Tag Archives: music

Lift Up Your Voice

Posted on by
5

We have a wedding at our church this weekend. 
The bride’s family’s and the groom’s churches from distant parts
are joining our small congregation for the weekend.
This Sunday, our church will swell
up to about three times its normal size;
we’re having a psalm sing before
worship
and a fellowship meal afterwards
to incorporate the visitors into our
body of believers. 

Lust is usually considered a pejorative term,
but lusty
singing is simply lovely in church. 
When the right music is joined to words of
praise the effect on my spirit is powerful. 
A room full of people singing with
unrestrained conviction is mighty potent.
Mighty Potent.
I’m getting goose bumps
of anticipation.

John Wesley’s directions for singing in the preface to Sacred Melody, 1761

1. Sing lustily and with good courage. 
Beware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. 
Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed
of its being heard, then when you sung the songs of Satan.

2. Sing modestly. 
Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from
the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony;
but strive to unite your voices together,
so as to make one clear melodious sound.

3.  Sing in time. 
Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it.
Do not run before nor stay behind it;
but attend close to the leading voices,
and move therewith as exactly as you can;
and take care not to sing too slow.
This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy;
and it is high time to drive it out from us,
and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.

4.  Above all sing spiritually. 
Have an eye to God in every word you sing.
Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself or any other creature.
In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing,
and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound,
but offered to God continually;
so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here,
and reward you when He cometh in the clouds of heaven.

Life is Strange

Posted on by
6

I’ve been listening to several Teaching Company musical biographical courses…The Life and Music of [fill in the blank].  Today on my walk and at other odd and sundry moments of the day I listened to two lectures from Great Masters: Stravinsky – His Life and Music.  One entire lecture was devoted to The Rite of Spring and its infamous premiere which caused a riot to break out.  It is considered one of the seminal moments in the history of modern music, but it was, all the same, A Scandal.

Professor Robert Greenberg, a wonderful and lively teacher, explained the asymmetrical rhythm patterns and then dubbed his voice on top of the Dance of the Adolescents with the numbers of the pulsing beat: 1-2-3-4-5-6-1-2 –1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-1-2-3-4-5-1-2-1-2-3…

It’s most bizarre sounding.  Further, Professor Greenberg reminded me of a word I barely knew: ostinati,  constantly repeated melodic patterns (in contrast to a melody which has a destination and gets to said destination).

Just a minute ago, I was skimming through my email and gave a quick glance at The Writer’s Almanac.  Oh my!

Literary and Historical Notes:

It was on this day in 1913 that The Rite of Spring premiered at the Théâtre des Champs–Élysées in Paris, a ballet with
choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky and music by Igor Stravinsky.

How strange it is that the day I learn about this event is the anniversary of the very day on which it was held!  With the time change between Oregon and Paris when I walking and listening is about the time the curtain would have gone up. 

That being said, I don’t care for the jarring cacophony and dissonance of this piece.  My son said, Stravinsky might have been a nicer person than Tchaikovsky (who was a pedophile), but I like Tchaikovsky’s music better. 


Eric Bibb and the Blues

Posted on by
3

 

(waving my hands frantically up and down) 
People! Pay attention!! A new discovery!

We have two queues in our life:  Netflix and yourmusic.com.  I try to keep the three occupants of our home happy with what comes in the mail from these queues.  In truth, the choices are stacked about 3:1 in my favor (i.e. the guys are exceedingly weary with medieval period films).  The point is that I occasionally attempt to get what they’d like.

In the music department, my husband wanted a little less of Vaughn Williams and a little more of Stevie Ray Vaughn.  So I was checking out the Blues when this album cover caught my eye.  The blurb snagged my interest like a shirt on a barbed-wire fence.

Steve Leggett in All Music Guide says: 

 It features his fine acoustic guitar playingand his soothing, nuanced singing, and it shows an increasinglyimproving songwriter as well, and the whole affair is all wrapped upwith a patient, quietly joyous, and ultimately positive vibe. Bibb’sversion of the blues has always been like that, patient and positive,and it serves as a reminder that the blues isn’t necessarily alwaysabout despair, darkness, and ominous guitar riffs but is also built onthe concept of survival and moving forward, on the idea of gettingthrough tough times and reaching brighter days. In Bibb’s hands theblues becomes sustaining, moving closer to the spiritual uplift ofgospel, and the often shaky division between Saturday night blues andSunday morning praise drops away here.

patient and positive – I like that

The Amazon.com product description:

Time and again over the past three decades and beyond, Bibb hasdemonstrated his ability to not only capture those singular momentswhen the spiritual and the everyday come together, but also extract thepriceless nuggets of truth and wisdom that emerge from those moments.Diamond Days is filled with just such gems.

the spiritual and the everyday come together – yes!

Take some time, when you can, to listen to the selections here or here.  The music is quiet, acoustical guitar with a dose of funky blues cadences or rhythms added in.  When my CD arrives it will get a lot of play time.

[Edit: we’ve discontinued our Yourmusic subscription.] If yourmusic.com interests you (one CD a month at $6.99 + free shipping and handling), consider involving me in the process of subscribing [I get a free CD when a friend subscribes][message me and I’ll email you].  We sure enjoy yourmusic; it’s a monthly taste of Christmas, a little touch of frugal, and a small bit of splurge — all wrapped in one package a month.

I’m always late to the party – has anyone else  heard of Eric Bibb?  Any fans out there?

Random Thoughts

Posted on by
3

First things first: 

The winner of the book giveaway is ……. Janie!  She guessed $54 and I spent $53.63.  Is it the Cullum you’d like, my friend?  I’m headed to the post office this afternoon.  I’m delighted to have found something for which you’ve long been looking.  [Addendum: How fun!  The book she was excited about was Shake Hands with Shakespeare by Albert Cullum. Today is Shakespeare’s birthday and deathday. Have you ever thought about dying on your birthday? Yeah, I’m weird.]

When the price was 50¢/inch I usually spent $35 at the sale.  So it makes sense to me ($35 * 1.5 = $52.50) that  when the price rose to 75¢/inch I spent $53.  Happily, my husband just bought new arrows for his bow so we are both indulged.  For incredible bargains, check out what Carrie got at her library sale for a total of  $1.75!!  Woo hoo indeed!

☼     ☼     ☼     ☼     ☼

Here’s a sample quote from the book Conversation  by Theodore Zeldin.  I’m not impressed with the book, but I liked this quote (emphasis mine):

Shopping for food is a game of hide-and-seek, with packagers concealing their secrets in small print.  The time will come, I hope, when those who influence our ideas on food, the writers of newspaper articles about restaurants, and the makers of TV cooking shows, will begin to discuss the quality of the conversation which their delicious meals induce, and not concentrate only on the decor of restaurants, or the technicalities of recipes.

☼     ☼     ☼     ☼     ☼

If you like choral music, I’d recommend Morten Lauridsen’s setting of O Magnum Mysterium.  The Lauridsen is  number 5 on this CD. The first sentence would be a good lesson for a young Latin student (with help given on the hard words).  The music is perfectly paired to the text.  We heard this at a concert last night and the tears just rolled down my cheeks.  It was so beautiful that it hurt.

O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum
natum jacentem in praesepio.

O great wonder, miraculous sacrament:
the beasts of the field have seen the Lord,
new-born and lying in a manger.

Funeral Music

Posted on by
9

Thanks to many who prayed for the service for my friends’ son.

Here’s a list of prelude and postlude music I played. I tried to choose a mix between hymns, Celtic-sounding “mournful” music, and popular songs, keeping in mind that the group wasn’t a highbrow audience.  For All the Saints and Softly and Tenderly wouldn’t have been good choices this time.  I had intended to play What A Friend We Have in Jesus and regret forgetting it.

Untitled Hymn (Come to Jesus) by Chris Rice
Homeward Bound by Marta Keen as heard played by William Joseph
Ashokan Farewell by Jay Ungar
Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy
Grace by David Foster and William Joseph
I Will Remember You by Sarah McLachlan
Give Me Jesus, arranged by Fernando Ortega
There Is a Fountain
I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger
People Get Ready, Eva Cassidy rendition

Eva Cassidy is a new find – oh, mama, that girl could sing!! Sad story: she died (1996) at age 33 of cancer, an unknown singer.  One of her recordings got some air time in the UK and they went wacko-wild over her.  That popularity bounced back to the states.  Listen!!  If you have three and 1/2 minutes this is well worth your time. Have any of you heard her?

The samples (# 7 and #11) of William Joseph are also excellent.   I would like to thank my sister and sister-in-law for their incredible help with song selections.  For you musicians out there, musicnotes.com was a lifesaver.  I could buy the music, download and print it in five minutes.  They also allow you to print the first page for free so you get an idea on the arrangement.  Bookmark that page!

Do you have a song you would really like at your funeral or memorial service?

A Frame of Silence

Posted on by
6

Such a treat last night – a concert held in a gorgeous church by the excellent Williamette University Chamber Choir. 

My favorite piece was Felix Mendelssohn’s Richte Mich Gott (Psalm 43). You didn’t need to know German to tell, by the music, when the choir came to these words. 
 

Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

Yesterday brought two heavy items for prayer.  Being bathed in beautiful music brought rest, relief and realignment. When the choir finished a piece there was a moment of silence which appropriately captured and contained the wonder.  A young man close by me audibly exhaled after the first piece, as if he had been holding his breath during the whole piece.  The concert ended with the choir’s signature piece Nunc Dimittis the glorious Song of Simeon. 

Professor Robert Greenberg, of The Teaching Company, on silence after a performance (transcribed from his series Great Masters:Haydn – His Life and Music):

One must always wait for an appropriate amount of silence.  Silence is the frame that surrounds any given piece of music.  We do not clap before the piece begins because we need to frame the beginning with absolute nothingness; and I trust that nothingness also includes no gagging, hacking, coughing or other tubercular signs of respiratory illness.

Likewise the end of the piece should be followed by an equally appropriate pause, that the music may exist within its own space.

Anything that disturbs that space disturbs our perception of the new world we’ve been transported to and has a terribly, terribly dislocating effect in the heart, ear, spirit and mind of the listener.

So let us not be that person who must applaud first.

Inventory

Posted on by
1

What we brought to church:
   

A 2-disc recording of Handel’s Messiah, Neville Mariner conducting (to lend to a young couple looking for recommendations on which Messiah to purchase)

What we brought home:

December 19th issue of World magazine (passed to us after original recipients are finished)

Franck’s The Complete Masterworks for Organ and Composers in Person CD with four French organists playing their own works on organ, mostly in the 1930s.  The composers are Charles-Marie Widor, Olivier Messiaen, Marcel Dupré and Louis Vierne.  (unsolicited loan of organ CDs to help my education in organ music along – imagine! Last week I’d never heard of Marcel Dupré and now I’m listening to a recording of him!)

Compilation of blues music (solicited loan to help my education in the blues along – favorite so far: I Want Jesus Over Me)

A box of Henty and Landmark books (returned to us after loan last summer)

Quote to ponder:  “We chew many pills God intended us to swallow.”

Gladdened hearts.



The King of Love My Shepherd Is

Posted on by
6

It’s peculiar, I know, but I’m fascinated with funeral music.  I’ve been collecting selections for my own funeral for decades, beginning with my all time favorite: For All the Saints, by Vaughn Williams. After Ronald Reagan’s service  I watched We Were Soldiers simply to hear the striking, majestic music in the recessional. I was saddened, indeed, when the paper came Tuesday and I realized that we had missed President Ford’s service. 

We watched excerpts of the Washington Cathedral service Tuesday, pointing to people we recognized and remembering the political world of our high school days.  I appreciated Tom Brokaw’s eulogy, how he mused on football as a metaphor for life. My heart lurched when Susan Ford Bales read from the book of James, her voice on the edge of control.  But on the whole, we missed all the good music. 

I started sniffing around the internet and found the program for the service.  I love organ music and would like to collect more this year.  I’m printing out the prelude and hunting down these pieces on Amazon to listen to parts. Marcel Dupré is a new composer to me, but I surely like what I’ve heard thus far. 

Minnesota Public Radio has limited coverage of the funeral.  If you are in for an exquisite, absolutely fabulous musical experience do this:  Download the state funeral (takes less than a minute) and move the clip position to 42:45 so you can hear The King of Love My Shepherd Is.

The best way to listen to this is to open a new tab and follow along with the words on the program.  The organ accompanies the singers the first two verses and then drops out as they sing Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed.  The minimal, etherial harmonies on the next verse match the words In death’s dark vale perfectly. 

The organ re-enters with the last verse in a triumphal reharmonization.  Goosebumps!  Major goosebumps! 

It doesn’t get any better, musically speaking, this side of paradise. 

Runaway Bunny and Brahms

Posted on by
1

One of the joys of looking and listening is discovering obscure connections. 

I’m listening to a Teaching Company course on Johannes Brahms.  I can’t say enough wonderful things about Professor Robert Greenberg’s music courses.  Greenberg teaches in such a lively, entertaining manner that his subjects breath and pulse and truly come alive. 

Brahm’s Quartet for Four Voices and piano, Op. 31, No. 2, Teasing, based on the poem Teasing by Josef Wenzig has the men singing several lines followed by the women’s response.  Here are the lyrics:

 It's true, my dear, I am now courting,
 and I will establish you as my wife;
 you will be mine, my dear, truly mine,
 and even if you don't also want it.
 
 "Then I'll become a dove with a white form -
 I will fly from you, fly into the wood,
 and so I may not be yours, may not be yours:
 that hour will never come."
 
 I have a flintlock that can fire quickly -
 I'll shoot the dove down in the wood;
 You will be mine, my dear, truly mine,
 and even if you don't also want it.
 
 "Then I'll become a little fish, a golden fish -
 I'll spring into the fresh water;
 and so I may not be yours, may not be yours:
 that hour will never come."
 
 I have however a net that fishes very well;
 I will catch me this golden fish in the water.
 You will be mine, my dear, truly mine,
 and even if you don't also want it.
 
 "Then I'll become a hare, full of swiftness -
 and run in the fields, the broad fields.
 and so I may not be yours, may not be yours:
 that hour will never come."
 
 I have however a hound that's smart and fine;
 he'll catch me that hare in the fields.
 You will be mine, my dear, truly mine,
 and even if you don't also want it.

Are you a Margaret Wise Brown fan? (If not, you should be!)  Do you recognize The Runaway Bunny?

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away.
So he said to his mother, “I am running away.”
“If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you.
For you are my little bunny.”

“If you run after me,” said the little bunny,
“I will become a fish in a trout stream
and I will swim away from you.”

“If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother,
“I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”

The book continues in the same vein.  It’s a delightful book to read aloud to a young child, making the little bunny’s voice high and squeaky and the mother’s voice calm and low. It captures the pull and push of budding independence and the security of a mother’s love.  I sure like the theme much better in the context of a mother’s love than as talk between a man and a woman.  

Who knew that you would find a German Lieder in classic children’s literature?  Isn’t that just plain fun?

Stamp Thine Image

Posted on by
1

It is a particular delight to discover new verses to familiar songs.  On Sunday we sang a verse to
Hark! the Herald Angels Sing I had never heard before:

Adam’s likeness, Lord efface,
Stamp Thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.

Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the Life, the inner man:
O, to all Thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart.

Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King.”

A line from Athanasius, On the Incarnation (the emphasis is my own):

He made all things out of nothing through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ; and of all these His earthly creatures He reserved especial mercy for the race of men.  Upon them, therefore, upon men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked–namely, the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself, so that, reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even as He does, though in limited degree, they might continue for ever in the blessed and only true life of saints in paradise.