Author Archives

by

Advent Calendar Day 1: Veni, Veni Emmanuel (The King’s Singers)

It’s December, which means it’s musical Advent Calendar time (and possibly also, oh look, I have a music blog, maybe I should stop ignoring it time)!

I’m starting Advent this year with a recording of The King’s Singers, singing Veni, Veni Emmanuel, a Christmas Carol – or, really, an Advent Carol – with medieval origins.

It is well known, I think, that I adore The King’s Singers.  They are, in my view, the best vocal group currently performing, and their harmony and clarity is so perfect that when you hear them in concert, their music often develops extra harmonics from the resonances.  Their work is, quite simply, sublime.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE6BzoMt0Ro&w=560&h=315]

I’m particularly fond of Veni Veni Emmanuel, because of all the ways it has developed over the years.  In its purest form, it’s simply Gregorian chant (and one thing I like about the King’s Singers version of it is that they do start in unison, befitting the music’s origins, before developing the harmonies in later verses); it can also be sung as a big Christmas Carol with organ and descant à la Willcocks.  And in between you get thoughtful, countermelody versions by the Medieval Baebes, or solo versions by Celtic musicians like Enya.  And then there’s the version by Nox Arcana…  All different, and all gorgeous – very few people do this hymn badly, I find.

The text is a paraphrase of Isaiah, and properly belongs in the third week of Advent, but I like it as a starting point, since it is an invitation, after all.  And that is the start of any journey.

by

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?

by

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…

by

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 →

by

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 →

by

Friday Fun: Cheap Flights (Fascinating Aida)

I was reading a novel this week in which, at one point, the heroine is about to fly to Japan, which is a terrible idea in the context of this book, and I really, really didn’t want her to go.  And then she mentioned that she was waiting in the Jetstar lounge, and I breathed an immediate sigh of relief, because of course there was no way Jetstar would take her to Japan – the flight would be cancelled for sure, or at least delayed long enough… And then I remembered that I was reading a novel, so that the rules of real life might not apply, and sure enough, her plane left on time, taking with it my suspension of disbelief.

(I’m sorry if anyone reading this works at Jetstar and is distressed by the above, but every time I’ve booked anyone on a flight with Jetstar, they have done their level best to strand my passengers in far north Queensland.  I refuse to book flights on Jetstar now, even when they are the only direct option.)

Anyway, between that and the fact that I’ve been chatting twice daily with our travel agents this week, today’s choice of song was obvious.  Though if you have a problem with profanity, you might want to give this one a miss (it is, however, safe for work, provided you aren’t working in a primary school or similar. Though I imagine the kids already know these words…).

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPyl2tOaKxM&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Continue reading →

by

Monday Music: Erbarme Dich – in Arabic (J.S. Bach)

Here’s something a little bit different for your Monday amusement.  Erbarme Dich is probably the most famous contralto aria from Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion.  It’s sung after Peter has denied Jesus three times, and, sung well, is an absolutely compelling portrayal of grief and guilt.  It’s also very firmly part of  theWestern musical canon.

So here it is, translated into Arabic.  And when I say translated, I’m not just talking about the lyrics – the style both of singing and playing has a decidedly middle-Eastern feel.  And it’s rather amazing.  The solo violin in this piece, as was pointed out to me recently, has a sound rather similar to Jewish liturgical Eastern European Jewish violin music, and this Eastern influence is brought very much to the fore here.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUj3LEiMEKE&hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0] Continue reading →

by

Monday Music: The Cold Genius (Henry Purcell)

It was absolutely necessary that I find a counter-tenor song for today, since I’m still so very disappointed that Cezar‘s magnificent counter-tenor effort on Eurovision didn’t do better, but it’s after midnight as I schedule this, and I have to work tomorrow, so was really not up for trolling the internet in search of the perfect piece of music.

Fortunately, it turns out that I had, stashed away in my list of things to write about, Andreas Scholl singing the Aria “What Power art Thou”, also known as the song of the Cold Genius, from Purcell’s King Arthur. Continue reading →

by

Friday Fun: Climbing Uphill (Jason Robert Brown)

One of the really great things about my singing lessons is that every fortnight, we have a performance class, in which we get to hear what all the other students are doing.  Some of the others are studying for exams; others are working on audition pieces, or on pieces for performances that they will be doing, and you never know when someone stands up whether you’re going to get opera or lieder, music theatre or gospel, Adele or Janice Joplin.  What you do know is that the odds are that someone will be doing something that you’ve never heard before and really like.

The other delicious thing about this class is that there are a handful of truly phenomenal singers and performers who always leave me mesmerised.  One of them, S, is also a particularly talented actress, and she is the one who brought this wonderfully clever song to class a few weeks ago.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0Y4_tFT1l8&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Continue reading →