what those tunes might sound like.  One by Barbara Shaw and two listed in a 1950's copyright summary - one by James Alphonse and the other by Ruth Bender.

The simplified score of Joseph Leggo's official state song, followed by the lyrics:

    Beautiful Connecticut Waltz.
    Play it over again.
    Your rivers and streams
    Flow through my dreams.
    I’m hoping it never would end.

    From Hartford to New Haven,
    I’ve kept on savin’
    All of my dances for you.

    Beautiful Connecticut Waltz,
    As cool as a mid-summer’s breeze.
    The birds sing their song
    As we dance along.
    Together forever we’ll be.

    From Hartford to New Haven,
    I’ve kept on savin’
    All my dances for you.

    Beautiful Connecticut Waltz.
    The birds sing their song
    As we dance along.
    Together forever we’ll be.

    From Hartford to New Haven,
    I’ll keep on savin’
    All of my dances for you.

    Beautiful Connecticut Waltz
    All of my dancing forever and ever with you
    For ever and ever,
    Forever with you.

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