calm

SHAME WEEK! Termagant Tuesday: “Tapestry,” Michael Jones

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Wood varnish, modern dance, and New York City.  Those are the three things that come to mind when I hear this.

Wood varnish: I am seven.  My mom refinished…man. I lost count of the number of things she refinished in the house I grew up in.  Our beautiful old upright piano, tables, chairs.  Not to mention all of the other home improvement projects she had going on.  A Michael Jones cassette was part of the music rotation she would put on the paint-splattered radio-tape player that kept her company when the fumes were too strong for a kid to deal with.  Michael Jones was soon supplanted by Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” and I took “Pianoscapes” for myself.  It heavily influenced my own early compositions.  Don’t get me wrong – this music isn’t that great.  But what it did do for a little kid writing her own stuff was make it okay to experiment with melodic changes, time signature changes, and rhythmic changes.  It also made it okay to write “songs” that were more than ten minutes long.  You’re welcome, neighbors.

Modern dance: I am ten.  I took a bunch of different styles of dance when I was a kid but modern dance was the only one that I really got into because – surprise! – there aren’t a whole lot of rules.  Perfect.  One homework assignment was to create our own dance and set it to music.  The person who came up with the most popular dance (decided by a very public vote) would choreograph a whole group routine.  I used “Tapestry.”  I did not win.

New York City: I am thirteen.  For my thirteenth birthday, I got to go to New York City and visit my godmother.  She lived by the courthouse in Manhattan and worked in the fashion industry.  She was (and still is), very tall and very glamorous.  She took me shopping to buy my very first make-up (Clinique – what’s up).  She bought me my first pair of black cigarette pants.  We ate escargot and went to the theater.  It was incredible.  We also went to a bookstore that had a CD section and I bought the CD version of the now six-year-old cassette tape.  I put it on her CD player when we got back to her enormous apartment and I remember walking around her very modernist two-bedroom, looking at the city lights glowing in the dark, with this piece pouring out of the speakers.  That’s a very happy memory.

SHAME WEEK! Modernism Monday: “Life in a Northern Town,” The Dream Academy

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I recently got a few boxes delivered from a storage unit I had more or less forgotten I had.  One of them had photos in it.  It was marked, “Photos.”  Another had scratch-and-sniff stickers in a jewelry box, an orange stopwatch in a plastic bag with some loose Euro coins, and approximately seven different guidebooks of Washington, D.C.  It was marked, “Random.”  The third box was marked “DO NOT PUT ANYTHING ON TOP OF THIS BOX” and was filled with all of my old CD binders dating back to senior year of high school.  Oh man.  This was going to take some time.

Leafing through page after page of CDs was way more intense that looking at old snapshots of myself and my degenerate college friends.  It was a tour of my innermost thoughts and – worst – tastes and preferences.  “Oh Christ” was a common thought that sprang to mind every three or four page-turns.  Talking about this with some friends over beers last week, it became clear that they – and therefore the entire universe of still-alive humans – have music that they still love but are too ashamed to tell people about.

I am not ashamed.  I am going to air my dirty musical laundry for all to see.  Welcome, dear readers, to Shame Week.  We begin our tour with the odd little British group The Dream Academy, whose song “Life In A Northern Town” is a nice pre-chewed bite of moodiness, punctuated by a howlingly out of place “African”-style chant in the chorus.  Oh, and there’s an oboe.  Okay.

Sacred Sunday: “Jesus Gonna Be Here,” The Blind Boys of Alabama

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Here is a real American spiritual for the weekend – calm, confident, and full of swagger. Good for a long walk in the sun, an afternoon in a hammock, and an evening sitting on the front porch. Nothing ground the spirit like the blues. “I’m gonna leave this place better than the way I found it was.” Amen, brother.

Termagant Tuesday: “Fear of the South,” Tin Hat Trio

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I know.  It’s the first work day after a long weekend.  We’ll get through it together.  Throw your shoulders back and march into the office with vigor and aplomb.  Make up a story about how you got that sunburn that’s even better than the truth.  No one will believe you actually went paddle-boating anyway.

Sacred Sunday: “Eternal Father, Strong to Save

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Memorial Day was created three years after the end of the Civil War. Originally called “Decoration Day,” late May was chosen for its observation because it was thought that the flowers to be places by the graves of the fallen would be in bloom at that time around the country.

Patriotism and nationalism are easy to confuse and have gotten completely mixed up in recent years. To the extent you can, put politics aside this Memorial Day and honor the ideas of service and sacrifice embodied by the men and women of our armed services. Think about those serving abroad. Think about their families. Offer up a prayer for those in peril on the sea, and around the world.

Sacred Sunday: “Om Namah Shivay Dhun,” Jagit Singh

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This is one of the most popular mantras in Hinduism, and the most important in Shaivism, the sect of Hinduism that reveres the god Shiva.

Shaiva temple in Sibsagar, Assam, India.

Shaiva temple in Sibsagar, Assam, India.

These words are known in Shaivism as the panychAkshara mantra, or the Holy Five Syllables.   Its loose translation is, “Adoration to Shiva,” but its essence is much more closely associated with the sublimation of the ego along with complete devotion.  The mantra has been set to countless melodies but this is one of my favorites.

Today is the Sunday in church we read the gospel lesson in which Jesus tells his followers, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  As Bishop Mariann Budde, the head of the Diocese of Washington, preached this morning, it’s a deceptively difficult statement to wrestle with because it seems to imply exclusion – i.e., the only way towards the divine is through Jesus, and therefore through the Christian faith.  Bishop Budde said that, to her, this is much more of a statement of love between Jesus and his disciples than it is a commandment that those who are not followers are condemned.  The Holy Five Syllables is another such love song.  What a wonderful thing that humans evolved so many ways of approaching the divine, and that each of them begins with love.

Throwback Thursday: “Violin Concerto in D major,” Erich Korngold

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49cKqKmLiDg

 

I had the great good fortune of seeing this performed live with Gil Shaham about a few weeks ago and oh, jeepers, was it ever amazing.  I had never heard of Korngold before that night and I forgot how glorious it is to be surprised by new music.  This piece absolutely knocked me flat.

Korngold was an American composer and a contemporary of Aaron Copland – Korngold wrote this piece in 1945, three years after “Rodeo” and “Fanfare for the Common Man.”  Korngold experiments with both atonality and out-and-out romanticism than does Copland, but there are echoes of Copland’s work especially in the third movement (at 17:17).  More than anything, the violin concerto sounds like a movie score (“E.T.,” anyone?), which isn’t a surprise since Korngold did write movie scores.  In fact, his score for “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (with the raffish Errol Flynn) won an Academy Award in 1938, the first time the award had been given to a composer and not the director of the studio’s music department.

Beyond all this, the second movement (08:56) is just exquisite.  It’s my favorite part of the concerto.  Go ahead, call me a sap.

Worldly Wednesday: “Farewell to Stromness,” Peter Maxwell Davies

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This has already been a tough week for me and a lot of people I know, so I thought I would share a piece that has helped me recenter myself when things get a bit much.  Davies wrote this for a play, “The Yellowcake Review,” which was a work of protest against a possible plan to build a uranium mine in Stromness, in the Orkney Islands of Scotland.

Stromness

Stromness

 

“I will not walk backward in life.”

– J.R.R. Tolkein

Throwback Thursday: “Szeroka Woda,” Henryk Gorecki

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy774gkJf5Y

Gorecki was a modern Polish composer who is probably best known for his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.  This piece is my favorite of his.  It is a very simple arrangement of a Polish folk song about undying love.

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Broad waters on the Vistula,

Now I’ll tell you my thoughts.

As it was yesterday, so it is today:

I must be with you through the ages.

Sacred Sunday: “Agnus Dei,” William Byrd

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We sang this anthem in church today, so it’s fresh on my mind – and means we are back to regularly scheduled program of Renaissance polyphony. (I promise to change it up soon, Tuners.)

Beyond this being one of the three anthems I sang at Palm Sunday service today and therefore stuck in my craw, this is a magnificent example of Byrd’s use of harmony. Each individual line is gorgeous on its own: as in Bach’s music, each line goes on its own exploration, interacting with the others but not necessarily serving the melody alone. My favorite part begins at 2:15 at the “Dona nobis pacem.” You can hear the plea echoed within each line in a different way. It wraps you up in the community of all those who came before you asking for the same thing – Lord, give us peace. And because there is such a community of prayers, it gives one the feeling that there’s a chance that the prayer will be granted. That’s a pretty nice feeling.

The choir of Christ Church, Oxford, sings this recording.