Maiden's Prayer

{{Infobox song

| name = Maiden's Prayer

| cover =

| alt =

| type = single

| artist = Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys

| album =

| B-side = Takin' It Home

| released = May 1941

| recorded = February 24 1941{{Citation|title=78 Record: Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys - Maiden's Prayer (1941)|url=http://www.45worlds.com/78rpm/record/06205|access-date=2021-07-20}}

| studio = WBAP Studio, Blackstone Hotel, Fort Worth, Texas{{Cite book|last=Russell|first=Tony|title=Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921-1942|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2004|isbn=0195139895|location=New York|pages=965}}

| venue =

| genre = Western swing

| length =

| label = Okeh 06205

| writer = Bob Wills

| producer =

| prev_title = Take Me Back To Tulsa

| prev_year = 1941

| next_title = Twin Guitar Special

| next_year = 1941

}}

The American musician Bob Wills heard "Maiden's Prayer" played on a fiddle while he was a barber in Roy, New Mexico,McWhorter, Cowboy Fiddler, pp. 59–60: "Bob said, 'He played "The Spanish Two-Step" and I locked the door where he couldn't get out and nobody else could get in, and I made him stay there until he taught me that and "Maiden's Prayer." Finally he nodded. I didn't know whether he needed to go to the bathroom or if I was doing it right, but I let him out.' That Mexican taught him those two tunes." and arranged the piece in the Western swing style. Wills first recorded it as an instrumental in 1935 (Vocalion 03924, released in 1938),[http://countrydiscography.blogspot.com/2010/02/bob-wills-part-ii.html Praguefrank's Country Music Discographies: Bob Wills – part II] Retrieved 2 January 2012[http://www.allmusic.com/song/maidens-prayer-t2711179 "Maiden's Prayer", Bob Wills with music sample], AllMusic. Retrieved 1 January 2012 and it quickly became one of his signature tunes. Later, it became a standard recorded by many country artists, including Buck Owens on his number-one 1965 album I've Got a Tiger By the Tail.[http://www.allmusic.com/album/ive-got-a-tiger-by-the-tail-r93471 "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail, Buck Owens review with chart and music sample], AllMusic. Retrieved 1 January 2012 The tune is still a standard in the repertoire of Western swing bands.

Wills wrote lyrics for "Maiden's Prayer" and recorded it again in 1941 (Okeh 06205) with vocals by Tommy Duncan.[http://www.allmusic.com/song/a-maidens-prayer-t931306 "A Maiden's Prayer", Bob Wills with music sample], Allmusic. Retrieved 1 January 2012 His lyrics reflect the title, and the song, as written by Wills, opens with:

Twilight falls, evening shadows find,

There 'neath the stars, a maiden so fair divine.

The moon on high seemed to see her there.

In her eyes is a light, shining ever so bright,

She whispered a silent prayer.

"Maiden's Prayer" was released in May 1941, and quickly hit number 1 on June 28, 1941, in The Billboard's "Hillbilly and Foreign Record Hits Of the Month".{{cite magazine|date=28 June 1941|title=Hillbilly Recordings – Month Ending June 28, 1941|url=http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Billboard/40s/1941/BB-1941-06-28.pdf|magazine=The Billboard|location=Cincinnati, Ohio|page=94|access-date=17 July 2021}}

Relatively few country singers have covered "Maiden's Prayer" with vocals, but they include Ray Price on his tribute album San Antonio Rose (1962)[http://www.allmusic.com/album/san-antonio-rose-r109544 San Antonio Rose Ray Price review with music sample], Allmusic. Retrieved 1 January 2012 and Willie Nelson on his album Red Headed Stranger (on the 2000 CD reissue but not the 1975 LP).[http://www.allmusic.com/album/red-headed-stranger-r93336 Red Headed Stranger Willie Nelson review with chart and music sample], Allmusic. Retrieved 1 January 2012 Both singers used the lyrics written by Wills with minor variations, e.g. the maiden is an Indian in Price's version. Also the Everly Brothers recorded a rendition of the song in 1973.The Everly Brothers, The Masters, Eagle Records, 1997

Wills recorded the song a third time on the 1963 album Bob Wills Sings and Plays. When he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, "Maiden's Prayer" was one of the works cited.{{citation needed|date=February 2021}}

The "Maiden's Prayer" is quoted in the 1930 opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. It appears midway through act 1, played on an out-of-tune piano at a honky-tonk frequented by prostitutes and their clients. Jakob Schmidt, one of the denizens of Mahagonny, refers to the song as "ewige Kunst" ("eternal art").{{citation needed|date=February 2021}}

"Maiden's Prayer" is heard off-stage in act 4 of Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov.{{citation needed|date=February 2021}} "Maiden's Prayer" appears as an insert piano song in the anime series Strawberry Panic.{{citation needed|date=February 2021}} "Maiden's Prayer" is played by garbage trucks in Taiwan. As residents have to take out their own trash, the garbage truck signals everyone to do so with the melody of this piece, along with Beethoven's Für Elise.[http://www.culture.tw/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=938&Itemid=156 "'A Maiden's Prayer': A call to dump all our garbage"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110811100809/http://www.culture.tw/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=938&Itemid=156 |date=2011-08-11 }} by Leo Maliksi (7 October 2008){{Cite news|url=https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/recycling/blogs/in-taiwan-trash-disposal-is-a-classical-affair|title=In Taiwan, trash disposal is a classical affair|work=MNN – Mother Nature Network|access-date=2018-10-03|archive-date=2018-10-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181003061800/https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/recycling/blogs/in-taiwan-trash-disposal-is-a-classical-affair|url-status=dead}}[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1032902617408392553 "Taiwan Enlists Garbage Trucks To Teach the English Language"] by Jason Dean, The Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2002 {{subscription required}}[https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/world/asia/taiwan-waste-management-beethoven.html "When You Hear Beethoven, It’s Time to Take Out the Trash (and Mingle)"] by Amy Qin and Amy Chang Chien, The New York Times, February 8, 2022

The Rodgers and Hart standard "It Never Entered My Mind" refers to this song in the penultimate line.{{citation needed|date=February 2021}}

In the 1955 Italian Scandal in Sorrento film, Antonio and Violante play the tune together on a piano at the very end of the movie

In Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1977 horror movie House, the character Melody plays the opening section of "A Maiden's Prayer" on the piano a few times.{{citation needed|date=February 2021}}

In 1993, the North Korean Wangjaesan Dance Troupe's VHS tape featured this song in electronic arrangement.{{citation needed|date=February 2021}}

In the 2013 television serial The Tunnel, Anglo-French actor and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg performs a voice-over to the tune of the Maiden's Prayer, singing a mixture of French and English:

{{Lang|fr|Venez dans mes bras}}, closer to me, dear.

{{Lang|fr|Donnez-vous à moi;}} set aside all fear.

{{Lang|fr|Restons enlacés pour l'éternité,}}

Yes, you shall be mine till the end of time.{{citation needed|date=February 2021}}

The piece remains especially popular in Asia. In Japan, the melody of Bądarzewska's Maiden Prayer is played when the platform door of Shinkansen bullet trains closes.{{Cite web |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02oprxvRzY |title=Shinkansen platform door closing sound "Badarzewska−La prière d'une" |website=youtube.com |access-date=25 November 2023}} In Taiwan, the Maiden's Prayer is one of two songs that are typically played on garbage trucks, the other being Beethoven's Für Elise.{{Cite web |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8G45uCa0Ic |title=Kaohsiung (高雄) Taiwan garbage truck song |website=youtube.com |access-date=15 April 2024}}

The Maiden's Prayer was used in a macabre context in Mary Wilkins Freeman's ghost story The Wind in the Rose-Bush (published 1903), where the main character, roused from sleep by the sound of the melody being played in a seemingly empty house, rushed downstairs to see who was at the piano, only to find that there was no one there.[https://americanliterature.com/author/mary-e-wilkins-freeman/short-story/the-wind-in-the-rose-bush "The Wind in the Rose-Bush" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman]

A Maiden's Prayer Op. 4 by Bądarzewska is featured on Lang Lang's 2019 album Piano Book released by Deutsche Grammophon.{{Cite web |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkLHdmcMU0I |title=Lang Lang - Badarzewska-Baranowska: The Maiden's Prayer, Op. 4 (Track by Track) |website=youtube.com |date=5 April 2019 |access-date=25 November 2023}}

The pianist and academic Arthur Loesser was among the critics of the piece and described it as "this dowdy product of ineptitude."{{cq |date=October 2023}}

{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

• McWhorter, Frankie. Cowboy Fiddler in Bob Wills' Band. University of North Texas Press, 1997. {{ISBN|1-57441-025-3}}
• Mishler, Craig. The Crooked Stovepipe: Athapaskan Fiddle Music and Square Dancing in Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada. University of Illinois Press, 1993. {{ISBN|0-252-01996-2}}

• {{IMSLP|work=La prière d'une vierge, Op.4 (Bądarzewska-Baranowska, Tekla)|cname="La prière d'une vierge"}}

{{authority control}}

Category:Western swing songs

Category:Songs written by Bob Wills

Category:1856 compositions

Category:1938 songs

Category:1941 singles

Category:Compositions in E-flat major