Monthly Archives: June 2013

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Dies Irae, Two Ways! (with a lot of other really weird Gregorian chant stuff)

This sounds rather like a MasterChef recipe, but I couldn’t quite resist.  I was in a bit of a silly mood the other day, and went a-Googling to try to capture a memory of some Gregorian chant I remembered from the 1980s or 1990s which had, if I recall correctly, a disco beat.

I didn’t find it (so far – the quest continues.  I do know it wasn’t Enigma, though I had forgotten about them, and it was fun to be reminded).  But I did find ever so many other things that people have done to Gregorian chant.  Some of them are sillier than others.  And I’m amused that there is an entire band that does Gregorian style covers of everything from Simon and Garfunkel to Rammstein (I am not fully convinced of their actual Gregorianishness, but again, points for silliness, and they certainly sound gorgeous.).

Oh, my, and then there’s this, which is kind of both awful and amazing and has everything.  And I do mean everything.  Including the stuff you wish it didn’t have.

… I get the feeling that I’ve just discovered one of those internet rabbit holes from which there is no escaping…

Anyway.

I found this rather gorgeous jazz remix of Dies Irae, which is filling Andrew with such joy that I really had to post it.  So here it is.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npj9Zj4djts&w=420&h=315]

Isn’t it stunning?  I love the Carmina Burana-like start, and all the brass, and then the walking bass in the piano and the movement into polyphony at the end. So much fun.  Apparently it started as a joke and then developed  The original Dies Irae can be found here, if you want to know how it sounded before someone decided to play with it.

Which is your favourite?

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Now that the sun hath veil’d his light (Henry Purcell)

I’ve reached one of those points where everything is unbearably stressful and overwhelming and I can’t cope and I sort of wish I could get appendicitis or something because then nobody could possibly expect me to get everything done.  (I realise that this isn’t exactly a healthy wish, but that’s just how it is, sometimes.)

Therefore, we get the Catherine equivalent of easy listening on this blog, which is to say, very mellow Purcell sung in the wonderfully gentle and effortless tones of Carolyn Sampson.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5N991L0i28&w=420&h=315]I won’t say that this makes everything better, but it does make appendicitis look a lot less appealing.  For one thing, that would probably hamper my ability to look up the music for this and learn it myself…

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Auf dem wasser zu singen – Franz Schubert

Schedule?  What schedule?  I do apologise for the lack of posts recently – I’ve been sick and then uninspired.  I think for the time being, I’m going to abandon my sequence of posts on Monday and Friday and just post things as the mood takes me.

And today, the mood takes me to Schubert land.  I’m in a tired sort of mood, and this is just the sort of music I can float along to and relax…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO4mofM5Jt0&w=560&h=315] Continue reading →

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Monday Music: My Shepherd is the Living Lord (Tomkins)

Did you know that singers are like bats?  Or at least, I am.  I can’t think of any other way to describe it, but sitting at Mt Carmel on Friday, getting ready to sing for the Order of St Lazarus (who still can’t quite live up to their rather magnificent title), I found myself doing something bat-like, analysing the space in some way that I can’t properly define, but feeling with my body the different way the sound would travel in this new space, so that when I got up to sing, I’d know how to project in it. I’ve sung at Mt Carmel before, but we’re usually at the side, where there’s a chapel to help us, rather than at the center, where one has to work a little harder in some way I can’t define… but part of me was defining it, so that by the time the first note emerged from my mouth, I knew where to put it so that it would carry. So very strange.   It’s one of those things that is partly conscious – I know I’m doing it, after all – but I don’t know how or what.  I imagine someone who really understood the physics of acoustics would know the equations my body and ears were figuring out, but I am not that person.

Anyway.  Moving along from this little side-step into chiroptology, it must be time for some music, and since this post started at Mt Carmel, it might as well move along to Wesley, because we sang a rather gorgeous piece by Thomas Tomkins yesterday.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02HCjeajCOs&hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0]

Continue reading →