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
It’s a Monday morning in Autumn, and time for a bit of Sturm und Drang.
(and this is where I confess that I just had to look up ‘Drang’, which turns out to mean stress. There you go. We all learned something new there…)
Erlkönig is, when it comes down to it, just a fabulous piece of music. It’s clever, clever musical writing that builds on Goethe’s spooky poem until you can just about hear what’s going on without understanding the words. Incidentally, this is another one of those pieces of music where you slightly hate the composer for composing something so spectacular at the age of 18 – not to mention for writing something with such a wrist-destroying left right hand part (all those octave triplets are just cruel).
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8noeFpdfWcQ&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0]
I think my love for both Handel and Ian Bostridge are pretty well established now, and if you spend much time on this blog, you will probably find yourself getting to know them rather well. Part of me feels that I should be looking for more variety, but honestly, this blog is about the music I love, and, well, this is it. And this particular aria contains, I think, some truly perfect singing, especially in the repeat at the end.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVx9sGQIKng&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0]
This carol is purely wishful thinking on my part. The forecast for today is for 39°C – appallingly hot for December – and a bit of frosty wind feels as though it would be very welcome just now. Especially as I still have to do all my Christmas baking!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hs9-Sxf9j4&w=420&h=315]
Another piece from our yearly Advent Service, and also from Handel’s Messiah. You’d think I’d be tired of it by now, but some things never grow old…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPig0EBG7MA&w=420&h=315]
I’ve only discovered Quilter recently, mostly because there was a book of his art song available at the Allans sale a few weeks ago and I was seduced by the prospect of singing Shakespeare’s poetry. My friendly salesperson, who is a fellow lover of Purcell and 19th century French opera, eyed my choice with disfavour. “Well… it’s very… pretty,” he finally said, clearly attempting diplomacy. And so it is…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGZjewK_jJY&w=560&h=315] Continue reading
Another slightly better-known carol, this one with lyrics by Christina Rosetti, who certainly never intended for it to be sung, since it scans differently in every verse. I love this carol for the words, which I find very evocative – of, as it happens, entirely the wrong season for us. This sort of carol reminds me of the Christmas we spent in England when I was a child – though less the Christmas, which was in London, and more the months leading up to it which were spent living at York University, in very storybook English surrounds – icy ponds, stepping stones, red squirrels, proper autumn trees and conkers and medieval and roman ruins. I still love York and undoubtedly view it through the rose-tinted glasses of someone who hasn’t been there for about 17 years, and these words and the clearness of the song remind me of it.
This is not the arrangement which I know well, and which we are singing on Sunday (that would be the Holst arrangement) and which I know better, nor is it the arrangement that I heard sung once when I was at school and am clearly never going to find because I have no idea who the composer was and YouTube just keeps offering me Holst and Darke. I can never decide whether I like this arrangement more than the other, but in the end, I loved the singing of this one, and the soprano and then tenor solo.
Also, the Darke arrangement is really strange if you are are accustomed to Holst – it’s similar enough that it *almost* sounds like it might be a harmony or descant to it (it isn’t – I’ve tried singing one over the other, and they don’t quite work. But it’s very close).
And now I’ve just realised that Darke skips my favourite verse, which is the one about angels and archangels worshiping Jesus night and day while, Mary worships her son with a kiss. There’s a lovely domesticity and humanity about it which I love. So you are going to have to have *both* versions, even though I don’t really love the singing on the second one, and I’m going to give you the lyrics too, and then you can decide which you like best.
I think I love all of them.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRjruAlijnA&w=560&h=315]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE0aIQp9V4s&w=560&h=315]
Edited to add: Chanticleer did a magnificent arrangement of the Holst, which is too good not to include, but not at all traditional. And they skipped the breastful of milk verse, which is also not acceptable. You have to sing all the verses, people!
Lyrics:
You knew I’d sneak some Ian Bostridge in here somewhere, right? And what could be better than a little more Messiah?
The text of this piece is read at every Advent Carol service I’ve been to – it’s another prepare ye the way of the Lord text (and now I have the Godspell version in my head), though I think it’s actually from Isaiah and not from the New Testament at all.
Look, in all honesty, I feel silly talking about the significance of this piece of music here – it really is, I think, a piece that needs no introduction, except, perhaps, to say that it is one of those pieces of music that really makes Advent for me, and is in my head during most of December. Indeed, I believe it was the inspiration for last year’s Advent Calendar, because we missed out on hearing it at last year’s service. And then my friend Lea pointed me at this recording by Ian Bostridge, and I loved it, and thus my first big opera crush was born. He truly has one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard. I hope you love this recording as much as I do.
(NB: You need to listen to both parts of it together – they are part of the same piece, but some obnoxious person has put an ad at the start of Ev’ry Valley, which is a terrible shame. I wish I could find a version where they didn’t, but I can’t.)
Edited December: Alas, Ian Bostridge’s ‘Comfort Ye’ can no longer be found on YouTube. But his Ev’ry Valley is still magnificent.