Talk:Sydney Carter

Compositions
I would find it very useful if a list of Sydney Carter's compositions was included here. Sidefall 14:51, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Quaker
On several websites, it is written that Carter was a Quaker. But on a quaker website, it is clearly mentionned that he was a friend of Friends, this means a person close to the Quakers, but not a member.

PostPosted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:22 am   Post subject: Reply with quote The experts generally agree that My Life Flows on in Endless Song is falsely attributed as an old Quaker hymn. It appears to date from before Quakers sang hymns. But it definitely is a Quaker favorite. Sydney Carter hymns tend also to be Quaker favorites. He was not a Quaker but a "friend of the Friends" who identified with much of what Friends stand for (he was a CO, for example). Old Shaker hymns like 'Tis a Gift to Be Simple are also popular among Friends. Shakers were not Quakers, but are sort of distant cousins. John Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker. His works were written as poems, but some of them have been set to music and become hymns. Bill Samuel, Webservant, QuakerInfo.com

Carter was a member of the Church of England. .

MHM-en (talk) 14:19, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Need some work here on his hymn writing
I took out the section on "Lord of the Dance" because it was a straight duplicate of the hymn's article. There does need to be some biographical information on his hymnody, however. Mangoe (talk) 15:10, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Dodgy links
Can somebody more experienced than me fix the links to the obituaries in The Independent and The Telegraph, please? Idt1957 (talk) 15:49, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

When I Needed A Neighbour
I am pretty sure Sydney Carter wrote the hymn "When I Needed A Neighbour", but this hymn does not appear to be mentioned in the article. Rollo August (talk) 17:23, 7 March 2021 (UTC) Many apologies  -  I have just had another look at the article and seen this hymn is mentioned. Rollo August (talk) 17:26, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

'Shaker Allegro'
I removed the text struck out here (added in 2022 by ):

He is best known for the song "Lord of the Dance" (1967), whose music is based on the Shaker song "Simple Gifts"

This is unsourced, and I think based on a misunderstanding. The first use I can find of "Shaker Allegro" is the 1940 book The Gift to be Simple (p136) which says: "[Simple Gifts] is a rather lively piece, Shaker Allegro in the original MS." Looking at other entries in the book, they often use similar designations to refer to tempo, e.g. (p127) "The speed should be Shaker Largo (♩=91) or Allegro (♩=106)". The introduction (p94) clarifies, "The tempo of a song was set by means of a number from 1 to 4 placed above the 'mode' sign^ indicating the Shaker concept of Adagio, Largo, Allegro and Presto."

I think someone at some point has read this entry and thought that "Shaker Allegro" was a tune name, whereas I think context makes it pretty clear that it is a tempo designation. TSP (talk) 15:53, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

...the neurosurgeon Michael Carter?
Is there something particularly notable about being " the neurosurgeon Michael Carter "?

In most of the biographies I've encountered here, the children of the person being written about will be mentioned by name, but, unless there's something that makes the children worthy of their own biography, it seems odd to see something like


 * ...She is the mother of  the teacher Joan Smith  and  the plumber Bob Smith .

particularly prefixing it with " the ". So, what makes Michael Carter " the  neurosurgeon"? Kevin Cole (talk) 20:53, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * See our article on False titles. Using "the" is the traditional way to write this sort of sentence, and while false titles like "neurosurgeon Michael Carter" predominate in the US (except in the New York Times), "the" is still fairly common in British English. As Carter was English, it can probably stay as is. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 06:01, 19 January 2024 (UTC)