tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53190214891835821612024-03-12T21:43:20.168-04:00Listening FridayArmchair Musicology at a price you can afford!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-90714569768069009342015-12-25T00:00:00.000-05:002015-12-25T13:01:43.087-05:00 Franz Xaver Gruber, Joseph Mohr: Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem."</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">~Douglas Adams </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On June 28th, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was assassinated by a group of Serbians (and one Bosniak). This act had a cascading effect, and thus began war like the world had never before seen. Exacerbated by uneasy truces and complicated alliances in a pre-war Europe marked by territorial disputes and multifaceted nationalism, European powers quickly entrenched themselves against each other and what ensued was a massive tactical stalemate which led to war lasting over four years and claiming the lives of 16 million humans. A tragic consequence of this was that the regions where these conflicts were established would soon become bombarded beyond repair.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By November 1914, there was a continuous line running from the North Sea off the coast of Belgium down to the Swiss border. Both sides had no advantage over the other and had fortified themselves by digging trenches that offered barely enough protection for the belligerents to survive well enough to rain munitions and gas on each other day after day. If one party did establish an advantage and actually manage to take more ground, they would quickly be repelled before ever getting the opportunity to defend and hold it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">However, not all areas of the front were as ruthlessly violent as it may seem. There are notes and journals from many on the front line, particularly in regions less hotly contested, where a sort of camaraderie arose between the opposing armies as they continuously bombed, shot and gassed one another. Many of the trenches were within earshot and in the lull between aggressions there would be the occasional communication between sides. Often this would simply be to arrange a mutual time to collect the dead and dying from the appropriately named "no man's land", but as the war lurched on, a strange fraternity began between murderous men who were merely cogs in the machine set in motion by the powers that be. In some cases truces would take place throughout the night and men from each army would inquire as to how the other was "getting along". A bond of mutual suffering, perhaps, but also known as the "live and let live" mentality. Both sides knew the predicaments and isolation facing each other better than anyone else and that also bred a sort of mutual understanding.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Bear in mind, many of these soldiers were relatively young as the age of enlistment was not stringently enforced on either side, so it was not particularly unusual for infantry as young as 16 to be found in the trenches. This was also well before the era of instant communication and certain regions of the Western front were very isolated from the rest of the world, so communication over no man's land could very well have been the only way to get news from home under certain circumstances, particularly in occupied Belgium where many of the fighting had family in occupied territory. Now the actual going's on of the prototypical trench war-farer cannot be described with absolute certainty. However, knowing that a great deal were boys, away from home for possibly the first time, being made to sit in frozen mud all day, suffering under the tyranny of machine gun fire, artillery, and chlorine gas- it's not a stretch of the imagination to believe what happens next.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">----</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Almost a century prior, in 1816, an Austrian priest named Joseph Mohr (1792-1848) wrote a poem which he entitled "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht". The work itself describes the scene immediately following the birth of Jesus and relates to the scripture surrounding the implications of this event. Mohr was at the time serving in a small village outside Berchtesgaden when he drafted the text. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mohr was a child born out of wedlock and his father was out of the picture, but he was fortunate enough to receive consideration from the Catholic church and thus was educated and learned to play the guitar and violin as well as sing. In 1811 he began seminary and by 1815 he had been ordained as a priest. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By 1818, he would find himself in the small village of Oberndorf serving as an assistant priest. Now this is where the story gets a little convoluted. For some reason, Mohr felt an urgent need to take his poem and put it to song in time for the Christmas mass at midnight. We'll explore that in a moment, but know that he felt it was important enough that he set out to the neighboring town of Arnsdorf to meet up with his friend and fellow musician and Austrian, Franz Gruber (1787-1863).</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6CRADhosoT4/Vn1SkIYyz_I/AAAAAAAADDM/A4-83qexDso/s1600/franzfall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="356" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6CRADhosoT4/Vn1SkIYyz_I/AAAAAAAADDM/A4-83qexDso/s640/franzfall.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Yippee-ki-yay, Mr. Falcon.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gruber was born to a family of linen weavers, though he would eventually study to become a school teacher as well as apprenticing under the tutelage of his church's organist, Georg Hartdobler. In 1816, he took the position of organist and choirmaster at the St. Nicholas church in Oberndorf, which is presumably where he came to know Mohr who a short time later was appointed assistant priest to the church in late 1817, possibly early 1818. Now the fateful night in question has been romanticized many times over since the inception of the tune we are discussing today, but here are the facts. We know that Mohr wrote the poem in 1816. We also know from autographed manuscripts from 1820, that Gruber is indeed the author of the melody. An interesting side note is that his authorship was contested until as recently as 1994, when the 1820 edition was rediscovered and its heritage was made intact. Previously, it had been erroneously attributed to Beethoven, Mozart, or Haydn. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mohr visited Gruber on Christmas Eve, which being as he was clergy and Gruber was the music director is not an unusual thing in and of itself prior to a big service like Christmas mass. There is a legend that the church organ had broken down for some reason. I found a few sources claiming it to be due to flooding of a nearby river, rust from lack of maintenance, and even damage from a mouse.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">"And so Mickey returns to Valhalla, to slumber and feed."</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Another theory is that Mohr, being a guitarist himself wanted to have a special hymn that would be suitable for the instrument and worked with Gruber to create the new hymn to be performed later that evening back in Oberndorf. The rationale is not of particular importance, but know that many sources on the work tend to implicate some sort of preternatural circumstances that inspired the music to be married to the words. The reality is we don't know. Neither Mohr nor Gruber ever wrote about it, and only the manuscripts remain. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So in a few hours time Gruber had completed the music and returned with Mohr to the church. For the mass, the piece was premiered with Mohr singing and accompanying on guitar and Gruber singing and directing the choir, which echoed the last two lines of each of the six stanzas. The work was well-recieved that evening and was reworked by Gruber several times in the coming months. It remained a local sensation being that Gruber and Mohr lived in the 19th century and they couldn't just upload it to their YouTube channel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over the next few decades the piece traveled throughout Austria and into neighboring European countries, carried perhaps initially by organ repairman, Karl Mauracher from Zillertal in the neighboring Austrian state of Tyrol. Thus, the piece adopted a moniker as the "Tyrolean Carol" despite the fact that it originated within the state of Salzburg. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite this misnomer, the work was carried on and about Europe as traveling musical groups, akin to the Von Trapp family singers, incorporated the work into their performances. It was eventually performed for royalty and even made its way to New York City by 1839, being premiered there by the Ranier Family outside the Trinity Church in lower Manhattan. In 1859 an English language translation was published by then-priest John Freeman Young, who was at that time working at the Trinity Church as an assistant to what could be considered an inter-church communication department where his fluency in multiple languages paid off as an editor. He also dabbled in translation of musical text which is what presumably led him to his work with <i>Stille Nacht. </i>As far as I can determine, he was not present at the Ranier performance, as he had been working in Florida, Texas and Louisiana as a deacon prior to his appointment in New York. He would later return to Florida, working in Jacksonville, Tallahassee, and various regions in South Florida, including what is now Dade county and the Keys. In 1867 he was ordained Bishop of the Florida diocese of the Episcopal church.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o-k0My2bBM4/Vn1rcAHs42I/AAAAAAAADEU/of-zlgXFRjI/s1600/monty-python-the-bishop-o.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o-k0My2bBM4/Vn1rcAHs42I/AAAAAAAADEU/of-zlgXFRjI/s1600/monty-python-the-bishop-o.gif" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">We was too late.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The version you recognize today is not the same as what the congregants of the St. Nicholas cathedral would have heard. Being passed organically as it passed through many people and languages, there has been considerable alterations made to the melody, most notably the omission of many of the ornamentations that Gruber initially wrote. I was able to find a version on YouTube that attempts to reproduce the original performance based on what I would have to assume is the 1820 autograph manuscript. Behold-</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You will notice that the last two lines in each stanza have a bit more of a melismatic flair to them than the standard we know today. It is also a bit more waltz-like in terms of tempo than most of the renditions that we hear today. In America, the piece is often performed during Christmas Eve services when candles are distributed to parishioners and lit from the Christ candle. A similar tradition is observed in Austria, where it is considered a national treasure, and the work is typically not performed publicly prior to Christmas Eve, contrary to what we do over here which is play it starting in late August.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Joseph Mohr continued his life as a clergyman, donating much of his salary toward causes like eldercare and education for local children, he himself being a product of financial assistance through the church. He was honored posthumously by the people of Wagrain in Salzburg, who named the Joseph Mohr School in his memory. In a report to the bishop, the overseer of St. Johann in Tirol apparently described Mohr as "... a reliable friend of mankind..." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Christmas Eve 1914. The war had been waging for several months and as stated before, most of the war-zones were effectively stalemated, which resulted in the unusual "live and let live" mentality tentatively holding in various positions along the front. This manifested in large scale during the cold, Christmas Eve night when as many as 100,000 soldiers declared an unofficial truce and crossed the trenches into No Man's Land, where they exchanged rudimentary gifts with their enemies, often just swapping buttons off their uniforms or sharing rations or tobacco together. They conducted joint burial services for their fallen and possibly engaged in matches of soccer (or football- depending on your perspective). It is described in the journal of Captain Robert Patrick Miles of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Friday (Christmas Day). We are having the most extraordinary Christmas Day imaginable. A sort of unarranged and quite unauthorized but perfectly understood and scrupulously observed truce exists between us and our friends in front. The funny thing is it only seems to exist in this part of the battle line – on our right and left we can all hear them firing away as cheerfully as ever.</i> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The thing started last night – a bitter cold night, with white frost – soon after dusk when the Germans started shouting 'Merry Christmas, Englishmen' to us. Of course our fellows shouted back and presently large numbers of both sides had left their trenches, unarmed, and met in the debatable, shot-riddled, no man's land between the lines. Here the agreement – all on their own – came to be made that we should not fire at each other until after midnight tonight. The men were all fraternizing in the middle (we naturally did not allow them too close to our line) and swapped cigarettes and lies in the utmost good fellowship.</i> </span></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Not a shot was fired all night.</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In some regions the truce continued onward through the new year, with many soldiers simply refusing to retreat to cover and the other side not willing to murder them in cold-blood. It was such a unique set of circumstances for this to occur, in the shadow of the most destructive event to date in mankind's history- to think humanity might've prevailed, even for a fleeting moment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The war engineers of the day saw differently. Much of the Christmas Truce was suppressed in the media in Germany and France, and only came to light in England and America a week after the initial event. It was lamented that following such a respite from the slaughtering, the violence would simply resume. In Germany and France it was considered treasonous behavior and subsequent Christmas' saw only attempts at fraternity being made, but such advances ultimately rebuffed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Much like the history of <i>Silent Night,</i> the Christmas Truce is an easy target for holiday romanticization. There is no shortage of breathless hyperbole and evangelistic-driven commentary available on both events which in my opinion serve only to cheapen the memories of the actors behind the experiences. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We do know that by 1914, <i>Silent Night</i> was as well-known in England, Belgium and France as it was in Germany and Austria. The words were translated, but the melody remained mostly intact and universally understood. And we also know that at least in one instance, somewhere in the miles of filth, metal and blood, someone began singing it in their native tongue, only to hear it echoed en masse from across the way. The melody taken by itself is a simple one, perhaps set apart from its humble beginnings and text, it might not have even merited a publication. However, this simple act of singing, coupled with the exhaustion of war and death caused a remarkable thing to happen, however brief it may have been. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I think it speaks volumes to how we perceive and observe Christmas today. And no, this isn't a sort of commentary on the calamitous commercialization of the holiday, or a diatribe on the Puritanical reaction to a perceived "War on Christmas". In this example it took the force of tens of millions of individuals, all disturbed in the wake of a cataclysmic series of events, all pushing an unstoppable force into an immovable object, driven by a seemingly infinite supply of resources devoted to obliteration to create a lull at the event horizon. Within that lull, a small quiet stillness occurred that, beyond all the noise and fury of propaganda and drums, allowed the germination of a small realization. The realization that despite our different clothes and languages and homelands we exist together. Together on this speck of dust floating in a vacuum so large that it defies mortal comprehension. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And within that infinitesimally small and quiet space, someone began to sing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Maybe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Many thanks to Bill Egan and the late <a href="http://www.cowart.info/blog/" target="_blank">John Cowart</a> for their highly-informative and insightful commentary which provided a great deal of the research for my own entry and pointed me in some interesting directions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<a href="http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME02/Silent_Night_History.shtml"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME02/Silent_Night_History.shtml</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/TABS/Silent_Night.shtml"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/TABS/Silent_Night.shtml</i></span></a><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirol,_Austria"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirol,_Austria</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/johnfreemanyoung00penn#page/n5/mode/2up/search/183*"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.archive.org/stream/johnfreemanyoung00penn#page/n5/mode/2up/search/183*</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.cowart.info/blog/?p=1207"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.cowart.info/blog/?p=1207</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://silentnight.web.za/translate/deu.htm"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://silentnight.web.za/translate/deu.htm</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://german.about.com/od/music/a/German-Lullabies.htm"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://german.about.com/od/music/a/German-Lullabies.htm</i></span></a><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce</i></span></a><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Night"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Night</i></span></a><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mohr#cite_note-german-3"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mohr#cite_note-german-3</i></span></a><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Xaver_Gruber"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Xaver_Gruber</i></span></a><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-82359369321938538682015-12-18T00:00:00.000-05:002015-12-18T22:40:26.439-05:00Miles Goodman, Paul Williams: The Muppet Christmas Carol<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.” </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">― Charles Dickens,<i> A Christmas Carol</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Jim Henson (1936-1990) began professionally playing with puppets in 1958, founding the then-titled Muppets, Inc. which you probably now know as the Jim Henson Company. Henson created several characters and skillfully brought them to life through the magic of puppetry. Tragically, he died in 1990, from a late-diagnosed infection in his lungs. At his funeral, many of the puppeteers and voice actors that helped him create the Muppet universe reprised the many roles for which they were responsible and shared remembrances of him through song. The Wikipedia article describes it well:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"In the final minutes of the two-and-a-half-hour service, six of the core Muppet performers—Dave Goelz, Frank Oz, Kevin Clash, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson, and Richard Hunt—sang, in their characters' voices, a medley of Jim Henson's favorite songs, eventually ending with a performance of "Just One Person" that began with Richard Hunt singing alone, as Scooter. Henson employee Chris Barry writes that during each verse, "each Muppeteer joined in with their own Muppets until the stage was filled with all the Muppet performers and their beloved characters." The funeral was later described by Life as 'an epic and almost unbearably moving event.'"</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Prior to his death, Henson had been in talks with Disney about merging his company with the larger corporation, but negotiations had been halted after his passing. Henson's son Brian took the helm and instead negotiated a deal regarding release rights and began to pursue completing Jim's most recent project, A Muppet Christmas Carol.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">--</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Charles Dickens (1812-1870) lived in a time before the internet, and therefore also a time before people communicated platforms of social change by sharing memes on Facebook.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Instead, Dickens and his contemporaries would write pamphlets or essays describing the social ills of Victorian Europe and hope that through their publication, the masses would come to understand their point of view. This worked out much as you might imagine it would today.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In 1843, Dickens was facing a decline in popularity and sought to craft a work that would provide a new and enduring source of income. He was also beset by the social injustice of his day, particularly as it related toward children and the lack of any regulation over the employment of young ones. He himself spent time in a blacking factory at a young age in order to support his family whilst his father was incarcerated, an experience that left him both scarred and emboldened with a sense of equality amongst the various social classes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Dickens wanted to create something that would express his discontent with the nature of avarice and classism that pervaded London, but he also wanted it to be something that people would actually want to read, thus giving it half a chance of actually changing people's minds. So, he tapped into the Victorian love affair with the Christmas tradition and paired that with his own childhood trauma, made a bi-personality cross-section of his father and Bob's your uncle- a Christmas Carol.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Success was immediate. In England it was revered and established as a "new gospel" of the day, evoking the humanistic response that Dickens had envisioned. Many who read it were inspired by the redemption of Scrooge, perhaps to say that it was relieving to learn that no human could ever sink low enough so as to be immune to atonement of the soul, the spirit. As a result of the archetypal qualities inherent to the story, it quickly became a tome to tell and retell, being set for stage in no time at all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This brings us to our example today. Carol had a tremendous impact on Victorian society and heavily influences the contemporary observance of Christmas around the globe. Many of the less sacred traditions had been eroded by Puritanism. Puritans of course being a group who firmly believed that if they weren't going to have fun, then they had better make damn sure nobody else did either.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Shortly before his death, Jim Henson had been planning to create a Muppet edition of the Christmas Carol with the Disney collaboration, and his son Brian directed the production two years following his father's death in 1990. The adaptation is remarkably true to the original work, omitting little and frequently utilizing Dickens' own words throughout the screenplay. It is one of the few Muppet movies to utilize a majority of human actors in major roles with Muppets in supporting roles. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The film was scored by Miles Goodman (1949-1996), who had worked with Frank Oz on some of his projects, and had songs written by Paul Williams (b. 1940). Goodman first developed an interest in film scoring from learning of the career from his cousin, Johnny Mandel. Goodman moved to Los Angeles, studied composition and theory and eventually broke his way into film scoring due to a natural talent for orchestration. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Paul Williams is probably better known for his work in popular music, having written hits for David Bowie, the Carpenters, and Three Dog Night. Williams connected with Henson in 1979 and cowrote "Rainbow Connection" with Kenneth Ascher. Interestingly enough, Williams also played roles on the screen in several Muppet-related productions as well as other film and television shows on which he occasionally wrote music. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />An interesting note of production drama is the omission of "When Love is Gone" from the theatrical release, and several subsequent home releases. During this song, Belle sings about how Scrooge only cares about money and a pivotal moment of character development occurs as we learn of how Scrooge lost her affections in favor of his lust for wealth. Allegedly, Jeffrey Katzenberg thought kids would not connect here and thus the song was cut, however the reprise, "When Love is Found" remained intact at the conclusion of the film. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The work is a refreshing retelling of the classic story, clad in the anticipated antics that comes with a Muppets title. Michael Caine is a convincing Scrooge, and the warmth and spirit of the message comes through in spades. The score only amplifies this effect, while not showing us anything remarkably different from the prototypical Hollywood musical, the tunes are catchy and heart-warming and will definitely leave you humming along as you go about your business. A good deal of allure surrounding the original work comes from the fact that it is not a straightforward Christmas story, but more correctly a ghost story on and about Christmastime and the Henson treatment provides an appropriate climate for this, with healthy interspersions of comedy to alleviate nightmares in younger viewers. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">All your base are belong to us.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The music carries the film well, and endears the characters to us as we bear witness to Scrooge's development. Perhaps the most enjoyable tune for me comes from the Ghost of Christmas Present, who greets us with "It Feels Like Christmas", a spirited jaunt through Christmas day and all that it entails. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've written a lot lately about how much we structure the holiday to be driven toward some insanely jolly and nigh-unachievable "perfect" Christmas. We are comforted by this song in the sense that Christmas can be found in many places, and it doesn't necessarily take anything special to observe the warmth of the holiday, beyond an open heart and mind, something that Scrooge himself must work at to perfect. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's not what we've got, but who we've got that counts and that to seek out the seemingly "little things" makes the season all that more special. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Williams_(songwriter)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muppet_Christmas_Carol</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Henson#Illness_and_death</i></span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-17138972347123997282015-12-11T00:00:00.000-05:002015-12-11T17:16:09.781-05:00Buck Ram, Walter Kent, Kim Gannon: I'll Be Home For Christmas<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So we've had a couple weeks of French music. That wasn't by design, but more so related to the intensely cerebral process I utilize to pick pieces of music to wax intellectual about. It begins by determining that it's not Friday and that I don't have to worry about it for a few days. Then Thursday happens and I promise myself to spend a least a modicum of time doing some background research, though at this point it's not even necessary to have chosen a title. Then Friday happens and I begin to frantically look for inspiration in the Amazon Prime Music Christmas Station, which when set to "Classical" will only play the Nutcracker Suite or the Piano Guys cover of "Let It Go".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I got interested in a "Carol of the Bells"-"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" mish-mash that these guys did, but soon became disinterested after realizing that they really weren't bringing anything new to the table. I've heard a lot of people talking about them and of course the sharing of things on Facebook seems to feature them a fair bit, but honestly it sounds like this generation's version of Liberace.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To me, it all just sounds like psuedo-classical music manufactured for people who don't really like music anyway, but like other people to assume that they're cultured. Nothing is new and unique about any of the arrangements I've listened to- and yes they do arrange certain pieces together that are unique to each other, but nothing changes about the style or the structure. <a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2014/12/not-henry-viii-greensleeves.html" target="_blank">Nothing like Holst's superposition of "Greensleeve's" over the "Dargason" in any event.</a> <a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2013/06/james-barnes-fantasy-variations-on.html" target="_blank">Or James Barnes massive undertaking on the 24th Caprice by Paganini</a>. Both of those pieces took music we'd heard many times over and found something new and different to share. "Oh! Oh! But Mr. Music Snob!" you protest. "You haven't seen that one video where they all play the piano and screw around with the inside of it! That's new and different!"</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">"Bitch, please." - John Cage</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And even then, Maurice Delage and Henry Cowell were doing the prepared piano and pluck the strings thing back in the early 1900's to boot! My main argument stands- I see nothing new and different about what they offer the musical world. However, this isn't a tirade about that. This is a an post about a man named Kim Gannon (1900-1974) and something he shared with Bing Crosby on a golf course in 1943. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The year is of particular note as at this point in history, the United States was heavily embroiled in what would later be confirmed as World War II. Evidently the "War to End All Wars" was ineffective and thusly was retroactively named "WWI". Gannon was a lawyer, having graduated Albany Law School he passed the New York State bar exam in the mid-30's. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of information about his youth and education, so I'm having a hard time explaining the jump from lawyer to hit Broadway/Movie lyricist, but jump he did. In 1942 he had caught the attention of Glenn Miller, who recorded his "Moonlight Cocktail" and he shortly transitioned to full-time lyric-writing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of interesting note is a copyright claim by another accomplished lyricist/poet named Samuel "Buck" Ram (1907-1991), who in December of 1942 had copyrighted a song called "I'll Be Home for Christmas (Tho' Just in Memory)" which according to Wikipedia did not exactly resemble the product put out by Gannon and music by Walter Kent (1911-1994). Apparently they had been made aware of the song while having drinks together with Ram who related that his publisher had put the brakes on its release until after Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" had its run. In light of the similarity of the Gannon/Kent version, Ram's publisher filed suit and won. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Gee, officer...I swear I have the license around here somewhere...</span></td></tr>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y0Ja-FhSY8A/VmsZKitoP3I/AAAAAAAADAg/vrLyK4CZL48/s1600/pocket_sand_king_of_the_hill.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><img border="0" height="221" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y0Ja-FhSY8A/VmsZKitoP3I/AAAAAAAADAg/vrLyK4CZL48/s320/pocket_sand_king_of_the_hill.gif" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Bing Crosby is possibly the most well-known performer of this work, though it has been recorded a ridiculous number of times. The lyrics describe the traditional dream of the warm, family-centric Christmas, but it ends somberly, explaining that the narrator might only see this idyllic scene in his dreams. Gannon claimed to have written it, reminded of the many thousands of soldiers who would be celebrating Christmas in foreign lands, away from the comforts of home. Ram claims his version was written at age 16 as a gift for his mother while he was away at college. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No matter the authorship, the theme is universal. In the US, the song was credited for raising troop morale, and awareness of the challenges those that were serving faced, not just from the physical threat of their enemies, but the psychological impacts related to separation from everything they cherished. The song speaks to the attainment of the "perfect Christmas" and therefore perhaps could be interpreted to reflect the inaccessibility of what we all perceive individually to be home. It doesn't matter what stands in the way, be it war, travel, work, or depression. We all have felt the absence of happiness and warmth in our lives, and so Gannon and Ram speak to us through Kent and Crosby. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, I began today complaining about unoriginality being praised in music land and I would be remiss to leave you with something we've all heard before, not to knock ol' Bing's rendition, but let's take a shot at something that might be new to some of you. The United State's Airforce has a jazz band, known as the Airmen of Note, who derive their ancestry through the incomparable Glenn Miller who once led the Army Air Force Jazz band and began a tradition of insanely talented musicians and kick-ass jazz bands that continues to this day. This track comes from their "Cool Yule" album, where they take Christmas classics and shoehorn them into Big Band era classics. In the case of I'll Be Home for Christmas, they arrange it stylized as the Glenn Miller Band's "Moonlight Serenade". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I find it very appropriate, knowing the sacrifice Miller himself made, and though I don't know that it was a conscious decision on the part of the band's arranger, it serves as a fitting tribute just the same.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ll_Be_Home_for_Christmas</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Kent</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Ram</i></span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-61766872529381137692015-12-04T00:00:00.000-05:002015-12-04T22:49:32.673-05:00Adolphe Adam: Cantique de Noël, text by Placide Cappeau<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms— this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men."</span></i><br />
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<i><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- Albert Einstein </span></i></i></div>
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<i><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- From Living Philosophies, 1931 </span></i></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Placide Cappeau (1808-1877) was born into a family of wine and barrel makers in a small town in southern France. At the age of 8, he was accidentally shot in the hand by a friend and as a result had his right hand amputated. I was not able to find specific details on the incident, but the fateful friend's father, a Mr. Brignon, paid for the young Cappeau to attend a private school and as a result he was able to go on to college where he would pursue a life of academia and study law in Paris. He was an artist and an author of poetry and literature. He would return to the family business and become a merchant of wine and fine liquors, but he did dabble in politics becoming mayor of his home town of Roquemaure. Cappeau never lost his interest in the art of the written word, and as a result he plays an important role in our lesson today. He was an intellectual, a non-Christian and would become a bit of a free-thinker and be accused of being a socialist.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Adolphe Adam (1803-1856) was born to a musical father and the daughter of a physician in Paris. His father, Jean-Louis Adam, was a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory and was opposed to his son's pursuit of a musical career. Adolphe's initial forays into the musical realm were whimsical and improvised, but eventually his father would relent and allow him to study organ at the conservatory. Adolphe would soon become a popular composer for music in the Paris vaudeville houses and he would successfully finance and open his own opera house, only to be shut down months later by the 1848 revolution in France. However, he would emerge from financial ruin due to his fame from his vaudeville days and a burgeoning career as a music journalist. He would return to the conservatory later in life as a teacher, ultimately following in the footsteps of his father. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In 1843, the Catholic church in Roquemaure completed renovations on their organ and the priest determined that it merited a dedication of literary proportions and thus commissioned Cappeau being that he was a local wordsmith of relative fame. The poem he completed was entitled, "<i>Minuit, chrétiens</i>" (Midnight, Christians). The first two stanzas correlate heavily with Luke's account of the birth of Christ, but in the first stanza more of Cappeau's ideology comes to the surface:</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Redeemer has broken every bond:<br />The Earth is free, and Heaven is open.<br />He sees a brother where there was only a slave,<br />Love unites those that iron had chained.<br />Who will tell Him of our gratitude,<br />For all of us He is born, He suffers and dies.</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It was this portion that would eventually catch the eye of Unitarian minister and music writer, John Sullivan Dwight who would eventually translate it it to English, but we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves now. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Cappeau's poem was well-received and as a result he sought out a composer to set the text to song. During a trip to Paris, he was able to petition Adolphe Adam, with whom he shared mutual friends, a Mr. and Mrs. Laurey. Adam was at a height of popularity at the time and finished the song in short order and the completed work was premiered in Roquemaure in 1847 to immediate acclaim and was rocked out to in many a household in France. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">"The fidelity, Jean-Luc! My God the FIDELITY!"</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some time later, however, the work was attacked and defamed as a result of it's lyricist's political standings. In 1848, France underwent a revolution against the largely conservative ruling class. It ended ultimately with the establishment of a new government, but one that sought to placate the radical leftist movement that had sieged Paris. The new government attempted to create jobs for the unemployed through civic works projects, however most of the projects were unnecessary and only fueled further anger at the class inequality. The problem for the reformers though was that the majority of rural France was still largely conservative, so after the initial wave of liberalism, the tide shifted and Napoleon I's nephew was elected on a somewhat liberal platform (and obvious name-brand recognition), only to take pretty drastic measures to reduce unrest in Paris and regain control.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">He would eventually come to lead a coup, ending in him claiming the title Emperor Napoleon III, but getting worked over by some turbo-charged Prussians. However, one significant outcome of the 1848 revolution was the abolition of slavery in the French colonies. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, Cappeau was a bit of a liberal for his time and outspoken enough in his writings that the Christian conservatives took umbrage at the popularity of his work and began to cast aspersions toward it. They even went as far to call out Adolphe Adam for being a Jew, though my research uncovered that he wasn't (interestingly enough I found no shortage of websites telling the story of this piece by incorrectly proclaiming: a priest, an atheist and a Jew walk into a bar...). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The silly part is that Cappeau really wasn't any sort of revolutionary figure so far as I can tell. He marketed wine, he like to read and write, and was well-educated. It just so happened that he also had come to think that maybe people shouldn't be treated differently because of their social standing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But slander the religious conservatives did. Despite this, the piece found its way to London and was translated many times over, eventually coming across the desk of the aforementioned John Sullivan Dwight who, being an American living in the year 1858, also found the topic of human slavery particularly of note. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It was Dwight who penned the version that you are most likely familiar with. It is an interesting rendition and holds on to the majority of the intention from the straight translation of Cappeau's poem, though he does take a slightly more religious tone in the third stanza, owing much of the deliverance from oppression to God, whereas love tends to be a more central theme in Cappeau's original. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What I find fascinating is that the whole work is an interpretation of the birth of Christ, a central moment in Christian theology, through the lens of a non-believer. And that's an intentionally poor choice of words, because I feel that Cappeau was indeed a believer, but perhaps in the way the priest who commissioned this work would have liked. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Cappeau experienced, what I can only assume, was a formative, life-altering event at a very early age. Perhaps he had grown up in this sleepy little town, surrounded by average families and assuming that one day, like his father, he would be hammering wine casks together and plodding his trail in the family trade. But in a moment that changed. With the loss of his hand, and the guilt and subsequent generosity of the Brignon's, he was awarded the opportunity to explore and create his own unique beliefs. To drink deep of the intellectual fount. He then came to what is interestingly enough not altogether a different conclusion than what we ourselves might come to find from the teachings of Christ, some thirty years past that fateful night of his birth. And because of Cappeau's beliefs, he was rebuked and his work tarnished. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I invoked Einstein at the start because he too was not what most of us could call a believer, but again that is not to say he was without belief. To Einstein, God was the god of the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza who, in a very tiny nutshell, believed the world and universe, as we perceive it, to be a total manifestation of God in the sense that all the natural order that surrounds us and the simplicity and harmony in which it fits and works together is in and of itself God. Einstein believed that the study of the natural, physical world was in and of itself the most important religion, and that to lose touch with the awe and wonder that surrounds us is akin to death. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I am reminded, perhaps unfortunately, of a show called "Firefly". It was a short-lived TV drama created by Joss Whedon that spawned a fervent fan-base and a movie, but did not survive long enough to flesh out most of its character story arcs. One such character was known simply as Shepherd Book. We are led to believe that he is a religious figure of sorts, but no specific religion is named and many of his actions and skillset seem contrary to what you might expect from a man of God.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now, if you don't want spoilers, skip to the example video now.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the movie, Mal returns to find the Shepherd mortally wounded and dying on a hillside. As he kneels beside his friend, waiting for medical aid that doesn't come soon enough, Book leaves us with this:</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don’t care what you believe. Just believe it.</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It reeks a bit of the dramatics, coming from a pop-sci-cowboy-spaghetti-western-in-space sort of show, and to a non-fan of the series I'd expect you might find it mere enthusiasm.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">However, when I read between the lines of Cappeau's "<i>Minuit, chrétiens</i>", I witness the portrait of a man who believed- in what is not my place to say exactly... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But I am comforted by it just the same.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Our example today is an arrangement by the remarkable jazz composer/arranger Tom Kubis and the Maynard Ferguson protege, Wayne Bergeron crushing it on lead trumpet. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i> Sources:</i></span><br />
<a href="http://www.familychristmasonline.com/music/trad_french_carols/o_holy_night.htm"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.familychristmasonline.com/music/trad_french_carols/o_holy_night.htm</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Placide_Cappeau"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Placide_Cappeau</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/adolphe-adam-mn0000394866/biography"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.allmusic.com/artist/adolphe-adam-mn0000394866/biography</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Movies/The-Nativity-Story/The-Amazing-Story-Of-O-Holy-Night.aspx?p=3"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Movies/The-Nativity-Story/The-Amazing-Story-Of-O-Holy-Night.aspx?p=3</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/o_holy_night.htm"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/o_holy_night.htm</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/1848/section8.rhtml"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/1848/section8.rhtml</i></span></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-20158762305559264812015-11-27T00:00:00.000-05:002015-11-27T18:41:12.768-05:00Hector Berlioz: L'adieu des bergers (The Shepherd's Farewell) <span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So for our first example this Christmas season we're exploring a piece by a French Romantic composer that doesn't necessarily center around the Christmastime canon, but certainly maintains a strong foothold in the Christmas story and the ensuing days of Christ's life following his birth in Bethlehem. Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was a composer that shaped and pushed the boundaries of western art music both within his lifetime and the years beyond. He took a peculiar path toward musical stardom, one that ran afoul of his own parent's wishes for him to become a doctor. He would travel to Paris to attend medical school, but by 1824 he would drop out and begin to pursue a musical career at the Paris Conservatory. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Berlioz did not fit the mold of the "child prodigy" musicians like Mozart and Beethoven who began composing shortly after birth. He never was classically trained in piano, instead learning guitar, flute and the "flageolet" which is kinda like those recorders you play in elementary school, but not nearly as obnoxious sounding.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">It's getting a little meta in here.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Berlioz would sneak into the conservatory library prior to his enrollment to copy the scores of composers he admired, and was actually thrown out by the music director at the time, Italian composer, Luigi Cherubini, with which he would maintain a contentious, but musically fruitful relationship. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You see, Berlioz had a problem. Music in France at this time was still pretty conservative with regard to the expansion of Romanticism and paradoxically Berlioz was a total Romantic, in terms of music and in terms of his personality. He was a big reader of the Roman poet, Virgil, and Shakespeare and he had a deep appreciation for the "chase" of passion, as evidenced in his pursuit of the affectations of a certain actress, Harriet Smithson. Following his attending one of her performances in a traveling English theatre company he began sending her love notes incessantly which basically freaked her the hell out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite these initial hardships, they would eventually get married and would've lived happily ever after if it weren't for the fact that Harriet only spoke English and Berlioz French, and that they both were fairly hot-tempered, opinionated, and aggressive. Berlioz would support Harriet for the rest of her life, having married her after her fame as an actress had already begun to fade. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Berlioz's music was much more technically challenging than that of his French contemporaries and almost universally hated by the Paris critics who were used to the refined (read: boring) music that was still popular despite that significant advancements Beethoven was pushing over in Germany. This would remain a point of contention in the advancement of Berlioz's career throughout his entire life. In an effort to garner attention (read: earn a living wage and not starve to death in the street) Berlioz would end up traveling around Europe, where he found work as a music critic himself and as a pretty accomplished conductor. He had a pretty unrestrained distaste for many of the conductors of his music as the emphasis on melody and expanded instrumentation did not lend itself to the more simplistic, post-Classical conducting style. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Berlioz found a great appreciation abroad, touring extensively in Russia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, and England, but found a cold reception in France, causing him to remark that "<i>France is becoming more and more philistine towards music, and the more I see of foreign lands the less I love my own. Art, in France, is dead; so I must go where it is still to be found.</i>" Despite the open hostility in the Parisan media, in 1850 he was appointed head librarian to the Paris Conservatory. This was his first and only steady gig, and offered him some freedom from the incessant cycle of composing and performing which frequently resulted in financial distress. During this time, he composed our example for today, <i>L'adieu des bergers </i>or <i>The Shepherd's Farewell</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Berlioz was not outwardly religious, but held an appreciation for the beauty of the religious music he had been exposed to in childhood. This piece was originally conceived as an organ work for his buddy, Joseph-Louis Duc, and Berlioz eventually expanded it into a choral work, writing the text based on Matthew 2:13, which described Mary and Joseph escaping to Egypt in order to prevent the death of the newborn baby Jesus from King Herod's decree that all male infants be killed within Bethlehem city limits. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Sales of George R.R. Martin's "The Bible for Children" have been muted</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The text in the work is written from the perspective of the shepherds who were witness to the first Christmas as they bid the young family speedy and safe deliverance from the cruel fate that remained for them in Bethlehem. Berlioz would eventually expand upon the work, crafting it into a full oratorio known as "L'enfance du Christ" fleshing out the story more to include Herod's decree, their journey along "the way of the sea" (a Roman coastal road connecting Palestine and Egypt), and Christ's early childhood. An oratorio is a large choral work which follows a similar format of an opera, but without the dramatic staging and scenery. The orchestra is typically standard-sized as opposed to the reduced size pit orchestras, and all performers remain on stage. Soloists typically sit in the front and stand when performing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the case of <i>The Shepherd's Farewell</i>, Berlioz decided to have a bit of fun at the expense of the Parisian know-it-all's. He premiered the work under false pretenses, claiming to have rediscovered it from the writings of some 17th-century composer named Ducré (who did not exist). Correctly suspecting that many of his antagonists would ordinarily just shitpost (to use the parlance of our time) all over his work without actually critiquing it, he thought he'd introduce it in this way to get an objective appraisal of his work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The reviews for the work of the cherished, but fictional, Ducré garnered almost universal praise in the papers with some going so far as to say that Berlioz himself could learn much from the old master. Berlioz responded thusly:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once the dust settled, the critics attempted to save face by observing that the style of this new work was much calmer than the raucous mayhem of Berlioz's previous works to which Berlioz explained: </span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In that work many people imagined they could detect a radical change in my style and manner. This opinion is entirely without foundation. The subject naturally lent itself to a gentle and simple style of music, and for that reason alone was more in accordance with their taste and intelligence. Time would probably have developed these qualities, but I should have written L'enfance du Christ in the same manner twenty years ago.</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you read carefully between the lines, you can see a thinly veiled barb about the critics' taste and simple music. Berlioz was as much a master of literary skill as he was of music, and a lesser known fact remains that he was a rather prolific author, both of musical critiques and scholarly texts, perhaps most popular being his "Treatise on Instrumentation." In this work, Berlioz outlines his master plan for the orchestra, highlighting the usage of the various instruments in roles that would be used to expand upon the Classical era instrumentation and create an intensely formidable ensemble, the likes of which Wagner and Mahler would absorb into their own epics. Beethoven may have introduced us to the melody as a tool, but it was Berlioz who truly weaponized it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of my favorite enduring musical quotes comes from his treatise. I first became aware of it from a copy of it adorned the door of my first trombone teacher, when I was but a mere trombone tadpole. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And to conclude today I will now share it with you:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The trombone is, in my view, the real leader among the class of wind instruments I have described as epic. It possesses to the highest degree nobility and grandeur. It commands all the accents, grave or powerful, of high musical poetry, from imposing and calm religious tones to the frenzied clamour of an orgy.</i> </span></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The composer may at will make it sing a chorus of priests, threaten, utter a subdued lament, whisper a funeral dirge, raise a hymn of glory, break out in dreadful cries, or sound its formidable call for the awakening of the dead or the death of the living. </span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Sources:</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27enfance_du_Christ</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Berlioz</span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-85011189865596964902015-11-20T00:00:00.000-05:002015-11-21T18:07:04.581-05:00Merry Christmas once again from Listening Friday!<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Well, we made it another year folks. And with millions of pounds of rotten, squishy Jack-o-Lanterns clogging our landfills and garbage disposal's you know the smell of Christmas is in the air. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the olden days, before Siri and calendars, ancient peoples of Earth would determine it was Christmas time by noticing the foliage changing, the air growing crisper, or the local adult-contemporary music station beginning to play Bing Crosby on repeat. Fortunately in these enlightened times we don't need to depend on such simplistic rituals to observe the holidays. Today, thanks to Al Gore and Leon Trotsky collaborating to bring us the wonderful interconnection of devices known simply as "the internet", we can remain aware of all things temporal with the simple click of a computer mouse.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Behold:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://isitchristmas.com/" target="_blank">https://isitchristmas.com/</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This was brought to you by the same people who keep tabs on Fish at <a href="http://www.abevigoda.com/">www.abevigoda.com</a></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">What a time to be alive!</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In all seriousness though, the surest sign of the season for most of us remains the changing of Muzak programs in the supermarkets and K-Marts of the world to reflect the mentality that we are now counting down the days remaining to buy stuff we can't afford for people we often only see during this magical time of year when it is considered socially appropriate to both overeat fervently and drink one's own weight in eggnog. But I digress. One of my favorite things about the holiday season is the music. There are of course the classics, which we will attempt to visit over the next remaining Friday's before Christmas. These are the hardened, battle-worn titans of the Christmastime aural field. Names like Andy Williams, Celine Dion, and the Beach Boys carry a lot of water this time of year. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But the lesser-known heroes of this day are of course the smooth-jazz remixes of those holiday favorites. Crafted meticulously, like the "radio-version" pop remixes of Disney melodies that inexplicably play following the credits of any given full-length feature animated film. These tunes possess the quality of being almost entirely not unlike an album that you would purchase as a Christmas gift for a friend that is more than an acquaintance, but not well-liked enough to take a long car trip with. This is the sort of music the office suck-up plays at the company Christmas party from a Spotify playlist on his work computer to demonstrate his "sophisticated taste". Not outrightly offensive, but majestically inappropriate in the fact that no one feels comfortable calling out the fact that it's awful in light of the fact that it's Christmas and drunkenly punching your fist through your co-worker's stereo is precisely the sort of behavior that earns one a lump of coal in their stocking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, in true Listening Friday fashion I will now present the farcical holiday kickoff, celebrating the 3rd year we've done this with a small, but nevertheless important announcement. Any of you who have read this blog semi-regularly will have by now noticed that my consistency in bringing you a new piece of music on Friday's has been severely lacking in recent weeks (or months). I offer no excuses, but I can explain that I have been finding it increasingly difficult to put myself in proper frame of mind to research and craft these entries. It is a painstaking process I use, despite what may seem like nonsensical gibberish, I try to pride myself on getting my facts straight and presenting a coherent and useful snippet of prose that may occasionally cause you to snort milk out of your nose, which of course is fine and well until you come to the realization that you were drinking iced tea. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, the announcement. I plan on writing entries leading up to Christmas (which just so happens to conveniently be a Friday this year) and then I will officially step back from writing for a yet to be determined interval. This of course is contrary to the unofficial stepping back I've already been doing, the key difference being that this hiatus has now been heralded with the so-named announcement. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have had this nagging feeling over the past few months that I have run into a quagmire of sorts in the structure and the content of the blog and while I know that many of you who will read this do appreciate what I write (and for that I am eternally grateful, beyond your capacity to fully realize), it has not necessarily garnered the readership where I feel it merits my full attention. However, that is far from the primary reason I am choosing to go on break. I also refuse to put out an inferior product, and for personal reasons I have not felt my normal level of motivation in generating content that I once found much easier. Call it indigestion, solar flares, crippling depression, or lactose sensitivity, but writer's block has made this a bit too challenging for now. I don't plan to permanently abandon this project, but I will be taking an indeterminate leave from it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But fear not! Because for today and then the next five weeks we're counting down the Listening Fridays until Christmas! And as is our custom, the first entry will continue to be a five-pack of sorts, and as teased in the beginning of this entry we will be exploring the most influential and dominating smooth-jazz renditions that ruined holiday classics from our respective childhoods. </span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">#5- Santa Claus is Coming to Town - John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie, arr. Oli Silk</span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wikipedia defines "smooth jazz" as, "<i>a genre of music that grew out of jazz and is influenced by rhythm and blues, funk, rock and roll, and pop music styles.</i>.." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines "smooth jazz" as, "<i>the third most heinous weapon of mass destruction ever conceived and tragically the most significant contribution the ape descendants of Earth have ever given the galaxy at large</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A fusion of jazz and hip-hop, smooth jazz takes two innocuous genres and, by cleverly putting them together inside a mixing console, creates something that uniquely sounds at home in both your allergist's waiting room as well as a pornographic film. Our first example comes from artist, Oli Silk, which is unfortunately his actual name. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Yeah, girl. It's a Roland.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The video is even more exciting because for a majority of the four minutes, nineteen second length you will be staring vacuously at two stuffed bears dressed like Mr. and Mrs. Claus as they kiss beneath an unseen, but ubiquitous bunch of mistletoe. You may not survive this ordeal.</span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">#4- Smooth Jazz Christmas Overture - Various, arr. Dave Koz and Friends</span></i></b><br />
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I think the most surprising thing about this track is that Dave Koz has friends. The only thing more repulsive than creating smooth jazz is being the author of a website that writes about smooth jazz. This powerhouse chart covers a lot of territory in it's 8+ minute run time, starting with a silky rendition of Dean Martin's winter classic "Let it Go", it concludes with a nod to fellow smooth jazzer, Oli Silk with a Gospel-esque concoction of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" that will leave you wondering if the federal government should institute a background check and three day waiting period for drum machines and synthesizers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This overture covers all bases and features far too many classics to name. Incidentally, those of you with weaker constitutions and pain tolerances may wish to skip to the next entry because OSHA's recommended daily exposure level to smooth jazz will be exceeded somewhere in between "What Child is This?" and "Jingle Bells". Personal protective equipment may prove ineffective in which case you may just want to throw your computer directly into the garbage at this time. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">#3- <i>This Christmas </i>- Donny Hathaway, arr. Boney James (with Dee Harvey)</span></b><br />
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"This Christmas" was originally written by Donny Hathaway in 1970 to limited acclaim, but would rise to become "...the premiere holiday song written by an African American" according to jazz guitarist/bassist Phil Upchurch. The tune was discovered again, some 12 years following Hathaway's death in 1979 and revived through many covers by powerhouse artists like Patti LaBelle, The Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and of course Boney James. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Go, go gadget OCTAVE KEY</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At this point I feel it almost necessary to go full disclosure. My brother played saxophone in his youth and I played trombone. That's like a bear living with a much more effeminate, but altogether similarly disagreeable wolverine and as such my own personal bias towards Adolphe Sax and his bastardized collection of plumbing scraps is perhaps slightly coming to the surface of this entry- much in the same way a speeding garbage truck crashes through a brick wall. I totally respect the work and effort these artists put into their craft and as a musician, I understand the heart-wrenching work it takes to get to the point where you can not only create a marketable album of music, but maintain the status of selling enough of it to make sense to create more of this music. That much is indisputable. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">However, as an American citizen with a computer, I would be failing my civic duty as a blogger should I not lay waste to the genre with unfounded derision and scathing reviews. So on the off-chance that any of these artists actually happen upon this website in a litigious mood I offer this olive branch-</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anyway, heeeeeeeeeere's Boney!</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>#2- White Christmas - </i>Irving Berlin, performed by Jim Carrey</span></b><br />
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In the late days of the Cold War the United States was faced with the prospect of total annihilation of the planet through combined nuclear holocaust with the USSR. As a means of staving off the end of days, the CIA worked with DARPA scientists and Hollywood producers to create cyborg actors that would easily win over the hearts and minds of the American citizenry with their charm on the big screen, but could also be completely controlled by government actors who fed information into their computerized brains. The top-secret project created two automatons, the second of which would reach the White House as commander-in-chief and successfully bring an end to hostilities. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">And his name is RONALD REAGAN!!!!</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">However, their first prototype proved somewhat unstable and prone to random outbursts of bits and pieces of its programming which consisted of several hundred algorithms designed to predict exactly what the prototypical potato-farmer in Peoria, IL would find funny enough to spit-take on his Ovaltine. That of course was Jim Carrey.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Once the wall fell, the CIA program funding dried up and the scientists were ordered to terminate the unused Jim Carrey-bot, however they had grown extremely fond of him and the talking anus bit and devised a sinister plan to release him into the wild thus preventing the government agents from disassembling him in their secret lab. They reasoned, correctly, that if the American public were to be made aware of him, they too would fall in love with his crazy antics thus proving his worth to national security and defense as an American treasure. They called in a favor to Ron Howard, and thus "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" was born.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Our example from Mr. Carrey's extensive repertoire comes from a brief stint on the Tonight Show where he regales us with the Irving Berlin classic, "White Christmas". Enjoy.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">#1- <i>Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas</i> - Hugh Martin, Ralph Blaine, perf. Kenny G</span></b><br />
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The original Gerber baby of Smooth Jazz himself, Kenny G was actually born on the distant planet Krypton and only immigrated to Earth after his world was doomed to destruction by a supernova. His parents, Marlon Brando and Sally Struthers, elected to save their only son by placing him in what was apparently the only available spaceship on the planet, which seems like a fairly large oversight for an advanced civilization capable of interstellar travel, but who are we simple monkeys to judge?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anyway, they placed baby Kenny into the rocket and left him with a single soprano saxophone to remind him of his home-world. Incidentally, as a result of intense gamma ray radiation near the equator of Krypton, all seagulls had mutated to produce a call that sounded suspiciously like George Michaels playing "Careless Whisper". Of course, the Kryptonians had no way of knowing who George Michaels was nor why anyone would carelessly whisper in the first place and so they assumed that all sea gulls in all the deepest regions of space sang sultry love ballads about forbidden love. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">It's just their cross to bear.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After winning a lawsuit against Barbara Streisand for intellectual property infringement of his trademark hairstyle, Kenny G went on to record 387 singles comprised entirely of the "Amen Break" and an ostrich playing the harmonica. After winning more Grammy's than the Beatles, Oasis, and Jesus combined, he decided to fulfill his destiny and create the ultimate Christmas album. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Using a metaphysical time machine, he created a rift in space-time that allowed him to re-record the musical scores to every single Christmas movie every made, but the catch was they all would sound exactly like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". As a result of the rift, an elderly Jimmy Stewart materializes in the middle of the theatre during the recording process only to be discovered by an upper-middle-class American family who then shower him with presents and adoration, reminding us that the real magic of Christmas is in responsible banking with your local credit union. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So that about does it for our Christmas collection this go around. We'll have a more sobering example next week, with hopefully just as much fun. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">-ED</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-56853919844413514702015-10-02T00:00:00.000-04:002015-10-02T19:39:07.357-04:00Verdi, Berlioz, Daugherty, & Friends: Dies Irae<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'A big hand please, ladies and gentlemen,' he hollered, 'for the Great Prophet Zarquon! He has come! Zarquon has come again!' </span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thunderous applause broke out as Max strode across the stage and handed his microphone to the Prophet. Zarquon coughed. He peered round at the assembled gathering. The stars in his eyes twinkled uneasily. He handled the microphone with confusion. </span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'Er...' he said, 'hello. Er, look, I'm sorry I'm a bit late. I've had the most ghastly time, all sorts of things cropping up at the last moment.' </span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He seemed nervous of the expectant awed hush. He cleared his throat. </span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'Er, how are we for time?' he said, 'have I just got a min--' </span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And so the Universe ended.</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">~Douglas Adams, <i>The Restaurant at the End of the Universe</i></span></div>
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Our piece today is not necessarily of a specific example, but more of a usage of the text and melody which has been placed into the human psyche as a rather forbidding explanation of the days to come. <i>Dies Irae</i> is a poem, though its composer and the time frame in which it was composed is subject to a bit of debate. We know it was written between 500-1300 AD and historians have attributed at one time or another to the following individuals:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thomas of Celano of the Franciscan Order (1200 – c. 1265)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Latino Malabranca Orsini (~1294)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">St. Gregory the Great (d. 604)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">St. Bonaventure (1221-1274)</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The text of the <i>Dies Irae</i> centers around the biblical judgement day, heralding the end of the world with a descriptive story-telling of the day as so described in biblical text. The account of the prophet Zephaniah provides us with the title:</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers.</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dies Irae itself translates from Latin to mean "day of wrath". <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_Irae" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wikipedia does a good job of showing examples of the text in Latin and two translations</a>, so I don't intend to waste time reproducing that here. There are other portions of the bible that also dictate to the poem, the Revelation being the most prominent. </span><br />
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This piece was originally purposed for use in the Roman Catholic Requiem mass, which is a time where the church turns its attention toward the departed and reflects upon the dead, most times in the context of a funeral. The music itself is ancient, brought about from a tradition of plainchant, which might be more recognizable to the layperson as "Gregorian Chant".</span><br />
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Plainchant is a single, monophonic melody that is unaccompanied by other instruments. They are often <i>responsorial</i>, meaning that a leader or choir would sing one stanza and the congregation would respond with a sort of "chorus" to put it into today's terms. Alternatively, they could be in <i>antiphonal </i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">format where the choir/leader would alternate verses with the congregation instead.</span></div>
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Plainchant evolved in the Christian church out of combined traditions of Jewish and Greek music, replacing the lost art of notation developed originally by the ancient Greeks. Plainchant used "nuemes" instead of notes, each symbol implying a certain sound, but for the most part it remained unstandardized from region to region until the 12th century. You also begin to see the development of the music staff at this point in history, as seen below:</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QV4TaDll25s/VgWIPKEbSZI/AAAAAAAAC0U/zdrkJYazFFs/s1600/kyrie-eleison.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QV4TaDll25s/VgWIPKEbSZI/AAAAAAAAC0U/zdrkJYazFFs/s1600/kyrie-eleison.gif" /></span></a></div>
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Now the thing about <i>Dies Irae</i> is that it just sounds so...dark</span><br />
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Now imagine for a moment the Roman church in the 13th century. Nobody's got their iPhone out. It's probably dark. It's probably pretty musty too since there's no central air and showering wasn't really a thing until after the Black Death some 100-150 years later. Lighting is either natural light filtering dimly through stained glass or candle light. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you've attended a Catholic mass today, it's not all that different in terms of format and style. Then these guys stand up and start singing <i>Dies Irae</i>. You're just a potato farmer in the middle of Europe and these guys in robes are telling you in Latin that God is going to come back and wreck stuff with flaming swords and angels that look like John Cena on steroids. </span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o9nQcaaoxHM/VgWLwsiCh4I/AAAAAAAAC0g/uKJ6A9fGXUs/s1600/4ygWdf.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o9nQcaaoxHM/VgWLwsiCh4I/AAAAAAAAC0g/uKJ6A9fGXUs/s1600/4ygWdf.gif" /></span></a></div>
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And while your medieval mind is trying to wrap around the fact that you have no idea who John Cena is (the saddest part of which being your total inability to appreciate perhaps the <i>most</i> unexpected John Cena in all history) the only other thing you can think of is how cool this sounds. And that's what has captivated composers ever since. </span><br />
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The first of which we'll look at is Joe Green.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IhLG9i9XJms/VgyZGAWp3uI/AAAAAAAAC08/h9jka3xo5a4/s1600/TMS405-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="245" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IhLG9i9XJms/VgyZGAWp3uI/AAAAAAAAC08/h9jka3xo5a4/s320/TMS405-01.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>So, Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) </b>is essentially the king of Italian opera in the Romantic era. He was a big fan of Italian culture and a champion of his fellow Italian composers. So one of his personal heroes, Gioachino Rossini, dies and he and a few other composers decided they needed to create a fitting, Italian tribute to the master. Verdi's vision was that they would construct an Italian Requiem, written by twelve Italian composers. It would then be sealed it in the Italian archives and performed annually in honor of Verdi's death as a public service and without financial gain toward any of the authors. Verdi wasn't interested in money or fame (he was already doing alright in both). Verdi was interested in nationally honoring a fellow whom he held in the highest esteem. Sadly, the project tanked near the finish line and the work was not performed as intended, though it did receive a revival performance in 1988, some 100+ years after Rossini died. </span><br />
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Verdi was a bit of a firebrand throughout his life and was quite passionate about things he felt were important. As a result of the failed Rossini Requiem, he refused to allow his portion of the work to be performed and five years later rededicated his efforts to write the mass in honor of an Italian author by the name of Alessandro Manzoni, a man who had inspired Verdi in his youth. Verdi reworked the finale portion of the original mass and wrote the rest of the music himself, premiering the work in 1874. </span><br />
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Critics look at Verdi, a cynic of religion, openly agnostic and with a significant flair for the dramatic, and question why would a man who had such mastery of the dramatic arts compose something so sacred as a requiem mass? It was denounced by some in the church as "cheapening religion with theatrics" and German conductor Hans von Bülow went as far to say it was "opera in ecclesiastical dress".</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ag3pSgcLEAA/Vg64wVmEgPI/AAAAAAAAC1Q/7eCTOl9b5b4/s1600/king-of-the-hill-on-christian-rock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ag3pSgcLEAA/Vg64wVmEgPI/AAAAAAAAC1Q/7eCTOl9b5b4/s1600/king-of-the-hill-on-christian-rock.jpg" /></span></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In any event, it's a hell of a thing to listen to and I'm willing to bet you've actually heard this work before. It's very common in movies where you need a scene of comically overt dramatics where all hell is breaking loose. The whole Requiem is about 70-80 minutes long, so I'll start the video right at the <i>Dies Irae</i>.</span><br />
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<b>The next work we'll look at is something we have explored a bit already. </b> <b>Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) </b>was a French composer in the early portion of the Romantic era. He struggled greatly to attain recognition for his work, and would spend a great deal of time fighting his critics in the Parisian newspapers some of which seem to take sadistic glee in denouncing his music. </span><br />
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One piece that managed to break above this negativity was his <i>Symphonie Fantastique</i> which premiered to almost universal acclaim at the Paris Conservatory in 1830. The whole work is programatic in that it is a tone poem that describes a young man's distress at failing to win the affectations of a young lady and in a depressed and dejected state attempts to kill himself by overdosing on opium. Instead he has a really bad drug trip. As Leonard Bernstein puts it, 'Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral.'</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jWDqYIxSMYI/Vg693cmmPRI/AAAAAAAAC1g/Opgn6aK67bc/s1600/Son-How-high-are-you.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jWDqYIxSMYI/Vg693cmmPRI/AAAAAAAAC1g/Opgn6aK67bc/s400/Son-How-high-are-you.jpg" width="225" /></span></a></div>
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So our hapless friend eventually dreams that he has been executed (<a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2013/10/symphonie-fantastique-march-au-supplice.html" target="_blank">that's in movement four</a>), and now in movement five, "<i>Songe d'une nuit du sabbat</i>" or <i>Dream of the Night of the Sabbath</i> he finds that he's descended into hell and finds himself at a witch party. Berlioz's program notes:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath ... Roar of delight at her arrival ... She joins the diabolical orgy ... The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, the dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies irae.</i></span></blockquote>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dHmUHepXbeY/Vg6_foiRQqI/AAAAAAAAC1s/_83yQpKppkI/s1600/24d0151d-be14-48f9-a84b-57802b9c43f1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dHmUHepXbeY/Vg6_foiRQqI/AAAAAAAAC1s/_83yQpKppkI/s1600/24d0151d-be14-48f9-a84b-57802b9c43f1.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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Here you go, kids:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Our last <i>Dies Irae</i> moment for today comes from a time a bit closer to home. Michael Daugherty (b.1954)</b> is an American composer who happens to be a big fan of the comic book hero, Superman. He was commissioned and composed a work entitled <i>The Metropolis Symphony</i> which explores the Superman canon through five movements: Lex, Krypton, MXYZPTLK, Oh Lois!, and...</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a1nVejtvN1s/Vg7BeVY0kWI/AAAAAAAAC14/d3NlOOjlVPo/s400/Death_of_Superman_Lois_Kiss.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="286" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; text-align: left;">...the Red Cape Tango.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The fifth movement chronicles a pivotal issue in the Superman comic world where the caped crusader fights a seemingly unstoppable villain known as Doomsday. The two trade blows through Metropolis and ultimately kill each other, Superman sacrificing his life to save the world from what would have been an unstoppable trail of destruction. The immortal hero, died in 1992.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Daugherty uses the <i>Dies Irae</i> as a recurring theme throughout the piece, transforming it into a sultry tango that is punctuated by cymbal and gong hits emphasizing the massive attacks the two titans deliver upon each other. The work, originally composed for orchestra, has been transcribed for concert band and I had the privilege to be a part of a performance of this work in front of the composer in my time at FSU. An interesting side note that we learned in hearing from Professor Dougherty: this is allegedly the first time the original melody of the <i>Dies Irae</i> has been used in a tango form.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I normally have some sort of undercutting metaphor and witty commentary on life to supplement the knowledge I haphazardly impart on you, but today I've got nothing. I've been mired in a bit of writer's block trying to get one of these off the ground (I've got 3 or 4 half-written ones at the moment), but I can't quite hit my stride. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In thinking about the <i>Dies Irae</i>, I guess I just find it impressive that we still find meaning and value in a piece of music that is potentially 1400+ years old. That in our search for the newest and brightest things, we should always remember to look introspectively and remember where we came from as they still exist within us, whether we recognize that or not.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Sources:</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_Irae</i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics2/verdirequiem.html</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Daugherty</i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-67648778203969896612015-08-21T00:00:00.000-04:002015-08-22T13:21:28.795-04:00Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Year 1812, festival overture in E♭ major, Op. 49 <blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">~Frank Zappa </span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Every now and then we have to let the general public know that we can still blow shit up."</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">~Captain Diel from <i>Rush Hour</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the late 1700's France was experiencing some pretty significant growing pains which historians have termed, the "French Revolution". There's a lot of loose ends and rabbit holes to be uncovered when discussing this, but the gist is the regular schmucks got pretty tired of the nobility being famous just because their daddy's had money and went berserk on most of Europe for the better part of ten to fifteen years because why not? Fortunately, Americans have no frame of reference here.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d4QxpjlaK9U/VdfYpH-WqFI/AAAAAAAACtU/0vFO3IuJhPQ/s1600/c09232baefbe1879fd673b13a76c8aa0e6614df7600dc85473a2a6fbd95f4647.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d4QxpjlaK9U/VdfYpH-WqFI/AAAAAAAACtU/0vFO3IuJhPQ/s320/c09232baefbe1879fd673b13a76c8aa0e6614df7600dc85473a2a6fbd95f4647.jpg" width="312" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">"Liberté, égalité, fraternité!"</span></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So in the process of this overthrow of Feudalism and creation of a republic comes a guy named Napoléon Bonaparte who it turns out is like the Michael Jordan of warfare and creates an empire the likes of Europe hadn't seen since Rome fell. Russia had eventually become pretty cool on most of this as they had generated a peace accord with the French from 1807 when Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon signed the Treaty of Tilsit which concluded with France absorbing most of Prussia and Russia agreeing to help France dominate Europe if they would help Russia defeat the Ottomans. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-By1RW7IJjvQ/VdfdCdRxRZI/AAAAAAAACto/mXnLBVWflWk/s1600/Treaties_of_Tilsit_miniature_%2528France%252C_1810s%2529_side_A.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="396" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-By1RW7IJjvQ/VdfdCdRxRZI/AAAAAAAACto/mXnLBVWflWk/s400/Treaties_of_Tilsit_miniature_%2528France%252C_1810s%2529_side_A.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">"I will never let go, Boney."</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Previously, Russia had been allied with Britain and Sweden in telling France the calm the hell down, but with the power of Napoleon's Grande Armée (which we can only assume was made up of pirate jedis) the Russians felt the greater hope for remaining undisturbed lay with such an alliance. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5z3fNWMLCM8/VdfcZ00In8I/AAAAAAAACtg/b34E0uNVqHs/s1600/1497276-pirate_jedi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5z3fNWMLCM8/VdfcZ00In8I/AAAAAAAACtg/b34E0uNVqHs/s1600/1497276-pirate_jedi.jpg" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">As this woodcut shows Johnny Depp fighting Prussians at the Battle of Auerstadt</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So with the treaty in place, peace was achieved between Russia and France for a whopping four years because in 1811, Russian nobility were getting pretty uncomfortable with the whole French thing about "equality" and "being pissed off at the rich people who are rich just because they were the inbred spawn of other rich people" and encouraged Tsar Alex to put the brakes on the Franco lovefest. As a precautionary measure, the Tsar began to explore the possibility of an invasion of France through Poland. This was accidentally leaked and as a result Napoleon beefed up his army to about 450,000 men and tore, thunder and blazes, across Europe straight towards Moscow beginning in June of 1812. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, Napoleon's army was really good at entering a theatre of war and gobbling up resources in short order on a scale of magnitude that was massive enough to satisfy the needs of the ever-enlarging army. Well-fed troops fight harder and longer and depriving the enemy of rations would frequently tip the scale in the French favor. The Russians knew from the outset that they were no match for the French army, which at this point was as hench as the Incredible Hulk, so the Ruskies began to retreat towards Moscow, dodging fights and destroying their own resources which was using a page out of the military tactics book known as: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Russians finally held a line in Borodino (after Russian nobility understandly completely freaked out) where a vastly overpowered Russian force valiantly got their butts kicked, but landed a definitive "you shoulda seen the other guy,"-esque blow on the French. Following the defeat, the Russians retreated beyond Moscow and left Napoleon to only assume that he could waltz in and force Alexander to capitulate, but the Russians would be having none of that and proceeded to burn their capital to the ground. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So at this point, a confused and exhausted Napoleon noticed that it had started snowing, the prize he sought was smoldering away and he had a few hundred thousand hungry soldiers who had about 1,700 miles to walk back to France. Meanwhile, the Russians were all like-</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gU-P5M5VBKE/VdfiGcaP8NI/AAAAAAAACuA/U-LaKdP_nW8/s1600/mi-leaving-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gU-P5M5VBKE/VdfiGcaP8NI/AAAAAAAACuA/U-LaKdP_nW8/s320/mi-leaving-5.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the most bitter Siberian winters had begun to set in and literally began freezing Napoleon's army to the ground. Thousands after thousands of men began dying from exposure and starvation as they began their retreat back to the homeland, leaving Russia to celebrate victory on account of their polar bear ancestry. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">"Is elixir of the bourgeois." </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So at this point you might be given to wonder when (if ever) we might be listening to something. Well, here's the tie-in. In 1880 the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was almost finished being built, which was good timing as it had been 25 years since Alexander II was coronated and about 40 years since Alexander I asked them to build it in the first place. The church was actually built to commemorate the Russian victory, and patriotism was maxed as everything seemed to push towards a blow-out spectacular where they had planned to have Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) compose a fitting piece of music to honor such an auspicious occasion. Someone (probably in Russian marketing) thought it would be a grand idea to have live artillery and bells and people shouting while the music played to simulate the absolute joy the Russian people experienced when nature liberated them from French occupation. Tchaikovsky thought it sounded like a bunch of crap and quickly and dispassionately composed the piece that would make his family wealthy beyond belief for generations to come.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The original festival ended up being canceled on account of the insane amount of money necessary to do all that cool stuff and that Alexander II was assassinated by members of a Russian liberation movement, thus making a such a celebration a bit superfluous. Despite all this, the piece was premiered on August 20th, 1882 in a tent in front of the unfinished cathedral.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The piece is sort of a mixtape of the entire conflict. Tchaikovsky employs a Russian Orthadox hymn, <i>O Lord Save Thy People</i> to symbolize his fleeing countrymen as the advancing French army is symbolized by the (eventual) French anthem, <i>La Marseillaise, </i>and as the conflict escalates toward Moscow you hear cannon fire (presumably the Russians firing the French guns that were left frozen in the tundra) punctuating the anthem as numerous bells ring out over the top of the orchestra. The bells symbolize the churches ringing their "zvons" loudly as many of the Russian citizenry had resorted to praying to God that they be delivered from the invading army. "Zvons" were Russian-style cathedral bells that unlike the Hunchback of Notre Dame, used fixed ropes attached to their clappers so that to play them one only had to press down on each rope to sound the corresponding bell. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now the art of performing the zvons had been mostly lost in the years following the Russian revolution as many of the bell towers were destroyed, so it has proven difficult to authentically replicate the sound Tchaikovsky may have been hoping to achieve. Not to mention the difficulty of firing off explosives in close proximity to musicians. Too close everyone dies, too far away and the sound delay causes a miscue as the cannon fire is in fact in the score. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The version I've found for today is, from what I can determine, a performance by the Leningrad Philharmonic on the occasion of Tchaikovsky's 150th birthday, which would put this recording somewhere in the year 1990. Cannons are used and the bells performed look very similar to what our Orthodox friend up there seems to be playing on. The other neat part about this work is that in the finale portion a brass band (who had up until this point been hanging out) is used to make it as loud as humanly possible as the Russians finally have a reason to be thankful they lived in the Earth's ice box. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The overture, a bit paradoxically, is now a frequent staple of the celebration of American independence following Arthur Fiedler programming it during the Boston Pop's annual "Pops goes the Fourth" in 1974. One could look at the present-day circumstances surrounding the Russian-US relationship and scoff at such use of what is traditionally a Russian anthem of freedom and independence. One could even make a swift (and truthful) judgement that the Russian people are in many ways still fighting for that freedom. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But I say look past the differences in our cultures. Put aside the injustices that still plague our modern societies. And just pause for a moment and appreciate what Mr. Tchaikovsky has done for young music listeners the world over:</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EhuVTgV-8l8/VdfsrC0ynJI/AAAAAAAACu4/P99lu0Bt2Hk/s1600/Calvin-Hobbes-1812.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="203" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EhuVTgV-8l8/VdfsrC0ynJI/AAAAAAAACu4/P99lu0Bt2Hk/s640/Calvin-Hobbes-1812.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sources:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1812_Overture">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1812_Overture</a><br /><a href="http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/July-August-08/On-this-Day--Tchaikovsky-s--1812-Overture--Debuts-in-Moscow.html">http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/July-August-08/On-this-Day--Tchaikovsky-s--1812-Overture--Debuts-in-Moscow.html</a></span><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia</span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Calvin and Hobbes belongs to the unparalleled Bill Watterson</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-2925200128116392362015-08-14T00:00:00.000-04:002015-08-14T23:15:30.428-04:00John Newton, William Walker, arr. Victor Wooten: Amazing Grace<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"...sometimes there's a man... I won't say a hero, 'cause, what's a hero? But sometimes, there's a man. And I'm talkin' about the Dude here. Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that's the Dude, in Los Angeles. And even if he's a lazy man - and the Dude was most certainly that. Quite possibly the laziest in Los Angeles County, which would place him high in the runnin' for laziest worldwide. But sometimes there's a man, sometimes, there's a man. Aw. I lost my train of thought here. But... aw, hell. I've done introduced him enough."</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Stranger, <i>The Big Lebowski (1998)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Recalcitrant insubordination could be a phrase that might appear in the vast cumulative folders of many students throughout history. Often when browsing Wikipedia, one is given to attempt to stay coherent through the drawling sentences, written to emulate and perhaps propagate a tone befitting a most verbose tome of the world's knowledge. It can get a bit dry. But every so often someone will throw out a certain combination of words that will catch my attention. In this case it was in an article regarding the brain child of John Newton (1725–1807) who was responsible for creating the combination of words known to many people as "Amazing Grace". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The article touched on the fact that Mr. Newton had an issue with people who were in a position to tell him what to do. In schools today, it might be called "Oppositional Defiant Disorder". You might notice a theme here, that I'm fairly certain has no correlation whatsover, but is interesting none-the-less. "Recalcitrant" describes an individual who possesses a difficulty when confronted with authority and particularly with following the instructions given by such authority. Uncooperative is a word that is associated with it, while insubordination is the act of willful disobedience, occasionally with an axe to grind. Both words are similar enough ways of describing the same trait or personality. It's almost like saying a color is "red red", but with more letters involved. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By the same token "Oppositional Defiant" is a similar concept, but with- what I feel anyway- is less flowery. It sounds like something you'd hear in an office as a supervisor is going over employee #2458's personnel file. "Well, you didn't share the copier with Pete last week, and then you proceeded to staple his tie to the door as you kicked over the water cooler. I'm sensing some <i>oppositional defiance</i> from you this quarter, Greg."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So the story goes that John Newton was a bit of a renegade and had led a life (as so described by Wikipedia) of recalcitrant insubordination. Now, in the mid-1700's when Mr. Newton lived, England had a very equitable way of guaranteeing that they had a strong, well-manned Navy. Each time in port when they needed to acquire more sailors (because the other ones had either run off or died from boredom or malaria) they would task a highly skilled militia with encouraging young men of age to come live a care-free life of ease on the open seas. This often involved threatening one's life with big sticks and frequently employed blunt force trauma to the head to initiate unconsciousness which would put a prospective sailor in no frame of mind to debate the merits of what was tantamount to indentured servitude. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mr. Newton was one such sailor and following his career in the Queen's navy he began working for the Atlantic Slave Trade which meant Newton would be helping to transport actual indentured servants to work unendingly in the English colonies. As fate would have it, his ship was struck by a fearful storm and like a college student who promises never to drink again whilst in the throes of alcohol-induced vomiting, Newton vowed to take up a life of Christianity should God grant him mercy. Now, unlike most college drunkards, Newton remained affected and as his ship was in for repairs following the storm he wrote the first verse to the tune we know now as "Amazing Grace".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Eventually, he would be ordained in the Anglican Church and become a curate, working alongside William Cowper who was a fellow poet and hymnodist in Olney which is about 60 miles from London. The pair were responsible for publishing a number of hymns, but Amazing Grace was written for New Year's sermon in 1773 and quietly forgotten for some time. We don't rightly know if the text was set to music at this point, but it was eventually published in 1779 and would remain under the radar until the Second Great Awakening in the US around the beginning of the 19th century. It wasn't until 1835 when it was set to the tune "New Britain" by William Walker (1809-1875). Now Walker was a composer, but he was not responsible for "New Britain", only setting the words to the melody. That tune was part of the British oral tradition and while there are a few possible leads from similar folk music, the original author cannot be satisfactorily verified. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">William Walker was the author of a choral education book called "Southern Harmony", in which this incarnation of "Amazing Grace" first appeared. The early 1800's in the burgeoning United States, music education was being handled most apparently by the churches, and in the southern US particularly the Baptist church. Walker used the tradition of shape notes, which was a simplified notation system used to indicate a note's pitch (flat, natural, sharp) by changing the shape of the notehead. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">American churches are often considered the soil in which music education flourished in our country, and as a result these songs tend to occupy a place in the American psyche to this day. Now "Amazing Grace" originally was set to a number of different melodies, and since Mr. Walker's pairing with "New Britain" it has been arranged into what I can only guess is an insane amount of different pieces of music. Searching YouTube for various versions of the tune would fill an afternoon, but today I will share just one version that is uniquely special to me as it is performed on one of my favorite instruments and by one of my favorite musicians. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2013/09/bela-fleck-and-flecktones-big-country.html" target="_blank">We have discussed Victor Wooten before</a> in the context of his band, the Flecktones. But the man is an amazing solo musician as well, being the preeminent virtuosic bassists alive today. He has an understanding and a capacity to the instrument that can be often emulated and observed, but infrequently duplicated. Victor holds an annual <a href="http://www.vixcamps.com/" target="_blank">summer music and nature camp </a>where he teaches lessons about playing electric bass to students of all ages and also shares his philosophy about nature and his Zen outlook on life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My favorite part about watching any virtuoso perform is the transformation that occurs in their countenance as they practice their art. Victor Wooten is certainly no exception. He takes on a new persona as he works the melody from his instrument, stretching its musicality to the zenith as he crafts something that cannot be adequately expressed through word alone. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I identify with John Newton. I never liked being told what to do, particularly when I thought what I was told to do was stupid or pointless. I regularly found myself in predicaments based off those choices that made life more challenging as a result, and I think we all have a taste of that at one time or another. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">He chose...poorly.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But I think the journey to redemption is, if nothing else, as important as the destination itself. Without the cause, there is no effect and without John Newton's "recalcitrant insubordination", we might not have ever had a wretch to be saved in the first place. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sources:</span></i><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">http://www.youtube.com</span></i></a><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace</span></i></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-36874541277391049692015-04-17T00:00:00.000-04:002015-04-24T21:04:00.519-04:00Radiohead, Albert Hammond, Mike Hazlewood, arr. Scott Bradlee: Creep<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is a perception that the music of this present generation is a lot crappier than it used to be. Now, I don't stand here professing that all contemporary music is quality, but I will tell you that music has existed for almost as long as humans have walked this Earth and for approximately the same amount of time several of them have made inordinately shitty music. </span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k-0Dgni8Fx4/VTKIaaFPC4I/AAAAAAAACkY/VzRJCgy9x-c/s1600/Rebecca-Black-Friday-Hipster-Meme.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k-0Dgni8Fx4/VTKIaaFPC4I/AAAAAAAACkY/VzRJCgy9x-c/s1600/Rebecca-Black-Friday-Hipster-Meme.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps the reason that this reality of music getting worse exists comes from a couple things that can easily be observed. First and foremost, to quote Winston Churchill, "History is written by the victors." Our entire cultural music experience is based on the premise that only music that gets listened to will be played. We tend to look through music history with a lens that filters out all the gunk and tripe that never made it. A downside to this is that sometimes things written in previous eras get tossed aside, and may remain undiscovered until someone later on can make it relevant to our cultural experience. Case-in-point: <a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2014/10/j-s-bach-suite-no-1-in-g-major.html" target="_blank">Bach's Cello Suites and Pablo Casals</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The other aspect that is more apparent today than ever before is that music is an easily consumed commodity and much more accessible to the layman to both listen to as well as create. This sea change has created a music industry that frequently focuses on image and marketability over musical talent. I reference my previous statement in saying that the only music that gets played is music that will be listened to. In a capitalist society, if it wasn't making money, it wouldn't last long. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Scott Bradlee (b. 1981) is an American musician, pianist, composer, and arranger from New York and approaches this new world of music creation and destruction with a backward looking glance. He's an incredibly talented pianist and has a natural flair for stylistically motivated arrangements that discover unknown facets of contemporary pop. His experiment in sound operates on a favorite premise of mine in that if you get enough talent and put it into a box filled with instruments something good will come out. </span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9z6tbfT_jfA/VTKOBhas2vI/AAAAAAAACko/Ep1v2U6BrFw/s1600/schrodingers-lolcat1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9z6tbfT_jfA/VTKOBhas2vI/AAAAAAAACko/Ep1v2U6BrFw/s1600/schrodingers-lolcat1.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He is the founder of the Post-Modern Jukebox, a group of rotating and guest musicians who take various pop songs from different decades and reimagines them in alternate style universes. He was actually tapped by the game developers of the BioShock series to create tunes that fit into the dystopian world of the game. His formula usually is to take a tune that is presently popular and arrange it as a top 40 hit from the 30's (or any other decade that makes sense for that particular song). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What interests me the most is his seemingly uncritical targeting for songs that will fit into his arranging machine. He has rehashed several examples of pop music from today that would be rejected by the more conservative listening community as examples of the ejecta of the modern entertainment business and a byproduct to be consumed and destroyed- certainly not showcased and performed by ridiculously talented New York session musicians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The example we look at today features a refresh of a song that can be considered to be part of the modern music "art" scene in and of itself. "Creep" by the English alt-rock band Radiohead was released originally back in 1992 to a lukewarm reception in their home country. The song did find a tremendous amount of success in Israel, several Scandinavian countries as well as the US. In what is somewhat of a paradox, the band's general opinion of the song is somewhat jaded, initially fighting the pressure to re-release the song in the UK after it garnered world-wide attention. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Postmodern Jukebox originally published their cover of "Creep" back in August of 2014, featuring a popular vocalist in rotation with the group, Karen Marie (<a href="http://www.wimp.com/slowjam/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">who is nothing short of remarkable and hysterically funny too!</a>). Following a tour in Europe the band re-recorded the arrangement with Haley Reinhart who takes it in a different direction altogether. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the more unfortunate things about the recent trends in popular music is not necessarily the embrace of image and marketability over all else, but more so the loss of musicality as something to be praised and embraced. The advent of autotune and the insane amount of post-processing technology that goes into producing an album allows for a sound that would be unobtainable under normal circumstances. And before you go trashing Rihanna, et al...</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EtaSPAe8-sg/VTKgb_Fu6uI/AAAAAAAACk4/tpSHYiIyHHE/s1600/deep-rihanna_o_353405.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EtaSPAe8-sg/VTKgb_Fu6uI/AAAAAAAACk4/tpSHYiIyHHE/s1600/deep-rihanna_o_353405.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">...this sort of technology is present in the classical world too. The difference between a classical recording today and one 50 years ago is worlds apart. Sound design has evolved significantly, microphone placement and the sheer number of different microphones available means that in a studio every detail can be accounted for and captured and then processed into the final product. Such music is also subject to the various edits and cut and pastes that any other music track would endure to be shaped into the final product. This is just a part of where the music industry has gone with the tools that are now available and just like any other kind of tools you may find, these can be mishandled. </span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G7TYGOPPQFQ/VTKiOVt2q_I/AAAAAAAAClE/qjzOePDR738/s1600/funny-grumpy-old-man-meme.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G7TYGOPPQFQ/VTKiOVt2q_I/AAAAAAAAClE/qjzOePDR738/s1600/funny-grumpy-old-man-meme.jpg" height="400" width="268" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I invite you to sit back and put some headphones on and listen to good musicians playing good music. And remember, bad music has and always will exist. There's nothing to be done about that. But take heart! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Good musicians will persist and as a result... </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So will good music.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Bradlee"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Bradlee</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://postmodernjukebox.com/"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://postmodernjukebox.com/</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creep_%28Radiohead_song%29"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creep_%28Radiohead_song%29</i></span></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-80530972349282319732015-04-10T00:00:00.000-04:002015-04-24T21:04:54.970-04:00Johann De Meij: Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings"<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>All that is gold does not glitter,<br />Not all those who wander are lost;<br />The old that is strong does not wither,<br />Deep roots are not reached by the frost.</i> </span></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From the ashes a fire shall be woken,<br />A light from the shadows shall spring;<br />Renewed shall be blade that was broken,<br />The crownless again shall be king.</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">J. R. R. Tolkien </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Johann de Meij (b. 1953) is a Dutch trombonist/composer/conductor that incidentally <a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2013/03/johan-de-meij-t-bone-concerto-mvt-i-rare.html" target="_blank">we haven't talked about in over two years.</a> Born in Voorberg, Netherlands he is well known for his love of wind band and Tolkien. He is a prolific and popular composer, amassing four large-format symphonic works for band as well as a quite a few popular concertos, including the T-Bone Concerto for trombone. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Normally I launch into some diatribe about how historical the composer was or what sort of environment existed to forge the work we're talking about, but this one is pretty straightforward. de Meij is a low brass band nerd and he really likes Lord of the Rings. </span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7yhSabN0Vc4/VShurUAG-4I/AAAAAAAACjA/XzkghbcIlls/s1600/gandalf-style.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7yhSabN0Vc4/VShurUAG-4I/AAAAAAAACjA/XzkghbcIlls/s1600/gandalf-style.gif" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The piece itself is divided into five distinct movements that all are sorts of character studies of the various characters and locations in the LOTR universe. They are:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gandalf (The Wizard)</span> </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lothlórien (The Elvenwood)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Gollum (Sméagol)</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Mines of Moria</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first movement begins with a triumphant, heroic theme that then transitions into another, quicker theme evoking imagery of a breakneck chase across Middle Earth. These all feel very much like film scoring, with lush, full band sound supporting these massively sweeping melodies. The piece then brings about a hymn-like conclusion to the chase and enters a bit more introspective section that recaps the original 'Gandalf' theme. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If I had to compare it to a specific style in Western-Art Music, I'd say it's a bit like a symphonic poem, but instead of evoking specific imagery of setting, date and or time, this is more of a character study of sorts. It explores the emotions and actions of the individual characters more so than setting any scenery in the mind's eye. The exception to that would of course be the 2nd and 4th movements which do explore actual locations within the LOTR universe. Movement II establishes a sort of curious, but slightly dangerous tone establishing the formal and reserved nature of the elves in Lothlórien with a stately waltz that echoes a Baroque ensemble that transitions to a forest of woodwind-inspired birds. It concludes with a restatement of the original theme and fades into the darkness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gollum is this wickedly twisted, loping galop that effectively sounds terrifying with an alto saxophone solo at the beginning. Again, de Meij expresses more the quality of the character and his personality rather than specific scenes that take place within the book. Just listening to this, if you knew nothing else about Gollum, you'd know he's not exactly the sort of person (or thing) you'd want to hang around. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Journey in the Dark captures the tension and anxiety of the ring-bearing party's entrance into the Mines of Moria and the madness of the orc attack following which we hear a brief statement of the Gandalf theme right before things wind down a bit, probably demonstrating some of de Meij's most vivid storytelling through music as we hear Gandalf's famous stare down with the balrog. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the final movement we again visit not specifically a place, but a archetype of the Tolkien world, the Hobbits. Introduced by the Gandalf theme, which is befitting as through the books and the movies we're often given to view the Hobbits through the lens of Gandalf, it then transitions to a folksy, upbeat tune that sounds very, well...Hobbity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My only gripe with this movements is that this movement then goes into what essentially amounts to a slow, "pomp and circumstance"-esque rehashing of the same Hobbit theme. It's very well done, but after almost 40 minutes of music, it's a bit stale. Like writing, composing tends to have a problem with overstating the obvious and in my humble opinion, this restatement of the main Hobbit theme drags on for a bit too long without saying anything too terribly new. Perhaps de Meij was pre-editorializing the insanely long ending as described by Peter Jackson. </span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LHb0-vqtnZo/VSh6XTNXn_I/AAAAAAAACj4/8hfvLBqm1_0/s1600/One-Hobbit-Movie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LHb0-vqtnZo/VSh6XTNXn_I/AAAAAAAACj4/8hfvLBqm1_0/s1600/One-Hobbit-Movie.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite this, I still really love this work. de Meij captures a Romantic style and love of a good melody and blends it quite well with more modern compositional techniques for band today. Not that I don't think Howard Shore did a fine job with the score for the Peter Jackson movies, but I certainly wouldn't have been disappointed had they approached de Meij for the job himself. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Interestingly, he was actually discouraged from writing the work as it was to be his first major work and at that time (in the mid-1980's) there wasn't much wind band music longer than 30 minutes. This work you will notice clocks in around 45 and despite the protestations of his contemporaries in the early days, de Meij's <i>Symphony No. 1</i> was the catalyst that launched him into contention with some of the finest composers of this era, gave him the ability to found his own publishing company, Amstel Music, which currently publishes several Nordic composers to this day. de Meij is a much sought-after conductor and frequently can be found in performances all over the world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you've only got a few moments, I'd recommend at least listening to Gandalf. However, if you're a die-hard Tolkien fan it might be worth it to settle in for the full 45 minute epic. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nRcKIAtHv5c" width="560"></iframe></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources: </i></span><br />
<a href="http://www.naxos.com/news/?op=1063&displayMenu=Naxos_News&type=2"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.naxos.com/news/?op=1063&displayMenu=Naxos_News&type=2</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.johandemeij.com/music.php"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.johandemeij.com/music.php</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._1_%22The_Lord_of_the_Rings%22"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._1_%22The_Lord_of_the_Rings%22</i></span></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-24007073407503006552015-04-03T00:00:00.000-04:002015-04-24T21:05:09.313-04:00George Gershwin: An American in Paris<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">According to Wikipedia, audio compact discs have been commercially available to consumers since 1982. Tragically, my family did not acquire this amazing technology until well into the 90's. Growing up in the era I did was a very interesting time in terms of music technology. The primary means of sharing music with consumers was either through the newly christened "Music Television" or for those of us without cable (before it was cool to "cut the cord") it was in fact the humble cassette tape. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SMDdlWhI3aE/VR8TBXm64wI/AAAAAAAAChg/HRcbxjD86X8/s1600/age-test-cassette-tape-and-pencil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SMDdlWhI3aE/VR8TBXm64wI/AAAAAAAAChg/HRcbxjD86X8/s1600/age-test-cassette-tape-and-pencil.jpg" height="296" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Know how I know you're old? You still think Comic Sans is a pretty neat font.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now the cassette tape afforded a unique opportunity to easily and quickly record music directly from the live broadcast of radio stations. This was illegal, but rarely raised a fuss as the challenge of waiting for the radio to play your favorite song and then have everything ready to capture it was often a difficult endeavor requiring no shortage of luck and patience. The advent of the CD meant that higher quality music was readily available, but it wasn't as easy to capture songs in the same manner, so it until the internet (and the illegal music downloading game) kicked in people largely remained true to the magnetic storage medium.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Prior to the mp3 and the various codec progeny that ensued, music either had to be shared physically from person to person or you had to actually purchase an album. Buying the album meant paying for all the songs on the disc or cassette even if you only really wanted to hear one or two tracks. This is a problem that was alleviated by the "a la carte" methodology introduced by the iTunes store and other music providers as well as the aforementioned illicit music peer-to-peer sharing networks that cropped up like weeds.</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yRUQKzsKtLQ/VR8VFBO-ukI/AAAAAAAAChs/YnzP1O9ThLk/s1600/first-world-torrent-problems.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yRUQKzsKtLQ/VR8VFBO-ukI/AAAAAAAAChs/YnzP1O9ThLk/s1600/first-world-torrent-problems.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a general rule, I do not advocate the act of illicitly sharing music. I don't really care if you do or not, but I made the decision a while back that if I really wanted a particular recording badly enough, I'd just buy the damn thing since it's now easier than ever. The other bit of progress in this realm (and one that has made this site the tepid success that it is no less) is YouTube and it's ever-growing collection of music and recordings of art music as well as pretty much everything else you can imagine before the content scrubbers banish it to copyright hell. In all the history of LF.com there has only been two times when I've stumped YouTube and had to send you elsewhere in search of music to listen to on a Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Don't worry. We've got it covered today.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">George Gershwin (1898-1937) was an American composer who lived inside and between two worlds. In the early 20th century, Jazz had begun establishing its place in the center of American popular music. Living in New York, Gershwin had begun performing as a "song plugger" which is essentially what predated those listening stations in the music store.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">And next time I'll tell you how Grandpa was banned for life from Sbarro's!</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You see, prior to the internet mucking everything up, people actually had to leave their homes to go find music that they liked to listen to. The mall actually was a place to go and buy such music and not just an indoor walking track for septuagenarians. Prior to the existence of malls and the like, there still existed music stores, but without adequate (read: affordable) recording equipment, it was particularly difficult to generate interest in new music. Enter the song plugger.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gershwin would get paid to sit in a music store and be a human jukebox, playing new music as requested by paying customers in an area of New York known as Tin Pan Alley. Much of this music was written in the ragtime and early jazz style, as aligned with the popular music of the age. Gershwin, who had enjoyed classical training up to that point imbibed the newer styles and as he would later begin to compose and arrange for Broadway music and musicians it would be a large part of who he was as a composer. You see, Gershwin never settled fully into the jazz scene however and tried on numerous occasions to learn more of and possibly even transition into the Western art music scene. He petitioned both Maurice Ravel and Arnold Schoenberg to take him up as a student, but both declined citing the same reason, as Ravel said it, ""Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?" Proving his point, Ravel's later music can be considered to have absorbed influence from Gershwin's marriage of art music and jazz. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1928 Gershwin traveled to Paris, France to absorb the music culture and to study under Nadia Boulanger, a French conductor and composer who Gershwin had been recommended to by Ravel. After listening to 10 minutes of Gershwin's music, she rejected him on the premise that she would have nothing to teach him, but Gershwin would remain undiscouraged as a big part of his relocation to Paris was to find inspiration for a symphonic piece to follow his very successful <i>Rhapsody in Blue</i>. <i>An American in Paris</i> is a symphonic poem that describes the experiences of an American encountering the city for the first time. It actually employs several car horns, Gershwin himself brought a few taxi cab horns back with him for the American premier (which if you pay attention later you will see the most intense car horn player on the planet). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Following the premier performance in Carnegie Hall the audience response was very positive. However, a few critics held the opinion that the work was a bit too "light" to hold its own within a program consisting of Wagner and Franck, but Gershwin shrugged it off saying, <i>"It's not a Beethoven Symphony, you know... It's not intended to draw tears. If it pleases symphony audiences as a light, jolly piece, a series of impressions musically expressed, it succeeds."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gershwin would die from a brain tumor in 1937, vastly cutting short what was expected to have been an increasingly successful career. He had completed an opera, <i>Porgy and Bess</i> in 1935, which while not initially a commercial success, has become synonymous with the American musical theatre tradition and established itself firmly as a transitional piece between opera and the burgeoning musical theatre scene of its time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I first heard George Gershwin in the mid-90's after my parents had finally acquired a CD player. I recall being very excited, thinking that this would be a vehicle for listening to some amazing music and how disheartened was I when my dad came home with a Reader's Digest collection of Glenn Miller tunes, a Pure Prairie League album, and an album of George Gershwin's <i>Rhapsody in Blue</i> and <i>An American in Paris.</i> I actually don't remember what I would have preferred to listen to at the time. It might have been during my short stint as a fan of country music. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Those were dark times indeed.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Anyway, being more excited about the new technology to play with than the disappointment of getting exposed to music that would eventually expand my tastes into what they are today, I would play these CD's for hours on end. At first fascinated that music could come out of a disc of plastic and aluminum, but eventually coming to realize that my limited musical palate was so blatantly ignorant of what the world have to offer that I vowed to continue to explore and discover as much as I could. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gershwin, as much as he wanted to be the American counterpart to the Debussy's and Ravel's of France, had created an entirely new genre of which he was the sole inhabitant and would perpetually grapple for his music to be considered "important" in the eyes of the classical music oligarchy. Despite this and ironically enough, it was he who launched what I presume will be my lifelong love for Western art music as I began to listen to more and more composers and sought out more varied composers and artists to supplement what has become a voracious appetite for the musically creative. However, I will always hold a special place in my heart for this piece. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As I sit and listen again to our American friend bounce around a busy Parisian street I can't help but feel that this poem could in fact be representative of any stranger in a strange land. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And speaking of strangers, an interesting facet of this piece, as well as Gershwin's other works too, is the use of non-standard instruments in the orchestral setting. For this work today, you will hear what amounts to a dance band sitting in the middle of a bunch of strings, extra woodwinds and a tuba player. This iconic sound would lend itself to the film scores to follow, generations following Gershwin's untimely demise. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So while Gershwin may not have ever fully realized his dream of becoming a "2nd-rate Ravel", he triumphed in being a "1st-rate Gershwin". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And that, my friends, is something special.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_in_Paris</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_plugger</i></span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-5533328835881143062015-03-27T00:00:00.000-04:002015-04-24T21:05:27.808-04:00Josh Ritter, trans. Chris Thile: Another New World (Bach: Partita for Violin No. 3, Mvt. 1)<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fractal geometry will make you see everything differently. There is a danger in reading further. You risk the loss of your childhood vision of clouds, forests, flowers, galaxies, leaves, feathers, rocks, mountains, torrents of water, carpet, bricks, and much else besides. Never again will your interpretation of these things be quite the same. </span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">— Michael F. Barnsley</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fractals Everywhere (2000)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the strange and curious ways that our minds tend to operate, I often suspect that there are certain sequences of thought that are analogous across various experiences. Whether enhanced by memory and time or rooted in reality, the first time we experience certain events places some sort of marker in our internal database that makes us believe, rationally or not, that it was the bee's knees. </span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QfdCNFsn22E/VRSXYhtbFiI/AAAAAAAACgI/4jKOLKiUzsY/s1600/7w4iam9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QfdCNFsn22E/VRSXYhtbFiI/AAAAAAAACgI/4jKOLKiUzsY/s1600/7w4iam9.jpg" height="320" width="276" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First time driving a car, first time away from home, first time kissing a girl- all experiences in this "first-time" vein have a tendency to reside in the annals of time as nothing short of remarkable, magical even. The ultimately tragic part of this "newness" is that over time the excitement tends to fade. What once created a tremendous high will eventually become mundane and ordinary and often we find ourselves scrapping to achieve that initial crest, forever searching the horizon for our <i>Annabel Lee</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1849, Edgar Allen Poe wrote the poem <i>Annabel Lee</i>. He also died that year from causes that have never adequately been determined. Poe has garnered a reputation for being a master of the written word as it relates to death and the macabre, though some research into his life suggests that this direction was as much a product of his environment as much as it was a conscious decision by the author himself. Poe was aspiring to become a writer in a time when a lack of international copyright laws gave publishers little impetus to actually pay for anything to fill their journals and publications. It is entirely possible that his focus on such dark topics was partially established to stand out in the discerning press of his age.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That's not to say Poe wasn't an odd duck though. He did marry his cousin, Virginia, (who was half his age) and whom would die approximately a decade after their marriage from what we're told was tuberculosis. It is thought that these experiences combined with the considerable alcohol consumption he used to cope with them also played a significant factor in shaping the author. </span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4plh8TCbLq4/VRSfWvE79mI/AAAAAAAACgY/tBB35BlBE5A/s1600/ce10cc4c0587d1b05871ba172be4c93daac48595dd5504c88a530d55eea81e5b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4plh8TCbLq4/VRSfWvE79mI/AAAAAAAACgY/tBB35BlBE5A/s1600/ce10cc4c0587d1b05871ba172be4c93daac48595dd5504c88a530d55eea81e5b.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174151" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Annabel Lee</a></i> is a poem describing the story of a young love so potent that it was ended by the jealous rage of the angels observing it from above. There is a certain maritime element to the story and Poe uses it as a setting for the poem that describes the presumed death of his love and his perpetual remembrance of Annabel Lee and the emotions that once existed between them. It speaks to a longing perhaps not just that a man has for a woman, but possibly of the passion that can evolve out of man's heart toward just about anything really. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even a memory.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In his sixth full length studio album, the singer-songwriter Josh Ritter presented the world with his own poem set to music called, <i>Another New World</i>. The text evokes several nods towards Poe's work, where we follow a hardened adventurer who has arrived at a precipice of Alexandrian proportions. Having discovered all the natural spoils the Earth has afforded, he begins to ponder the possibility that the last unexplored region may house another world of inconceivable wonder. </span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UFsYmIv5zIU/VRS91iZpGpI/AAAAAAAACgo/YulFxsQxHiE/s1600/inconceivable_princess_bride.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UFsYmIv5zIU/VRS91iZpGpI/AAAAAAAACgo/YulFxsQxHiE/s1600/inconceivable_princess_bride.gif" height="157" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The tale continues that the "Annabel Lee" is a most seaworthy vessel and should any ship crafted by man be capable of broaching the last stronghold of Earth's bounty it would be she. The captain in Ritter's song possesses a passionate relationship with the ship, where upon leaving harbor to venture into the unknown he muses as his crew-mates are waving farewell to their loved ones, he "never had family, just the 'Annabel Lee'", and therefore no "cause to look back." Ritter establishes the relationship between the captain and the 'Annabel Lee' as two lovers who have conquered adventure after adventure and her captain is assuredly leading her to safe harbor in what must be the last frontier for the both of them to find, together. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">However, as in any great epic, disaster strikes and the "Annabel Lee" is frozen in ice as she penetrated the Arctic circle. Slowly her crew deserts to seek passage home, but the captain remains and eventually finds himself slowly destroying the ship in order to keep a fire stoked to survive in the hold. The end of the poem brings him home safely, but leaving the ship to her fate while pondering visions he has of her in safe harbor on the top of the world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are certain pieces of music that resonate with me to the level that I feel it in the flesh and sinew of my body, as if somewhere deep in my genetic code, there is some sort of familiarity that causes a sympathetic reaction. It is difficult to predict this reaction, however when it occurs it is quite apparent. Much time is then expended trying to relive and explore that "first-time" experience as I am careful to analyze it further. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You see, there is a danger in furthering one's knowledge in any subject area. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The quote today comes to me from a geometry textbook I used in or about the 10th grade. It has stuck with me as it seemed quite profound to my teenage mind at the time. Part of the danger Dr. Barnsley is implying comes with the understanding that as we grow to learn more of the natural order of things around us, the magic will wear off. As any educated musician will tell you, 18th century-based music theory is a pretty solid way to reduce music to what is essentially mathematics. It dissects and lays bare what non-musicians perceive to be "music" and transforms it into something else entirely. It makes it impossible to simply sit and listen to music without attempting at least a mildly provocative analysis. At least for me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The consequence of this is that some music has grown exceedingly boring. </span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rA11loulbB4/VRTHyw25uqI/AAAAAAAAChE/tB5xQz6CLug/s1600/bad-music-meme.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rA11loulbB4/VRTHyw25uqI/AAAAAAAAChE/tB5xQz6CLug/s1600/bad-music-meme.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So when I discover something as indescribable as "Another New World"- I just want to stay and live in that "first-time" listen forever.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Josh Ritter version is remarkable, but the arrangement I have chosen to share comes from one of my most cherished musicians, <a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2014/10/chris-thile-and-edgar-meyer-big-top.html" target="_blank">Chris Thile (who we've discussed before)</a>. The video is of him performing the work live and at its conclusion he drifts seamlessly into the prelude to Bach's 3rd Partita for solo violin. Thile's technique and musicality is unmatched. Listening to him play this work will in fact put you aboard the ship as you brace against the cold spray off the bow. Your hands grapple for stability against the icy, damp wood of the gunwale. I swear you can feel the grain of the timber under your fingernails if you close your eyes tight enough. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This piece, this poem speaks to me on such a personal level. It hearkens to a place that I feel all of us at one point or another have mistread in that we seek the unattainable and sacrifice a part of ourselves in the vain attempt to reach our destination, whatever it may be. It speaks on a love so deep that we'd give up everything to find safe harbor again, and in doing so we inadvertently allow that love to slip through our fingers. It's almost a bit of hubris, but of an ironic sort as our pride is not for our own consumption, but for our beloved. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And in tragic conclusion our pride is the ruin of all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The question remains, and Ritter gives it to us to wonder, was it worth it? To sacrifice happiness for ourselves in the hopes that somehow, against all odds, our own "Annabel Lee" finds her way to the new world? Or is she adrift, charred and icebound, in the cold, bitter tranquility on the edge of the unknown? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The pairing of the Ritter and the Bach is Thile's own invention, and one I suspect that is directly related to his virtuosic appreciation for the mandolin. But going a little deeper, <a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2015/01/johann-sebastian-bach-passacaglia-and.html" target="_blank">and knowing what we do about Bach</a>, I am forced to ponder if this piece would not have resonated deeply with the master himself?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174151"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174151</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annabel_Lee"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annabel_Lee</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe</i></span></a><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-62246448908023196562015-03-20T00:00:00.000-04:002015-04-24T21:05:41.994-04:00 Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It all started at the Temple of Apollo In Delphi. One of his friends approached the oracle with the question: "Is anyone wiser than Socrates?" The answer was "No." Socrates was profoundly puzzled by this episode. He claimed to know nothing of any importance, so Socrates set off in search of someone wiser than himself. He interrogated the politicians, the poets, and the craftsmen. The first group turned out to know nothing of any account but believed themselves the wisest of men; the second could move men with powerful words but were unable to explain their meaning; the third group displayed expertise in their specialities but erred in claiming a more general wisdom. These conversations led Socrates to conclude that the oracle may have been correct in its riddling way: Socrates was wise in that he knew that he knew nothing, whereas others were unaware of their own ignorance."</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dr. Morris B. Kaplan</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Foreword to the <i>Socratic Dialogues</i> by Plato</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A favorite time of mine in music history is during the turn of the 20th century when there was a massive interest in the preservation of European folk songs. This is of course well before the advent of any sort of reasonably portable or even remotely useful recording technology such as we have today. Today, most of us have a relatively reliable recording device in our pockets at all times. Just 100 years ago, recording technology was limited to mechanical means with equipment such as the phonograph. 100 years prior to that, musical notation was it. Humans have been perfecting the system for the transcription of music since prehistory, but the ability to record in reasonable fidelity and reproduce a close facsimile has only been available to the average person for less than a century.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So as we've talked about before, you've got a few composers in the late Romantic/early Modern era who began capturing these folksongs and using them as centerpieces for their arranging work. Now this is music that has been transferred down through the lineage of particularly families and communities though the aural tradition- one generation singing it to the next, over and over again. So here comes Grainger, and Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AA8Kb_i_OFg/VPpjilTwWBI/AAAAAAAACa0/RJS6wryfjYA/s1600/ralph-vaughan-williams-1340190830-article-0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AA8Kb_i_OFg/VPpjilTwWBI/AAAAAAAACa0/RJS6wryfjYA/s1600/ralph-vaughan-williams-1340190830-article-0.jpg" height="191" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">With a jawline that made men weep and women pregnant.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">An interesting side-note on Vaughan Williams is that he hated being called "Ralph" as you probably just read that. He insisted on the pronunciation "Rayf" which I can only determine was a preferred means of pronunciation among the upper crust of English society.</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-baMf31iNG2E/VQuNDua2rBI/AAAAAAAACes/HgbYMUCRVTU/s1600/tumblr_inline_mtffy7xFd01rbrja2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-baMf31iNG2E/VQuNDua2rBI/AAAAAAAACes/HgbYMUCRVTU/s1600/tumblr_inline_mtffy7xFd01rbrja2.gif" height="225" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite this propensity for the finer things, Vaughan Williams was not a stranger to hard work and grave danger. He enlisted in the Royal Army during World War I as a private in the Medical Corps, ending up becoming a stretcher carrier and eventually working his way up to higher levels of command. He would eventually come to be reassigned as director of music and would transition back into civilian life as a conductor and composer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He has been described frequently as quintessentially British in his composing, capturing the spirit, nostalgia and essence of the British people in musical form, and Loch Lomond, despite having origins set in Scotland, espouses much of this "Britishness". </span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f8Edy0yLxbA/VQuP42S5a0I/AAAAAAAACe4/DJXuZVJU57c/s1600/operation-retake-british-empire_o_2819259.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f8Edy0yLxbA/VQuP42S5a0I/AAAAAAAACe4/DJXuZVJU57c/s1600/operation-retake-british-empire_o_2819259.jpg" height="268" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So Loch Lomond, like so many other folk tunes of it's type, has a muddy history that has long since been eroded and intertwined with various, believable possibilities. A lot of them have to do with a group known as the Jacobites and an uprising they held in 1745. The Jacobite Uprisings span a portion of history 1688 to 1746 and involves England, Ireland, and Scotland and Protestants, Anglicans, and Catholics. Essentially, you have a King named James (the Latin of which is Jacobus, hence the Jacobite bit) who is Catholic and trying to keep the Anglicans and other Protestants from going nuts. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He ends up getting deposed from the throne of the UK by his daughter, Mary, who was pissed that she had been bumped out of succession to the throne by her new baby brother who James had fathered with his second wife, Mary's stepmother. So she gets hitched with a guy named William of Orange who then is coerced by some of the Anglicans to use her birthright and new husband to stake claim to the throne of England, Scotland, and Ireland. As you might imagine, this did not sit well.</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tuWPUGP6NvI/VQuUazemapI/AAAAAAAACfE/7OO2RTPdfnU/s1600/aggr.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tuWPUGP6NvI/VQuUazemapI/AAAAAAAACfE/7OO2RTPdfnU/s1600/aggr.gif" height="246" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So the Jacobites sought to restore James to the throne to secure their interests in the Catholic church overseeing the rule of the thrones and it pretty much didn't work out, again and again. Now, here comes the part where I explain our reference to Socrates up there- I've spent about 3 weeks on this entry. I vacillated on which angle to really take. "Should I go full bore on Vaughan Williams?" "Should I try and tackle the history of Loch Lomond the tune?" Both were daunting. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As I began researching both angles I discovered a rabbit hole of side stories and parallels that consumed my thoughts and flooded any rational train of thought I could summon for this entry. Imagine- a simple folk tune could have such depth! It was frustrating to the point where I almost scrapped the entry altogether and as a result this entry went unwritten, blowing well past St. Patrick's Day (where I had originally intended it to be the start of a three-part series on Irish/Scottish/Celtic music). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So two things come to mind today. First and foremost, I failed. I had a goal, I set out to do it, and fell short of what my intentions were. The other being that there is no possible way to be sure anything we say is the absolute truth. It's proven that our brains <i>soften</i> our memories over time, massaging away the little bits that suck and salving on some sweet, sweet lies of nostalgic bliss. History has often be attributed to the winners. And here we don't even know who wrote this song we're talking about today. So, for Socrates to go around and determine that everyone is pretty much shooting from the hip and the only sensible thing to do is say hang it all gave me the impetus necessary to plug forward and polish this turd up shiny.</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OE5WcOLMPL4/VQuW9OR1GjI/AAAAAAAACfQ/sgoR8ai3LNc/s1600/846d8c351eb8e7dbd64e5b0fbe08f7c8eb2fadc25bab9e8930007cadb8711c43.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OE5WcOLMPL4/VQuW9OR1GjI/AAAAAAAACfQ/sgoR8ai3LNc/s1600/846d8c351eb8e7dbd64e5b0fbe08f7c8eb2fadc25bab9e8930007cadb8711c43.jpg" height="235" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The truth of the matter, kids, is this- everyone fails. Our world needs failure as contrast for the stars in the sky to shine a little bit brighter. Without the constant and perpetual motion of failure, success wouldn't hold nearly as much meaning. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Today marks two full years of that Listening Friday has been in existence online. I just paid my $10 to secure the domain name for another full year, putting me $28.97 in the hole on this little venture (minus the few months I tried out Google Ads- which sucked). I started writing this blog at a point in time where I was coming to grips with the fact that I would be leaving something behind that I had dedicated a great deal of my life to and that meant I had to acknowledge defeat. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I had to come to terms with being a failure on a relatively massive scale. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is, surprisingly, not something I come by easily. To quote John McClane, "I don't like to lose." It's just not in my nature, but walking away from teaching was necessary for me to survive and to get to that understanding took a lot of time and a lot of grief. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So all of that is a roundabout way of getting back to the core message of this blog. This is not a space to find well-researched, exhaustive studies of history and musicology. I don't have that kind of time on my hands. This is a place where I take music that has had an impact on my life and means something to me and I find something that I can write about it. As well as put up stupid pictures.</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7iFWnYl0jII/VQukiUBk4CI/AAAAAAAACfg/enuLiftQzyA/s1600/a6ffB5l.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7iFWnYl0jII/VQukiUBk4CI/AAAAAAAACfg/enuLiftQzyA/s1600/a6ffB5l.gif" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, the text of Loch Lomond is thought to have been inspired by a Jacobite rebel having come to the realization that he will never return to see Loch Lomond (which incidentally is a lake in case you were wondering) where he said farewell to his love. He then tells his friend who is not dying that he'll take the low road back to Scotland, implying that his soul will be returned to his homeland following his death. There are a handful of interpretations as to which road (high or low) might actually be the path most preferred by the recently deceased, but the nevertheless the impression is given. </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond Where me and my true love were ever wont to gae On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Chorus: O ye'll take the high road, and I'll take the low road And I'll be in Scotland before ye but me and my true love will never meet again On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'Twas there that we perted in yon shady glen On the steep, steep sides of Ben Lomond Where in purple hue, the highland hills we view And the moon coming out in the gloaming.</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Chorus"</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The wee birdies sing and the wild flowers spring And in sunshine waters lie sleeping But the broken heart it kens, nae second spring again, Though the waeful may cease frae their greeting.</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Chorus"</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, in the acknowledgement of knowing nothing and embrace of failure, today we celebrate the 2nd birthday of this project. </span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Pg9UYHEPnDQ/VQumK24mY0I/AAAAAAAACfs/bu_VfDk6pX4/s1600/content_grumpyscreen-shot-2014-04-05-at-2_140405111_616.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Pg9UYHEPnDQ/VQumK24mY0I/AAAAAAAACfs/bu_VfDk6pX4/s1600/content_grumpyscreen-shot-2014-04-05-at-2_140405111_616.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here's to many happy returns of the day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bonnie_Banks_o%27_Loch_Lomond</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Vaughan_Williams</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_risings</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_III_of_England</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://books.google.com/books?id=SSous9E-3CwC&pg=PR9</i></span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-52083667395580116892015-02-20T00:00:00.000-05:002015-02-20T03:29:13.232-05:00Robert Robinson: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness;</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ecclesiastes 2:14 (NIV)</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I was younger I was in the Boy Scouts and at one point we began a relatively serious study of survival and the techniques associated with taking care of oneself in various wildernesses and with limited resources. It is a delicate thing to balance the existence of a human body against such challenging circumstances and it is no small task to not only maintain the metabolic processes necessary for sustaining life, but to also combat the mental hurdles one is presented with in most (if not all) survival situations. One of the things my scoutmaster told us then has stuck with me through the years since my youth. He looked around the room full of mostly teen-aged boys and explained that part of embracing the mindset necessary to live through a survival situation was to come to terms with the fact that, above all else, every single person seated in that room will one day cease to live. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is a sobering thought to grapple when you've barely begun your own life.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But no doubt an important one. Survival requires a calm and persistent rationale, one without panic. Fear, to paraphrase George Washington, is a flame best stoked gently and guarded carefully lest it should consume. Fear keeps us alive, but it can also paralyze us and so must be our constant companion, but never a trusted friend.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Robert Robinson (1735-1790) composed <i>Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing</i> in 1757 at the age of 22. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Robinson was born in Swaffham, Norfolk to a Scottish father who was an exciseman (a sort of tax collector) and a mother who was born to a wealthy family. When Robert was five his father died and he was left alone with his mother who we are told was already struggling to support him. Her father, who did not approve of Robert's father's social stature, disowned his grandson and Robert's uncle was left with the job of supplying for the boy's education. We know that Robert was an avid reader and had a considerable interest in the application of Christian baptism, but didn't possess the social standing necessary at the time to pursue a life in the clergy and so he was apprenticed to a barber in London.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is a story that has been corroborated along a few sources that claim Robinson had fallen in with a rough crowd while in London. On one outing, they came across a fortune teller who they persuaded with alcohol and convinced her to tell them their futures. The story goes that Robinson's future was that he'd live to see children and grandchildren and as a result it caused him to rethink his life's choices and eventually turn towards religion and become a minister. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The story of the drunken seer concludes with Robert wandering in darkness for approximately three years whereupon he happens to hear the Calvinist pastor George Whitefield, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a renowned evangelical Methodist who was instrumental in spreading the Great Awakening throughout Europe and the American colonies as well.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Robert first heard Whitfield around the time he was 17. Long story short, he leaves his post as hairdressing apprentice and begins to preach regularly. Over time he also would supplement his income with odd jobs and farming, but his true passion would lie in the pulpit. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is curious that he only wrote a handful of hymns and only two of real consequence, one of which we will listen to today.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Another, less verifiable tale comes from the latter portion of Robert's life when sharing a carriage with a young lady she began humming <i>Come Thou Fount</i>. She grew aware that he had overheard her and apologizes to which Robinson supposedly replies, "Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then."</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There's no real evidence that exchange took place and looking subjectively at Robinson's early life of losing his father, his abandonment by his mother's family, his young apprenticeship to an unfamiliar trade in an unfamiliar city all lend to the thought that he indeed was "prone to wander" and justify creating a dramatic story of this nature. His reconciliation of faith gives the text of <i>Come Thou Fount</i> an autobiographical flavor and as such he is somewhat of a poster boy for the tenets of divine grace.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the US, the text was eventually set to a folk tune called <i>Nettleton</i> which was written by either John Wyeth or Asahel Nettletonin. In the UK, <i>Normandy</i> by C Bost, is the preferred treatment. <i>Nettleton </i>is a simple melody, repetitive and written in A-A-B-A form. The tune has been set numerous times, by Charles Ives in the 20th century and by several modern artists since. It is a frequently heard hymn both in traditional and contemporary protestant worship services to this day. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The text itself has undergone several revisions following its inception, perhaps most apparent being the subtraction or addition of the "Here I raise my Ebenezer" line, most likely because it causes modern individuals to recall scenes from the Muppet Christmas Carol. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In reality, "Ebenezer" is a reference to 1 Samuel where God helps the biblical character Samuel and the Israelites fend off the attacking Philistines. Ebenezer roughly translates from Hebrew to mean 'stone of help' and Samuel erected a stone monument near the battle to honor the assistance their people received from God. It's use in Robinson's text comes out of a statement expressing gratitude from God for the protection offered thus far, while also implying that the journey home is not yet complete. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Wikipedia itself cites at least 10 variations of the text throughout the different publications and renditions of the work throughout time. One almost uniform omission is of Robinson's fifth and final stanza, reproduced here:</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>O that day when freed from sinning,</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>I shall see Thy lovely face;</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Clothèd then in blood washed linen</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Take my ransomed soul away;</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Send thine angels now to carry</i></span> </blockquote>
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Me to realms of endless day.</i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And to be perfectly honest, the fact that it does regularly get cut is complete crap. The whole work is about accepting the fact that we all screw up at a consistent pace and on a regular basis. He's constantly asking for the intervention of divine grace to supercede his own selfish wants and desires and to retrain his mind and heart to a more Christian mindset. Part of that comes with the acceptance of the fact that one day we are all going to cease to exist. Part of that is the understanding that our time here and now is so very precious.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I've written about this before, but I tend to get a bit weary of the breathless and dogmatic teachings of Christianity in relation to the salvation of humanity. The redeeming death of Jesus is obviously a large part of Christian faith, but eternity in heaven versus ~80 years farting around this rock is a very lopsided juxtaposition, so much so that it defies comprehension. Robinson in his own way is seeking strength and compassion from his creator to execute Jesus' vision of humanity on Earth, right now, in his own time. If we've got all eternity to kick up our feet and chill on the cloud-tops, then it seems prudent to get to work while we're down here on this pale blue dot. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My grandmother passed away three Friday's ago. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She probably would not have liked much of the music I've talked about here in this online listening experiment. She probably wouldn't even want to understand that it was on the internet, nor what the internet actually is. I wouldn't go as far to call her and my grandfather Luddites, but when they signed up for cable TV it was somewhat Earth-shattering. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was also like 1998. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She had a very defined vision of the afterlife in her mind. It was biblically based out of her life-long education in the Methodist church. Out of all the people in my life, her's was the most unquestioning faith I have ever known. She knew what Robinson knew when he wrote that fifth stanza, and she lived that to her last.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My faith tends to be a bit more towards where I imagine my grandfather's mind dwelled. He never felt completely at ease in a chapel and it was thought that the church might actually fall over should he poke his head inside. But his spiritual place could not be found in something fabricated by the hands of man, and so he found his walk took him into creation, in nature itself. He was a selfless man and his evangelism was quiet, often silent as a stream percolating from a hillside. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This blog has evolved a fair amount since it's inception almost two years ago. In its history it has had three of what I'll term 'leaves of absence'. Gaps between entries that vary from 3 weeks to a couple months in length. All three correspond to specific circumstances in my life that prevented whatever muse I summon to actually write this crap from inspiring me to get the written word transposed upon the flickering screen. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I'd like to think that this process is anemic and removed from my own present emotional and mental state, but the truth of it is I write from personal experience and I always have. Each piece of music that has been presented here has had some sort of impact or correlation to events, choices, or relationships that I have experienced in the past 31 or so years. In that sense this blog becomes a tapestry of sorts of yours truly.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I've since discovered that the rationale I utilize to comprehend and interpret my emotions is like a large desk scattered with papers. Papers symbolizing the various experiences that elicit emotional responses. When an event occurs, the paper is placed on the desk on top and I endeavor to find a stack in which it can find a suitable home. On occasion a paper's arrival can be a disruptive force, serving to uncover other papers that have long since been forgotten and buried underneath layers upon layers of content. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I used to think this was bottling up, but it's a very different process. At any time I can revisit the stacks and leaf through these states of mind and exist in that moment once more. Or I can choose to ignore them and let the dust fall where it may. I am reminded of Kurt Vonnegut's theory of time travel as described in the book, <i>Slaughterhouse-Five</i>. He explains that our experience of time is akin to being strapped to a moving train car while peering at the grand canyon through a telescope, one tiny section at a time. We experience time in a uniform, forward manner, but in the book the protagonist drifts from moment to moment as though he were a leaf on the wind. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At my mind's desk I can see my life set before me in the scattered papers. Some are much more worn than others and, to the contrary, some have never been touched. So when these papers arrive and sort of mess up everything I often get these unfamiliar recollections thrown to the surface of my consciousness, whether I like it or not. As I said before, occasionally this unintended reorganization serves to disrupt this process I utilize to write, and I think, perhaps, that Mr. Robinson, in his own way, suffered this phenomenon as well. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So today, in this moment, I celebrate him and his final stanza in the sense that we know nothing beyond this present in which we exist and the stack of papers that lay before us, save for the fact that the papers will one day stop arriving. We have no idea when they will stop, nor what will be the penultimate circumstance of their cessation. We only know what is going on right now, and as a result no other instant should hold more importance. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Neither of the renditions we will hear today include the final stanza, but both provide a sense of contrast for the scope of this work. From simple folk tune to a magnificent opus.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In spite of the internet, I'd like to believe that my Grandmother would've approved. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br>
<a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Robinson,_Robert_(1735-1790)_(DNB00)"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Robinson,_Robert_(1735-1790)_(DNB00)</i></span></a><br>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Robinson_(Baptist)"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Robinson_(Baptist)</i></span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.stempublishing.com/hymns/biographies/robinson.html"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.stempublishing.com/hymns/biographies/robinson.html</i></span></a><br>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_Thou_Fount_of_Every_Blessing"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_Thou_Fount_of_Every_Blessing</i></span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.sharefaith.com/guide/Christian-Music/hymns-the-songs-and-the-stories/come-thou-fount-of-every-blessing-the-song-and-the-story.html"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.sharefaith.com/guide/Christian-Music/hymns-the-songs-and-the-stories/come-thou-fount-of-every-blessing-the-song-and-the-story.html</i></span></a><br>
<br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-8309679042238196602015-01-22T23:44:00.000-05:002015-02-19T08:56:47.426-05:00Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in b minor, D.759<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So many of us in life start out building temples: temples of character, temples of justice, temples of peace. And so often we don’t finish them. Because life is like Schubert’s "Unfinished Symphony." At so many points we start, we try, we set out to build our various temples. And I guess one of the great agonies of life is that we are constantly trying to finish that which is unfinishable. We are commanded to do that. And so we, like David, find ourselves in so many instances having to face the fact that our dreams are not fulfilled.</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is an excerpt from a sermon given by Dr. King at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on March 3rd in 1968. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One month and one day later he would be dead from an assassin's bullet in a Memphis, Tennessee motel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I like to think that in this world, there still exist prophets. And I don't mean that in the crazy "drinking the Kool-Aid", riding-the-comet sense. I mean that there are people who can perceive their own actions and thoughts outside the ebb and flow of humanity. My 7th grade English teacher would call them aliens. She claimed that if in fact there existed sentient beings among us who were not of Earth, they would easily blend in under the guise of our most revered and famous minds. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don't know if that's entirely true, but I will readily agree that there are a class of people who exist above the din of our structured society. They often speak quietly, and are very rarely recognized significantly before their death, and a great tragedy is that their death is often part of their legacy. A capstone on their contribution to our history. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My scoutmaster from my youth often would claim that "you can't see the forest through the trees." It is a strange adage to be certain, since we normally equate trees and forest as cut from the same cloth. However, we often are unable to see greatness when looking directly upon it. We have to see it from another angle before we can perceive that what we are observing is in fact something significant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Like many composers of art music, Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was more popular in death than life. If I had to wager a guess, I would have to blame the inherent lack of Facebook for this seemingly perpetual travesty. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Don't worry, they're not. This was the least stupid one I could find.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The internet has given us many, many wonderful things, chiefly the ability to research ad nauseum pretty much anything you can imagine. Hell, this blog is a testament to that in and of itself! More so, the internet, in some ways, has leveled the playing field a bit and given a voice to the previously voiceless masses. This...has not always been such a good thing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So Schubert lived in Austria and grew to be well-respected among a decent circle of musicians and music-lovers in Vienna, but it wasn't until after he died that people really began to understand the scope of what the young musician had accomplished. The communication and marketing of his time was nowhere near the break-neck pace that we experience in daily life today. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Schubert died at age 31, but at his death he had composed over 1,500 works of music- including "<i>over six hundred secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of chamber and piano music</i>" and one incomplete symphony. This is a <b><i>massive</i></b> amount of music to have been written by an average composer. This is an <i style="font-weight: bold;">insane</i> amount of music for someone to write in under three decades. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The crazy part is that his family and friends sat on most of his library for quite a while after he died. Eventually, Felix Mendelssohn discovered several works and began performing them and pushing them to the forefront of the musical circles of his time. Franz Liszt began transcribing and performing his lieders (songs), followed by Antonín Dvořák, with Hector Berlioz and Anton Bruckner all paying tribute or claiming influence from Schubert's pen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Schubert, by all accounts, was a Classical Era composer. He was studied in the form and function of Mozart and Beethoven and composed in a style that was indicative of the unyielding format of his time. The example for today follows the traditional sonata form that was pioneered in the early 18th century. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you'd like a more entertaining explanation of this format, Peter Schickele AKA PDQ Bach has a wonderful video (shown below) that explains it in baseball terms:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you watch that all the way through you'll notice that at a few points the announcers get frustrated with the deviations from the standard sonata form that's detailed above. You see, Beethoven himself would bend these conventions of form from time to time and that's why he was considered to transcend the Classical Era and also be a founding member of the Romantic Era. Schubert was also given such a distinction.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">His "Unfinished Symphony" is a bit of a mystery. He began writing the work in 1822, as a means of expressing gratitude to the Graz Music Society whom had awarded him an honorary diploma. He sent his friend and leader of the society, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, a copy of the first two movements and a few pages of a scherzo that was intended to be the 3rd movement. That surmises what we know for certain about this symphony in b minor. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There's some reason to believe that there might have been more to this work and several scholars have posited that Schubert did indeed complete a fourth movement, but simply reworked it into the incidental music for Rosamunde, a play by Helmina von Chézy. The other peculiar thing noticed by historians is that the copies sent to Hüttenbrenner had a few pages torn out. So Schubert dies in 1828 and Hüttenbrenner sits on this partial symphony for a whopping 37 years! It wasn't until 1865 that this work was premiered. We don't know why Hüttenbrenner held onto it for so long, or why there were pages missing, but it raises a lot of questions. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What we do know about the work is that it is a remarkable piece of music. Schubert places a great emphasis on melody, which is where some stake the claim that this is the first true Romantic symphony. The major difference between Classical and Romantic music is the departure from the strict forms established in the 17th century, but another part to that is the triumph of melody in the 19th century. Program music was born at this time and was designed to tell a story through song and melody and as a result much more expressive themes had to be invented and more loquacious harmonies to compensate. The rigid construct of Classicism would not allow for such liberties, but such lofty compositional goals could not have been built without first given the foundation and framework established in the Baroque and Classical eras. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When you listen to Schubert's "Unfinished" you hear a true sonata form work to the core. However, deep within the structure, particularly through the development in the 1st movement, you begin to hear the boundaries being tested. Without delving too much into the theory of it, he breaks quite a few conventions with what would be the expected tonalities throughout the middle of the piece. It's almost as if he were testing the proverbial waters for what was possible through expanding beyond the confines of the traditional sonata form. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Schubert was dead for almost four decades before this symphony was published. We don't fully know if this was a dream mistakenly deferred and went unrealized from a life cut short or even if he meant to return to the work and finish it as a symphony at all. What we do know is what Dr. King told us at the beginning of this article- there is not one among us who will live to see the culmination of the entirety of our dreams. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And that's OK.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We still struggle with violent opposition to equal rights in our world today. Does that mean that the struggles Martin Luther King, Jr. and his contemporaries went through in the 60's were not worthwhile? Or does that simply mean that they were an irreplaceable cog in the vast machinery of humanity as we continue to grind out a path toward enlightenment? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Would the Romantic Era of music have happened without the influence of Schubert? The answer is a pretty resounding yes as much of his music went undiscovered until well into the midst of Romanticism. But did his contributions have an immeasurable impact on the future compositions that would follow in the centuries after his passing? It's evident they did as we still remember Schubert for what he wrote. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You see, the beauty of humanity is that we are blessed with the ability to collectively enhance our intelligence from generation to generation, that the sum of our entire existence is carried forward to the youngest of our species. We are continually updating ourselves and furthering our knowledge and understanding of the universe and passing that forward to those that will come after. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, while we may not live to see the ratification of our efforts we can rest easy knowing that the dent was made, the first ground was broken and the foundation laid. For in spite of our own unfinished symphonies, time will pass also.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources: </i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.</a></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mnrHf7p0jM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mnrHf7p0jM</a></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schubert#Numbering_of_symphonies_2">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schubert#Numbering_of_symphonies_2</a></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/unfulfilled_dreams/">http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/unfulfilled_dreams/</a></i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-17274557810978660402015-01-16T00:00:00.000-05:002015-01-23T09:39:42.340-05:00Percy Grainger: Children's March (Over the Hills and Far Away)<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I can vividly remember being 17, it probably was my favorite age so far. I was still too young to even begin to contemplate that there was a real world beyond the county in which I resided. I had a job. I had a truck. I had no concept whatsoever that this life of mine I led would change so vastly and erratically over the next decade and a half. Like many teenagers, I had no concept of my own mortality. I had plans, but everyone has plans. Guidance counselors make a solid living off of telling youngsters that in order to be successful at life you must have a plan. So we all made our plans. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I had my plan, but it didn't seem real. It just was a thing. It was like a print of a renaissance painting you buy at Hobby Lobby to hang in your hallway so your friends think you have a sense of culture. It was a fad. It wasn't tangible, but it would become part of my identity and take form as the so-called plan was forged against reality and hewn from the puerile marble of my vision of "adult-land" as I left high school and thus became my first foray into this brave new world laid before me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One thing I didn't expect was fatherhood. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Percy Grainger (1882-1961) <a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2013/06/percy-grainger-irish-tune-from-county.html" target="_blank">is someone we've discussed before.</a> <a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2013/12/sussex-mummers-christmas-carol-percy.html" target="_blank">A couple times, actually.</a> Since we usually delve into a bit on the composer's personal history, I'll take most of that as read today and if you're really interested you can click around and find out something on your own through catching up, why not. I will share a bit about this Children's March piece of his though. Grainger, as you might know, was a voracious consumer of folk music of his time. It had become a bit of a hobby amongst his musical contemporaries to find these wonderfully well-kept tunes in the English countryside and transform them into symphonic masterpieces for any number of instruments, voices and the like. Grainger was well-known as a pianist, so many of his pieces ended up as piano music initially, but in his heart was a special place for the wind band, and some of the finest literature we have for that ensemble comes from good ol' Percy himself. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1917, following the entrance of the United States into World War I, Grainger joined the US Army as a saxophonist, but also had a strong will to learn the oboe. At some point while visiting Denmark in 1904 he had come to know a Scandinavian woman named, Karen Holten. They corresponded frequently and were romantically involved over the course of a decade. While in the service, Grainger penned his "Children's March (Over the Hills and Far Away)" and dedicated it to his "playmate beyond the hills", which historians presume was indeed Ms. Holten. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A7FDY1bI8oQ/VLibgpSLsqI/AAAAAAAACUY/QUnsVv3J4Pk/s1600/KarenHoltenbyParsberg-c1909.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A7FDY1bI8oQ/VLibgpSLsqI/AAAAAAAACUY/QUnsVv3J4Pk/s1600/KarenHoltenbyParsberg-c1909.jpg" height="400" width="292" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Courtesy of the Grainger Museum (1909)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, I proceed delicately because if you know nothing of Percy Grainger, you might be a bit surprised to learn that the man had some issues. He was into the sadomasochism scene in a large way. He also had an unusually intimate relationship with his mother, that some claim was incestuous. I'll leave you to your devices to suss out the truth there, but his relationship with Ms. Holten was indeed hampered by his mother's jealous nature and they remained "playmates", last seeing each other in 1953 when Grainger went to Denmark for an operation for his abdominal cancer, to be performed by her brother. Karen died that same year. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Percy and his mother, Rose Grainger (1920)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This piece of music is unique in the fact that it is a Grainger original. As I stated before, Grainger was renowned for his skill at arranging, but an original melody is a bit of a rarity. Despite this novelty, it does not disappoint. He treats it as it were any other folk tune and cycles it through various tonal and textural variations, exploiting the instrumentation of the Army band of which he was a member at the time of composition. He also wrote the work simultaneously for piano score. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To me the piece exemplifies the innocence of childhood, of first love, of discovering the world about you. You take so much for granted, you drift from your roots, you aimlessly wander back again and again. And through it all, it's a journey of self-discovery, of rebirth. I feel so detached from that 17-year-old, so much so that I feel that iteration of me has long-since expired, replaced by another, supposedly more mature and stoic version that will ultimately be uprooted and replaced. It's like we're forever in beta testing on our personalities, our existence. Constantly updating and releasing patches to compensate for our life's sometimes injurious experiences. Grainger's work here captures a youthful and pristine part of that journey, very near the beginning, but just at the precipice of letting go and beginning our journey over the hills rising in the distance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I hear my son a lot in listening to this work. I hear his jubilant exploration of the environment that surrounds him, and it makes me fall back into a similar state of mind. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I wrote what you're about to read a while ago. It was originally a Facebook post, but I think it fits the message of today's entry quite well:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Here's my thoughts for tonight. Yesterday, I was putting my son to sleep in a Pack 'N' Play at my mother-in-law's house. We have been traveling a great deal in the past week or so and he had grown accustomed to my wife and I sleeping in the same room as he. Prior to this, he was an absolute piece of cake to put to sleep. Read a few books. Goodnight kiss. Plop him in bed. Lights. Door. Done. Since the traveling, he's gone a bit haywire. I think he misses the companionship of us bunking in the same room. So, to solve the problem, sometimes we will lay on the floor by his crib as he goes to sleep.</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"So yesterday evening, he's all done and we're looking at the same situation. I grab a stuffed toy and use it as a makeshift pillow and settle in on the carpet, trying to make it look comfortable and convincing. After all, he wants to believe I'm going to sleep too. After some initial shuffling and getting comfortable, I can tell he's winding down and begins breathing slow, deep breaths and drifts off to whatever dream land a 17-month-old kid can conjure up. It must be something!</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I start thinking. It's really easy to do while looking at him. I see the whole of existence in my son. The moment he came into being, was the moment I truly realized that one day I will die. I've said before, his existence makes me realize that mine is finite. Maybe that's the way of things? For so many years as an angst-filled teenager I felt invincible. I took risks, most of them stupid, and endangered my life in so many reckless ways. Not much changed through my 20's until I got a "real" job.</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"In this moment, next to my son, I realize another thing. Something so darkly sinister, I imagine most parents don't dwell on it often or worse just simply shut it out entirely. It's this:</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"No matter how hard I try- I can never completely protect my son. No one can.</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's evident every single day! He sprints around like an ant with a sugar crystal. BOOM! Coffee table.</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">*Sobs*</span> </i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">*Kisses*</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">*Better*</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">*Repeat*</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"If I can't protect from running into the coffee table everyday, how can I protect him from a random act of violence? I think about the parents of the children in Connecticut often. God knows they did their best and more too.</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Life is painful. It's just so, so utterly, tragically painful.</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"My son starts to stir a bit. He grabs his "Doggy" and pulls it tightly against his little chest instinctively. His breathing settles down, back to the familiar rhythm.</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I begin to think about a dear friend of mine, whose children are in college and beyond. He's resting at home in an empty house with his wife. I think about the welcome serenity and calm being returned after two decades or more of racing around with kids. I think about that respite in contrast to my present situation with the toddler tearing full speed into large heavy things and falling down a lot. I think about how it will feel, knowing that you can say, "Job well done! The kids did alright!" I think about being alone with the wife. Alone with no kids.</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"But I also think about the journey. Because every station in life is just that, a stopping off point. Nothing ever really stays constant for long. We strive so hard to get to the destination only to find that once we arrive, we're already packing our bags for the next one. Kindergarten. Middle School. High School. College. Job. Family. House. Kids: Kindergarten Middle High College Job House Family Grandkids: Kindergartenmiddlehighcollege </span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Dead."</span> </i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"So I'm laying on the floor. And I'm enjoying the moment. I'm taking a picture on the train, because when it's all said and done- I want my memories from the trip."</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We can stop the passage of time no more than we can hold back the tides nor fix the moon in the sky. These are things that come to pass, and will pass. Again and again. We control so little of our destiny, but we are given to cherish that which we hold dear while we are able, without a second thought to the erosion of the moment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Such a beautiful lesson taught so well by someone so small in stature. </span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TNoE6LXkM8s/VMJdGxyXq5I/AAAAAAAACWY/pa2VtGSfbdw/s1600/IMG_8517.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TNoE6LXkM8s/VMJdGxyXq5I/AAAAAAAACWY/pa2VtGSfbdw/s1600/IMG_8517.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over the hills and far away!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/k8oRPbjZt4Q" width="560"></iframe>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Conductor: Timothy Raynish</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A Chandos Recording</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<a href="http://www.music.utexas.edu/getFile/pdf.aspx?id=2203"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.music.utexas.edu/getFile/pdf.aspx?id=2203</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.percygrainger.org/prognot2.htm"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.percygrainger.org/prognot2.htm</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.percygrainger.org/biograf3.htm"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.percygrainger.org/biograf3.htm</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.ficta.dk/Grainger.html"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.ficta.dk/Grainger.html</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://grainger.unimelb.edu.au/about/percy_graingers_timeline"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://grainger.unimelb.edu.au/about/percy_graingers_timeline</i></span></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-64765105314419024352015-01-09T00:00:00.000-05:002015-01-10T14:52:17.652-05:00Bedřich Smetana: Vltava<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We humans, are creatures of habit.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I8YrfHPs6RI/VLEnxTYQfeI/AAAAAAAACTQ/gkxH5t6_kFE/s1600/a363bc2577636069e93e20051c3d338be3172781144f9bfe4a67b534427750f4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I8YrfHPs6RI/VLEnxTYQfeI/AAAAAAAACTQ/gkxH5t6_kFE/s1600/a363bc2577636069e93e20051c3d338be3172781144f9bfe4a67b534427750f4.jpg" height="228" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As much as we cast our vision into our environment, we are very much forged by it- given to search subconsciously for the path of least resistance as a puddle of water gently finds its way down to nestle as close to the Earth's core as the soil will allow. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is not as lazy as it sounds though. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am given to reflect on <a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2014/03/karel-husa-music-for-prague-1968.html" target="_blank">Karl Husa and his Music for Prague 1968</a> as an example of this. His work (which you can read about through the link) describes the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in the winter of 1968. It paints a picture of a people given a glimmer of hope, but crushed in spirit at the hands of an overwhelming majority of force. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A people forced into the path of least resistance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sadly for the city of Prague and the land of Bohemia, this sort of thing isn't alien. Over the past 200 years or so alone they've experienced similar fates, wars and struggles for the freedom to express and live free and faced overwhelming odds pushing them back. This particular environment has given birth to a great number of revolutionaries, artists, and composers and one such composer we'll explore today is Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884). In 1848 eastern Europe was in a state of social and political upheaval, occasionally referred to as "Spring" or sometimes "Summer". </span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nbCe1HZHdY0/VLEntKFkYsI/AAAAAAAACTI/FWPevvWQos4/s1600/9650247.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nbCe1HZHdY0/VLEntKFkYsI/AAAAAAAACTI/FWPevvWQos4/s1600/9650247.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Smetana was born to a relatively wealthy family, his father was a brewer and also a decent amatuer musician. Bedřich himself took to the piano at an early age and grew in popularity as a gifted performer. Despite a promising childhood, he struggled to gain notoriety as an adult in the highly cultured city of Prague. After the loss of of three of his daughters, the lack of any progress as a professional composer, and the suffocating political climate, Smetana left Prague to try and establish his career elsewhere. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He eventually settled in Gothenburg, a "musically unsophisticated" city where he was able to quickly rise to the top of his local contemporaries. He began a school, gained notoriety and respect in a matter of a few months. After about five years, the political climate had again shifted in Prague and the need for a Czech national identity was created. Smetana returned, emboldened by his success in Sweden, and took the creation of a new national opera company as a sign to help generate that identity by inventing <i>the</i> Czech opera. </span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N_Mh8K8YDCw/VLGCThIdt9I/AAAAAAAACTw/9ZI03I8IkUs/s1600/resized_creepy-willy-wonka-meme-generator-you-ve-seen-phantom-of-the-opera-tell-me-about-your-vast-musical-theatre-knowledge-c597a5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N_Mh8K8YDCw/VLGCThIdt9I/AAAAAAAACTw/9ZI03I8IkUs/s1600/resized_creepy-willy-wonka-meme-generator-you-ve-seen-phantom-of-the-opera-tell-me-about-your-vast-musical-theatre-knowledge-c597a5.jpg" height="318" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He would meet challenges as many in musical power in the city of Prague felt his work bordered too close to the side of radicalism. He embraced Liszt and Wagner which was considered eccentric for the time. Many in the city felt a more conservative approach was warranted and Smetana would struggle through the remainder of his life to etch out his place in history.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And etch he would. Now internationally, Dvořák is considered the senior Czech national composer, however within the Czech Republic and Prague itself Smetana holds a special place.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From 1874 to 1879, Smetana composed six symphonic poems <a href="http://www.listeningfriday.com/2014/10/camille-saint-saens-danse-macabre.html" target="_blank">(we talked about this style before with Camille Saint-Saëns and his <i>Danse Macabre</i>)</a> under the caption of <i>Má vlast, </i>translated: My Homeland. In this work he quotes historical tales and physical places of the Czech countryside and Prague itself. The most famous of these poems is <i>Vltava</i> also known by its German title, <i>Die Moldau</i>.</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tGwobElgyu8/VLF44QbXR7I/AAAAAAAACTg/a1MDv7ENmto/s1600/1280px-PragueCityscape.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tGwobElgyu8/VLF44QbXR7I/AAAAAAAACTg/a1MDv7ENmto/s1600/1280px-PragueCityscape.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Vltava (or Moldau) is a large river that travels through the heart of the Czech countryside, beginning from two small springs and eventually growing massive and weaving through the city. Through music, Smetana describes a journey along the river, passing a farm where a wedding is taking place, past ruins and castles, echoes of Bohemian history, and finishes by passing through the great city into the distance beyond. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's clear in studying Smetana that the man had a great and deep love of his country. He had an early desire to create a national identity, a unifying ideal through his music. Whether those desires rose out of a call to fame or fortune or simply because he wanted to fight oppression of thought is debatable. One thing I kept returning to was the fact that despite his contemporaries in Prague criticizing and reviling his work, he maintained a perpetual optimism that his diligence would in fact stand the test of time. That perseverance could override the resistance he faced in achieving his goal. Smetana might not have lived to see the scope of his work fulfilled, but with his love of his people and his homeland, he changed his environment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For the better.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/XDjE6H5HqWk" width="560"></iframe>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed%C5%99ich_Smetana"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed%C5%99ich_Smetana</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1_vlast"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1_vlast</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.bhso.org.uk/repert-131-Smetana-Vltava---Symphonic-Poem.htm"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.bhso.org.uk/repert-131-Smetana-Vltava---Symphonic-Poem.htm</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848_in_the_Austrian_Empire"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848_in_the_Austrian_Empire</i></span></a><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-64797171540773532932015-01-02T00:00:00.000-05:002015-01-02T22:49:31.675-05:00Johann Sebastian Bach: Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor, BWV 582<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Every once in so often I set up to write one of these little entries and come up with somewhat of a false start. I usually try and accomplish a few things in a typical Listening Friday entry. First off, I primarily use it as a vehicle to introduce a work. Accompanying that I will also try and build some sort of transfer to another topic of interest, something that I usually use as an "A Theme" to introduce things and get the ball rolling. This can range from a current event, an idea, a pop-culture tidbit or really anything that I can find some leap between that will create a sort of contrast that can help break up the dialog a bit and maybe even supplement a narrative that's related to the piece or possibly my own interpretation of the music being discussed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Occasionally this is not as easy as it sounds.</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6bToCUkZXqk/VKaw9tZJrjI/AAAAAAAACSE/Oags7AulJhA/s1600/54968060.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6bToCUkZXqk/VKaw9tZJrjI/AAAAAAAACSE/Oags7AulJhA/s1600/54968060.jpg" height="320" width="255" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I had a great English literature teacher in 7th grade. To be honest, I've been fortunate enough to have great English teachers for most of my life, but in 7th grade I had a teacher who forced us, against our will and frequent protestations, to write 5 paragraph essays every single day of class. There would be some sort of prompt, usually a sentence or two about a topic or current event and we'd have to write some cohesive opinion about it following the simple rules that would allow you to create a cogent mini-thesis on whatever the topic was about. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite my lack of reverence for this methodology, it has endowed me with the ability to write ad nauseum about essentially anything. It came in handy when presented with exams with essay sections since they really don't care about whether or not you actually understand the topic but more so that you can create an organized pattern of thinking without drooling on the paper. </span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ErFlkV5vqs8/VKa8qrATZvI/AAAAAAAACSU/k235QvcKwl8/s1600/morpheus-meme.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ErFlkV5vqs8/VKa8qrATZvI/AAAAAAAACSU/k235QvcKwl8/s1600/morpheus-meme.jpg" height="289" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You'd probably be right. But here's the thing- one of the biggest writing hurdles I hear most people talk about is just getting started. It's so prevalent that real writers actually came up with a name for it- Blank Page Syndrome. The cure I've found for that sort of phobia is to just start freaking writing! Anything. Everything. Just begin to put words on the page. The beauty of the electronic age is that you can type as much or as little as you want and copy and paste it all over the place. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here's an example. I started this very entry with this phrase:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"How long can you listen to the same 16 notes repeated before you lose your mind?</i> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"</i><i>According to J.S. Bach (1685-1750) about seven and a half minutes. Fourteen if you count the fugue. in this case. His Passacaglia..."</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And that's about as far as I got. I was staring at a blinking cursor. Originally, I felt that this might be a cool way to start things out talking about Bach's Passacaglia, but after seeing it on the screen it just felt a bit silly. A portion of overt dramatics. I mean, it's really cool that he repeats the same 8 bars 20 times and adds stuff in to make it interesting enough to listen to, but that's really just what a passacaglia is. You take an ostinato (a short phrase that's repeated throughout a composition) put it in 3/4 time, play it in a minor key, riff all over it 10-20 times, and you've got your passacaglia. It's very similar in nature to a chaconne. The trick really comes into composing it so your musicians and audience alike don't expire from boredom prior to the conclusion of the piece.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here's the thing about Bach- he was the last son born into a musical dynasty. His father was music director in their town and several of his 7 siblings were instrumental (ha) in building musical talent within the young Bach, particularly his older brother Johann Christoph. Bach's parents died 8 months apart from each other when he was only 10 and JC Bach took JS under his wing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">JS Bach adapted early to the organ and found a strong following for his talents at the keyboard for the remainder of his life. Surprisingly his compositional talents were not truly appreciated until some time after his death, well past the Classical era (1750-1820) as the titans of the Romantic Era (1800-1850) were getting their footings on the mount of the musical world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He was married twice, his first wife, Maria Barbara Bach, died unexpectedly while Bach was away on business. It was a tragic event for Bach, who had 7 children with Maria (three of which died young). He remarried Anna Magdalena 18 months later with which he had 13 children (7 of which died in infancy or childhood). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So here's the deal- Bach wrote some 1120 pieces of music <i>that we know about</i>. He lived 65 years, which would mean that at a minimum (assuming he started composing at let's say age 8) that's still an average of 20 pieces a year, some of which were massively lengthy (and granted some of which were relatively brief works), but all of which were published. I have one kid and can barely write 1000 words a week about music! Either he had the best au pair in history or he just never slept. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Another facet of Bach's music (which you will observe in the Passacaglia and the Fugue) is that it is intensely technical. So much so that many of his contemporaries had great difficulty replicating it and even today some of his organ works are more commonly performed by ensembles as opposed to individual organists simply because there aren't really that many people on the planet who can play the organ well enough to create a reasonable facsimile of what Bach wrote.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UzTs1GWrC0o/VKbHP_VLODI/AAAAAAAACSo/J15mEw8EkIg/s1600/BACH-meme-final1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UzTs1GWrC0o/VKbHP_VLODI/AAAAAAAACSo/J15mEw8EkIg/s1600/BACH-meme-final1.jpg" height="320" width="250" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This piece you're about to listen to is really two pieces melded into one giant bit of awesome. It starts with the Passacaglia (which we explained above), but at about 7:30 it turns into a fugue- particularly a double fugue. This type of work is a highly structured format that uses a theme (in this case two themes made up of the bisected ostinato from the passacaglia) and presents them with each voice of the ensemble one at a time and then develops the fragmented theme statements into a new idea (or development section). The best explanation I've heard comes from another Listening Friday favorite, and somewhat of a Bach scholar himself, Chris Thile. He has performed a number of Bach's works on mandolin successfully and when describing a partita that he was about to perform he explained that "Bach just kinda riffs on the shit he just did." That's pretty much what goes on halfway into the fugue section as Bach just plays with the melodies he created. You hear the themes broken up and shared amongst the different voices that had introduced them and through it all another theme is created (called a countersubject). Now these three themes are performed together, but never by the same combination of voices twice, making it a permutation fugue. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To help you out, you'll hear the fugue section start with the bassoons (around 7:35) and then the oboes take a turn, followed by the low voices and so on. It just all swirls around as Bach experiments with the different texture and dips into Bb and Eb major, giving the theme an altogether different experience from what we just heard. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At this point, I would traditionally try to steer back toward my original thought from the beginning of the entry and wrap it up with some witty or clever transfer that puts a nice bow on the entry. This format usually works quite nicely as it gives a strong sense of finality to everything. Given that my "A Theme" was in fact a diatribe about how I had nothing to write about and more so on the actual format I ascribe to for the blog, it's proving difficult to "wrap it up" as it were.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps then, I can just say this- Bach lost his parents young, lived with his brother, worked his fingers to the bone playing organ and composing, lost his wife (who was buried before he even knew she had died) had 20 children, half of which died in childhood. Granted, this sort of life was not entirely out of the ordinary for his day and age, Bach himself died following some sort of eye surgery (which in 1750, I can only imagine the field of optometry was a guy with a magnifying glass and a butter knife), so death was a pretty common event, hence the need to create a lot of progeny in order to preserve one's lineage. But even still, it had to have had an effect on the man. He himself never lived to even comprehend the sort of acclaim his name garners to this day- and yet, he gave the world so much in spite of it all. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To me, that's always been an inspiration to create no matter the cost, no matter the hurdles.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The example from today comes from the annual Proms at Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Andrew Litton performing the Respighi setting of the Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor. Turn up.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.bachonbach.com/100-johann-sebastian-bach-faq-q-a/100-faq-on-johann-sebastian-bach-answer-20/</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passacaglia_and_Fugue_in_C_minor,_BWV_582</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach</i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-27003932633620324082014-12-25T00:00:00.000-05:002014-12-25T00:00:03.187-05:00Merry Christmas from Listening Friday!<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/o8hqaz1wbVo" width="560"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-2989480907404733342014-12-19T00:00:00.000-05:002014-12-20T11:52:49.235-05:00Sy Miller & Jill Jackson: Let There Be Peace on Earth<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"OK. So science sent the Hubble Telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn’t even nothing or once. Can you imagine that? You can’t, because there isn’t even nothing to imagine.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"But then there was this great big BANG! And that's where all this crap came from."</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">~Excerpt from a commencement speech that was to be given by Kurt Vonnegut at Clowes Hall in Indiana on April 27, 2007. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He died two weeks prior.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">So it goes.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1955, the world was well-embroiled in the Cold War, which historians generally agree began around 1947. This is a period of approximately 44 years when the two largest countries of the world continually demonstrated that it would be no challenge whatsoever to eliminate humanity from the face of the Earth with but a simple phone call and perhaps by clicking a few buttons or flipping a switch or two.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Imagine that- 200,000 years of bipedal primates hailing from the family Hominidae gone at the press of a button. Your science dollars at work!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Both nations possessed the technology to make this happen. Neither wanted it, but the grip of escalation set in and the die was cast. In order to not miss the party should it start unannounced, an early detection network was established within a complex known as the Continental Air Defense Program. CONAD was the predecessor to NORAD and both organizations were (and still are) used to track things in the air that were moving above and about the United States.</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LLpjNaWnni8/VJTyqytKVfI/AAAAAAAACRI/YallMhTh8ao/s1600/ancient-aliens-th_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LLpjNaWnni8/VJTyqytKVfI/AAAAAAAACRI/YallMhTh8ao/s1600/ancient-aliens-th_0.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Seven years before nuclear warheads attached to rockets were parked about 90 miles south of Key West (and fourteen years before similar rockets were launched from 378 miles north of Havanna to drop a few men off at the moon), a man named Col. Harry Shoup sat at his desk in what was the former National Methodist Sanatorium in Colorado Springs, CO. The sanatorium had been purchased by the government and converted for use in CONAD's mission of tracking flying and potentially lethal objects. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Upon the Colonel's desk was a red phone. And one day it rang. Now according to the family of Col. Shoup, only two people knew the number of that phone- the Colonel and a four-star General at the Pentagon. It was to be used in the event that nuclear missiles were anticipated to be hurtling towards American interests. On the other end of the line at this moment, however, was a boy. He was asking, hopefully, to speak with Santa Claus. </span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R_5Q10d1fEQ/VJTy-UEsCVI/AAAAAAAACRQ/Zzo8YK4Wvw0/s1600/santa-knows-whats-up.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R_5Q10d1fEQ/VJTy-UEsCVI/AAAAAAAACRQ/Zzo8YK4Wvw0/s1600/santa-knows-whats-up.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Since the burden of preventing the fiery deaths of millions of people is presumably quite heavy, the Colonel responded negatively to what he initially assumed was a joke. At some point, the boy began to cry and he realized that this was no prank. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, I feel that in many parts of our history (both on a grand scale as well as personally) there are these great divides- they are moments that exist when a choice is presented and must be made, often irrevocably. Actions taken that will have the potential to impact a great many people and could have echoing ramifications for years to come. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In his moment, Colonel Shoup chose to be Santa Claus.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Again in 1955, but a few months before a boy accidentally called the government headquarters for preventing the apocalypse looking for St. Nick, a large group of teenagers went into the mountains of California on a retreat with Seymour "Sy" Miller (1908-1971?) and Jill Jackson (1913-1995) who were musicians, composers, and writers. Additionally Jill was an accomplished actress for film and TV.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Jill had been previously married to a German writer and director and had two children. Sadly, they divorced in 1944 and as a result of the turmoil from exiting that relationship she attempted suicide. Recovering from her depression led her to begin writing and finding peace in her Christian faith. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When she met Sy, it began a trove of song writing with Jill a lyricist and Sy composing music. One of the works produced was a piece entitled "Let There Be Peace On Earth"- the central theme of which (<a href="http://www.metrolyrics.com/let-there-be-peace-on-earth-lyrics-christmas-song.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">read here</a>) is the concept that peace on our planet is achievable provided that each and every person does their part. Jill and Sy really believed that with this simple concept, world peace was attainable and they both continually worked toward that end for the rest of their lives. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When they worked with this group of youngsters on the mountaintop, they taught them their song about peace and goodwill toward men with the hope and idea that when they came down from the mountaintop it would spread to their friends and families and communities. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It worked. </span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l5hZ_viKe8w/VJTzRWzv5lI/AAAAAAAACRY/Tz6-T7Daip4/s1600/l-jjm5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l5hZ_viKe8w/VJTzRWzv5lI/AAAAAAAACRY/Tz6-T7Daip4/s1600/l-jjm5.jpg" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The song was eventually performed worldwide and covered by a great many artists and usually performed around the holidays (which is when it's socially acceptable to encourage peace and whatnot). To be honest though (and I mean this with all respect) I find the song a bit campy. It oversimplifies what it exemplifies in that all we really need to do in order to achieve a brotherhood of peace throughout the world is to one by one take up hands together and stand around like some Coke commercial from the 90's?</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Fly the white turtleneck of peace!</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It can't possibly be that simple. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And it's not.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Just take the US for instance, a country so bitterly and willfully divided that issues are no longer even relevant. You see, thanks to the internet everyone is always right. The pundits and politicians have in fact streamlined debate by discovering that any problem can be solved by simply ignoring the alternatives. You would think with everyone in a state of perpetual correctitude the world would be a much happier place. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sadly, this is not the case. Our country is divided because we're told that we must think only one of two ideologies. As a result, our country is fearful because one side is constantly in terror that the other side will inadvertently destroy the nation through their poorly chosen actions. We have arrived at an internal Cold War, just a little over two decades following the initial dust up with the Soviets. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So then, is it possible for someone to change the world by simply not being a jerk all of the time and being friendly and open to other people as well as their ideas?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Probably not.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But, should that be a discouraging factor? Does it really matter that one person's actions would have an essentially incalculable difference on the global scale? Again, probably not, but that one person might impact another. And that person who was affected by some act of goodwill might then again decide to share a kind word with a friend who needs it most. The established chain could potentially reach hundreds if not thousands. But more importantly, it's just the right thing to do. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I've been torn for some time on a basic concept of Christianity. So, Jesus comes down to Earth and pretty much says getting into Heaven is like basic simple. It's harder to find a hotdog at a baseball game than it is to get into the Pearly Gates. Him and God and the Holy Spirit got this deal, you stick with the Son of God and he can get you backstage. Now, since eternity is off the table, how about we just go on with doing the right thing and being helpful and friendly and kind to one another and try not to kill each other for a few millennia? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And then they nailed the guy to a cross.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I guess that's why I find Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. so appealing. He was a self-proclaimed Humanist which means he tried to be altruistic without the expectation that some great reward would be waiting for him after he died. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I truly believe that was what Jesus was talking about when he referred to His kingdom come. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To imagine- being good for goodness' sake!</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">~ Kurt Vonnegut</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Presuming Heaven is eternal, shouldn't it matter more what we do in this blip of an existence than in the face of the unending afterward?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So there is Colonel Shoup, sitting alone at his desk with a child whimpering softly in his ear. How will he change his world?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the story turns out, an ad taken out by Sears in the newspaper had printed a number for which children could contact Santa and hash out their naughty to nice ratios for the year. Incidentally, a mistake in the printing caused a random number to be printed and by a stroke of chance that number happened to be to the red phone on the good Colonel's desk.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Today, Santa is regularly tracked by NORAD and a small group of airmen assigned to that command field phone calls and manage a webspace for youngsters the world over so that they can see how Santa's getting along on the big day. All this because one man, sitting at the helm of destruction saw a way to shine a bright light of faith back out into the shadows. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the darkest hour, there was a beacon. In the bleakest of nights, a brave few made the right choice. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">God bless you, Colonel Shoup, Mrs. Jackson, and Mr. Miller. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday*. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>*Just a note, I will be refraining from providing an entry next Friday due to the Christmas holiday. However, you can expect a special gift come Christmas morning. Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Kwanza, et al, to all!</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/12/19/371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began-with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.npr.org/2014/12/19/371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began-with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pole#Territorial_claims_to_the_North_Pole_and_Arctic_regions"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pole#Territorial_claims_to_the_North_Pole_and_Arctic_regions</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.jan-leemusic.com/Site/History.html"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.jan-leemusic.com/Site/History.html</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.b-westerns.com/ladies55b.htm"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.b-westerns.com/ladies55b.htm</i></span></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-89098171777258794292014-12-12T00:00:00.000-05:002014-12-15T23:01:46.441-05:00Not Henry VIII: Greensleeves<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In September of 1580 the publisher Richard Jones registered the first instance of the tune known as "Greensleeves" with the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers. This group was essentially a private guild and the Tudor version of copyright. It began as a collection of printers, illustrators, manuscript writers and other companies involved in the communication technology of the 15th century with the idea to provide a means to produce and protect the intellectual property through the written word. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the year following the initial registration, 6 other works with similar titles were registered with the Stationers, from various (and competitive) publishers and a contentious battle over the rights ensued. Eventually, this mess of supposed plagiarism and musical pilfering settled into what would become 400 years of arranging, rewriting and adaptation into the melody that modern society is now familiar with today.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Another interesting byline is that many attribute the composition of the melody to none other than the big man himself, Henry VIII.</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AkP640wevaE/VI9r3rrxA4I/AAAAAAAACQA/ZbJUz7n2XLg/s1600/0e7149f698e29aceff10822d3f06e46100cde84cb9051b3fb4e825358b2ad83a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AkP640wevaE/VI9r3rrxA4I/AAAAAAAACQA/ZbJUz7n2XLg/s1600/0e7149f698e29aceff10822d3f06e46100cde84cb9051b3fb4e825358b2ad83a.jpg" height="400" width="285" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite his reputation at being all <i>uxoricidy, </i>Henry actually had pretty baller street cred as a composer as well as being a sort of manly Renaissance man. This coupled with his ability to burn through cash faster than the Sun fuses hydrogen atoms, made him the ultimate man's man/potentate. Not to mention that he pretty much reinvented contemporary religion for the sole purpose of picking up chicks. </span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8Sw7vC3KADM/VI-g1e0ysdI/AAAAAAAACQQ/BOSdtSlg6lI/s1600/3r0tjz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8Sw7vC3KADM/VI-g1e0ysdI/AAAAAAAACQQ/BOSdtSlg6lI/s1600/3r0tjz.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But this entry really isn't about dear ol' Hank, because historians tell us fairly definitively that he did not compose Greensleeves, thus the mystery continues unabated. One interpretation of the lyrics claims that because of her green clad nature, the lady referenced in the <a href="http://www.sixwives.info/greensleeves-lyrics.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">lyrics</a> very possibly was a prostitute as apparently having "green" and "clothing" in the same conversation often referred to the practice of...well...</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z23OJUysB8E/VI-iSiodcqI/AAAAAAAACQc/6RM9qdGaCco/s1600/tumblr_lzinj7T8oU1qjtndio1_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z23OJUysB8E/VI-iSiodcqI/AAAAAAAACQc/6RM9qdGaCco/s1600/tumblr_lzinj7T8oU1qjtndio1_500.gif" height="196" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Alternatively, it is thought that the woman who "cast off" the author "so discourteously" was in fact mistaken for a prostitute by the author, which (despite what you might have heard on the internet) is not generally a great way to make friends and influence people, let alone make the acquaintance of the fairer sex.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The other theory (and likely the reason for the King Henry attribution) is the similarity between the plight of the author and King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and her early rejection of his advances. Unfortunately, it doesn't hold up with a simple analysis of the style exhibited in the piece, being that it's of an Italian nature that was uncommon in England until a bit after ol' Hank kicked the bucket, partially due to being grossly out of shape, but also in part from his transparent addiction to the good times.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AwgyU5K6G1Q/VI-naUpiTXI/AAAAAAAACQs/lvLiOkw3tUI/s1600/10152561_299431663539916_2109139727_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AwgyU5K6G1Q/VI-naUpiTXI/AAAAAAAACQs/lvLiOkw3tUI/s1600/10152561_299431663539916_2109139727_n.jpg" height="257" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">My how times have changed.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But by now, you might be asking yourself why is this classified into the 6 Listening Friday's of Christmas? Well, faithful reader, because in 1865 an insurance company manager fell very ill and had a sort of spiritual revival that caused him to pen several hymns while in a rather depressed, bed-ridden state. The man's name was William Chatterton Dix and he lived in Glasgow at the time he wrote the poem, "The Manger Throne". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It wasn't until 1871, when the poem was set to the "Greensleeves" and included in a hymnal edited by Henry Ramsden Bramley and John Stainer, thus <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Child_Is_This%3F#Lyrics" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">altering the meaning and purpose of the original text greatly</a>. The hymn has survived well, perhaps earning more popularity in the United States than its home country of England.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The melody is haunting, categorically Renaissance in nature and in composition. It recalls an air of mystery well-applied to it's bewildering heritage. Perhaps we'll never know who wrote it, and perhaps it doesn't matter. It has come to represent much to many and will most certainly continue to do so throughout the ages. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For the example today, I present my most cherished setting of the melody, by Ralph Vaughn Williams in his "Fantasia on the Dargason" which pairs the somber tune with a lively English dance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here's the Star of Indiana performing an adaptation of the work in 1989 at DCI finals (with kind of a crappy stereotypical drum corps ending- but the rest is pretty good!):</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9bIKnddj1XI" width="560"></iframe>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And here's the more traditional version performed by the NHK Symphony Orchestra:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ovqFe9KhMj8?start=511" width="560"></iframe>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>https://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=377970</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=8685</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://greensleeves-hubs.hubpages.com/hub/FolkSongGreensleeves-Greensleeves</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensleeves</i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-91479472205394831012014-12-05T00:00:00.000-05:002014-12-06T11:47:21.963-05:00Canned Heat: Christmas Blues<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are times when I get really tired of hearing music. I think most can relate to this. You get stuck on a CD for a while, but then your ears get tired of hearing the same old thing and you attempt to relieve the monotony by switching it up something different. But sometimes, there's just nothing that will fit in that niche and you find yourself turning through station after station until you settle for some talk show radio and mindlessly complete your commute, chugging through a 75 hour work week in 5 days. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And then it hits you. You're so tired you can't think, you're so hungry you can't think, you're mind is jello and you're not even sure what day it is anymore.</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y4cTo46G-Jw/VIJ5riWNCBI/AAAAAAAACOs/qUXvfWjQxbA/s1600/tumblr_inline_mtaiclAT6O1rf8so2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y4cTo46G-Jw/VIJ5riWNCBI/AAAAAAAACOs/qUXvfWjQxbA/s1600/tumblr_inline_mtaiclAT6O1rf8so2.gif" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And that's when you realize it's Friday and you have no idea what you should be listening to. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And when you have a blog called "Listening Friday" that's a problem.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iffZ3IT6a4Q/VIJ6g-zSP3I/AAAAAAAACO0/4_Z1k-1q5q8/s1600/Pm8qVz2.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Hint: The planet. It's Friday.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iffZ3IT6a4Q/VIJ6g-zSP3I/AAAAAAAACO0/4_Z1k-1q5q8/s1600/Pm8qVz2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></span></div>
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And it's like already 9pm. You quickly run through your options- Bust it out, bail, bullshit...or blues?</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lBwPZeLHCmM/VIKABCGWSOI/AAAAAAAACPY/xcipq23GMUU/s1600/tumblr_mv4mag0Ogx1sjt6izo6_400.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lBwPZeLHCmM/VIKABCGWSOI/AAAAAAAACPY/xcipq23GMUU/s1600/tumblr_mv4mag0Ogx1sjt6izo6_400.gif" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So as I was leaving work tonight and wallowing in self-defeat at the fact I had indeed been unable to complete my quest to accomplish the 3rd Listening Friday of Christmas my radio happened to land on the local college station. Ordinarily when given airtime during periods when the administration is fairly certain no one of serious consequence is listening, the DJ's of such stations tend to play things that sound like emo kids murdering band saws while hitting 50 gallon drums with pickles. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tonight, being a Friday night (in a town with what could be considered a passable nightlife) one might expect the airtime to be fertile with opportunities of musical debauchery. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One might be wrong. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fPMsYxuVHRk/VIJ9Sv1ogiI/AAAAAAAACPM/ynwu8b0m8JM/s1600/tumblr_inline_nas4l0vaM71rqb640.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fPMsYxuVHRk/VIJ9Sv1ogiI/AAAAAAAACPM/ynwu8b0m8JM/s1600/tumblr_inline_nas4l0vaM71rqb640.gif" height="300" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">#GIFsthatworkbetterwithaudio</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tonight, there was some wonderful gentleman who was laying down some serious blues. As I turned on the car I was treated to a rendition of a Roy Buchanan tune called "The Messiah Will Come Again" by Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers. Full disclosure- I had never heard Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers, but I have to admit that it was choice. Mr. Thackery, for lack of better words, murders his guitar and records it for posterity. That's one of the elements of Blues I find most endearing actually. Just listening to a slow, drawn out, barely moving blues shuffle while someone just wails on top of the engine room with a mouth harp, guitar, what-have-you, makes me just...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I can't even describe it. Words fail. It strikes a point deep in my soul, a place where all of us try to keep under wraps. A place where we've been hurt before, a dark place. A cold place that derides warmth. Blues exists to magnify that spot, and yet minimize it. Package it neatly into a product that we can all share and take communion of. No one is immune to its call, because no one has never not had the blues. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I began thinking this might be a sign! </span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ltx0Gp2y2jU/VIJ7oMhvHLI/AAAAAAAACPA/9QQg_klIwQc/s1600/see-the-light.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ltx0Gp2y2jU/VIJ7oMhvHLI/AAAAAAAACPA/9QQg_klIwQc/s1600/see-the-light.gif" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Except, we're in the 6 (or 5) Listening Friday's of Christmas and we're talking about the first time Jesus came around, so The Drivers, while apparently awesome, don't fit the bill at the moment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But it did get me thinking.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I got home and googled. And googled. And screwed around on Facebook. And then googled some more. And after I downloaded like 20 new *.gif's, I wrote this entry. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Canned Heat, blues/rock band out of California, was founded in 1965 by Allen Wilson (1943-1970) and Bob Hite (1943-1981) on the premise that being so strung out that drinking sterno sounds like a good idea is pretty much a blues song that wrote itself. The group rounded out with Bob Hite singing, Alan Wilson covering guitar, harmonica and vocals, Henry Vestine or Harvey Mandel on lead guitar, Larry Taylor on bass, and Adolfo de la Parra on set. For the recording we will listen to today they are joined by Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, aka Dr. John on the piano.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The song is titled simply, "Christmas Blues" and evokes exactly what you might expect from such a title. I could go on a bit more about the history of Canned Heat, but I'll be honest- I'm really tired and it will be pretty awful. Not that what you've just read wasn't, but</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yKoBbLgR3mY/VIKDPpklSKI/AAAAAAAACPk/zMdXcPZWwXI/s1600/tumblr_inline_mlacqiA0WI1qz4rgp.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yKoBbLgR3mY/VIKDPpklSKI/AAAAAAAACPk/zMdXcPZWwXI/s1600/tumblr_inline_mlacqiA0WI1qz4rgp.gif" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">OK! OK! Here's Canned Heat + Dr. John burning down YouTube with "Christmas Blues".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<i><a href="http://youtu.be/PouMzBdB-Ts" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Embedding the video was disabled at the request of someone. I'm not sure who. But you'll have to leave this site to watch. But it's ok. You're just going to YouTube. There's a lot of cool stuff there. </span></a></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sources:</span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">www.youtube.com</span></a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canned_Heat"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canned_Heat</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.cannedheatmusic.com/merch.htm"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://www.cannedheatmusic.com/merch.htm</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.jimmythackery.com/"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://www.jimmythackery.com/</span></a><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u style="background-color: red;">BONUS</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here's the recording of Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers taking us to church. Enjoy!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/SHtMeMP1-Yo" width="420"></iframe></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-91322713764182453612014-11-28T00:00:00.000-05:002014-11-28T11:52:54.037-05:00Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I can recall as a child watching the sitcom, <i>Family Matters</i> religiously. It would air as a part of a series of Friday night shows that were all family-friendly and classic examples of sterile and ideal 90's family life. We called it TGIF. <i>Family Matters</i> followed the Winslow family and their patriarch, Carl, through the daily trials and triumphs of being a middle-class family in a Chicago suburb in the mid-90's. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7P61TO_U_X0/VHiF9r-B9nI/AAAAAAAACNc/h_B-SyRyia8/s1600/carl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7P61TO_U_X0/VHiF9r-B9nI/AAAAAAAACNc/h_B-SyRyia8/s1600/carl.jpg" height="400" width="347" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">And their video game deal with Activision.</span></td></tr>
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The show was pretty standard as your sitcoms go and since a good percentage of you probably watched it too, I won't spend time going over the finer points and recurring themes in the show. I will however share that for the entire time the show was on the air, I really had no concept that all of the characters were black, nor that this was anything out of the ordinary. </span><br />
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It wasn't until some time later that I went back and watched the show after being an adult for some time that I realized it. Now, I take great care to make my point here because:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> <b>#1 </b>I am not a racist </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> <b>#2 </b>I still find this show one of the best sitcoms ever (because whatever the hell you people watch on TV nowadays is pretty much crap). </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IKIkH8fph1w/VHiHSlFCzYI/AAAAAAAACNo/rUQynU-CgIE/s1600/Watch-Two-and-a-Half-Men-Season-11-Episode-20-Online-Lotta-Delis-in-Little-Armenia-Free.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IKIkH8fph1w/VHiHSlFCzYI/AAAAAAAACNo/rUQynU-CgIE/s1600/Watch-Two-and-a-Half-Men-Season-11-Episode-20-Online-Lotta-Delis-in-Little-Armenia-Free.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">I still don't understand why it was any better with Charlie Sheen, but I guess you can polish a turd after all.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I couldn't help but realize that some part of me had been irrevocably altered. I no longer could just look at the Winslow's and say, "Here's that really funny TV family that I used to watch." Somewhere along the way my brain had absorbed the idea that people could be classified in many different ways, and this is not abnormal. I have a 3 year old son. I've watched over the past few years as he comes to terms with this world he was thrust into. Initially he just began observing patterns in his day and found that "food time" and "play time" and "bath time" and "bed time" were basically the rule. He began categorizing all new things as based on those initial criteria. </span><br />
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Eventually he'd come across something that didn't fit into any of those four categories (like pizza for example, which is in fact both party and food) and he'd make a new category and keep moving on. I think this behavior continues on for the rest of our lives. I think we're always finding new things and putting them into various boxes to label and associate them. I think it's human nature and by itself is essentially harmless.</span><br />
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It was the reaction I had when I realized the incongruity with how I remembered the Winslow's and how I perceived them in context with my current category system. I became quite disappointed in myself. It was like a part of my childhood was wrest from my control. It wasn't that I felt any differently about the show or that somehow learning that the characters were black was anything bad.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I just didn't have a box for skin color before and now I did. </span><br />
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In 1944 the movie musical <i>Meet Me in St. Louis</i> premiered. It was a pretty standard plot, family with various age children, living in middle-class 1944, and the oldest daughter (played by Judy Garland) has a crush on the neighbor guy (Tom Drake) and they eventually get engaged despite some comedic hurdles along the way. </span><br />
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The other storyline is that the father has recently received a promotion requiring the whole family uproot and move to New York. This means, among other things that the family will miss out on the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. Ultimately, dad decides that moving is a bad idea for his family and they all live happily ever after. </span><br />
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You see, movies before Michael Bay and MTV were like big, 90-minute music videos. Devoid of significant plot, they were designed to provide a fertile place for actual musicians to create their produce and the American public in this era always asked for seconds on veggies. Of this single movie, Hugh Martin (1914-2011) and Ralph Blaine (1914-1995) had created three hits that still occasionally get radio play today. The piece we're focusing on today for the second Listening Friday of Christmas 2014 is one of my favorite pieces of music of all time.</span><br />
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Judy Garland's character is trying to convince her younger sister, Tootie, that moving to New York will be alright and that Santa will still be able to find their house. She sings "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" to calm her. The song itself has undergone quite a few notable revisions in its history, even beginning before this movie was released. Hugh Martin wrote several lines that were downright depressing, focusing on the somber air in the flick and giving an encouraging sentiment to enjoy the moment now because next Christmas the family could be anywhere. Several producers, the director and actors all requested he alter the lyrics to add a more hopeful nature to the piece. </span><br />
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Other changes came when Frank Sinatra recorded the track for a Christmas album and was noted as saying to Martin, "The name of my album is 'A Jolly Christmas'. Do you think you could jolly up that line for me?" The line in question was the "<i>we'll have to muddle through somehow</i>" which you'll notice in the Judy Garland original, but in subsequent versions was changed to "<i>hang a shining star upon the highest bough</i>."</span><br />
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The song speaks to an area of our culture that praises the so-called "perfect Christmas" and established standard that frankly is really hard to achieve in most of our lives. The truth of the matter is that most of us are pretty normal and a big part of being normal means a lot of crazy, goofy crap happens. Especially, when we try to achieve a "perfect" anything.</span><br />
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I think Hugh Martin got that when he wrote it, and the ensuing evolution of the lyrics to a more positive place contrasted with the original purpose of the song, to tell someone everything will be OK when you yourself have no reason to believe it. But ultimately, your outlook is yours alone and you are the only person who can control it. And the other important thing to understand is that you can't control how anyone else thinks either.</span><br />
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I recall an episode of <i>Family Matters</i> where the son, Eddie, was pulled over and harassed by law enforcement. This was complicated by the fact that his father was also a cop. Carl confronts the officers who pulled over his son in the following scene:</span><br />
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The fact of the matter is we can't change anyone's viewpoint on anything and Carl knew it as evidenced by the way he spoke to the rookie at the end of the scene. Race, religion, ethics, whatever. The views we develop are long established by the boxes we've created and how we've filled them. That's why we need to be so careful who we let influence our choices on what goes into which box. If we believe a certain way, we have to continually question and analyze why it's the way it is and if it's the right way or if there's a better way. I think far too often people allow far too much control over their own categorization of ideas instead of turning off the news and exploring an issue for themselves. Often times the news (and even Facebook) will show two sides to an issue that is much more multifaceted than that.</span><br />
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When I watched this episode the first time I had to have been like 10 or 11. I didn't have a box- for any of this. I didn't really understand why anyone would be mean to Eddie, let alone what his skin color had anything to do with it. But the fact of the matter is that there are people in this world who think the behavior of a person is linked to their appearance and I'm here to tell you that people who think like that are in fact unequivocal assholes. </span><br />
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The only thing we can do is to put our own boxes in order and I for one endeavor to put all people into one gigantic box. Will it stop injustice? Or anger? Or racism? Or violence? I doubt it. But what can one person do? You can put all people into the same box, and categorize them only by their actions and their words. That's what you can do.</span><br />
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That's all any one of us can do, but now imagine if it caught on...</span><br />
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And we'll muddle through.</span><br />
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Somehow. </span><br />
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See you next Friday.</span><br />
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-ED</span><br />
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<i>Judy Garland's original version-</i></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Béla Fleck and the Flecktones' version-</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Sources: </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_Me_in_St._Louis</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Yourself_a_Merry_Little_Christmas</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">www.youtube.com</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Béla Fleck and the Flecktones</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">FOX</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">ABC</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Sony</span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5319021489183582161.post-20119781393894870222014-11-21T00:00:00.000-05:002014-11-21T00:00:08.532-05:00Leroy Anderson: A Christmas Festival<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1950, A Christmas Festival was premiered in the middle of June. At this time, Leroy Anderson (1908-1975) had been writing frequently for the Boston Pops, having garnered the attention and respect of its conductor, Arthur Feidler, back in 1938. Anderson had a tremendous capacity for writing relatively short, relatable and digestible orchestra works that could be played by studio orchestras and then broadcast on the radio. You see, back in the 1950's people would actually listen to orchestral music without having to sit through an action film. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">That is, if you call what Hans Zimmer does "music".</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A Christmas Festival is like the holiday mother lode. In Anderson's own words it is not a medley of carols, but a reckoning. A wholly consummate bible of all that pre-1950's Christmas music could proffer to mankind, hewn together to accommodate the limited technical requirements of his time and place. In fact, it literally could not be contained by the recording faculties of the era. To quote Anderson from an interview with Dick Bertel of WTIC Radio, Hartford, Connecticut:</span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"...when this was done, I think it was in 1950 or 1951, they still had single records as the main part of the market; LP's were just about coming in. so while it was played all the way through, that is, when it was recorded, for the LP, we also had to make a split after four minutes - the Christmas Festival runs about 8 minutes so that meant that when I wrote it I had to make a place in the middle where you could stop...</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"... and if I may brag a bit, I defy anybody to find out the exact spot where that occurred..."</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Already, this is a piece of music that is bursting at the seams of convention. I like to imagine the hypothetical conversation between Leroy and his wife Eleanor as they discover that Arthur Feidler has commissioned the work went like this:</span><br />
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~~~</div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Leroy places the receiver on the cradle of the phone as he reaches for the wing of the large red chair and slides into it as an untethered pile of bricks slides off a pallet on a moving truck. His wife enters the room, immediately aware of the change of demeanor as a cold pall fell softly upon the parlor room.</span></i><br />
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<i>"It was Arthur..." Leroy trails off.</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Yes?" Eleanor replies expectantly. </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"He..." Leroy trails off as he searches the wall to his left for the words that will not come. "He said, 'It's time.'"</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i>
<i>Eleanor grows pale as the gravity of realization washes over her like the thousands of Christmas-past before. "It cannot be! It's much too soon, my dear! You'll have to call him back and expl-"</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Explain what? That it's too much to bear? That it's February?"</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Leroy..."<br />"That it isn't my destiny?!"</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's just that..." </span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i>
<i>Leroy calms a bit, realizing the brunt of his frustrations laid bare had upset his bride. "What, my dear, what?" he said calmly, rising to hold her in his arms.</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"T-the children..." she stammered. "I asked Jane and Eric what they wanted Santa to bring for them and...and," she began weeping openly into Leroy's shoulders. </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"What was it?"</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Jane asked for a pair of Hopalong boots and Eric..." she breathed heavily, "He asked for a pistol! That shoots!" </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She collapsed into his arms like a crushed rag doll, sobbing uncontrollably. </span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i>
<i>"Damn that Meredith Wilson! That infernal '76 Trombones' simply wasn't enough for him, now he wants my children!?" Eleanor was inconsolable, Leroy was galvanized. "It's time. I'll be in the study."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">~~~</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I did take a few liberties there considering that Leroy was probably really stoked to write this work, and it shows. Also, Meredith Wilson didn't write "It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas" until 1951 and "The Music Man" premiered in 1957, but hey it's artistic license. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One could make the argument that Leroy Anderson was not a serious composer of serious music and therefore somewhat less important an author of music history than others of his time. I would counter that many dismiss Hemingway on similar terms for his favoritism of short words opposed to the loquacious vocabularies of his contemporaries. Quantity does not an artist make. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Anderson was a cult favorite for all things in the light orchestral category and one of the best things about that is that his music maintains a certain relevance today. Since my wife and son are now listening to that Christmas radio station daily, I've heard "Sleigh Ride" about 47 times already this year! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The other side of Leroy Anderson is that his music is still played frequently by Pops orchestras and school bands and orchestras. A frequent trick to getting kids to realize that instrumental music isn't all lame is to relate it to something that has credibility in their stupid lives of Beats by Dre and pictures of cats. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nGghvbA_nCc/VG45wtte2CI/AAAAAAAACNM/EPMFgA8OFYU/s1600/drdrebook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nGghvbA_nCc/VG45wtte2CI/AAAAAAAACNM/EPMFgA8OFYU/s1600/drdrebook.jpg" height="320" width="222" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Or whatever...</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's recognizable and relevant to them because they've heard it on TV and the radio and the movies. It's part of the easily acceptable culture to them and therefore they can buy in without fear of looking foolish. The other neat part is that it's just a lot of fun to play and to listen to as well. It's not easy to write parts for specific instruments and make them fun to play for all. As a trombonist, I can give you hours of music with horrifically boring trombone parts, but Leroy (being a trombonist himself) knew what he was doing. He spread the love around. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a special note, this is the remastered original recording. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">See you next Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-ED</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/yRtHdFctdvQ" width="420"></iframe>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Sources:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>YouTube</i></span><br />
<a href="http://www.pbs.org/sleighride/Video&Music/Compositions_CFestival.htm"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.pbs.org/sleighride/Video&Music/Compositions_CFestival.htm</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leroy_Anderson#Early_life"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leroy_Anderson#Early_life</i></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.leroyanderson.com/biography.php"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>http://www.leroyanderson.com/biography.php</i></span></a><br />
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